Thank you all so much for all the wonderful things you said about the last chapter! I only hope you enjoy this chapter just as much!
Joe felt his stomach churn as he saw the signs for New York appearing. He hadn't thought that being back there would scare him so much. He had grown up there after all. New York had been his playground.
And yet it felt very obvious that that was no longer the case.
New York was Mauve's kingdom, a land where Joe no longer belonged. Or at least one where he was no longer safe. He tried to draw together all the information he had on the man, trying to remember something, anything, he could use against him.
But then he forced down the idea. He was going to protect his family, protect good people from Mauve. If he made a move against the criminal mastermind, he would only put innocent people at risk. He would put the people he loved at risk.
Joe turned to Miss Rose, holding her gaze.
"You won't do this to anyone else, right? I'm the final kid you sell out to a guy like Mauve."
"You're the last one," Miss Rose vowed.
With his father breaking into Miss Rose's apartment and his mother working out the best way to contact Marsden, Frank had been desperate for his own angle to pursue. He couldn't stand the thought of his brother being out there, putting himself at risk for their sake. Frank decided to contact Dr Miller.
"I am afraid I really don't have much of any use for you," Dr Miller admitted as he welcomed Frank into his office.
He looked pale and shaken, wracked with guilt. He assured Frank that if he had even had the slightest inkling that his receptionist had been spying on his clients, he would have had her fired on the spot, possibly even arrested.
"I know," Frank said. "I was actually wondering if you would be willing to let me see any notes you have made about Mauve. Maybe Joe made some comment that could tell us anything about Mauve."
Dr Miller frowned. He glanced toward his desk. Frank could understand his hesitancy. His receptionist had just violated his trust. He was going to have to tell each of his clients that their sessions had been spied on, that information about them had been funnelled to a criminal master mind. He wanted to be able to preserve some of the sanctity of his role, offer his poor clients at least some protection.
"I just want to look through Joe's file," Frank said. "I'm his brother."
"Which is exactly why I am not sure if he would appreciate you knowing these intimate things. Even if I didn't believe you would take the information and immediately put yourself in danger, Joe told me things in the strictest confidence, reassured by the fact you and your parents would never find out."
Frank held the man's gaze.
"We need this. It might be the only way to get him back."
Miller grimaced. Then he nodded. He collected the file of notes he had compiled on Joe, passing it to Frank.
"Your poor brother. He deserves so much better."
Frank tried to be as clinical as possible as he set out the file in front of him. He tried not to think of it as Joe's file. It was just the file of some other kidnapped boy, that his brother was in the room across from his, stuck at home because he'd not finished all his homework. But he couldn't. There was so much of Joe on the pages. All his fears and likes and dislikes laid bare.
"You really got him to open up," Frank said, hoping it might comfort Miller.
He winced the moment the words left his mouth. The man's face grew paler. He looked down at the file. Because Miller had done it all with the best intentions. Everything he had done had been to help the young people he had been entrusted with. There was no denying how much he cared for them, how he desperately wanted the best for each one of his clients. To know that his efforts were being twisted, that so many of his clients would have to wrestle once more against trust issues because of something that had happened in his office…
"I really wanted to help him," Miller said. "And we were making progress. He was having less nightmares."
Frank frowned, saying he thought Joe was having more nightmares. He had taken it as a good sign though. It had been eerie to never hear any noises from his brother's room as he slept. It had felt like he didn't care, like he was just willing to accept whatever happened in his dreams would happen. Hearing Joe getting up in the middle of the night. It hurt… Of course it hurt, to hear his younger brother so upset and scared but Frank figured it was a good thing, something Joe would have to make his way through to manage to come to terms with all that had happened to him.
"Less," Miller said. "He just didn't let anyone hear before. He was worried he would inconvenience you, that'd you'd not be happy if he woke you up in the middle of the night. But now… Now he knows you only want the best for him. I told him that it might help him to let it out, to allow himself to react to the emotions he was feeling, to show them. He has them less but you hear them more."
Frank nodded. He began to skim through accounts of Joe's nightmares. He had read studies about the subconscious mind, about the things you could have noted without realising it. It seemed like a good enough explanation for the detective's gut instinct, the brain being able to recognise patterns it couldn't fully process as thoughts. Maybe Joe's mind had been doing the same thing, taking a figure like Mauve and putting clues that Joe didn't realise he had into his dreams. There certainly seemed to be a lot of recurring imagery. Joe seemed to associate being underground with bad things. Frank guessed it was the trauma of the events that had happened in Marsden's basement echoing lack of cars had surprised Frank at first. He would have thought that they would have featured prevalently in his brother's nightmares but he told himself Joe had very little recollection of the accident, if he indeed had any at all.
"What have you been making of these?" Frank asked, wondering if Miller might have noticed patterns he had missed.
"He talks a lot about being frozen in connection with Mauve. I originally thought he might have been associating Mauve's treatment of him as him being like a doll or an action figure. A lot of people who underwent trauma when they were younger still hold associations with toys and it certainly seemed to fit the level of control Mauve wanted over him."
"But that wasn't your conclusion?"
"It was Joe's idea really," Miller said. "He felt that statue felt more appropriate, that it felt like Mauve wanted to chip away at him."
Frank nodded. He could certainly see a lot of statue imagery in the nightmares Joe had been having. Not just with him feeling like he froze up around Mauve. He talked about being trapped in rooms full of frozen people, or being lost in a maze of statues.
"Did that art therapist ever talk to Joe about statues?" Frank asked, looking through the papers. "Maybe he got something useful about them out of him."
Miller shrugged, saying he didn't know. He had asked if the therapist would be willing to share notes with him but never heard anything back.
Frank paused, staring at Miller.
"Why did you pick art therapy for Joe? Because of the statues?"
Somehow Miller managed to pale further.
"My receptionist suggested it," he said, voice a brittle whisper. "She said she knew the perfect man for the job. You don't think… You don't think Regenbogen was working for Mauve too?"
Frank swallowed thickly, turning back to the files.
"I think it might be worse than that," Frank admitted. "Why hire someone else to spy on Joe? He already had your receptionist."
"Then what are you saying?" Miller asked.
"I think Regenbogen was Mauve."
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