Brendan stopped smiling. “Well, that’s interesting,” he admitted. “I wonder what else he knows?”
No one ever got out, is what he knows, she thought, with a chill. And then she frowned, realizing. But that’s not right, because Rafe’s sister said that Rafe was living on the streets in Atlanta after—and then she stopped, and there was a thought there, just out of reach… .
Brendan was speaking again, oblivious to her sudden turmoil. “But that doesn’t mean he put that water there. That’s what we have monitors for.” He crossed to the bank of monitors and reached to rewind the tape—and his face darkened. “It’s off,” he muttered. He looked at the time code. “Stopped at 7:30 A.M.”—he checked his own watch—“forty-five minutes ago.” He stared at it, turned to her abruptly. “Did you turn off the cameras?”
She felt her face flush. “Of course not,” she said in total disbelief. “I can’t believe you’d even ask.”
He turned back to the monitor without responding and backed up the recording. The screen image showed the room with no puddle of water.
Laurel was feeling a growing sense of unreality. “It was the minister … pastor. He turned off the monitor, he poured water on the floor. He was right here when this happened, Brendan, of course that’s what happened.”
She could feel his impatience rising. “Why are you doing this?”
“What am I doing?”
“Why are you fighting this so hard?”
“We’re supposed to be objective—”
“You’re not being objective. You’re looking for reasons to poke holes in everything that happens.”
That stopped her for a moment, and of course the truth was, she was afraid. Things were moving too fast and she didn’t know who she could trust, and she didn’t like the feeling of skidding out of control.
She forced herself to be calm, forced quiet into her voice. “The pastor came in. At the same time that he was in the house, the monitors were turned off and that water poured on the floor. There’s no mystery about it.”
Brendan took her shoulders and forcibly turned her toward the pool of water. “Look at that water, Mickey. Look at it. Have you ever seen water poured in that perfect a circle? That’s a characteristic of pools of water in the literature.”
Now she was starting to feel crazy herself. Something was real that she’d thought was just in her imagination and it was wobbling her sense of reality. She pulled free of his grasp.
“All right, then he poured out the water in a perfect circle. He knows about the study, Brendan. He would know how it’s supposed to look. You’re seeing what you want to see.”
Brendan looked at her with a stony expression, then turned his back on her without another word, returning to the monitors.
She stared at his back, then turned and walked out of the room, carefully steering clear of the pool of water.
Upstairs she stalked the length of the hallway, past Katrina’s closed door, through the lounge and linens room, to Tyler’s little room at the end of the house. She knocked sharply and he answered, “It’s open,” in an awake enough voice. She opened the door and saw him lounged back on the bed, with a book splayed on his bare chest. She jolted a little at the raw sensuality of the picture. He smiled lazily, seeing her, as if she’d come to service him.
“I need your iPhone,” she said.
He assumed a look of injured innocence. “But Dr. MacDonald, you said phones were off-limits—”
“Just hand it over. Are you getting reception?”
He opened the drawer of the nightstand beside the bed, and tossed her the phone. She caught it with a steel resolve that surprised her.
“On and off,” Tyler answered. “Outside is best. Anything else I can help with?”
“I’ll bring it back,” she said, ignoring his inviting look.
“Well, just let me know what I can do,” he said, with a smile that was not a smile.
And for a moment they were together there in that little room of endless white that was no place on earth …
She turned on her heel and walked out, closing the door behind her.
Back in her own room she locked the door and sat on the bed, dialed 411 to get the number for the Five Oaks Baptist Church. Tyler’s phone did get reception and the cheerful church secretary confirmed Pastor Wallace had been with the church for ten years now.
Laurel sat with the phone pressed to her cheek, her mind racing.