Traces of the Girl

by E. R. FALLON

  There was no way either Joyce or Albert would have made it out alive, and I could see their mangled remains, bones and charred flesh. A half piece of money floated up in the air, the edge still on fire, and landed near my face. I picked up the paper and blew out the flame. Then I put it in my pocket so I’d never forget how I’d beaten one of the greatest ordeals I ever faced outside of war.

  If I hadn’t been snapped out of hypnosis fully before, the sensation of the crash landing and then the noise of the exploding plane had done the trick.

  The burning rubber smell started to get to me and I felt like I might puke. But I felt like a hero again and doubted I’d ever drink again. And I’d start my own flight school, and I didn’t need that dirty money to do so. I’d figure it out somehow.

  The sleet cooled me for a while then stopped. Now that the explosion had settled, I got up and met a woman – she looked like a detective from her suit – halfway. Was she real? Or a mirage?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Emily Will?” Harry said to the soot-covered woman standing in front of her. She could barely tell the woman’s hair color under all the dust and debris on her, and her face looked like it had been beaten. But she recognized Emily’s profile from her driver’s license photo.

  “That’s me.” Her voice sounded dry. “I recognize your voice from when I talked to you from the phone booth at the side of the road. Detective Harry?”

  “Yeah. We’ve been looking for you.” Harry paused. “And the Fishers?”

  Emily shook her head.

  “How many bombs did they have?” Harry asked.

  “One, I think, but it already went off, as I’m sure you noticed.”

  Harry liked that Emily still had her sense of humor despite the ordeal.

  “I’m going to have the bomb squad take over for now just in case there’s another explosive we don’t know about,” Harry said. “We need to get you to the hospital. An ambulance is on its way.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Harry raised an eyebrow. “Let the ambulance take you to the hospital.” She wanted to get Emily out of there before the news crews started arriving. She could hear a helicopter in the distance.

  “What about the fire?” Emily asked.

  “The fire department will be here soon to take care of that.” Harry gave her a reassuring smile. “There’s no need for you to worry about that.” She understood Emily wanted to be useful because she was the same way.

  “I’m wearing a dead man’s jacket,” Emily whispered.

  Harry couldn’t tell if she was talking to her or to herself. She looked at what remained of a red jacket now in damp tatters. She noticed Emily shivering in her burned and shredded clothes and gave her the leather jacket she always wore.

  “Thanks.” Emily slipped it on.

  She seemed calm, like Harry had thought an elite soldier would seem in the situation. Harry’s bulletproof vest felt tight around her. She waved to Nolan and Maple to let them know it was safe and she had Emily Will with her. They, along with tons of other cops were lined up with their guns drawn, crouching behind their car doors for shields. They’d thought Harry was wild for racing toward the crash and explosion, intensified by the plane fuel, to see if she could drag Emily out. But Emily had already gotten herself out. God, how Harry hated airplanes, and seeing one crash in front of her only underscored why.

  “I have to say, Emily, you make us cops seem pretty useless,” she complimented her.

  Emily began to smile and then collapsed into Harry’s arms. “Do you have any water?” she whispered.

  “Where’s that ambulance?” Harry shouted to her colleagues.

  Two days had passed when Harry entered Emily Will’s hospital room after getting the nurse’s permission, bearing a flower basket. Emily had been in the hospital since passing out after the crash. Harry was a bit more spruced up since she would be attending Maria’s funeral after, but she still wasn’t wearing a dress. She had polished her shoes. Harry and Mickey’s parents had arrived late last night. Harry also would be attending Dan Wesley’s funeral the next day.

  She knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” Emily said.

  Harry went in. “How are you feeling?”

  “I still feel like crap.” Emily grinned from her hospital bed in her blue nightgown. The bruises and cuts on her face were starting to heal. “But a little better.” She thanked Harry for the flowers. Emily no longer had dark circles under her eyes and Harry assumed she’d slept well.

  Harry felt like she already knew Emily and was joking with an old friend. Harry sensed they’d be friends for real someday if she stayed in the town, which she felt she would. She had lots of unpacking to do.

  And Harry felt like she had a better understanding of Emily’s condition. Em. Not Ms., Will or the ‘looney’. Emily, the victim, and Major Will, the war hero. Em, the person.

  “I’m sorry about your sister-in-law,” Emily said. “Please offer my condolences to your brother and his children. I don’t know them well but when I’d see them in town sometimes they were always so kind to me.”

  Harry thanked her.

  They talked about their dogs – both felt they would each adopt a pup someday – and Harry admitted she hated airplanes.

  “Yeah, airplanes aren’t for everyone,” Emily said, like she was thinking of the crash and explosion. Then she offered to fly Harry someday to help her overcome her fear.

  “I’ll take a rain check on that,” Harry said.

  After a while, Harry brought up the idea of pursuing a criminal case against James Addison.

  “Have you ever spoken to a lawyer about it?” Harry asked.

  Emily shook her head. “I’d like to help you. He harassed other women as well as me.”

  “I’ll talk with them to see if they’d like to press charges.”

  “I’m going to start my own flight school,” Emily said after a while. “I don’t have a lot of money, but I figure I might be able to get a loan from the bank.”

  “You’re very talented. I’m sure it will work out well for you. You can always come work with me if you’d like.”

  Emily laughed but Harry wasn’t joking.

  “I just realized I never gave your jacket back to you,” Emily said.

  “That’s okay. You can keep it.”

  “Really?” Emily smiled.

  Harry nodded and smiled back at her. It was a big step for her considering she always wore it, but she felt she knew Em.

  “She had ALS,” Emily suddenly said. “Joyce did.”

  “We didn’t know that.”

  “I don’t think anybody but her doctor knew. Not even her brother knew until I told him. She hated me for telling him.”

  “Why did she pick you to tell then?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Is that why they committed the robbery, to pay for her care? Were they going to get her medical treatment in Cuba?”

  “Joyce said that wasn’t the reason when I asked her. And Albert didn’t know his sister was sick until I revealed it to him after I promised her I wouldn’t tell him. I do feel kind of bad about that, breaking my promise to her, even if she was a murderer. But I was trying to get him to dismantle the bomb and felt he should know that his sister had little to lose but he didn’t. She told me she’d always wanted to do the crime and she didn’t have much time left so she went ahead and did it before she died. I suppose we’ll never know the real reason. It’s not like anyone can ask either of them anything ever again.”

  Then Harry listened as Emily told her something she hadn’t revealed when Maple and Harry had stopped by yesterday to speak with her.

  “You know, she hypnotized me into believing I’d killed someone at my house so they could get me to do what they wanted. At first, they made me believe he was a home invader. Then they tricked me into believing he was really just an innocent salesman.”

  “I didn’t know that. They used it to lord over you.”

  Emil
y told Harry about the cutting knife from her kitchen she couldn’t find, the one she’d thought was the murder weapon. “I really thought I did it. You don’t think it’s true, right?”

  Harry shook her head. “We did a very thorough search of your house and property, Ms. Will, and found absolutely nothing like that.”

  “Em, please. Call me Em, please. I think it was Albert Fisher who really came to my door. Not a home invader, not a salesman. And then Joyce came and, well, you know the rest.”

  Harry had heard from Maple that a clean, unused cutting knife had been found on Emily’s property. The Fishers must have tossed it out there.

  “We found a knife, but it definitely wasn’t used as a murder weapon,” Harry said. “It was completely clean. Not even a trace of blood.”

  Emily seemed like a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

  Emily’s doctor came into the room and took a piece of paper out of his white lab coat. When Harry introduced herself to him as the detective on Emily’s case, he gestured for her to step out into the hall to talk.

  Emily gave Harry a worried look as she left the room but Harry gave her a comforting nod and smile.

  “What’s going on?” she asked the doctor outside Emily’s room. Harry admired doctors or anyone who saved lives; she was so used to dealing with those who took them.

  “Her blood tests came back and she had something like traces of peyote in her bloodstream.” The doctor showed Harry where the results indicated that on the piece of paper in his hand. “She told me she doesn’t remember taking or being given peyote recently. But there must have been a large amount given to her at some point because there are still traces of it in her blood. The peyote explains why she told us she’s been thirsty all the time since being kidnapped. It can dehydrate. She also said that she had a very bad headache around the time she was kidnapped. Peyote can do that.”

  “I think I’ve heard of it, but what is peyote, exactly?”

  “It’s not so unusual for you to be unfamiliar with it, even for a detective,” the doctor said. “It’s a cactus that’s mostly unheard of outside of Native American culture. It can be chewed. It’s still used by Native American tribes in the area for recreational purposes, but it’s sometimes sold as a narcotic on the black market as a substitute for opioids and the like. It can be used as a ‘natural’ painkiller.”

  Harry thought of what Emily had said about Joyce’s illness.

  “Does it have hallucinogenic properties, like LSD?” she asked.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Emily Will told me something that led me to believe she’d hallucinated during the initial kidnapping. Could hypnosis make Emily believe she’d killed someone?”

  “I’m not an expert, but an experienced hypnotist might be able to do that,” the doctor said.

  And Joyce Fisher had been very experienced.

  The doctor continued. “It’s likely that she was given the peyote as part of the hypnosis process since it can help a person relax and made them more susceptible to hypnosis. The extra benefit is also that its hallucinogenic effects will make the person more likely to believe what the hypnotist is telling them.”

  “Like believe they murdered someone?”

  “It’s possible, yes.”

  “So, one of them could have held Emily Will down and made her take the peyote and she wouldn’t remember that after the hypnosis?”

  The doctor nodded.

  “But why is she fine all the sudden?” Harry asked.

  “The shock of the plane accident could have snapped her out of it.”

  But Harry wasn’t as sure about that. “Does Emily know they gave her peyote?”

  “Yes, I told her.”

  “When we found her she mentioned something about needing a medication. Have you got that all sorted out for her?”

  “That’s confidential. But I can tell you, yes, we have.” He smiled.

  “Great. Thanks. How is she doing in general?”

  “She’s doing well considering the ordeal she’s been through. Her feet were in especially bad shape. I gather they made her walk barefoot.”

  “In this weather?” Harry shook her head. “I’m glad she’s safe now.”

  “She told me the woman beat her,” the doctor said.

  Joyce. Harry nodded. “Thanks for telling me.”

  When the doctor left, Harry called Nolan from the hallway of Emily’s hospital room and told him the news about the peyote.

  “When I last spoke to Dr. Tompkins’s assistant, she mentioned the doctor had treated peyote addicts in his practice,” he said.

  “Joyce probably bought the drug off one of the patients.” Harry told him what Emily had said about Joyce having ALS. “She must have been using it herself as a painkiller in addition to giving it to Emily.”

  Harry left Emily’s room for the day and started to walk down the hallway past the other rooms and she saw Carlow’s hospital room. She went back and knocked on the door. She could see Carlow in bed wearing a similar blue gown Emily had on. An older man who could have been his father sat next to the bed.

  Carlow saw her in the doorway and waved her inside.

  “Officer Carlow. I was just visiting Emily Will down the hall,” Harry said.

  Carlow asked her to call him by his first name and she felt funny calling him “Rick”.

  “This is Detective Harriet Cannon,” he said to the older man. “She works with me at the station.”

  The man rose and shook her hand. “I used to have your job.”

  At first Harry thought Carlow’s father might make a wisecrack about a woman replacing him. Then he said, “Rick says you kick my ass at the job.”

  Harry laughed. “I don’t know about that.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Dad. She’s really good at what she does.” Carlow’s compliment surprised Harry. He thanked her for the flowers.

  “My father was a detective too,” she said to Carlow. “I don’t know if you knew that.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. We worked for different police departments before he retired but I’m kind of a legacy cop myself.”

  “Thanks,” Carlow said. “Thanks for telling me that.”

  “I’m sorry I never visited you until now. I’m not good with this ‘get well’ thing.”

  “That’s okay. I’m not either. How’s Emily Will doing? I heard you were the one who found her.”

  “Yeah. I think she’s going to be all right.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “The flowers you got, they were from Maple, too,” Harry said after a while.

  “Okay. Thanks. That’s great. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about the hypnosis thing. Nolan stopped by earlier and told me all about it and how it was true.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “How are you doing?” Carlow asked.

  “Okay. My only regret is that Joyce and Albert Fisher didn’t live to stand trial and face my brother in court. I think it would have given him closure.” But she understood why Emily had to do what she’d done.

  “The service for Maria is today, right?” Carlow’s father asked.

  Harry nodded. “It’s in a half hour. I better be on my way so I’m not late. It’ll be good to have you back at work, Rick.”

  “It’ll be good to work with you again,” he replied as she left.

  Yeah, she’d been a little wrong about Carlow and Maple, although she’d never tell them that.

  Outside in the hospital parking lot on her way to her car she called Maple to say goodbye. It had rained earlier and the ground still glistened. Maple would be leaving to catch a plane to return to Virginia in a few hours so he could be briefed in person on his next case. Harry didn’t know why anyone would want to fly after what they’d witnessed.

  “Nice working with you,” Maple told her.

  Harry’s phone rang after she and Maple finished their call. Harry looked at the screen. ‘Unknown caller’. She answered it and heard
a man breathing. Green. Unable to control herself any longer, she gave him what she knew he wanted to hear. “Leo Green, I know it’s you.”

  “Detective Cannon,” he purred. “I’ve waited so long to hear you say my name.”

  Harry would have recognized Green’s strange, nasal voice anywhere. “How did you get my number?” she asked.

  “You’ll never guess.” He laughed, a cruel laugh she knew well. “I see you’ve been busy. How’s your brother doing? I’ve been busy myself.”

  He must have seen the newspaper article. Harry knew from interrogating Green that he liked to have the edge in any situation by asking personal, sensitive questions, so she ignored him.

  “I noticed you’re back to being a detective,” he said. “Weren’t you working with dogs before that?”

  “I’m sure you already know the answer. You’re very good at stalking women.”

  “Yes, but I only have eyes for you at the moment.”

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  About the author

  Best-selling author E.R. Fallon has studied criminology and was mentored by a leading advocate for the family members of homicide victims.