by B. J Daniels
His heart raced as last night came back in a wave of nausea. Hands shaking, he threw the pillow across the room and fell back on the bed to stare up at the water-stained ceiling.
It all came back like a swift kick to his gut. His cheating wife. The wild drive to Pilot’s Cove. The rain and darkness and falling-down-drunk pity party he’d thrown for himself.
He’d awakened a motel clerk demanding a room sometime after four in the morning and been forced to show his badge to keep the clerk from calling the cops on him for disturbing the peace. Kind of like the run-in he’d had at the Past Time bar and liquor store where he’d gotten the bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
The memory made him as sick of the smell of fear and alcohol permeating the motel room.
Nash had heard about men hitting bottom. He’d seen his share that were certainly on their way if not already there. He’d just never thought he’d be one of them as he reached for what was left of the Jack Daniel’s and plotted how to kill his wife and her lover.
OFFICER WALKER OPENED the door to the doctors’ lounge to find Doc Brubaker nuking a frozen beef burrito. On the way in, he’d passed Sheila leaving. She’d gone off duty, leaving the elderly Connie Danvers at the nurses’ station monitoring the small hospital’s only patient.
“I thought doctors ate better than that,” Walker said as he helped himself to a cup of coffee.
Doc shrugged. “She told you?”
He nodded. “She swears she was confused when she woke up earlier and thought her son was in the car with her, but that he wasn’t.”
“You don’t believe her?”
Walker shrugged. “Who the hell knows? I’m not even sure she knows.”
“Which wouldn’t be unusual given her head trauma.”
“Which is why I haven’t called off the search.” He pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “I called the Seattle Police. They’re canvassing her neighborhood to see if they can get some information. But it’s one of those neighborhoods where the houses are a quarter mile apart and the neighbors don’t know each other. I’m also trying to find out if maybe there was a custody problem with the kid. So far nothing. I’m afraid her son is out there somewhere in that lake and she knows it and just doesn’t want to face it.”
“Understandable. That’s a hell of a thing to have to face.”
“Especially if she panicked and left him down there to drown.”
The doctor grimaced. “Maybe she couldn’t get him out of his car seat. Or maybe he’s with family or friends or even his father, alive and well, and nowhere near Shadow Lake.” He sighed. “Let’s hope that’s the case.”
Walker glanced out the window toward the cliffs, unable to shake the bad feeling he had. “What I’d like to know is what the hell she was doing on that road at that time of the night. The divers found the car, but the water down there is so murky they couldn’t see shit. Even if the kid’s car seat is in the back, it doesn’t prove he was with her—or that he was even strapped in.”
“Still no luck reaching the husband?”
“Ex-husband. She says they recently divorced.” Walker took a sip of the horrible coffee. If anything the coffee was worse than the cup he’d had earlier, and the smell of the burrito as the microwave dinged was enough to make him sick to his stomach.
“She’s still wearing the ring though,” he said. “There’s something there that’s not right. Did she say how she got that awful scar?”
“I haven’t asked. But I think whatever pain the woman is in isn’t necessarily visible,” Doc said.
“Yeah? Well, we’re all in pain, aren’t we.” He finished what he could of the coffee, needing something to keep him going. As he rose to rinse out his coffee cup, he said, “The towing crew should be getting to the site any time now. See what you can get out of Anna Collins, Drake, whatever. But I gotta tell ya, she’s lying about something.” His cell phone rang. He apologized and took the call.
DOC BRUBAKER WATCHED WALKER pull out his notebook to jot something down, worried. He felt bleary-eyed. His lack of sleep was starting to hamper his ability to think clearly. Only his concern for his patient was keeping him here.
An added concern was Walker. He’d delivered Walker, had watched him grow up in Shadow Lake, seen him change into the cynical, angry man he’d become after his wife left him and his best friend died.
It saddened Brubaker, even though he knew that life shaped a person. Walker had been through a lot, but nothing more than other people faced every day. Brubaker worried that Walker was taking this case too personally, that he’d seen similarities between his ex-wife and this woman and that ultimately, it would cloud his judgment.
Doc finally got up to retrieve his burrito from the microwave, hoping it would be cool enough to eat. He wasn’t hungry, but he knew if he didn’t keep something in his stomach, he’d regret it.
Walker snapped his phone shut. “The divers are going back down to hook up the cable from Mac’s tow truck. I need to get up there.”
“Let me know what you find. As soon as I eat, I’ll go down and see our patient.”
Walker nodded, frowning. “I’ll be at the accident site if you need me.”
Doc ate part of the burrito, forcing what he could down before tossing the rest in the trash. When he pushed open the door to Anna’s room, he found her awake and staring up at the ceiling, her eyes red and swollen from crying. She didn’t seem to hear him come in. He studied her for a moment before approaching her bed.
“How are you feeling?”
She said nothing when she looked at him, her eyes hollow as he drew up a chair.
“Do you remember your car going off the road and into the lake?” For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t answer. There was a frightening dullness to her eyes.
“It was raining,” she said in a distant tone.
He watched the pupils of her eyes and saw that she was starting to recall the accident.
“I lost control of the car.” He could see the fear, hear it in her voice. “Water was coming over the hood, filling the car…” She shuddered. “That’s all I remember.”
He nodded but wondered if she hadn’t remembered more than she was saying, from the way her eyes filled with tears.
“That must have been terrifying.” As he put his stethoscope in his ears and moved closer to check her heart and lungs, she brushed back her bangs to run her finger along the old scar on her forehead.
When he was finished, he stepped back and she pulled her hand away from the scar almost guiltily.
“That’s a lonely stretch of highway to be traveling, especially that late at night alone,” he said. “I doubt there was much traffic with it being off-season and raining. Were you on your way to Shadow Lake or leaving town?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at him, the admission clearly painful. “I’ve tried to remember, but…”
“Don’t worry about. You’ll remember when the time comes.” He reached over to brush back her bangs. “How did you get the scar?”
Instantly, she looked self-conscious. “I’ve been told it was from a car accident eight months ago.”
He weighed that information. This wasn’t the first time she’d experienced memory loss then. “Were you unconscious for long from the accident?”
“I was in a coma for six months.”
He tried not to let his surprise show. Six months was a long time, but probably not for a head injury of that magnitude. He asked, although he already suspected the answer, “And you’ve never regained your memory of that accident?”
“No.” Her tears boiled over. He noticed she had hazel eyes. “I only know what I’ve been told about it.”
He could see the pain of whatever burden she bore in her face and reached for her hand and squeezed it.
She turned her face toward the window but held tightly to his hand, as if anchoring herself for a moment.
He followed her gaze to the window. It was still raining; the dense fog that had enveloped the lake and sh
ore earlier had lifted. Walker would be up on the road with the tow truck getting her car out of the lake. What if the boy was inside the car?
“Do you want me to close the blinds?” Brubaker asked.
She shook her head as she turned back to him and let go of his hand to touch the bandage on her temple. “Is this why I can’t remember now?”
“Probably. Because of your earlier head injury, it’s possible to have some memory loss even if the second injury wasn’t nearly as severe. I would suspect the memory loss this time will only be temporary.”
“I will remember everything then?” she asked, and his heart fell at the sheer terror he heard in her voice.
IT SURPRISED HER WHEN the doctor didn’t leave. She was used to people keeping their distance. Doctors at the hospital, after she’d come out of her coma, had seemed to have little time for her.
Even complete strangers gave her a wide berth, as if they could smell the misery on her. Just as she could smell their fear that if they got too close they might catch it.
She wiped at her tears, surprised that she still had tears to cry. She felt raw inside, but then she had since the moment she’d awakened from her coma two months ago. The memory was like a knife piercing her already bleeding heart.
What was new was the terror whenever she thought of last night. Hadn’t the worst that could happen to her already happened? And yet she still felt as if something horrible was going to occur.
“You’re fighting to keep your eyes open. Try to get some rest,” the doctor said quietly. “You’ve had quite the ordeal.”
He had no idea.
“You’ve never had memory loss, have you?” She hadn’t meant for the words to come out so sharply, and she instantly regretted them. “I’m sorry. It’s just…difficult to have huge chunks of missing time. Black holes in which you have no idea what happened to you. What you did. What you could or should have done differently.” No, she thought, you just wake up to the consequences. And to people demanding explanations when you had none.
“No, I haven’t,” he said quietly. But she could tell he thought there were worse things than not being able to remember.
“When can I leave the hospital?”
“I want to keep you at least overnight for observation,” the doctor said quickly. “You need to get your strength back.”
She closed her eyes, suddenly just wanting to be left alone. She would have prayed for sleep but she knew her prayers were no longer answered. Her weakened body and mind were exhausted. But lately sleep evaded her or was fraught with pieces of memory that churned in her thoughts giving her no peace or answers.
She couldn’t even remember what had happened last night. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered.
So why couldn’t she hold back the nagging thought that she had to remember? That there was something she desperately needed to recall?
How could she not be worried? She couldn’t imagine why she’d been on that road last night. She’d never even heard of Shadow Lake. Why would she come up here at that hour of the night in a thunderstorm?
What she did remember only made her anxious. The bitter, numbing cold of the lake water, the bite of the seat belt into her breasts, the horrible metallic taste of her own fear. Air. Her lungs had been bursting with a need for air when—
Her eyes flew open. Heart pounding, her mind veered away from what she told herself couldn’t be a memory.
“Are you sure there isn’t someone I can call for you?” Dr. Brubaker asked in concern, surprising her that he was still in the room.
“Yes.” Her voice broke. “I’m sure.”
He glanced toward the window again where a sliver of the lake could be seen through the rain and pines.
“Just ring the call button if you need anything.” He seemed hesitant to leave her alone, but finally started toward the door, and, just as quickly, she didn’t want to be left alone.
“Where did my car go into the lake?” she asked.
He stopped and came back to point to a spot through the trees in the distance. “See those cliffs up there on the mountain? You went off right before the road drops down into town.”
Anna gasped. How had she survived? “How did I get to the hospital?”
“I can only assume that when you surfaced, you swam toward the shore, which would have put you out just down the hill from the hospital,” he said. “It’s the first building on this side of town. The nurse found you barely inside the door. Given the temperature of the air and water, you were lucky the hospital was so close.”
She felt a chill and pulled the blanket up to her shoulders.
“You’re safe now. That’s all that matters.”
Why didn’t she believe that?
“Rest. I promise you it’s the best thing you can do to regain your strength—and your memory.”
Anna glanced out at the lake. How had she survived last night? Why, she wondered, as hot tears scalded her cheeks.
The six months in the coma were completely lost to her. The two months since she’d awakened had been a living hell. The panic attacks had started the minute she’d gone home from the hospital. Without warning she wouldn’t be able to catch her breath. She would start shaking, her heart pounding so hard she was sure she was having a heart attack. Hoping she would.
Like now when she looked at the lake. Her pulse raced, her mouth went cotton-ball dry. There was something she desperately needed to remember.
DEPUTY WALKER MOVED TO THE edge of the road to watch as the wrecker crew snaked the steel cable down the steep mountainside to the lake.
He’d already been warned that the crew would have to inch the car up the mountainside since they didn’t have enough single cable to reach the car and would have to use an extension. The town wrecker was old, the winch outdated.
When he’d reached the site, he’d been informed divers had gone back down to run a strap through the interior of the car. The car had come to rest upside down in about thirty feet of water.
“No sign of any other passenger?” he asked the head of the dive squad on the shore via the tow truck’s radio.
“Not in the car.”
“Was there a child’s car seat in the back?” Walker asked.
“Negative.”
“You’re sure?”
“Affirmative. There’s a suitcase that had been in the backseat but is now resting on the headliner. That’s all.”
Walker rubbed his jaw. Why wasn’t the suitcase in the trunk? “What about the trunk?”
“Don’t know. It’s resting in the mud.”
“Thanks.” He handed the radio back to the tow-truck operator.
Where had this woman been headed? he wondered as he waited. He told himself the answer might be in the car.
Walker had the town’s two other officers handling traffic. Not that there was much this time of the year. But word had spread and since this was probably the biggest news all spring, the locals had come up to get in the way. Shadow Lake residents, especially those who’d just gone through a long boring winter, weren’t about to pass up free entertainment.
As Walker looked down the path the Cadillac had taken, he couldn’t help wondering what had happened last night up here on this mountain. Anna was recently divorced. When he’d talked to her she’d been more than a little despondent. Had she purposely driven off here? Panicked once the car hit the water and changed her mind?
Or had she picked this spot, knowing that the hospital was close by, as some ill-conceived plot to get her ex’s attention. That’s something Walker’s ex would have done. If she’d wanted him back, that is.
He hated the bitter taste in his mouth. But he’d noticed some things about Anna Drake Collins that were just like his ex. Anna clearly came from money, lived in Seattle in a posh neighborhood, had that air of privilege about her and was model attractive—just like his ex.
What worried Walker was how far a woman like that would go. And if she really wanted to get back at her ex, Walker feared
the kid had been in that car.
“We’re ready to bring her up,” Mac called from the tow truck. “Did you hear me?”
Walker looked up, startled to find the wrecker operator standing in front of him frowning.
“We’re ready.”
“So bring her up.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t stand there. If that cable should—”
“Just pull her up,” Walker snapped, anxious to see what was inside that car.
Below him, the emerald lake lay in the tree-lined basin, the surface dimpled by the drizzling rain. There was no warmth, only wet and cold as the motor on the tow truck revved. He stood next to the wrecker, wanting a clear view when the car broke the surface.
He’d found a business number for Marc Collins and left a message to call the Shadow Lake Police Department.
That the man’s ex-wife had been in an automobile accident but was fine.
Walker hoped the boy was with his father, but from the way the mother was acting, he had a bad feeling that wasn’t the case, and his cop instincts were seldom wrong.
His cell phone rang. He stepped away from the whine of the wrecker to take the call.
“Walker?”
He almost didn’t recognize the voice. “Chief?”
“Just wanted to let you know I won’t be back for a few days.”
“Is everything all right in Pilot’s Cove?”
“Yeah, I just need to take care of some things over here.”
Before Walker could tell him what was going on in Shadow Lake, the police chief hung up.
Walker snapped his cell phone shut, telling himself he had to be wrong. The chief had sounded drunk.
As Walker started back toward the tow truck, his phone rang again. This time it was the dispatcher. She had Marc Collins on the line.
“Put him through,” Walker said.
“What’s this about my wife being in another accident?” the man demanded the moment Walker answered.
“Don’t you mean ex-wife?” Walker asked, instantly irritated with the man’s tone.