by Lissa Pelzer
So everything was lined up. Now she just needed the trucker to come back for her. Luckily she had a plan for that too.
Lauren
Janine’s doctor called a meeting at the rehab clinic for 3pm the next day. Lauren hadn’t been invited, but as she happened to be at the clinic at the time, was asked to make coffee and found herself in the room when the meeting began.
She thought at first it was about Janine regaining her memory, but soon realized that it wasn’t. Janine’s therapist, Karl, started right in.
‘We can’t keep her here,’ he said. ‘She has confessed to the police that she murdered a man. Surely, there must be some secure facility, Wakefield perhaps that will have to take her.’
Bryan held up his hand. ‘Karl, she did not murder anyone. You can’t murder someone without intent.’
‘Come on Bryan,’ he shot back. ‘This isn’t the place to discuss technicalities. So what will it be in the end, manslaughter?’
‘No, it was suicide. Only Snell wanted to make it look like Janine did it.’
Janine’s therapist rolled his eyes.
‘And you know her,’ Bryan said, ‘She’s not at all violent. Has she ever, in all the time you’ve worked with her shown any violent tendencies?’
Karl didn’t answer. He reached out for his pen like he was going to take notes, but pulled his hand back.
‘Can you imagine,’ Lauren said from the table next to the door, ‘you see someone shoot themselves right before your eyes, with the gun in your own hand, and then you’re involved in a car crash, with broken bones and head injuries…’
She wasn’t sure she’d been heard, but Dr. Mathers nodded.
‘It makes a lot of sense as to why we couldn’t get any results early on. There must have been some level of self-protection going on.’
Janine’s therapist drilled his finger into the table. ‘She was simply being reticent for her own ends. Difficult, a very difficult girl.’
Lauren jumped when Dr. Mathers slammed her hand down on the table.
‘She wasn’t being reticent. We’ve got fMRI output to show low cerebral cortex activity when she was shown familiar objects, the dog they kept at the home, kids she ate breakfast with every single day, the bedroom where she lived for ten years of her life. She was not faking it.’
‘The detectives have that information too, don’t they?’ Lauren said.
Dr. Mathers was still staring the therapist down, but she confirmed Lauren’s question.
‘The police department received a full statement on Janine’s injuries and symptoms. We made it very clear. Janine had shown very few signs of recovering her memory as recently as two days before they interviewed her. But perhaps, Lauren,’ Dr. Mathers said, twisting around, ‘you’d like to give them a statement too, for the inquest.’
‘Sure.’
‘You’ve spent a lot of time with Janine. You probably understand her better than any of us.’
Lauren just smiled.
‘And why don’t you go down and see her now? Because strictly speaking, you probably shouldn’t be in here.’
Lauren didn’t need to be told twice. She excused herself and went off down the hall.
In her room, Janine was curled up on the armchair in the corner. Lauren hadn’t seen her since she’d recovered her memories, but she could tell from a first glance, this was a changed person. This wasn’t the Janine Kenny she had come to know. Her eyes seemed smaller but smarter, Lauren wanted to say, cat-like, but that sounded childish. She came in and shut the door and went towards her.
‘We’re friends aren’t we?’ Janine said, like an alien who was just getting to grips with the whole humanity thing.
‘More than you know.’
Lauren thought for a moment that she had said something wrong, but Janine smiled.
‘So, how does it feel?’
‘To have my memory back?’ Janine looked away. ‘Not that great. You heard all about what happened?’
Lauren nodded.
‘You don’t hate me for it?’
‘No…’ she said, and she didn’t. She didn’t hate her for any of the things she had done, supposedly done, probably done. ‘Can I sit down?’ she asked and Janine gestured to the bed.
From here she could get a better look at her. A hundred questions popped into her head, but none of them made their way to Lauren’s lips. Of course, she had seen the news bulletins for Carol Ann Baker on the TV and three days later, found her complete with recently cut and dyed black hair, lying senseless between the crisp white sheets of a hospital bed. And after she woke up, Lauren was there, ready to tell her to stay quiet, to tell her they had found the other girl’s ID.
Lauren had wanted so badly to help her. This person was someone! She was famous, as close to famous as anyone Lauren had ever met. But when Carol Ann Baker, the man murderer, the cop shooter, woke up that hadn’t been necessary. Her memory had been wiped. She was Janine Kenny.
‘Of course, when I remembered shooting Simon,’ Janine said, ‘that was hard.’
‘I can imagine.’
And she waited in anticipation of something more because there was more.
‘But I guess, I’ll come to live with it, eventually,’ she said stoically as if reading from a piece of paper. ‘And right now, I’m just very glad that my memory is coming back at all and I can get on with my life. I can get down to California for this scholarship...’
‘Oh sure. The writing degree.’
Was that it then? Did shooting one person feel the same as shooting three?
‘Right...’ Janine trailed off. ‘That is if I can make registration.’
Was there a chance, she only remembered shooting Simon Snell and not the others?
‘When’s registration?’ Lauren said absently.
‘In two days. But there’s this guy, a trucker, he can give me a ride to California. He was here last night, he came to pick me up, the cops scared him off, but I reckon he’s still in town.’
Lauren felt the blood in her hands begin to cool. That was the trucker who attacked Valerie, the one who had been looking for her.
Janine pushed her comforter away and stood up. ‘Lauren,’ she said, and a more serious aspect showed in her eyes. ‘I need you to help me. I need you to find this trucker and get him to come and get me... Can you do that?’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea…’ she said. ‘Maybe we could appeal to Brian and then you could just fly down.’
Janine shook her head. ‘He won’t go for it. And even if he does, it’ll be for after the inquest, I won’t make it in time and I don’t have cash for a flight. And really, this guy – he’s okay.’
‘How do you know him?’ Lauren blurted out, and she knew straight away, she was prompting Janine to lie to her.
Janine looked away. ‘I just do.’
And something stirred in her gut. She had painted Janine’s nails and colored her roots, she had been unique, the keeper of Janine’s little secret, but within one day, that secret wasn’t hers any longer. Janine knew she was Carol Ann Baker now and somehow, so did the trucker. Lauren waited. She couldn’t quite answer. She wanted to help her, but yes, she wanted to be special too.
Davis
For a few delirious moments this morning, she considered again that the girl in Bryan’s care was Carol Ann and that something had happened to cause her to lose her memory. But that was how the mind worked, how it played tricks on you. When someone died, it raced around to find an alternative storyline... But as her dose of in-room coffee started to take effect, the illusion paled and she felt numb from the loss of hope.
And now, in her heart, she knew it was much more likely, when a young girl gets picked up by a violent psychopath, and goes missing in the vicinity where he likes to prey, that there won’t be any alternative ending. Carol Ann hadn’t slipped down a rabbit hole like Alice in Wonderland or flown off to Neverland with Peter Pan. She had been murdered by a trucker called Ralph ‘Red’ Adams. Plain and sim
ple. And all Davis could do now, was find out where he’d put her, to give her a decent burial, at least.
Coming to unfavorable conclusions hurt, but Davis knew it to be true and before her coffee had even cooled, had called up Marquez to tell him what she thought. She told him that he trucker who had been stopped out here had probably put a bag over Carol Ann’s head and left her for dead somewhere before coming back for her body after the cops had let him go. He would have disposed of Carol Ann somewhere around Terre Haute, and she suspected this because this was his territory, a second girl had been attacked in the vicinity and a third was in danger. There was a pattern. These guys were creatures of habit.
‘And the women,’ Marquez asked. ‘What are their names?
‘That’s where it gets tricky. I can’t give you the name of the second and I don’t know the name of the third.’
She heard the long whistle of a sigh rattling down the phone.
‘The girl who he attacked does not wish to report the incident, and she has told me who he is looking for, but this girl is in care, possible underage and she is anonymous.’
‘They’re always underage with you, aren’t they?’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’ Davis dug her nails into the mattress she was sitting on.
‘Never mind. Do you want me to call up the police department up in Terre Haute?’
‘No. I just want you to know what I’m doing. I’m going to get a hold of this guy myself.’
‘Davis! This makes no sense. Why would you want to do that? Once he’s in custody, he’ll be questioned over Baker, no doubt about it.’
‘But we’ve got nothing to bring him in on. The girl he attacked won’t make a report.’
‘She’s just scared, but they’ll give her police protection.’
And Davis smirked because Marquez didn’t get it. ‘You know, I don’t think it’s him she’s scared of. This is a small town, with small minds, but if I bring him in myself...’
‘I’m worried about the decisions you’re making, right now,’ Marquez said coolly. ‘Davis, enough is enough. You need to report to the local police department, immediately.’
‘I need to see this through.’
‘Don’t try me! I said, you needed to be on the road today and I meant it.’
‘If all goes well, I’ll be leaving here tomorrow. How about that?’
Marquez had never been one for discussion and compromise and Davis was hardly surprised when he hung up abruptly. Then she thought of his last words and knew that Marquez was no bullshiter either. Would he call up the locals and give her name and that of Ralph ‘Red’ Adams? Would he suggest Ralph Adams needed finding and protecting from a rogue cop? She knew she needed to act quickly.
Davis got back in her car and drove over to where she had found the Freightliner the evening before but wasn’t surprised to find it not there. She’d gone back over last night and found it already disappeared. It was an infuriating fact to know that while she’d been wrestling Bryan in the bushes, Ralph Adams had driven off.
But her blood was pumping again and she drove out to the next major truck stop, twenty miles away, off the I-70 and when she saw nothing out there, came back to where Valerie had been attacked the night before. She hadn’t expected anything here either and wasn’t surprised when she didn’t find it. But then she saw the big, double height doors of the workshop and the idea struck her. Maybe he had parked the Freightliner away and rented a car. She cursed under her breath before the epiphany arrived. Why was she looking for a Freightliner, when it was a man she really wanted to find?
She needed to know who this guy was, his habits and his appearance. Right now, all she had was that grainy print off of a thumbnail photo. She could be walking past him twenty times a day and not even know it.
It was around 4pm when Davis knocked gently on Bryan’s kitchen door. There was a sound within and then Valerie stood there and the smell of weed drifted out around her body.
‘Sorry to drop by unannounced.’
‘No, come on in.’
Before the door had closed, Davis was off. ‘I need your help. I need to know what this guy looks like. I need to make sure he doesn’t get anywhere near that girl of Bryan’s.’
‘But he won’t, will he? That place is secure.’
‘Still...’
‘And if anyone tries to get in, well, that’s him.’ She raised one eyebrow, the split one, except now someone had applied butterfly adhesive stitches, and applied them well, Davis noticed.
Davis smiled in response. She liked her, but still she needed info.
‘But, if I were to pass that guy on the street, how would I recognize him?’
Valerie dropped down onto the couch and rolled her head back. She was high. That was okay, given the circumstances. And now she started to sing and Davis leaned back patiently and waited for her to finish.
The tune was familiar, painfully so, like a cereal commercial from her childhood, but Davis couldn’t name it. Probably, it was some old eighties classic, the kind of song, she’d heard as a teenager, that they might even have played on the farmstead.
Davis had blinked at the memory of it. Most of the time, she blocked that part of her life out pretty well, but since the surgery, it had kept coming back to her. She could see Rane now, one evening, whittling away in front of the fire at something stupid and impractical. What had it been...a toy microphone? She could hear him humming a tune too, this same tune. Davis stood up, crossed over to the kitchenette and opened a window. Maybe she’d got a contact buzz because after Valerie had stopped singing, Davis could still hear Rane singing along.
She turned suddenly. ‘Was he singing that song when you picked him up?’
‘No,’ Valerie said.
Davis turned back to the window and breathed in. The air didn’t seem much cleaner out there than it was in here.
‘I’m sorry for asking, but I guess you’ve been thinking about it too... Did he tell you his name?’
Valerie shook her head again ‘No, but...’
‘Do you want me to tell you his name?’ she asked.
The girl didn’t answer. Davis heard a click and when she turned around, she saw the little stubby glass pipe at her lips. She couldn’t blame her for wanting to get stoned, but everything had its time and place.
‘His name is Ralph Adams,’ Davis stammered.
Valerie closed her eyes. ‘No,’ she said and let out a long plume of purple-tinged smoke. ‘That’s not his name...’
Davis had straightened up. It was Ralph Adams. If Valerie wanted to play games then she was wasting her time here. But Valerie wasn’t silent. She was singing.
‘Why do you keep singing that?’ Davis asked her.
‘He’s the Red Rider.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘That’s his name, Red Rider.’
‘Red – Rider?’ And Davis thought of the flames going down the side of the truck. And now she nodded too. He was Red Rider, Red, for short. So it definitely was the same man. That was one piece of information at least. And maybe there was more.
‘Hey, Valerie. You feel like going down to ER with me and getting checked out?’ she asked.
Valerie turned her head. ‘Not really, Susan. But thanks for offering.’
‘Well, that’s okay.’
And Davis walked between the couch and the window, wondering if there was another way she could get info out of her.
‘Was he a tall guy, this Red Rider?’
‘Not really.’
‘Did you see the color of his hair?’
‘No,’ Valerie said again, and Davis noticed the return to monosyllabic answers and sighed.
Valerie wasn’t going to discuss him. That was her prerogative, but it wasn’t helpful.
‘Say, do you need a ride home?’
‘My house keys are in my car.’
‘Gray 2001 Ford Taurus, right? Your car is back at Patchy’s. I saw it already. You want a ride there?’
Valer
ie held up the pipe. ‘Not right now.’ She smiled. ‘And I don’t have the keys.’
‘Sure,’ Davis said, but in her head, she imagined what she would say to her if they were mother and daughter. And that changed her mood. ‘Hey, how about I go by there and see if it’s open, see if I can get your house keys for you. That way, if you want to take a taxi later, you can.’
‘Sure,’ Valerie sat up a little. ‘That would be nice, Thanks.’ And she began to hum the tune again, this time with some words. ‘Lunatic Friiiinge!’
Davis found the car on the right-hand side of the lot. The door was unlocked, the key on the seat and at first glance, the car looked clean. The car key would have his fingerprints on so she left them in place for forensics, just in case Valerie changed her mind.
Her purse was on the back seat and Davis grabbed it out by the handle. She had been straightening up when she remembered the gun Valerie had mentioned. There was no harm in holding on to that until Valerie was feeling a little better. Davis knew of girls who hadn’t been able to deal with attacks, who had done rash things. The ones who appeared the strongest, were often the ones who went the quietest, by their own hands, a few days later. It was best to take it away and out of temptation. At least, that’s what Davis told herself she was doing.
‘Lunatic Friiiinge!’
Davis slapped her own face. The melody had been stuck in her head all the way over there, and it dropped back in as she drove back to Bryan’s apartment. She sighed hard when she remembered that Rane had sung it non-stop for a while. Some things will always come back to haunt you. She remembered the track clearly, with or without Rane squealing over the top.
She had taken the tape from home, a driving songs compilation, and he had found it and started playing it over and over again because they didn’t get many radio signals out there. She could see the tape, the cracked plastic cover after someone stood on it. She saw the inlay too. She remembered Rane squinting to see the titles and reading them off.
‘Lunatic Fringe. Red Rider.’
Davis slowed. ‘That’s right,’ she said to herself. They were a Canadian band. They might have been a one-hit wonder or she might have been so isolated that she only ever heard that one song. So that was why Valerie was singing it. Hopefully, now the song would leave her head.