by Gayle Wilson
“By telling us you ‘saw’ her in a flashback.”
“Obviously, it wasn’t a flashback. I don’t know what it was. All I know is what I saw.”
“I thought it was just an impression.”
“That’s right. An impression that I was in a dark, wet place with a terrified little girl.”
Until now, despite the absurdity of his claim, Underwood’s tone had been reasonable. As if he were trying to explain things to someone whose IQ didn’t quite come up to his standards. This time, however, there was a definite hint of anger in his response.
And Eden intended to use it to her advantage. “Anybody there with her? Her abductor, maybe?”
“There was nobody else.”
“Well, you see, that’s what makes me wonder.”
“Whatever you’re wondering, you can forget. I told you. I didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance.”
“She just somehow…showed up in your flashback.”
“Yes.” The single syllable was cold, controlled, but patently furious.
“What do you think was the reason for that, Mr. Underwood?”
“I have no idea, Chief Reddick.” His sarcasm echoed hers.
“I think you do.”
“I don’t give a damn what you think. I came here because I thought it was my duty to tell law enforcement what I’d seen. What you do with the information is now up to you.”
He rounded the table and walked toward the door. Eden’s gaze automatically followed. The head injury Dean had mentioned hadn’t been obvious, but his stride, though rapid and purposeful, was uneven.
A little less put together than when he left…
With that memory, the rest of Dean’s words echoed in her head, as well. Served his country… Last tour… Hero.
Maybe in her desperation to put an end to the nightmare the Nolans and this community were experiencing, she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. The guy seemed sincere. And sincerely frustrated by the way she’d interpreted his story.
“You have to understand that anybody coming in here claiming to have seen Raine—”
Almost at the door, he turned sharply on his heel. “Oh, I understand. Believe me. Blame my naiveté about how investigations like this are handled for not getting the message before. I stupidly thought those requests for information—any information—were genuine. I guess you were just casting the wider net for suspects. I’m sorry I stumbled into it. You know where to find me if you have further questions.”
He pushed through the narrow doorway without touching the two officers who were still standing frozen on either side. In the silence that fell after Underwood’s pronouncement, the three of them listened as his limping footsteps faded down the tiled hallway. A few seconds later the outside door slammed shut.
Only then did Eden make eye contact with her deputy chief. “I blew it, didn’t I?”
Dean laughed. “I’d say your interrogation skills might need a little polishing.”
He didn’t seem upset about what had just happened, but then Dean hadn’t believed from the beginning that Underwood had any hand in the kidnapping. Neither had Winton.
And reviewing the interview in her mind, she could understand their reservations about considering the ex-soldier a suspect. Despite her own preconceived notions, his reaction to her suggestion had rung true. As Dean had said about Ray Nolan, if Underwood was hiding something, he was a consummate actor. The problem wasn’t that she’d had suspicions. Any law-enforcement officer would have, hearing his story secondhand. The problem was in the way she’d handled the face-to-face.
“I imagine the guys from the Bureau are going to be ticked off,” she acknowledged.
“You gonna tell ’em about this?”
“You think I shouldn’t?”
“I think they’ll react the same way you just did. But if you believe that’s what you ought to do…” Dean shrugged.
“I don’t think I can legitimately keep Underwood’s story from them. Do you?”
“Major Underwood.”
An officer. Something she should have gleaned from his attitude, if nothing else. “Do you?” Even as she repeated the question, Eden recognized that, in this case, calling the Bureau might fall under the category of “covering your ass.” If she didn’t pass this information on to the FBI, and something eventually came of it, she’d be considered derelict in her duty. The same word Jake Underwood had just used, she realized.
I thought it was my duty…
“Up to you, Chief,” Dean said, refusing to let her off the hook. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think it makes a hill of beans difference what you do. I don’t think Jake had anything to do with that little girl’s disappearance. But I also think he can probably hold his own with the Feds. After all, he’s been dealing with bureaucratic red tape most of his life. I suspect he’ll be more than a match for the boys from Jackson.”
Dean sounded as if he was enjoying the thought of that confrontation. The realization that he had no doubt how Underwood would handle himself should have been comforting, given that she felt she had little choice about sharing this information with the agents. If the ex-soldier thought she’d hassled him…
Eden blew out a breath, the frustrations of the past two days suddenly catching up with her. She needed a couple of hours sleep to go along with the partially eaten sandwich. Maybe then she could get some perspective back.
They’d done everything they could think of to find Raine Nolan. The feeling that it wasn’t nearly enough was compounded by the realization that, despite the horror she’d felt listening to Jake Underwood’s “flashback,” despite the ridiculousness of even considering the possibility that what he’d seen was real, that vision—or whatever it had been—was the most positive indication they had had yet that Raine might still be alive.
Chapter Three
“I just want to make certain I understand what the term means.” Eden looked up to make sure the door to her office was securely closed, although she had already done that before she’d placed this call.
It was bad enough that her inquiry into Jake Underwood’s medical condition felt like an invasion of privacy, she wasn’t sure how others in the department would interpret her interest. Dean’s dismissal of what the ex-soldier claimed to have seen had been swift and definite. In spite of that, she felt compelled to check with someone who had more expertise in these matters than either of them.
“Brain damage can mean a whole lot of different things,” Dr. Ben Murphy said. “You’re gonna have to be a little more specific if you want me to give you a medical opinion.”
“I don’t know what I want,” she admitted.
Doc Murphy had been her father’s physician as well as his friend. She trusted both his discretion and his judgment. “Closed-head trauma?”
“I don’t even know that. All I know is he was a soldier.”
The silence on the other end of the line made her wonder if Doc, with his quick intellect and broad knowledge of this town, had already put it all together.
“This an official inquiry?” he asked finally.
“Nope. This is just me asking a trusted friend for some guidance.”
“Fair enough. Generalities, then. That all right?”
“If that’s all you got.”
“Give and take, Eden. Give and take.”
“Well, you got all I can give, so…I’ll take whatever you’ll offer.”
“The brain’s a delicate thing. It can be damaged by cumulative injuries, like a football player who has too many concussions during his career. Then you can get stuff like ALS, maybe years afterward. He doesn’t know his brain’s been hurt until it’s too late.”
“I don’t think that’s the case here.”
“I didn’t figure it was. In war, the injury is usually obvious. A blow or a concussive force from an explosion, resulting in an open or closed wound to the head.”
“Which is worse?”
She could almost hear Doc
shrug. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other. It’s the degree that matters. And the treatment, of course. In modern wars men survive things that would once have killed them, if not immediately, then within a matter of hours. Now sometimes within minutes, we get them off the battlefield and into a trauma unit that’s as good, if not better, than most of those in our major hospitals. They relieve the pressure on the brain, maybe by removing a piece of the skull so it’s got room to swell. Maybe with drugs. Whatever we’d do here, they can do there.”
“And after that?”
“Depending on the damage, rehab to recover function.”
“Function?”
“Mental and physical. I could do a better job of explaining this, Eden, if I had some clue as to what kind and degree of injury we’re talking about.”
“I can’t help you with that. Just keep it general. So with this quick treatment, do most of them recover?”
“Some do. Some don’t.”
“And if they don’t, what kinds of problems would they have?”
“Physically? You ever see somebody after a stroke? That’s a kind of brain injury in itself. Muscle weakness, usually confined to one side of the body. Mentally? It could involve amnesia. Aphasia. Even personality changes.”
The tip of the pencil she’d been jotting notes with lifted. “What kind?”
“Any kind. Somebody who’s been mild-mannered and shy becomes overbearing. Or vice versa. Or they may suffer from extreme excitability. Impulsivity. Have anger-management issues.”
“Might they become violent?”
Again there was a silence on the other end of the line. “It’s possible. Anything’s possible, Eden, but most of the men and women who suffer brain injuries come home and resume their lives. They may struggle with mobility or memory or control, but they don’t become somebody else. If they weren’t violent criminals before, most of them don’t commit acts of violence after. They just come home and try to be the best they can be, despite what’s happened to them while they were fighting on our behalf.”
The silence this time was Eden’s. She broke it finally to suggest, “I don’t guess I need to tell you that I’d appreciate your keeping what we’ve talked about to yourself.”
“You don’t need to tell me. But I’d do it anyway. As on edge as folks in this town are right now, the suggestion that we’ve got somebody around here who’s become dangerous because he’s had a brain injury could be disastrous. Frankly, I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”
“Thanks, Doc. I appreciate your help. And the advice.”
“Your daddy would be proud of you, Eden. You’re doing a good job. And the hardest one you got facing you may be keeping the yahoos here from going off the deep end. I’d hate to see that happen in Waverly.”
“Me, too, Doc. Me, too.”
“While you’re taking care of everything else around here,” the old man said, “don’t forget to take care of you. We need you. Your daddy knew that, too.”
“Thank, Doc. That means a lot.”
“You just do what he taught you. You’ll be fine.
YOU’RE A DAMNED slow learner, boy, Jake thought, as he watched the special agents’ car disappear behind the cloud of dust that enveloped any vehicle exiting his property this time of year. Or maybe he was as brain-damaged as the surgeons who’d worked on him had feared he might be.
No matter the impetus, going to the police department had been a colossally stupid, totally idiotic mistake. One he still couldn’t believe he’d made. And now that blonde Barbie, who hadn’t believed a word he’d said, had sicced the Feds on him.
The old adages were true. Never volunteer. Keep your head down and do your job. Mind your own business.
That’s exactly what he’d do from now on, Jake vowed. Even if he had another of what the agents had called “his visions.”
Not that he planned on doing that. At least not the kind he’d had yesterday.
He had enough ghosts in his head already. He didn’t need Raine Nolan’s there, too.
BY THE END of Day Three, the effects of being overextended were apparent on everybody in the department. And probably on most of the townspeople as well, Eden acknowledged. The local search parties had been joined by teams with cadaver dogs—an unwelcome reality check, based on the passage of time since the Nolan child had been taken.
“You talk to the lab?” Dean asked.
“Yesterday and today. Special Agent Davis called them, too. They say they’re doing the best they can. And, truth be told, I’m not sure we sent them anything that’s going to tell us much.”
Cliff Davis was the senior of the two agents the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation had sent down. Eden had found him helpful and professional, but a couple of times, she thought she’d detected a gleam of contempt in his eyes when she asked for his opinion of things the department had talked about doing.
Paranoid, she chided herself. Everybody was grasping at straws, including the Bureau.
She’d been open with her officers, that if they had any ideas about other avenues they should be pursuing in this investigation, they should speak up. Several had, and they’d already put a couple of those suggestions into play.
And of course, they were still concentrating on the tried-and-true. They’d interviewed the registered sex offenders in the region—at least the ones they could track down. They’d also canvassed the upscale neighborhood where the Nolans lived to see if anyone had seen or heard anything unusual, not only on the night of the kidnapping, but also in the days leading up to it.
The Nolans had both taken lie-detector tests, verifying hers and Dean’s initial reactions to their stories. The hotline and the Amber Alert had yielded a ton of calls, but so far nothing that led anywhere. Other than that…
“We sent ’em all we got.” Dean’s comment was nothing but the truth. A truth that grew less palatable with each passing hour.
“I don’t know what else to do.”
“You’ve done everything you can,” her deputy chief said earnestly. “Nobody could’a handled this better. I mean that, Chief.”
He always called her chief, despite how long he’d known her. Almost twenty years, Eden realized, a little surprised it had been that long.
But then, her existence before they’d moved to Waverly seemed very distant. Another time. Another place. Another life.
“I really appreciate your saying that, Dean. I keep thinking there must be something we haven’t thought of. Something that will give us a handle on who did this.”
“Sometimes, despite all you can do, things like this just don’t have a happy ending.”
“I know.” She did. The chance that they’d find Raine Nolan alive decreased hour by hour. And far too many of those had already passed.
“Why don’t you go on home and get some sleep? I grabbed a few hours this morning. I can hold down the fort for a while.”
Eden glanced at the clock above her office door. The windowless room made it too easy to lose track of time, especially when things had been as hectic as today. Still, she was surprised to find it was almost seven. It would be dark in another hour. Since the marshy terrain was too treacherous to risk after nightfall, even the search parties would be coming in.
She might as well take advantage of Dean’s offer. He was more than capable of taking charge of the command center.
Especially when there was so little to command.
“I think I’ll do that. You’ll call me if anything happens? And I mean anything, Dean.”
“You’ll be the first to know.”
They both understood how unlikely such a call would be, given the end of the searching day. Sadly, it was now almost a relief when they had reached that point without incident. It meant that at least for one more day Eden didn’t have to face Margo Nolan with the news that her daughter had been found. And that, against her mother’s hopeful expectations, she wouldn’t be coming home again.
HIS GRANDMOTHER USED to preach to him about “sp
eaking things into existence.” At the time, Jake had considered it all a bunch of Holy Roller hogwash, but when the familiar flickering began, his vow that he would keep any other “visions” to himself came to mind.
That was the last thought he managed before the horror closed in, so strong it made rational thinking impossible. The darkness was terrifying enough, but now, somehow, he knew what it contained. And understood the things that could happen within it.
He could again hear water dripping. Could smell its stench. Maybe if he opened his eyes…
There was more light this time, so that his surroundings were clearer, more distinct. Exposed roots lay against the black walls like a network of veins.
A trickle of moisture glinted on the ground in front of him, reflecting a light whose source he couldn’t determine. The sun? Or something artificial? Something put into this place to illuminate it?
Not that it did. Not to any real degree.
A splinter of his mind continued to worry over that. The rest was lost in the same primitive fear that had encompassed him before.
This time, however, he knew something about the source of that fear. Not enough to identify it, but enough to know it was to be avoided at all costs.
Stooping, he scrambled backward to get away from it. Away from the light, he realized, which must mean—
As quickly as he’d been thrust into the darkness, he was thrown out of it. This time, rather than kneeling beside his truck, he was lying on the floor of his grandmother’s parlor, the fibers of its faded wool carpet rough against his cheek.
Physically unable to move, he lay there for what seemed like hours, trying to orient himself into the present. When he had, he realized that, once again, where the flashback had taken him hadn’t been to the past. Not back to the desert. Not the war.
This had been something more immediate. Something nearer in both time and space.
He hadn’t seen the little girl. He searched the fragments of memory that lingered like smoke in his brain and found within them no trace of another presence.