Not that big a dope, I unlocked the door leading to the Admin area and dug through the filing cabinet for the two patients in question: Oswald James Harrington and Tika Rain Solis. I pulled the files, showed Detective LeBlanc the photocopier, then called Karen.

She was half-asleep, but woke up fast enough once she heard the news. “I’ll be right there,” she assured me, which, given where she lived, meant at least an hour.

“Do we need a lawyer? How does this work?”

“Don’t answer any questions you don’t want to answer, and advise the rest of the staff to do the same. Showing up at one-thirty in the morning. Assholes.”

“I think Sergeant Warren considers that a compliment,” I said. As if summoning the Devil, Warren appeared at the end of the hall.

“We’d like to start with you,” she said: a command, not a request.

“No shit,” I muttered.

I hung up the phone. As the most senior person on the floor, I would have to shoulder this load and play nice with the detectives. Lucky me.

“Fine,” I said.

“Good,” Warren returned.

“Just gotta grab a glass of water.”

“I’ll wait.”

“Make yourself comfortable.”

I turned away from the detective and headed for the kitchenette. At the last minute, however, I continued down the hallway to Lucy’s room. I peered in, expecting to see Lucy sleeping in a corner.

Instead, she was dancing.

She moved around the room in graceful circles, swooshing from one moonbeam to the next. The oversized surgical scrub shirt ballooned around her as she twirled, leaping across her mattress, then pirouetting in front of the windows.

She was a cat again, moving in the languid style of a feline. Maybe she was trying to catch moonbeams in her paws. Maybe she simply liked the way it felt to sway to and fro. She hit the windows, placed her hands open-palmed against the glass. Then she stilled, and I knew she saw my reflection.

Was she angry after our last confrontation? Fearful, defiant?

Lucy turned away from the glass. Slowly, she meandered and twirled her way toward me. At the last minute, as I felt myself tense, she held out her hand, pale fingers extended. She dangled a tiny ball of string, something she’d fashioned from rolling together loose carpet fibers. A homemade cat toy.

I hesitated. She jiggled it again.

I accepted her gift, closing my fist around it as she swooped away, long pale limbs flashing silver in the moonbeams.

I tucked her peace offering into my pocket and returned to Sergeant Warren.