Walks Through Mist

by Kim Murphy

  The Dreaming

  Walks Through Mist

  Kim Murphy

  Published by Coachlight Press

  Copyright © 2011 by Kim Murphy

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

  Published by Coachlight Press January 2011

  Coachlight Press, LLC

  http://www.coachlightpress.com/

  Cover design by Mayapriya Long, Bookwrights Design

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-936785-14-8

  Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2010910414

  * * *

  to Aunt Janice

  and Phoebe

  Also by Kim Murphy

  Whispers from the Grave

  Whispers Through Time

  Promise & Honor

  Honor & Glory

  Glory & Promise

  * * *

  Prologue

  No moonlight alighted my path to aid me. Halting to catch my breath, I focused on the night sounds. Branches, with rustling leaves, creaked in the wind, a screech owl trilled a mournful melody, and midges hummed past my ear. Upon hearing rushing water, I reasoned that I could follow its course and escape those who sought my death.

  Unless the hounds were sent aft me, the advantage was mine. Unlike my pursuers, I had been taught to move swiftly and silently through the forest. Reaching the bank of the stream, I kicked off my leather shoes, for they were a hindrance. I dipped my toes into the water and felt the cool and slippery moss-covered rocks. Near me, a fish splashed. On the path behind me, I heard a familiar voice, hailing me and assuring me that no harm would come to me.

  For a moment, I turned, contemplating whether I should continue on or turn back. Always steadfast in his devotion, Henry would not harm me. But was he alone? My back stung from the whip’s lashes. Like spiders waiting in their webs, those close to him could have spun a trap.

  He called to me once more. I quivered with irresolution, when a voice inside me urged me to continue forward. Though my life with Henry had ne’er been true, I feared what lay ahead.

  “Do not fear it. You will be reunited with what once was.”

  ’Twas his voice. So many years had passed that I had nearly forgotten the sound of it. Unashamedly, tears sprang into my eyes. Disregarding those who followed me, I called out to him in the tongue that had been forbidden to me for so long.

  “Forward,” he urged.

  Heeding his advice, I forded the stream. The water churned around my feet whilst fish kissed my toes. Near the middle, the water swirled about my waist. I slogged through it and reached the far bank, when suddenly I was lost.

  Trees were everywhere. I stumbled my way through the gigantic roots. Ne’er having felt confused and alone in a forest, I cried, “Where, my love? Where am I to go?”

  Raging shouts came from the opposite stream bank. My heart pounded at their nearness. If I did not seek refuge, the mob would be upon me. I could now see their torches, and my breaths quickened. In the breeze, my beloved whispered, and I followed his voice ’til an elegant white hound stood afore me. I now knew what I must do.

  The dog’s body was made for coursing, but he kept a slower pace in order to guide the way. Deeper and deeper into the forest we traveled. I sought shelter in a dark opening within the roots of an immense oak. Instead of blackness surrounding me, a thick mist engulfed me. The clammy dampness upon my skin raised the hairs on my arms. The hound was my salvation, and I latched onto his leather collar.

  On and on I faltered through the fog with the dog tracing a huge circle. I felt the rough, bare wood of a rocking and swaying ship neath my feet. A wave of nausea overcame me, and I clutched my stomach with my free hand. The hound failed to break stride. Onwards.

  From a nearby branch, a crow cawed. Suddenly, I thought of a tiny lad vanishing in a similar mist, ne’er to be found again. Assured that my pursuers would reason that I suffered from the same fate, I continued walking along the arc.

  When my beloved’s voice returned, I signaled the hound to halt. He kept going, and the loving voice faded. With a twinge of remorse, I thought of Henry. He, too, had loved me. A love that I could ne’er return, for my heart had always belonged to another.

  The mist grew thinner, and he whispered in my ear for me to follow the light. Up ahead, I spied what looked like thousands of torches. As I emerged from the fog, the dog vanished. I blinked in disbelief. How could so much light be possible in the night sky? I scanned about me. Lights upon lights, swarming with people. And clattering noise. I pressed my hands to my ears to block the racket. The thoroughfare had a surface the likes of which I had ne’er seen. Where am I? Which lights should I follow?

  I stepped into the road to escape. More lights chased aft me, blinding me. I froze in my path, deafened by a piercing sound and sudden screeching. The earth trembled, and I was flying afore striking the pavement. I closed my eyes to the pain. Soon, my beloved, I will join you.

  * * *

  1

  Lee and Shae

  Near Richmond, Virginia

  Lee Crowley flashed his badge and police identification at the receptionist behind the emergency room desk. “Detective Crowley to see Dr. Miller,” he said to the woman.

  “Right away, detective.” Dark circles beneath her eyes hinted that the night shift had been a long one. She put in a call to announce his arrival.

  Sympathetic to the feeling, Lee stifled a yawn and wandered away from the desk. Coughs and groans from waiting patients filled the room.

  “Detective Crowley. I’m Veronica Metcalfe.” A fiftyish nurse dressed in blue scrubs motioned for him to follow her down the corridor. “Dr. Miller will go over Jane Doe’s injuries with you. The patient is white, in her late twenties to early thirties, and was brought in after being struck by a 2005 Toyota Camry on Route 5 a few miles from the I-295 interchange. She’s about five feet two inches and 105 pounds. Even though she’s petite, she’s muscular.”

  Lee transcribed the details into his notebook. “Muscular, as in she works out?” They turned the corner to another corridor.

  “I’ve never seen anyone like her. No, it’s more like she’s worked every day of her life—heavy, hard work.”

  He made note of her comment.

  She continued, “Her hair is strawberry blonde, and her eyes are blue green. Her ears are pierced, three times each, and she was wearing copper earrings. She’s got scars on her right forearm from what appears to be a former fracture. She has tattoos circling her upper arms and on her breasts and thighs. She has stretch marks, so we know she’s given birth. A tooth is missing from the upper-right side of her mouth. She has incomplete syndactyly of the third and fourth digits of her left hand.”

  Lee stopped writing and waved at the nurse to back up. “English, please.”

  “Syndactyly is webbing between the fingers or toes. All human fetuses start out with webbing, but in some cases the digits fail to separate during development. Jane Doe has fleshy webbing between the knuckles of her middle and ring fingers, as well as the second and third toes on her left foot. Frankly, I was surprised to see it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because in her case, it would have been an easy operation to have fixed as a child.” She continued with her report as Lee made note of her comment. “She had no ID and was wearing unusual clothing.”
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  The officer at the accident scene had also noted the victim’s clothing in his report. “In what way was it unusual?” Lee asked.

  “The garments don’t look modern. I’ll show you what I mean.” They turned into the lab.

  The victim’s clothing had been cut away in the emergency room, but fortunately, the hospital staff had spread the garments out for the blood to dry. Lee examined the clothing without touching it. He was no expert on women’s fashions from other eras, but the simple cloth undergarment would have been white, if it hadn’t been covered in blood. There was also a long gold skirt and metal eyelet holes in the top with laces that had been cut away for the victim’s treatment. “She must work in a colonial tavern or living history program.”

  “No doubt,” the nurse responded, “but when she was brought in, she muttered a foreign language.”

  Lee donned gloves and carefully collected the clothing in a bag. He tagged it, in case it would be needed for evidence at a later date, before tossing the gloves into the trash receptacle. “What was the language?”

  “No one can make sense of it,” came a deep bass voice from behind them. “Detective Crowley, I’m Dr. Jack Miller.” The doctor, a bald man in a white lab coat, shook Lee’s hand. “If you’ll step into my office, I’ll go over Jane Doe’s injuries.”

  They took an elevator to the next floor. Except for a file folder with x-rays, the doctor’s massive oak desk was spotless. A computer with a flat-panel monitor sat on the highly polished surface. Miller hit a key, and numerous images of a skull popped onto the screen. “My patient has an amazing constitution. She has a minor skull fracture.” He pointed to the trauma on the screen. After another click of the keyboard, he switched to an image with a view of a ribcage. “She also has two broken ribs. She may be older than we originally believed because I see the beginning of osteoarthritis in her legs and hands. Other than that, she came away from the accident with minor contusions and lacerations, but...”

  Lee picked up on the doctor’s hesitation. “Go on.”

  “She’s been whipped and possibly beaten—recently.”

  The doctor was finally getting to why he had been called in. “As in assault or consensual sexual bondage?”

  “In my professional judgment, the former. She had healed scars on her back that indicated it wasn’t the first time either.”

  A simple traffic accident with a nameless victim was definitely turning into an assault case. Lee wondered if she might have been abducted as well. “Was she raped?”

  “There was no evidence.”

  “If she’s conscious, I’d like to see her.”

  “I thought you might. She’s conscious, but heavily sedated. I couldn’t tell how much of her apprehension of our proceedings was due to pain or disorientation.” The doctor escorted Lee to the intensive care unit.

  The woman’s short stature left abundant empty space at the end of the bed. An IV tube trailed from her forearm to the saline solution. Her hair had been tucked under a medical cap, but reddish blonde tufts were visible. Lee observed the roots were the same color. She was a natural redhead.

  “Ma’am.”

  Her eyelashes fluttered. At first, the blue-green depths revealed fear and grogginess. As her eyes focused on him, she relaxed.

  He showed his badge. “I’m Detective Crowley, ma’am.”

  “Netab?”

  Her inflection told him that she had asked a question. The language was guttural, and for some reason, he felt he should recognize it. It wasn’t German or any of the other European languages he had heard before. He pointed to himself, then presented himself with an open-handed, non-threatening gesture. “Dectective Crowley.” He pointed to her. “And you are?”

  She lightly grasped his hand. “Netab.”

  The doctor spoke up. “Whatever she’s saying, she’s comfortable with you. She hasn’t exhibited any similar feeling toward the rest of us.”

  The fact that he had instantly gained the woman’s confidence would certainly help his investigation, but he couldn’t bring in an interpreter if no one could figure out what language she was speaking. Start with the basics. “I’ll get a sketch artist and finger printer in here, and we’ll see if we can identify who she is and what’s happened to her. Bring me a map.”

  “A map?” the doctor asked.

  “You heard me. Bring me a map of the world. Let’s start by finding out where she’s from.”

  “Of course, detective.” Dr. Miller relayed the order to one of his assistants.

  Was it his badge that had eased the woman? “We’re going to do all we can to try and find out what happened,” Lee said.

  She tilted her head slightly. Did she understand?

  “I’m Detective Crowley,” he said one more time. “You are?”

  She muttered a string of unintelligible sounds with the words coming faster in a frenzied frustration.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. I don’t understand.”

  She leaned forward and traced a line with her fingertip across his cheekbone. “Netab.”

  Did she think he was Hispanic? Few correctly guessed his Indian heritage upon meeting him. Lee was relieved when the nurse brought an atlas. “Point to where you’re from.”

  With the curiosity of a child, Jane Doe watched with round eyes as he slowly turned the pages of the book, letting her study each map in detail. He flipped a page, and she ran her hands along the paper and flared her nostrils as if taking in the scent.

  “The West Indies?”

  “Tangoa.” She took the book from him and began turning the pages on her own. A quarter of the way through the atlas, she stopped and frowned. She jabbed a finger to the page.

  Lee looked at the map. “England?” With Jane’s red hair and blue eyes, she could be English. She did comprehend what he was saying. He’d check with Immigration Services. Whatever had happened to her had terrified her to the point of losing normal communication.

  * * *

  Relieved when her last patient had closed the door to her office, Shae Howard eased into the leather chair behind her desk and looked over the following day’s schedule. Kay Hood, her bulimia patient, was scheduled for 10:00 a.m. Right after Kay, she had a new client, suffering from depression. After lunch, she had three patients.

  The phone to her direct line rang.

  “Dr. Howard,” she answered.

  “Shae, I was wondering if you could take a look at an assault victim for me.”

  She let out a tired breath. “You could start by saying hello, Lee.”

  “Hey. Now that we have formalities out of the way, Jane Doe was hit by a car, but she was assaulted before the accident. She speaks a foreign language that no one has a clue about, yet she pointed to a map of England. I think she understands us, but whatever happened, she’s so shaken that she’s reverted to what must be her native language. So far, there’s no trace of her via immigration. Her fingerprints aren’t on file, and it’ll be a few days before we get DNA analysis.”

  Same old Lee—right down to business. “In a case like this, hypnosis is a long shot.”

  “I realize that, but I have no leads. The department has approved it, if you’re willing to give it a try.”

  “How was she assaulted?” Shae asked, fearing the worst.

  “Some bastard took a bullwhip to her. And it wasn’t the first time.”

  That definitely wasn’t the answer she had expected. “Then you think she may have been abducted and escaped, rather than it being some sort of domestic dispute?”

  “Yes.”

  In spite of their past, Shae trusted his hunches. He was a good cop. “Where is she?”

  He relayed the details, and she jotted them down on notepaper.

  “That’s all the way across the city,” she said. “With traffic at this time of day, I’ll be there in forty-five minutes. Thirty if I get lucky with the lights. I also need to give Russ a call that I’ll be late.”

  “Thanks.”

  The line went de
ad. Shae put in a quick call to home and got the answering machine. She left a message for her live-in boyfriend, saying she’d be late. After gathering together the files that she would need for the morning, she stuffed them into her briefcase, locked her office, and went down to the parking lot. Luck was with her. She hit mostly green lights and made it to the hospital in forty minutes. Dr. Miller showed her to his office, where she could review Jane Doe’s files. Lee joined them when she was nearly finished reading.

  “For some reason,” Dr. Miller said, “the patient seems comfortable in Detective Crowley’s presence.”

  Lee was over six feet tall and had an athletic-cop build. Women were often drawn to him. While his black hair and brown skin were certainly attractive, a woman needed more than earth-shattering sex in her life. She dealt with patients learning that painful lesson the hard way all too often, as she had. “We may be able to use that to our advantage,” she finally said. “I’m ready to see the patient. Detective Crowley, I’d like for you to accompany me. Since she’s comfortable in your presence, you can introduce us.”

  Lee nodded. He’d never really been much of a talker.

  She hated seeing patients for police investigations. It was a one-time examination, which made a doctor/patient rapport an impossibility. In addition, the session was videotaped on the chance it might be needed in court for evidence.

  Lee opened the door for her.

  With a corner sofa, the room at least gave the appearance of a comfy lounge rather than a sterile exam room. Nurse Metacalfe escorted the patient into the room. Jane Doe was dressed in a hospital gown and wore her light-red hair pulled away from her face. Upon seeing Shae, Jane’s eyes widened as if she were a predator’s prey. What had happened to the poor woman that would make her so afraid?