Edge of Midnight

by Leslie Tentler

  “I need you to return to the car you drove away in, Mia. The silver Acura,” Dr. Wilhelm stated gently once it appeared the drug had taken effect. He sat in the wing chair, which he’d pulled up next to the couch where she lay, her eyes closed and breathing slow and deep. “You’ve already escaped that terrible room, but you need to get far away. You’re twisting the loose wires under the dashboard to start the engine—you know how to do it.”

  She didn’t speak for a long time, almost appearing to be asleep. Then Eric’s heart skittered as she suddenly jerked. “He’s banging on the window! It’s going to break!”

  “Then you have to go, now. Put the car into Drive. Is it moving?”

  “Y-yes. But I’m so dizzy. My vision’s blurred.” Her voice trembled. “Oh, God, I think he’s following me!”

  “He’s not,” Dr. Wilhelm promised. “Just keep driving and tell me what you see.”

  “It’s dark and it’s raining so hard. I’m swerving on the road! I—I can’t help it.”

  “Are there street signs?”

  “I—I can’t read them. Trees are blocking the streetlights and I’m going so fast…”

  “Just keep driving.” Dr. Wilhelm exchanged a look with Eric, who stood close by. He realized again what a feat Mia had accomplished in getting away without wrecking the car and killing herself or others in her drugged state. It had been blind luck, literally.

  “I’m on an interstate,” she said a short time later, voice still shaky. “I don’t know how I got here.”

  “It’s all right. The interstate should be well lit. Look for signs.”

  A jagged streak of lightning lit up the office window and thunder rolled overhead. Eric heard the patter on the roof as the storm broke. At least it was raining in Mia’s memory, too, decreasing the chance of it being a distraction. The interstate was her best chance of seeing something useful.

  “I-95 North,” she murmured. “That’s what the road marker says.”

  He felt a sense of triumph. It wasn’t a pinpoint location, but it narrowed the geographic area down. Wherever she’d been held, it was south of Jacksonville. Mia had apparently traveled up the interstate before turning east somewhere and driving onto the A1A that ran along the coast. He recalled the broken fencing at the site where she’d finally veered off the road outside Atlantic Beach.

  “Keep looking,” Dr. Wilhelm prodded. “There might be an exit sign or a billboard. Tell me anything you see.”

  She fell silent again. But something had changed. She began to squirm, her head lolling fitfully from side to side. Worried, Eric looked at Dr. Wilhelm, who leaned over her, alert to her stress. “Mia? What’s going on?”

  She sobbed, her breath quickening. Her hands fisted at her sides.

  “Mia, you must listen to me. Tell me what’s happening.” Already, he’d begun inflating the blood pressure cuff on her arm.

  “I’m back in the room again. Oh, God. He…he has a knife!”

  A coldness slid down Eric’s spine. They’d been warned this could happen—she could start out following Dr. Wilhelm’s suggestion, but her subconscious might wander elsewhere, to other memories more deeply entrenched.

  She trembled harder, her voice breaking. “No! Please!”

  Eric felt his pulse pound. “Bring her out of it. Now.”

  “It’s not that simple.” Dr. Wilhelm glanced up at him, then returned his attention to the digital screen on the blood pressure unit. He frowned and shook his head. “Bringing her out too quickly could make her BP go even higher.”

  Eric watched helplessly as she continued to thrash on the couch, her breathing growing more ragged. He should have never let her do this.

  “Remember the theater where you’re safe, Mia?” Dr. Wilhelm said, trying to regain control. “I want you to go there now. Replace what’s going on around you with the blank theater screen. Stare at its whiteness. It’s cool and quiet there. Serene. The door’s locked so no one can come in. No one can hurt you—”

  She screamed, her back arching off the couch. Blood rushed to Eric’s face. He knew what was happening, what the bastard was doing to her. He was carving the numeral into her skin. “Bring her out of it!”

  Mia’s anguished cries were punctuated by broken sobs and gasps for air.

  Dr. Wilhelm clapped his hands sharply in front of Mia’s face. “Wake up, Mia! You have to come back now!”

  On his third attempt at jolting her awake, she sat upright, wheezing. Her face had a bluish pallor that scared the hell out of Eric. He took her by the shoulders.

  “It’s all right, Mia. You’re back. You’re safe.”

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. Blood from the scabbed cut on her stomach seeped through her white top. Dr. Wilhelm got another read from the device, then yanked the cuff off her arm. “Her BP’s skyrocketed. One-sixty over one hundred. We need to get her to the E.R., now!”

  “I—I can’t breathe.” She clutched at her chest.

  “Jesus,” Eric whispered under his breath. He lifted Mia into his arms and carried her out into the downpour.

  22

  Eric stood as Dr. Wilhelm entered the waiting room in the naval hospital’s E.R.

  “She’s stabilized,” he announced. “Her blood pressure’s coming down and they’re giving her oxygen.”

  Relief slumped his shoulders. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “A beta-blocker was administered to combat the hypertension.” He paused as the hospital intercom crackled to life overhead, paging a doctor to the surgical ward. “Her arterial blood gases are also within an acceptable range now. They’re going to keep her a few hours for observation. If the second round of tests comes back normal, you should be able to take her home.”

  Eric shifted his stance to let a military family pass by. His clothes were still damp from the downpour outside. “What happened, exactly?”

  “In layman’s terms, we’ve taken the drug dosage too high. It sent her adrenal glands into overdrive. She went into a fight-or-flight reaction she couldn’t come down from, causing the hyperventilation and prolonged spike in her BP.” He shook his head, his expression grave. “If it went on any longer she could’ve had a heart attack.”

  Eric stared down the corridor where the trauma staff had taken her. He hadn’t wasted time getting her into a car, instead carrying Mia from Dr. Wilhelm’s office across the parking lot to the adjacent hospital. As soon as the E.R.’s electronic doors had slid open, she’d been plucked from his arms and strapped to a gurney, then rolled away to one of the exam bays. That had been nearly an hour ago.

  “I understand the urgency of your situation, Agent Macfarlane. But I don’t recommend continuing the memory-retrieval therapy, especially not at the current dosage level. Unfortunately, it’s the one required to access her memories.”

  Eric nodded, a dull ache in his chest. “Can I see her now?”

  “Of course. She’s in the fourth exam bay. The hospital’s tight on bed space, so they don’t plan to move her to a room unless she has a relapse. If anything like that happens, I’ve asked to be called.”

  Bidding him good-night, Dr. Wilhelm walked past the admissions desk and out into the graying haze of early evening. It had finally stopped raining outside and steam rose from the asphalt at the E.R.’s entrance. Eric chastised himself for letting Mia attempt the therapy again. He wanted the unsub badly, but not like this. Even now, he could still hear her strained gasps as he traveled with her across the parking lot.

  He’d have to find another way.

  Eric left the waiting room, heading past hospital workers and patients waiting for treatment. He went down the hallway until he reached the windowed exam bays. The curtains were closed and lights lowered in the one Dr. Wilhelm had indicated. Eric knocked softly on the door. A stern-faced nurse on her way out stopped him, but he presented his shield and she allowed him to enter.

  “She needs to rest,” she pointed out before pushing her cart away.

  Wire leads from the heart monitor
snaked under the neckline of Mia’s hospital gown. The machine beeped nearby. A pulse oximeter was clipped to the index finger of her right hand, and an oxygen cannula had been adjusted under her nose. He swallowed hard, feeling a surge of protectiveness. She appeared small and pale under the gurney’s sheets. Eric stepped next to it, causing her eyes to flutter open.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping, just floating.” She sounded groggy. “Valium, I think.”

  “You gave me a scare,” he said quietly.

  “But we know he’s somewhere south of Jacksonville now. If I’d stayed with the memory a little longer—”

  He hushed her. “Let’s not worry about that.”

  She could’ve had a heart attack. His insides twisted at the prospect.

  “The carving on my stomach…it started bleeding again.” She placed her hand on the sheets over her abdomen, puzzlement in her voice. Mia looked up at him with glassy eyes, probably caused by the medication. “The same thing happened before…only last time it was where he pulled out my nails.”

  It was some kind of strange phenomenon. But to Eric, it only underscored the realism of Mia’s experiences during those sessions. She really was reliving those lost memories, not just viewing them like someone passively watching a slide show of past events. He regretted the torture she’d been put through all over again, forced to endure a psychotic killer cutting into her.

  “I got a better look at him this time.”

  “We can update the sketch in the morning.”

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

  Frowning, Eric brushed her dark hair back from her forehead. “What do you have to be sorry for?”

  “I wanted to remember something that might make this finally be over.”

  He pulled a stool beside the gurney and took Mia’s hand. It was unclear to him how someone so delicate-looking could also be so brave. He studied her scabbed nail beds, then brought her fine knuckles to his mouth and kissed them, his eyes somber.

  “Think you could bust me out of here?” she asked half-jokingly.

  He wanted to make certain she was all right. “Not a chance. We’re staying until they release you.”

  It was nearly eleven by the time they returned to Mia’s apartment. She felt tired and still a little woozy from the sedative, but also appreciative of the close watch Eric had kept over her. He hadn’t left her bedside at the hospital except to make a few necessary phone calls. Once they had gotten her release papers, he’d carefully guided her into his car to take her home.

  “You’re a dancer.”

  Mia turned to see him holding her worn pair of ballet slippers. He stood in the doorway to her bedroom, having followed her down the hall, worried about her steadiness on her feet. The ribboned slippers had been hanging from a hook on the front of the door. It was a rather childish decoration, out of place with her more chic furnishings, but she liked having the shoes where she passed by each day.

  “I also saw the photos in your office,” he admitted. “You made a pretty ballerina.”

  She felt herself blush at his comment. Mia took the slippers from him, her fingers pensively gliding over their pale satin. “I got started as a teenager, a little late, but I had promise. I trained with the youth program at the Jacksonville Inner-City Ballet. I ended up getting a minority arts scholarship to the University of Florida. It’s how I went to college.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  Her thumb worried at one of the slipper’s frayed toes before she laid them on the distressed wood of her bureau top. “Don’t be. I blew out my knee as a junior, ending my scholarship.”

  “But you still managed to finish school.”

  “It took a while since I was working two jobs—waitressing and doing a paid internship at the Gainesville newspaper, but I made it.”

  “You amaze me, Mia,” Eric said, taking a step closer. His eyes were sincere. “Especially considering all you’ve been through…”

  His words trailed off, but she knew what he was thinking. That given her background she could have ended up with no education or career. Worse, she could have followed her mother’s path, sustained by welfare, accepting money from men for sexual favors. Luri Hale might not have walked street corners, but the nameless men she picked up in bars still looked upon her as a whore.

  “I’ve been on my own since I was sixteen,” she said, thinking of the night Luri had come home with two men. One for her and one for her little girl, she’d said in her thick accent, a gleam in her eye that suggested she was back in her manic phase. When Mia refused to go into the bedroom with the stranger, Luri had slapped her and said he was willing to pay two hundred dollars, money they needed for rent. She shouldn’t be so high-and-mighty.

  Mia had run from the apartment. She’d gone back to it only once after that, to pick up her clothing and her few possessions, and to tell Luri she wanted to be free of her forever.

  “Well, I wasn’t completely alone,” she conceded, her voice soft. “One of the dance instructors, a woman named Delora Vance, took me in. She gave me a room in her house until I finished high school. Delora had this creaky old Victorian in the Springfield Historic District that had been in her family for generations. She helped supplement the stipend for independent living I’d gotten from the court, and I got the university scholarship with her help. I’m not really sure what I would’ve done without her.”

  “Are you still in touch with her?” Eric asked.

  Mia shook her head, still feeling Delora’s absence. “She’s dead now. She was robbed and shot outside her home four years ago.”

  Springfield was returning to gentrification, but at that time it had still been a haven for crime. “I covered the investigation for the paper. A fifteen-year-old gang member killed her for fifty dollars. Before that I saw her fairly regularly, though. I used to go to her place for dinner on the last Sunday of every month. Usually Mayport fried shrimp or barbecue pork, Delora’s specialties, and always with sweet tea.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, somber. “Do you ever dance anymore?”

  “I teach during the summer at one of the nonprofit urban centers downtown. I like to introduce it to children who otherwise might not get the chance.” Kids like me, she thought. “The classes start after school’s out for summer. Three nights a week I’m surrounded by cute little girls in pink tights.”

  Eric studied her. “I’d like to see that. You with all your miniballerinas.”

  She smiled wanly, knowing it was unlikely to happen. When the investigation was over, he would return to D.C. It was true what she’d said tonight. More than anything, she wanted to remember something that would put an end to the violence. To help Eric finally capture the man who had caused him so much grief. But she couldn’t help it—thinking of his departure made her feel hollow inside.

  Afraid he could sense her melancholy, she lowered her gaze. Her hand went to her blouse, which had rusty droplets of dried blood on its front. She recalled why she’d come to her bedroom. “I’m going to change.”

  He moved back to the door. “I’ll be just outside.”

  They hadn’t talked about what had happened between them at the bungalow, not since their awkward morning after. “You don’t have to stay, Eric. It’s late and I’m really okay now.”

  “I’d like to spend the night.” His hand remained on the door frame, steadfast. “I don’t think you should be alone. Not tonight.”

  Mia thought of The Collector’s knife cutting into her. The memory was enough to rattle her all over again.

  “It was before he took my nails,” she said in recollection. “My wrists were tied over my head and bound to a hook in the wall. He sat in a chair in front of me, taking his time…”

  She shook her head in disbelief, unable to control the tremor in her voice. “The whole time, he was humming some tune, like I was a piece of wood he was carving on.”

  Eric’s eyes darkened.

  She found him in h
er office, looking through Hank Dugger’s notepad.

  “They’re from the retired detective who handled the Joy Rourke abduction,” Mia said as she entered, wearing a soft pair of print pajama bottoms and fitted T-shirt. She’d also taken a shower, her dark hair damp. “I went to visit him on Saturday.”

  “He gave you his notes?”

  “I told him I might’ve known Joy when I was in foster care.”

  Eric had pulled his dress shirt free from his suit pants, and she noticed his jacket and tie were draped over the back of her desk chair. His shield and gun in its holster were also nearby, on the bookshelf next to several reference journals and an old AP Stylebook she’d had since college journalism courses.

  “Have you found anything in them?” he asked.

  “Not so far. It’s mostly the same information as in the cold case file, although some of the detective’s personal thoughts and observations are included along with the facts. I’ve been trying to locate people he talked to during the investigation, but there are a lot of names and it was twenty-five years ago. Some are dead, or moved or are just generally hard to find. I worked on it Sunday, and a little today at the paper between assignments.”

  Still studying the notepad, he took it to the love seat. Mia sank down beside him and pointed to one of the names on the list, a man who had lived across from Miss Cathy’s. “His house would’ve been in the best position to see something that day. He died a year ago, I found out.”

  “Keep looking,” Eric said. “We have task force members going through the JSO file, but if someone stands out to you or raises any flags, let me know.”

  She nodded, although she realized it was a long shot. Hank Dugger and his partner had worked the case thoroughly, it seemed.

  “Would you like something to eat?” she asked.

  “I had a bite at the hospital cafeteria when I was making calls. What about you?”

  She shook her head, stifling a yawn.