Devil Smoke Page 4

  “Anything else in the car? Receipts, notes, maps?”

  “Only thing left was broken glass, a spare tire, and a jack,” Burroughs answered.

  “And a repair bill,” Sarah added ruefully. “I didn’t even know the car was mine. Only thing I recognize, including my face, is this.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a slightly battered, professional-looking camera. Despite its size and obvious weight, she hefted it easily in one hand. “Had it with me when they found me. ER nurses said the only time I got hysterical that first night was when they tried to take it from me. Like it’s my baby or something.”

  “Did you run the info from the camera card?” Wash asked.

  “All the photos are from Saturday, all taken at Fiddler’s Knob,” Burroughs said. He slid a data storage card across the table to Wash. “Here’s a copy. Maybe you can get more from it than we did.”

  “But surely there was something at your current address to give us more information?” TK persisted. Tommy noticed that Burroughs gave Lucy a little nod at that.

  Sarah smiled. “I guess not. Detective Burroughs went through my apartment while I was in the hospital. I was only there long enough to change clothes before we came here.” She gestured to her outfit. “At least I remember how to tie my shoes and button a shirt without help.”

  As a joke, it fell flat. Sarah tensed the slightest bit, and Tommy realized she was straining to make it seem as if this was a totally normal situation—when it was anything but. He edged closer to her, hoping that knowing they were all on her side would help.

  “Nothing on the public appeals?” Lucy asked Burroughs.

  “Not yet. We’ll keep them going, update you with any progress.” Burroughs shifted in his seat, frowning at Tommy—or at Sarah, it was hard to tell. “Honestly, I’m not sure where to go next.”

  “Which, I’m guessing, is where we come in.” TK sounded excited. Tommy had to admit, it was nice not to be digging around cases where all they had to work with were decomposed bodies and ancient trails of clues that led nowhere. “Boots on the ground.”

  “You mean fingers on the keys,” Wash said with enthusiasm.

  “Exactly,” Oshiro said. “It’s not a criminal case, but we’ll assist with the public appeal and any court orders you need to access databases.”

  “Not that that’s not going to lead anywhere fast,” Burroughs cautioned. “Without a crime or exigent circumstances, cutting through the red tape is going to take forever. Companies and organizations are more concerned about protecting themselves against a violation of privacy lawsuit by releasing the wrong info than they are helping someone who may or may not have a right to that info.”

  “How can I prove I have a right to anything if I can’t find out who I am?” Sarah asked. She spread her arms wide. “It’s like I don’t even exist.”

  “So we have a name, social, basic demographic data—”

  “I’m not data,” Sarah interrupted Lucy. “I’m a person. Please help me. I just want my life back. Do I have a family out there worrying about me? Or maybe not, since they haven’t come forward, but maybe they don’t even know I’ve lost them.”

  She stood, fists balled in frustration. “Maybe I’m some crazy cat lady, living alone, and not one single person in the world would have noticed if I never came home. I don’t know. Or maybe…” Her voice dropped and she seemed to focus on Tommy, but that was probably just his imagination since he was fighting with everything he had to hold it together; her questions were a mirror image of the ones he’d been struggling to answer for almost a year. “Maybe there’s someone out there who loves me, who’s waiting for me… and to him, I’ll just disappear. Poof.”

  She rapped her knuckles against her head. “All because of some stupid slip and fall. My life—my real life, who I was—could vanish forever. And he’d be left waiting, never knowing. I can’t take the thought of that. Could you?”

  The tear surprised Tommy. Only it wasn’t Sarah’s tear. It was his. Funny, he could barely feel it. His face felt frozen, numb. But inside—

  He pushed back his chair and turned away before the others could see. “Excuse me,” he mumbled, not trusting his voice, as he forced himself to walk, not run, from the room.

  He lurched down the hall, toward the stairs, needing air, needing space, needing… he wasn’t even sure what.

  Chapter 6

  BURROUGHS, CLEARLY ANGRY at Tommy’s reaction to Sarah’s story, turned to follow him, but before Lucy could intervene, Oshiro placed a palm on the detective’s arm, holding him in place.

  “You’ll help her?” Oshiro’s question was for Lucy alone, but she answered for her entire team.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then. We’d best get back to work. Right, Burroughs?”

  Burroughs narrowed his eyes at Lucy. “Right,” he said grudgingly.

  He and Oshiro moved to the door.

  Lucy followed, intending to check on Tommy. When she drew near Burroughs, he glanced back at Sarah, who’d sat back down, arms folded in a posture of waiting.

  As they stepped into the hall, he said to Lucy, “Watch Worth around her. He’s trouble. If I’d known he was working here—”

  “I can take care of my team,” Lucy snapped. “And our client.”

  He made a sound in the back of his throat but nodded. “Keep me in the loop.”

  “Will do.”

  The two men left, and Lucy turned to the window beside the staircase landing. She could see Tommy pacing along the edge of the bluff, hands balled into fists, shoulders hunched, his entire body twisted into a walking question mark.

  Questions, she thought. She had plenty of those. How to get some answers?

  Before she could decide on a direction, the door behind her opened and TK emerged, followed by Wash, his chair gliding over the polished oak floorboards with ease.

  “Tommy okay?” Wash asked. Despite his frequent joking, Wash was the most empathetic member of the team.

  “Are you sure he’s the best person for this case?” TK asked. “Maybe he needs a little time. Get his head together.”

  Lucy frowned. “He handled sexual assaults and child abuse cases all the time when he worked in the ER. This case should be relatively pain free.”

  Wash and TK both looked away from Lucy. Damn, she hated being the new kid on the block. “Okay, what am I missing? I mean, I know his wife is gone and that’s why he came to work here. But this isn’t a missing person case. We have the person. It’s her past we’re trying to find. If anything, that should bring him some relief or hope, right?”

  “It’s just that Charlotte’s case, the anniversary…” Wash stalled out.

  “It’ll be one year in two days,” TK finished for him. “Still no leads. No idea if she went voluntarily, if someone took her, if she had an accident, or… if she did something to herself. Nada. Not a single blessed clue. Every time the cops start looking, every time he tries to chase down a lead, it just breaks his heart all over again.”

  “You think Sarah’s case is too close to home for him?”

  Both of them nodded.

  Lucy hesitated, watching Tommy out the window. Misery radiated from him as he walked the bluff. She knew from her own experience with trauma that isolation was not the solution. Plus, she wanted to keep an eye on him.

  “Benching him is only going to make things worse,” she decided. “TK, you and I will work directly with Sarah. Why don’t you get started, gauge her baseline?”

  “Baseline?” Wash asked. “The girl can’t remember anything. How are you going to get any kind of baseline?”

  “She remembers more than she realizes,” Lucy said.

  “She dressed herself, remembered how to tie her shoes,” TK added. “Remembers how to use idioms in her speech.”

  “But that’s all like muscle memory.” Wash gestured to his legs strapped to his chair. “After I got shot I remembered how to walk, but that didn’t mean my legs could do anything about it.”

 
“Which is why we need to see where Sarah’s memories start, map them out. Like a minefield,” TK said. She glanced at Lucy. “You want a cognitive interview, right? Use her sensory impressions as triggers?”

  “Right.” Lucy added, “Wash, Tommy can work with you on the leads the detectives couldn’t close out.”

  Which basically meant database diving—Wash’s favorite pastime—and dumpster diving, tracking down the origin of anything of Sarah’s they could get their hands on. Including her garbage.

  And it was past time that Lucy delved into the specifics of Tommy’s wife’s disappearance. If it was going to impact his work, she needed to know more about Charlotte Worth.

  <><><>

  LUCY WAITED FOR the others to clear the hallway before attempting the steps. Going down was always more painful than going up, but she refused to use the house elevator. Every step was rehab, she told herself as she gritted her teeth against the pain and slowly hobbled down the staircase.

  She grimaced as her weight settled onto her left leg. Days like today, she regretted abandoning the cane, but it felt like too much of a crutch. Honestly, it didn’t even decrease the pain—instead, it alerted other people to hover and try to help, which was, in its own way, just as painful.

  Since coming to work at Beacon Falls she’d cut back to only one physical therapy session in the morning, and then Nick helped her with stretches and a massage at night. But the damaged nerves around her ruined ankle had appreciated the neglect even less than they had the extra strain of the rehab sessions. Valencia had offered Lucy use of her pool in the residence wing’s solarium; maybe Lucy could start swimming over lunch.

  As she reached the bottom of the steps, she let out a wry laugh. Here she was worrying if accepting her boss’s offer would be too intrusive, while at the same time they were about to go digging through every private detail of Sarah’s past to try to rebuild her life. Talk about intrusive. She hoped Sarah realized what she was asking for.

  She waved to Missy, the receptionist, and went out in search of Tommy. She spotted him near the tall wrought iron tripod with its eternal flame, looking out over the river gorge to the rolling hills and farmland east of Beacon Falls. He’d stopped pacing, but the worry hadn’t left his posture.

  “Burroughs was right,” he said without looking at her as she drew near. “I shouldn’t be on this case.”

  Lucy mirrored his posture and simply nodded. Waited.

  “Wednesday, it will be a year since Charlotte—” He swallowed. “What good have I done her? Leaving the ER, coming here to work her case after the cops gave up. At least Burroughs agrees with me, that something happened to her. The other cops, the PIs we hired, they all think she left me. That I must be some terrible ogre, must have done something horrific for things to be so desperate that she’d abandon Nellie. They say all the evidence points that way.”

  Finally he turned to her, despair tightening his face. “No one seems to understand that the so-called evidence is just facts we twist, trying to make sense of it. Evidence isn’t truth. I know my wife. I know her truth. She didn’t leave. Not because she wanted to.”

  “Her life was stolen from her,” Lucy said. “One way or the other. From you and your daughter as well.” She let her words hang for a moment, the spring breeze scattering them across the gorge. “Just like Sarah Brown’s.”

  His posture straightened and he rocked on his heels. “You want me to stay on the case?”

  “I think you can help her. TK and I will work with Sarah directly. But you’ve got a good eye for details, for evidence that doesn’t add up. I suspect that’s why you were such a good pediatric ER doctor. After all, most kids can’t tell you what’s really going on with them, and most parents are too upset, trying to create a story that makes sense of a world where their child could be sick or injured. I know that’s how I was when my daughter was sick.”

  He nodded, still not making eye contact.

  “Is the press hounding you about Charlotte’s anniversary?” she asked.

  “Not just the press. Her folks think it’s important to remind the public, keep her story out there in case someone remembers or sees something new.”

  “It’s their way of feeling like they’re not powerless.”

  “But we are. Nellie, this morning, she asked me why I couldn’t bring Mommy home. That if I could save lives and make dying kids better, why didn’t I want to bring Charlotte back. Like I’m some combination of an uncaring god, neglectful husband, and lousy father all rolled up into one.” His lips thinned and the muscle at his jaw clenched. “Maybe she’s right.”

  “She’s how old?”

  “Five. How do you explain ‘missing’ to a five-year-old? She has a grasp on the idea of death, but the idea that her mommy could be gone, not dead, not alive, not home, not anywhere… hell, I can’t grasp it. A year now, and I still have no idea if I’m doing more harm by giving her false hope that Charlotte might come back or if it would be better for her to accept that Charlotte’s gone for good.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem. She’s trying to follow your lead—”

  “And I’m going nowhere except spinning in circles.” He drew in a breath, raising his shoulders into a shrug. “I think that’s why I’ve been avoiding the whole anniversary thing. A year is too long for Nellie to linger in limbo. It’s time to decide how we’re going to live.”

  They stood in comfortable silence. Finally, Lucy said, “Maybe you’re right. You shouldn’t work this case. Take a few days off, be with your family.”

  “Nellie’s in school today, and the empty house…” He gave a shake of his head. “Besides, you need someone to go over Sarah’s apartment, inventory her personal possessions. It’ll keep me busy. Shouldn’t take more than a few hours. But I think maybe I will take the rest of the week off. Spend time with Nellie. Figure out the answers to the questions I’ve been avoiding all year. Like how to say goodbye to Charlotte when it’s the last thing I want.”

  Lucy nodded her agreement, not sure how to help Tommy deal with the turmoil other than to focus on work and the case at hand. “I know the doctors said Sarah was fine to go home, that she only had a mild concussion, but she seems so… unconcerned? I mean, relatively speaking.” She’d seen victims in shock, denial, even stunned. But Sarah was smiling, joking about her predicament.

  “La belle indifférence,” he said. “The mask of denial. A kind of psychic defense mechanism for when things are so confusing the brain can’t make sense of them, so it defaults to whatever emotion is most socially acceptable. Usually a pleasant smile—best way to gain strangers’ trust and get their help. Evolutionarily speaking.”

  “Okay. But it feels like there’s more.”

  “You think she does remember something?”

  “Maybe not consciously. Maybe this is more than a simple concussion. Maybe there’s something she wants to forget.”

  “Psychogenic fugue?” His tone turned musing. “Rare. Very rare. And not something we see in kids, so I don’t have much experience with it. Maybe your husband does?”

  “I’ll ask. But Burroughs and Oshiro both got the same impression after seeing Sarah’s apartment: that she’d purposely lived a life with no ties to her past.”

  “Like she’s on the run from someone?” He straightened, his gaze traveling past her to the house behind them as if seeking any potential threat. “Then we need to protect her.”

  “Hard to do until we know who she is and what, if anything, she’s running from.”

  He nodded grimly. “Right. I’ll get her keys and head over, get started on her place. Maybe Burroughs missed something.”

  Chapter 7

  NELLIE RACED THROUGH the empty school courtyard searching for something to hit. Or someone. Anyone.

  But the recess bell had rung, the playground was empty, and there were only the tall, heavy, mirror-like glass doors reflecting her image in waves, making her look like she’d soon wash away to nothing.

  She was late. Not
her fault—they’d made her chase the ball after it went over the fence—but Sister Agnes said if you came in late, you had to report to the office. Sign in. Be escorted to class. And no more recess for a whole week.

  Nellie scrunched up her face, blinking back tears. Everyone was gone. Everyone always left her behind.

  She thought of walking into class, Sister Agnes yanking her by the hand, giving her that “you’re wasting my time, young lady” look while she told everyone, including Miss Cortez—who was so nice and who Nellie wanted so much to like her—that Nellie had broken the rules and come in late from morning recess and disrespected her teacher and classmates and needed to apologize and promise not to disrespect again even though it hadn’t been Nellie’s fault, and why were grownups in charge of what she did, anyway?

  They were all stupid, stupid, stupid. They left and didn’t say goodbye and they didn’t do what they were supposed to do like save people or not leave or not go missing and they were just…

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

  The sound of her voice startled her. But she felt better. And the girl in the mirror-door looking back at her seemed to approve. Nellie hunched her shoulders hard, tightening up her elbows and fists, stomping around in a circle. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  The forbidden word filled her with power. No wonder grownups said it was a bad word. “We don’t use that word,” they said, but they lied—she heard them use it all the time.

  “Stu-pid, stu-pid, stu-pid.” Oh, she liked that last way: it felt like she was spitting out something yucky. Another thing “we don’t do.”

  Well, Nellie was going to do what she wanted, go where she wanted, and she was most certainly not going to walk into Sister Agnes’s office and say sorry for being late because she was the only one skinny enough to slip between the fence bars and chase after the ball. Her breath whooshed out of her and she reeled against the sandstone wall, dizzy with rebellion.

  She glanced across the playground to the building that towered over everything, even Sister Agnes’s school. The church. It was older than the school—older than her Papa Callabrese, even. It had been here forever, built of stones that were slick and cold to touch and as big around as she was tall. Tall and quiet and solid and peaceful. The church wasn’t going anywhere. It was here to stay.