Seraphine looked at Dr. Whitfield. The therapist gave a small nod.
"My mother was Jessie Maddox. Tabitha Smith's sister. She was part of the Three Pillar Community. I grew up there." She paused. Her fingers found the hem of her shirt and worked it between her thumb and forefinger. "When I was little, they told me my mother had gone off into the world. That she'd chosen to leave the community and leave me behind. That's what they told everyone. And I believed it. For years I believed it because I didn't know any different."
"What changed?"
"When I was sixteen, someone came to me. Someone outside the community. They told me that my mother hadn't left. That she'd wanted to take me and get out, and that before she could, she disappeared." Seraphine's voice was measured but there was a tremor underneath it, the vibration of a structure holding more weight than it was built for. "This person told me about a place. A bridge over the bog near Bloomingdale. A place that meant something to my mother. A place she loved. They believed that's where she might have been taken. Or buried."
"So you drew it."
"I drew it." She looked at the painting on the far wall. "But I was sixteen. I was a kid inside a community that controlled everything. I couldn't walk into a police station and say I think my mother was murdered and her body is in Bloomingdale Bog. Who would have listened to that? A girl from a group that most people already thought was a cult."
"So you used Kara Ellison."
Seraphine nodded slowly. "Kara had just disappeared. The whole region was looking for her. I thought if I connected the sketch to her case, the police would search the bog. And if they searched the bog, they'd find my mother." She let go of her shirt hem and pressed both hands flat against her thighs. "I drew what I was told. A bridge over the bog. That's all I had. I figured if the police took it seriously, they'd come back to me and I could point them in the right direction."
"But they didn't come back."
"No. Two officers looked at the drawing from a sixteen-year-old girl connected to Three Pillars and decided it was nothing. Someone in the department said that I had said it was a vision. The cops must have run with that." Something bitter crossed her face. "I never claimed to be psychic. I never said I had visions. That was someone else. They took what I did and turned it into something else."
“So what happened after you went to the police?"
Seraphine's eyes dropped. Her fingers returned to her shirt hem. Dr. Whitfield shifted in her chair, the first movement she'd made since the conversation started.
"Seraphine," the therapist said quietly. "You don't have to go there."
"After the elders found out," Seraphine said, her voice dropping, "things changed. For me. Inside the community." She stopped. The tremor in her voice was visible now, notjust audible. Her hands were shaking. "I left the day I turned eighteen. I walked out and I never went back."
Noah could see the wall going up. The space between what she could say and what she couldn't was narrowing fast. He changed direction.
"The person who came to you when you were sixteen. Who told you about the bog? Who told you about your mother? Can you give me a name?"
Seraphine looked at Dr. Whitfield. The therapist held her gaze. Something passed between them that Noah couldn't read, some prior conversation, some boundary that had been agreed upon before he arrived.
Seraphine shook her head. "No."
"It could help the investigation."
"I can't remember."
Noah didn't push. He let the silence hold for a moment, then reached into his jacket and pulled out a folder. He opened it and laid a row of photographs on the counter beside Seraphine. Six men. Booking photos, license photos, images pulled from files. Derek Hollis was third from the left. Samuel Bridger was fifth. Garrett Finch was second. The others were community members from the farm raid.
"Do you recognize any of these men?"
Seraphine looked at the photos. Her eyes moved along the row. She stopped on the third photograph. Her hand came up and her finger touched the edge of it. Derek Hollis.
"That one," she said.
"How do you know him?"
"I was told he was responsible. For what happened to my mother."
"By the same person who told you about the bog?"
She didn't answer. She didn't need to. It was the same question she'd already refused and the answer was the same wall.
"Why didn't you come forward with this before?" Noah asked.
Seraphine looked at him and something in her expression shifted. Not anger exactly, but close to it.
