“Anything happen to bring them on?”

“Not that I saw. I thought we were happy. Dr. Harrison told me he’d thought so, too, but turns out Pierce had never stopped being plagued—that’s the word he used. Plagued.”

“By the case.”

“By failure. Dr. Harrison said Pierce had been forced to walk away from the case when they railroaded him off the department. He said Pierce had fixed it in his mind that giving up had been some kind of mortal sin. He’d been punishing himself for years—the drugs, abusing his body, living like a bum. Dr. H. thought he’d helped Pierce get past it, but he’d been wrong, the nightmares came back. Pierce just couldn’t let go.”

She gave me a long, hard stare. “Pierce broke rules for years, always wondered if he’d have to pay one day. He loved being a detective but hated the police department. Didn’t trust anyone. Including your friend, Sturgis. When he got railroaded, he was sure Sturgis had something to do with it.”

“When I was here with Detective Sturgis, you said Pierce had spoken kindly of him. Was that true?”

“Not strictly,” she said. “Pierce never breathed a word to me about Sturgis or anyone else from his old life. These are all things he told Dr. Harrison, and I was trying to keep Dr. Harrison out of all this. But yes, Pierce had changed his opinion about Sturgis. Followed Sturgis’s career and saw he was a good detective. Found out Sturgis was homosexual and figured he had to have a lot of courage to stay in the department.”

“What else did Dr. Harrison tell you about the case?”

“Just that walking away had stuck in Pierce’s brain like a cancer. That’s what the nightmares were all about.”

“Chronic nightmares?” I said.

“Chronic enough. Sometimes they’d hit Pierce three, four times a week, other times he’d be okay for a stretch. Then, boom, all over again. You couldn’t predict, and that made it worse, because I never knew what to expect when my head hit the pillow. Things got to a point where I was scared to go to bed, started waking up at night, myself.” Her smile was crooked. “Kind of funny, I’d be lying there all wound up, unable to sleep and Pierce’d be snoring away and I’d tell myself it was finally over. Then the next night . . .”

“Did Pierce say anything during the nightmares?”