Elias Croft's boots hit the pavement of the station parking lot at a dead run, but the lot was empty except for his own sedan and a squad car with a flat tire. The street beyond was quiet, the early morning light casting long shadows across the asphalt. Pine's car was nowhere in sight. Croft stopped, scanned the intersection, and saw a flash of silver turning left onto Elm Street—a late-model sedan, moving fast but not reckless.
He jumped into his car, keyed the ignition, and peeled out of the lot. The sedan was already two blocks ahead, shrinking into the distance. Croft pressed the accelerator, his mind racing through the possibilities. Pine was running, which meant he was guilty of something—but of what, exactly? The tire tracks placed him at Paula Heston's murder scene, but that was circumstantial. The journal tied Leo to the Riverbed killings, but Leo was a puppet, not a puppeteer. And Pine had walked out of the station legally, with no charges filed, because Croft had been too focused on Leo to secure him.
He called dispatch. "This is Croft. I'm in pursuit of a silver sedan, heading west on Elm. Driver is Harold Pine, subject of an ongoing investigation. Requesting units to block intersections at Fourth and Main."
The dispatcher's voice crackled back. "Copy that, Detective. Units en route. Be advised, we've got a report of a disturbance at the old VA hospital—someone broke in through the basement entrance. Might be connected."
Croft cursed under his breath. Pine had worked at the VA for decades. He knew the building, its tunnels, its archives. If he was heading there, he was looking for something—records, evidence, something he had left behind. Or perhaps he was leading Croft into a trap.
He took the turn onto Elm at sixty miles per hour, the car fishtailing slightly before the tires caught. The silver sedan was closer now, just three blocks ahead. Croft could see the outline of Pine's head through the rear window, still and composed, as if he were out for a Sunday drive.
The sedan turned onto a side street—Benton Avenue, which dead-ended at the VA hospital's old service entrance. Croft followed, his hand hovering over the radio. He could see the hospital now, a sprawling brick complex that had been partly abandoned since the new facility opened across town. Its windows were dark, its grounds overgrown with weeds.
The sedan pulled up to the service entrance and stopped. Pine got out, moving unhurriedly, and walked to a steel door. He produced a key, unlocked it, and disappeared inside before Croft could reach him.
Croft slammed the brakes, threw the car into park, and ran to the door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped into a dark corridor that smelled of antiseptic and dust. The lighting was dim—emergency bulbs, spaced every twenty feet—and the walls were lined with old pipes and electrical conduits. He drew his weapon and moved forward, his footsteps echoing in the silence.
He heard a door close somewhere ahead, then footsteps—steady, unhurried. Pine was not running. He was walking with purpose, as if he knew exactly where he was going.
Croft followed the sound through a labyrinth of corridors, past abandoned offices and empty examination rooms. He passed a room with a rusted gurney, another with overturned filing cabinets. The place was a graveyard of medical history, its files and equipment left to rot.
He reached a stairwell and descended to the basement. The air grew colder, damper. He saw a light ahead—a single bulb burning in a room at the end of the hall. He approached it, his weapon raised, and peered through the door.
Harold Pine was sitting at a desk in what had once been an administrative office. He had turned on a desk lamp, and its glow illuminated a stack of old files, their binders cracked with age. Pine looked up as Croft entered, and his smile was as calm as ever.
"Detective," he said, as if greeting an old friend. "I was wondering when you'd find me. I apologize for the dramatic exit. I had to retrieve something before the building was demolished."
Croft kept his weapon trained on Pine. "You're under arrest, Dr. Pine. You're not going anywhere."
Pine raised his hands, palms out, in a gesture of surrender that seemed almost mocking. "I'm not resisting, Detective. I'm simply here to collect a piece of my own history. You see, this building was where I conducted most of my research—including my work with Leo Vance and several other subjects. I kept detailed notes, but I never transferred them to the new facility. They were too... sensitive."
Croft stepped closer, his eyes scanning the files. The top binder was labeled "SUBJECT 4 – VANCE, LEO." He felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold air.
"You kept patient files here, even after you retired?"
Pine nodded. "I kept them here because they weren't meant to be found. They contain the full record of my therapeutic techniques—including the guided imagery sessions, the suggestibility tests, and the post-hypnotic commands. Everything I did with Leo, and with others, is documented in these pages."
Croft's jaw tightened. "Others? How many?"
Pine's smile widened, but his eyes remained flat. "That's a longer conversation than we have time for. But I will say this: Leo was not my only experiment. He was simply the most successful. The most... receptive."
Croft holstered his weapon and approached the desk. He flipped open the binder and saw page after page of Leo's handwriting, but also Pine's own notes—marginalia, observations, clinical assessments. One entry caught his eye: "Subject displays extraordinary capacity for internalizing external narratives. By age sixteen, he had constructed a complete alternate reality based on documented forensic details. This reality is indistinguishable from lived memory."
He looked up at Pine. "You gave him the details of the Riverbed murders. You fed him crime scene information and made him believe he had witnessed them."
"I gave him a framework," Pine corrected. "The details came from the public record—newspapers, police reports that were leaked, court documents. I curated them, organized them, and presented them in a sequence that felt natural to a developing mind. Leo did the rest. He filled in the gaps. He imagined the sensations, the emotions, the physical realities. He made the murders his own."
Croft felt his stomach turn. "And the journal? The one we found in his wall?"
Pine nodded. "I asked him to keep a journal as part of his therapy. He documented his 'memories' in real time, as they developed. By the time the actual murders occurred, his written accounts matched the crime scenes almost perfectly. He had predicted what the killer would do, because he had constructed the killer's actions in his own mind. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy."
"But how did he know the details that weren't public?" Croft demanded. "The knot, the stones, the positioning of the bodies—those were never released."
Pine's smile flickered. "I knew them because I had access to the investigation. I was a consultant to the county coroner's office from 1996 to 2002. I reviewed the autopsy reports, the crime scene photographs, the forensic analysis. I had complete access to every detail of every murder. And I shared those details with Leo, not as facts, but as 'dreams' and 'imaginings.' He never knew he was being fed actual evidence. He believed he was creating it himself."
Croft stared at him. The pieces were falling into place, but they formed a picture he did not want to see. "You used him as a test subject. You wanted to see if you could create a false memory so vivid that it became indistinguishable from reality. And you succeeded."
"I succeeded beyond my wildest expectations," Pine said. "By the time his mother pulled him out of therapy, Leo had a complete internal world—a parallel history in which he had been present at every Riverbed murder. He had written about them, dreamed about them, and eventually, he began to act on them. The sleepwalking, the nighttime excursions, the stones in his hand—all of that was real. He was reenacting the memories he had built, without any conscious awareness of what he was doing."
Croft's mind went back to the tire tracks, the new victim, the stone in Paula Heston's palm. "And Paula Heston? Was that Leo, acting out another memory?"
Pine hesitated—the first crack in his composure. "That, I don't know. I had no contact with Leo after 2000. I had no reason to believe he would continue the pattern. But the human mind is unpredictable. Perhaps the memories I built in him were so strong that they survived two decades of dormancy. Perhaps he encountered a trigger—a place, a face, a sensation—that revived them. Or perhaps," he paused, "someone else is using the same framework."
Croft's blood ran cold. "What do you mean?"
Pine leaned back in his chair. "I wasn't the only one with access to those files, Detective. The county coroner's office had a rotating staff. Several of them had access to the Riverbed materials. And one of them, a man named Gerald Thorne, was particularly interested in my work. He asked questions. He borrowed notes. He even sat in on a few sessions with Leo, as an observer. I didn't think much of it at the time. But Gerald Thorne is now the chief medical examiner for Millbrook County. And he was the one who examined Paula Heston's body."
The name hit Croft like a physical blow. Gerald Thorne—he knew him, had spoken to him at the crime scene, had accepted his preliminary findings without question. Thorne had been calm, professional, almost detached. But his eyes had lingered on the stone, and he had noted the date of death with unusual precision.
"Thorne is the killer," Croft said, not a question.
Pine shrugged. "I can't prove that. But I can tell you that he had the knowledge, the access, and the opportunity. And if he was using my techniques—or his own variation—he could have created his own 'Leo' without any help from me. Or he could have simply copied the original pattern, while I provided the psychological cover."
Croft turned to leave, but Pine called after him. "Detective. If you arrest Thorne, you'll need evidence. And the only evidence that ties him to the crimes is in this room—in my files, and in Leo's journal. But I warn you: if Thorne knows I'm here, he'll destroy everything. He'll burn this building to the ground with all of us inside."
Croft looked back. Pine was still smiling, but there was something in his eyes now—a flicker of genuine fear.
"You're afraid of him," Croft said.
"I'm a scientist, Detective. I'm afraid of anything I don't understand. And I don't understand what Gerald Thorne has become."
Croft grabbed the binder labeled "VANCE, LEO" and two others that seemed related. He slung them into his jacket and ran for the stairwell. His mind was churning—Thorne was the killer, Pine was the architect, Leo was the tool—but the timeline didn't quite fit. If Thorne had been the original Riverbed Killer, he would have been active in the late 1990s, the same time Pine was feeding Leo the details. That meant Pine had been giving Leo information about murders that Thorne was committing, in real time. Pine had been using Thorne's crimes as material for his experiment, without Thorne knowing.
Or perhaps Thorne had known. Perhaps he had been in on it from the start.
Croft burst out of the service entrance and ran toward his car. He called dispatch again, his voice urgent. "I need an immediate pickup at the old VA hospital—suspect Harold Pine is in the basement, and he's a material witness in a murder investigation. Also, I need an alert on Gerald Thorne, county medical examiner. He's a person of interest, possibly armed and dangerous."
The dispatcher acknowledged, and Croft jumped into his car. He drove back toward the station, the binders heavy on the passenger seat. He needed to get these files secured, to read them, to understand the full scope of Pine's experiment and Thorne's involvement.
But as he turned onto Main Street, his phone rang. It was the station. The desk sergeant's voice was tight with tension. "Detective, we've got a problem. Leo Vance escaped from the interrogation room about ten minutes ago. He took off on foot, heading toward the river. We've got units searching, but he's got a head start."
Croft slammed his palm against the steering wheel. Leo was out there, alone, with a head full of false memories and a killer who might be hunting him. And if Thorne was indeed the Riverbed Killer, he would know exactly where Leo would go.
He turned the car around and headed for the river, the binders sliding across the seat as he accelerated.
The drive was short but felt endless. The riverbank was empty when he arrived—just the gray water, the brown reeds, the silent trees. He got out and walked along the path, scanning for any sign of Leo. The mud was soft from the morning mist, and he saw footprints—two sets, one larger and one smaller, leading toward the old stone bridge.
He followed them, his hand on his holster. The bridge was ancient, its arches worn by decades of floodwater. Beneath it, the water was dark and deep. He saw a figure standing at the edge—Leo, his back to Croft, his arms limp at his sides.
"Leo," Croft called out. "Don't move."
Leo turned, and his face was pale, his eyes wide and unfocused. He was holding something in his hand—a river stone, smooth and gray, the same color as the one from Paula Heston's palm.
"I found it," Leo said, his voice distant. "It was here, just like I remembered. I picked it up, and it was cold, and I knew... I knew I had held it before."
Croft took a cautious step forward. "Put it down, Leo. We need to talk."
But Leo didn't put it down. He looked past Croft, toward the other end of the bridge, and his expression shifted—from confusion to recognition to fear.
"He's here," Leo whispered. "He followed me."
Croft turned, and saw a man standing at the opposite end of the bridge. He was tall, thin, with gray hair and a long coat. He was not Pine. He was someone else, someone Croft had seen just this morning at the crime scene, but hadn't recognized in the moment.
Gerald Thorne was smiling, and in his hand was a length of rope, coiled neatly, like a serpent ready to strike.
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