“Please Dr.
Kavanaugh, I don’t know who else to go to. You’re listed as the
leading expert on The Architect. I can’t keep going on like this. I
need to know.” Sara Addison Welch pleads shoving her notebook
forward and opening it to a heavily decorated page.
Dr. Andrew David
Kavanaugh leans forward in slight awe, “Ms. Welch, these
drawings..”
“I know! I kept
drawing them, they show up everywhere! They would appear in my
notebooks before the bodies would appear and I don’t know why!
Please!” Tears are streaming down Sara’s face now, dripping off
her chin and collecting on the notebook pages beneath her anguished
eyes.
Dr. Kavanaugh sits
back in his chair in wonder, “You would draw the exact scenes The
Architect created before they appeared? This seems... impossible. I
would believe it was a hoax if you didn’t seem so authentically
distressed by this.” He leans forward again and examines the
notebook pages.
“Can you help me?
Can you explain this?” Sara takes a step back and collapses into
the soft grey chair behind her. “I just want answers. I just want
this to stop.” She collapses forward into her hands, releases a
great sigh and scrubbs her hands down her face. She stays there for a
moment, staring down at the dull brown carpeting beneath her feet
before sitting up straight. “I want you to monitor me all night.
The next body is due tonight, if I have something to do with this
serial killer, if I have something to do with all these innocent
people being murdered and then displayed as art exhibits then I need
to know. I need to know Dr. Kavanaugh.”
Dr. Kavanaugh hums
quietly before shifting to stand, “I can surveil you through the
night and into the morning but I can’t promise any answers. I can’t
promise you any resolution. I need you to understand this.” He
walks around his desk to stand before her, “I want to help you get
to the bottom of this but I need you to understand this first.”
Sara’s head droops
forward only a little before she regains her composure, “I figured
you’d say something like that. I’m willing to do anything, even
if it only gives me a small insight or no answers at all. You observe
me overnight and into tomorrow and any information you learn can be
used in any research, even if it doesn’t lead to the capture of The
Architect.” With a quick intake of breath she stands to look Dr.
Kavanaugh in the eye and sticks out her hand, “Do we have a deal?”
Dr. Kavanaugh smiles
softly, “We do indeed, Ms. Welch.”
At 19:36 on
Sunday, April 5th 2020, almost seven months after The Architect
started his ruthless, but beautiful killings Sara Addison Welch
walked into lead FBI profiler Andrew David Kavanaugh’s office and
asked for his help with her nightmares. She’d been dreaming of the
killings before they started appearing on the streets. Just fragments
at first, a bundle of flowers or a slice of something melting, but
the first real nightmare came a week before the first body and had
continued like clockwork ever since.
A beautiful
young men draped in silks lounging on a melting wooden bench, a
solemn middle aged woman curled into a nest of pansies and posies
clutching a single pearl, an elderly man sprawled in an armchair
watching an old television filled with his own burning fingers, a
child flat on her back eyes wide with curiosity dressed like a queen
fallen. Sara had woken from each nightmare trembling and terrified,
soaked in sweat, fingers cramping, legs aching, head pounding, mouth
dry like she’d just run a marathon.
She’d taken to
downing coffees and staying up until she passed out from exhaustion.
No dreams that way. When she’d finally conquered the dreams she
started noticing the doodles. Little sketches that appeared beside
her notes in Chemistry, crafting gardens and fields where there was
once only solvents and solutions. Arms and legs held her equations
and eyes focused around her answers. She knew about the scenes the
bodies were found in from the nightly news and it only made it worse.
She told Lina about her nightmares after she filled up the second
notebook with drawings. It took Lina two weeks to connect her dreams
and sketches with The Architect's creations. Sara tried to tell her
it wasn’t possible, how could she be connected to a serial killer,
but Lina wouldn’t listen. She insisted that there was something
there.
She heard Dr.
Andrew David Kavanaugh’s name for the first time during a police
briefing two months in to The Architect’s reign of terror. He’d
delivered a profile of the man they believed to be behind the
killings and Sara barely paid attention. Four months later and she’s
sleep deprived, scared witless, and failing all her classes. It’s
her roommate Lina that finally talks some sense into her.
Sara wakes to a
gentle hand shaking her shoulder and when she opens her eyes soft
brown ones nestled beneath thick, furrowed brows are gazing at her
worriedly. “Hey girl, did you miss class today?” When she notices
that Sara’s eyes are open Lina leans away a little to give her room
to sit up, “Sara?”
Sara just rolls
further away, desperate for just one more moment of that sweet, pitch
black nothing. She nuzzles her head deeper into the cave that is her
comforter sure that she’s dissuaded Lina from any further
investigation, but her thoughts are rudely interrupted when her
blankets are roughly ripped away and the cold March air rushes in.
“Lina please, just
a few more minutes, I just need a few more minutes and then I’ll be
fine.” Sara rolls over to face Lina and makes a grab for her
comforter, but Lina’s already tossed it to the floor a few feet
away in a move of unexpected genius.
Lina leans forward
and cradles Sara’s face between her palms, “You’re not fine,
Sara. You are not fine. You’re not even remotely close to okay.
I’ve watched you slid down farther and farther into this hole, but
as your best friend I can’t allow it any longer. I’m going to
drag your ass out of bed every day if I have to, I’ll call every
single therapist and psychiatrist in the phone book if that’s what
it takes, but I will not let you waste away in this bed.”
Lina releases Sara’s face, but keeps a hand firmly in the air
between them, “Am I understood?”
Sara got out of
bed that day. And the next. Then three days in a row. Then the whole
week. She wasn’t better, she still had nightmares, she still
sketched out killings before they happened, but Lina helped her
manage them, helped her stop them from overpowering her again.
Together they researched every therapist, psychiatrist, psychic,
hypnotist, and herbal healer in the city of Little Grove, but none
seemed to know how to help. It was eventually Sara’s idea to find
out where the FBI profiler on The Architect’s case was working out
of, but it was at Lina’s insistence that Sara actually sought him
out.
Lina grabs Sara’s
shoulders and gives her a firm squeeze, “You’ve got this. Don’t
let him turn you away, make him listen to you. He’ll be able to
help. I know it.” She pulls Sara into a quick embrace before
shoving her gently towards the door, “Go in with that confidence I
know you have and call me as soon as you’re done, okay?”
Sara Addison Welch
walks into Dr. Andrew David Kavanaugh’s temporary office in the
west Little Grove Police Station at 7:36 on Sunday evening and
convinces him to put her under surveillance until the following
night. Dr. Kavanaugh wants to know how this college freshman has
intimate knowledge of one of the most prolific serial killers he’s
seen. Sara just wants to sleep peacefully.
Dr. Kavanaugh sets
up a small cot in one of the two interrogation rooms. He walks Sara
through the connected room so she can see what he will be doing
throughout the night. He introduces her to the three other agents who
will assist him in watching over her: Agent Burt McConnell, a burly
bear of a man with a sweet smile; Agent Jason Sawlen, a tall, thin
man whose nails sparkle a light blue and Agent Amita Khatri, a short
fiery woman who puts Sara at ease with her no-nonsense attitude. She
calls Lina to let her know that she’ll be staying the night at the
station and that she’ll make sure to call her first thing in the
morning. At 9:30 PM Sara changes into some sweats and a shirt that a
Sergeant Fuentes lends her and crawls under the wool blanket they set
up on the cot.
Dr. Kavanaugh notes
on his little yellow pad that by 10:15 PM Sara Addison Welch is
soundly, deeply asleep.
At 12:58 AM Dr.
Kavanaugh wakes to Agent Khatri tapping his shoulder and telling him
to get some sleep somewhere reasonable. A chair isn’t reasonable.
At 2:17 AM Dr.
Kavanaugh is woken again, this time by Agent Sawlen, who informs him
that Sara is awake and asking for him.
Andrew Kavanaugh
grows increasingly worried the more he takes in Jason Sawlen’s
appearance. His hair is mussed on one side, his eyes shifty with
anxiety, his ever present nail varnish is being chipped away on his
left hand by his right.
“Agent Sawlen?
What’s wrong? Is Ms. Welch okay?” Kavanaugh pushes back the
blanket he’s draped over himself and stands from his makeshift bed
on the department lounge’s couch.
Agent Sawlen scrapes
a little more blue from his left thumbnail, “She’s asked to speak
with you, sir.” He gestures with his head out towards the hallway,
“She didn’t seem inclined to wait long.”
Kavanaugh quickly
slides his feet back into his shoes and follows Sawlen out into the
hallway. “Why is she awake? Does she need something?”
Sawlen glances back
at Kavanaugh, “She woke up about ten minutes ago and asked to speak
with you. When I informed her that I could retrieve anything she
needed she insisted she needed to speak with you. When even Amita
couldn’t get her to say what she needed we decided it would be best
to wake you up.” Sawlen stops in front of the interrogation room
door, pulls the door open, and sticks his head in, “Here’s Dr.
Kavanaugh as you requested.”
With a slight nod to
Sawlen, Kavanaugh enters the room and the door closes softly behind
him. He steps forward until he’s a few feet from the cot Sara is
sitting on. “You asked to speak with me?”
Sara swings her feet
out from underneath her and brushes her toes across the cement floor.
Once. Twice. Three times. On the fourth she swings herself up into a
standing position and stretches her hand out towards Dr. Kavanaugh.
“I did. I hear
you’ve been following my recent works. It’s so nice to finally
meet you, Dr. Kavanaugh, my name is Addie.”
Points: 144
Reviews: 126
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