Orchid followed him into the outer office and gently closed the door behind her. "What, exactly, are we going to look for in here?"
"I'm not sure. I'll know it when I see it."
There were two sets of file cabinets in the outer office. The drawers in the one nearest the receptionist's desk were not locked. Those in the larger cabinet on the other side of the room were. Rafe started with them.
There was no trick to deactivating the simple drawer locks. He opened the one that contained the files of patients whose last names began with Q through Z. He played the narrow beam of the flashlight over the names on the folders.
There was no file for Theo Willis.
Orchid peered over his shoulder. "I suppose that would have been too easy."
"Probably."
He closed the drawer and walked into the inner office. It was furnished with two padded leather chairs, one of which had a side table standing next to it. There was a box of tissue on the table. The client's chair, Rafe decided. The prints on the walls were nondescript designs in pale pastels. Probably intended to be soothing, he thought. They looked dull and lifeless to him. The rug was the shade of discreet gray that was guaranteed not to show stains for years. The desk was a cheap reproduction of an Early Exploration period piece.
Rafe aimed the flashlight at the top of the desk. The only items on it were a telephone, a leather blotter, and a fountain pen in a wooden stand.
"A little too neat, if you ask me," Orchid said. "I never trust anyone who maintains a perfectly clear desk."
"I'll remember that. Here, hold the flashlight while I go through it."
She stood over him and aimed the light while he quickly went through the desk's four drawers. Nothing caught his eye until he opened the last one on the bottom left-hand side and discovered a stack of garishly colored magazines.
"Well, well, well." Orchid bent down for a closer look.
Rafe glanced at the bulging nude breasts that filled virtually the entire cover of the first magazine in the stack. He lifted it and looked at the second one. It contained an enlarged closeup of a woman's naked buttocks.
"Looks like Austen has a few fixations of his own," Rafe said.
"Do you suppose the good doctor uses these magazines for therapy?" Orchid asked.
"More likely he uses them to jack off with in the men's room down the hall when he gets a break between clients." Rafe closed the drawer. "Damn. They've got to be here somewhere."
"What?"
"The billing records."
Ten minutes later he found what he was looking for in one of the unlocked file cabinet drawers next to the receptionist's desk. Satisfaction stirred in his gut when he found a file labeled Willis, T. There was a partially filled out billing log inside.
"We're in luck. Whoever removed the patient file on Theo Willis did not remember to take the financial stuff," he said.
"Or didn't think that there was anything important in that file." Orchid studied the log as Rafe removed it from the cabinet. "After all, what can you tell from it except that Theo was one of Dr. Austen's clients? We already know that."
"But this is our proof. And the fact that Willis's patient file is missing is a good indication that someone, probably Austen, did not want us to be able to link him to this office."
"In other words, the fact that there's no file on Theo tells us more than if we had found one."
"That's it in a nutshell. You know, I think you're getting the hang of this detective business."
"I told you, I have a flair for it."
Rafe scanned the list of payments. "Two months of therapy. It fits with what we saw on his calendar. He was going five times a week during the last two weeks before he died."
"Poor Theo. He must have been in really bad shape there at the end."
"Looks like it." Rafe started to drop the billing record back into the drawer. Something caught on the edge of the file folder. He turned the record over and saw a small, pink sticky note.
"What is it?" Orchid stood on tiptoe, trying to see over his shoulder. "What did you find?"
"Nothing much. Looks like someone, Austen's receptionist, probably, jotted a note to remind herself to send a thank-you for the patient referral. It's common practice for one doctor to thank another who refers a patient to him."
"Oh, right." Orchid dropped down off her toes and turned away. "Well, that's that. We know that Theo was getting some very intensive therapy shortly before he died. Looks like we'd better find Austen, doesn't it?"
"Yes." Rafe dropped the log into the file and shut the cabinet door. "I think the doctor will be able to tell us a great deal. The fact that he decided to take a sudden vacation today makes me even more interested in what he has to say about Willis."
"Rafe?"
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Orchid had walked back into the inner office. She had her small flashlight aimed at a row of framed certificates that hung on the paneled wall.
"What is it?"
"Dr. Austen's diploma and professional certificates."
"What about them?" He went to stand in the doorway. "Most doctors hang their credentials on the walls of their offices."
"One of these papers is his paranormal talent certificate," she said slowly. "Rafe, Austen is a class-seven hypno-talent."
He frowned. "That's rather high for paranormal hypnotic ability, isn't it?"
"Extremely high. As a professional prism, I can tell you that it's almost unheard of to have such a high level of hypnotic talent. A lot of syn-psych therapists have some hypno-talent, of course. It's one of the things that makes them suited to the field of synergistic psychology. But the normal range is class three or four, at the most. Austen is no off-the-chart vampire, but he is exceptionally powerful."
"Strong enough to have manipulated Theo Willis with hypnosis?"
Orchid lowered her flashlight and turned to look at him. Her expression was shadowed. "Theoretically, no one can be hypnotized into doing something against his will. But Theo had a lot of syn-psych problems. He was fragile."
"In other words, there's no telling what a clever, powerful, trained hypno-talent could do once he got his hands on Theo's para-psych history and figured out which buttons to push."
"Yes. Even working without a prism, a class-seven hypno-talent could do a lot of damage to a person as delicate as Theo." Orchid's eyes grew bleak. "I've been saying all along that Theo was no thief. But I hadn't considered the possibility that he could have been hypnotized into stealing the relic."
"So now we have a means." Rafe said. "Austen may well have hypnotized Willis and convinced him to steal the relic."
"We don't know that for certain."
Rafe ignored her caveat. Things were finally starring to feel right. He had long ago learned to trust his hunter's instincts at times like this. "What we need to do next is nail down the motive. I see a couple of possibilities."
"Austen either had Theo steal the artifact for him, which means the doctor is a secret, eccentric collector of alien relics—
"Or Austen acted as a broker. He could have arranged for Willis to steal the relic for someone else."
"There's a third possibility," Orchid pointed out.
"What's that?"
"Dr. Austen has got an even more screwed-up para-profile than Theo had."
"Believe me, the fact that Quentin Austen may be crazy has not escaped me."
Chapter 12
Orchid rolled onto her side, propped herself up on one elbow, and looked down at Rafe, who was sprawled on his back beside her. "Are you awake?"
"I am now." He curved one hand behind his head. The light of the twin moons pouring down through the glass dome revealed the faint curve of his mouth. "So are you, obviously."
"I've been thinking."
"By an odd coincidence, so have I."