Running on Empty

by Michelle Celmer

  “We got a hit on a missing-person report. It’s Jane.”

  Mitch’s heart jumped up into his throat. “Let me see it.”

  Greene handed him the file. “The report was filed in Lincoln Heights. A co-worker reported her missing when she didn’t show up. She said they do ‘sensitive’ work and she was concerned when her friend didn’t get in touch with her.”

  There was a copy of the report, and a computer printout of a driver’s license. Jane’s driver’s license. With Jane’s picture.

  Not Jane. Ellen Phillips.

  “The mystery is solved.”

  “Not exactly,” Greene said. “When I got her name I did some digging. Look at the next page.”

  He quickly scanned the next page. Aw, hell. He was afraid of something like this. “What kind of work did you say they do?”

  “The desk over in Lincoln said the woman wouldn’t go into detail. But she said she was pretty sure this friend of hers was in trouble. Said it wasn’t like her not to check in.”

  No doubt it was something illegal. He’d bet his badge on it.

  Damn. This was not a good sign.

  His phone rang and he snatched it up from the cradle answering gruffly, “What.”

  He listened for several minutes to Petroski shout and curse on the other end, barely comprehending what he was hearing. Oddly enough, his first reaction was to laugh, then when he thought about it for a minute, he just wanted to wring Jane’s—make that Ellen’s or whoever the hell she was—neck. He’d been right, she was up to something, but he’d never expected this. Not even from her.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he told Petroski before he slammed down the phone. What little harness he had left on his anger was swiftly slipping away.

  He stuffed the paper back into the file and grabbed his cuffs from the top drawer of his desk. “I have to go.”

  “Trouble, Detective?”

  “You could say that. I have to go and arrest our friend Ellen.”

  “Arrest her? What for?”

  “She just stole a police car.”

  Chapter 14

  Mitch pulled up in front of his mother’s house, not at all surprised to see Detective Petroski’s car parked in the driveway. Up until that very moment, he wasn’t sure he really believed it. But he knew that if he would find Jane anywhere, it would be here. She didn’t know anyone else.

  What the hell had she been thinking?

  He came to a screeching halt, tore the keys from the ignition and vaulted out of the car, stomping his way to the front door. He tried the handle but it was locked, so he used his key. The door unlocked with no problem, but when he tried to open it, it wouldn’t budge. He pounded with a balled fist. “Lisa, open up!”

  He got no answer, so he stalked around the house to try the back door. Through the sheer curtains in the window of the door, he could see a chair hooked under the knob.

  He shook his head. This was friggin’ unbelievable. They’d barricaded themselves into the house. Did they really think that would keep him out?

  He slammed his fist into the door. “Damn it, Lisa, open this door, or I swear to God I’ll shoot it down!”

  “Go away,” a muffled voice called. “We don’t need you to protect her anymore. She’s staying with us now.”

  “I’m not here to protect her. I’m here to arrest her.” He didn’t get a response. “Open the damned door. Don’t make me call for backup.”

  Lisa’s face appeared in the window over the kitchen sink. “She didn’t steal that car. She was only borrowing it. He gave her the keys.”

  “You know as well as I do that he didn’t give her the keys so she could drive off with his vehicle.”

  “In that case, she’s going to plead insanity. It was a side effect of the head injury. She didn’t know what she was doing.”

  He glared up at her, shading his eyes from the sun with the file. “You see this? This is a file on a certain Jane Doe. Also known as Ellen Phillips.”

  There was a pause then, “So.”

  “Why don’t you sound surprised?”

  He heard muffled voices, then, “You promise to be nice to her?”

  “Nice?”

  “You have to promise not to yell at her or make her feel bad. You’ve done enough already, don’t you think?”

  “Meaning what?”

  Lisa glared down at him. “Meaning, maybe you should have kept your gun in the holster where it belonged.”

  Son of a—

  If Lisa knew, that meant his mother probably knew, too. Great.

  “I promise I’ll be nice,” he said through gritted teeth. After he’d arrested Jane—Ellen—whoever—he was arresting his sister for obstruction and harboring a fugitive. And for pissing him off.

  He saw Lisa’s shadow through the curtain, heard the doorknob rattle as she pulled the chair away. He twisted the knob and shoved the door open. “Jane,” he shouted. “Where are you?”

  Lisa stood next to the door, arms folded over her chest. “That won’t work. You have to be nice to her or she won’t come out.”

  “Ellen Phillips,” he called.

  She appeared in the hallway, his mother close behind her. “You know my name.”

  “Apparently you do, too.”

  She nodded. “It all started coming back a little while ago. It’s still kind of jumbled in my head, but for the most part, I remember everything.”

  “That’s good,” Mitch said, tossing the file on the kitchen table. “Because I want you to tell me who the hell you really are.”

  “I guess I owe you an explanation,” Ellen said. And she didn’t have a clue where to begin. There was so much to say. While she drove to Mitch’s mom’s, memories had begun to flood through her mind. Including a lot of things she’d have been better off forgetting forever. It’s no wonder she couldn’t remember who she was, what with two people in there throwing clues at her.

  Everything was still a little jumbled up there and she was having some trouble keeping her two lives separate in her mind.

  “Go ahead.” Mitch settled into one of the kitchen chairs. “I’m all ears. And if I like what I hear, I may not arrest you.”

  “I only borrowed that car.”

  “I’m not talking about the car. I’m talking about fraud. About the identity you stole, because I have to tell ya, Ellen, you look pretty good for someone who died of leukemia twenty years ago.”

  She bit her lip, cringing at his sharp tone, but he had every right to be angry. Just as he deserved her anger in return. “Don’t get all self-righteous on me, Detective. At least I didn’t knowingly lie to you. And I can explain everything.”

  The cop facade didn’t waver an inch. “Somehow I knew you were going to say that.”

  “But first I need to use the phone. I’ve been trying to call someone and haven’t been able to get ahold of her. It’s imperative I talk to her.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Mitch’s mother placed a protective hand on her shoulder. “Mitch, where are your manners. Of course she can use the phone.”

  “Mother, I don’t think—”

  Every bit of patience drained from her voice. “She’s been missing for three days and there are people out there who are worried about her. Let her make the damned call.”

  He sank back into the chair and mumbled, “Fine. You have five minutes.”

  Lisa handed her the phone and Ellen dialed the number of the shelter again. Please be there, she prayed. There was no way he could have found Anna, too.

  When Ellen had gone to the police department to meet Detective Thompson, then followed him to the store, she’d had the feeling she was being followed. She’d told Anna, her assistant, as much when she’d called her from her car.

  Her car. Where had her car gone? she wondered. And her cell phone. She had to get home, see what he’d done. He would have been looking for information, which meant her house would have been thoroughly tossed. It wouldn’t be the first time, or the last.
/>   “Hello,” Anna answered, her voice guarded. Ellen went weak with relief. Anna had only been with them for a few months and was still nervous most of the time. Always edgy. Some women never got over the fear of being discovered.

  “Anna, it’s me.”

  “Oh, thank God. Oh, Ellen, I was so scared. I thought for sure something horrible happened to you. I know I shouldn’t have called the police but I was so afraid.”

  So that’s how Mitch knew her name. “It’s okay, Anna, you did the right thing. But I need to know about the woman that called Friday. Did she come to the shelter? Is she okay?”

  “When you disappeared she got scared. I haven’t heard from her since Saturday night.”

  Ellen dropped her head in her hand, swore softly. There was no way they would find the woman now.

  “I tried to get her to come in. I even called that Detective she told us about.”

  “You called the station?”

  “No, she gave me his home number. But don’t worry, I did like you showed me and blocked the call. But he didn’t answer. I got his machine, and I was afraid to leave a message.”

  The blocked call they’d gotten Saturday night at Mitch’s house. It had been Anna. If he had only answered the phone—

  Across the room, Mitch cleared his throat loudly.

  “Anna, I have to go. I just wanted to let you know that I’m okay. I’ll call you later and fill you in on everything that happened.”

  They said goodbye and Ellen handed the phone back to Lisa.

  Mitch stood and motioned to the door. “Let’s go.”

  Lisa stepped in front of her. “No way. You promised not to arrest her.”

  “Promises don’t mean much to him,” Ellen said, her voice dripping with venom. Mitch looked appropriately wounded by her statement, but instead of satisfying some sense of vengeance, she felt rotten for hurting him.

  “I’m not arresting her.” He pushed Lisa aside and hooked a hand under Ellen’s arm. “Yet. I’m going to take her outside where we can get a little privacy.”

  “It’s okay, Lisa,” Ellen assured her. “I have a lot to tell him.”

  Mitch turned to his sister. “Do me a favor and call the station, ask for Petroski and tell him I have his car.”

  “Is he mad?” Ellen asked and swore she could see the hint of a smile on Mitch’s face.

  “Yeah, he’s mad. Probably humiliated more than anything.”

  Mitch led her outside, to the picnic table. The afternoon sun warmed her arms and shoulders, chasing away the chill that had gripped her since her memories returned and she realized the predicament she was in.

  She sat on the bench and Mitch sat beside her, a few feet away.

  “So tell me,” he said. And just like that, he’d slipped into cop mode, his voice—his expression—completely devoid of emotion. “And I want the truth.”

  She clasped her hands, rubbing her palms together. “Ellen is obviously not my real name.”

  “No kidding.”

  She tried to ignore the sarcasm, but it still stung. “I stole her name when I went underground. My real name—” She paused. How long had it been since she’d spoken her own name? If she told Mitch—if she told anyone—it was possible her husband would find her. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to take that chance. “I don’t use my real name anymore.”

  “It would be in your best interest to tell me what your real name is.”

  “If I tell you, it could put my life in danger.”

  “The healed fractures? The scars?”

  The words were nearly impossible to force out. “It was…my husband.”

  “You mean ex-husband?”

  She shook her head.

  “You’re married,” he said and cursed under his breath. “Christ, could this get any better.”

  “Only on paper. In my heart I ended our marriage the day I left.”

  “That doesn’t make it any less legal.” Anger leaked into his tone. “It doesn’t change the fact that I’ve been messing around with someone’s wife.”

  “You make it sound cheap. It wasn’t like that and you know it. If I could have gotten a divorce I would have. He would have rather seen me dead. My only option was to escape, to start over.”

  “Tell me,” he said. “What did he do to you? I need to hear it.”

  “He nearly destroyed me.” Her voice wavered. The memory of the terror her husband had put her through was still hard to talk about, to think about. Even when her memory was gone, she’d felt him lurking somewhere in the farthest corner of her mind, taunting her. “He…he would beat me, and he would toy with me. He’d say things like, ‘do you know how easy it would be to kill you. All I have to do is put a pillow over your face while you’re sleeping,’ or ‘I could snap your neck like a twig, toss you down the stairs and no one would ever know.’”

  “What about your family? Why didn’t they help you?”

  “He had everyone fooled. My parents adored him. After a particularly vicious beating—I think for something as trivial as leaving a microscopic wrinkle in one of his work shirts—I finally mustered the courage to tell them the truth. They accused me of being spoiled and ungrateful.”

  Mitch swore again.

  “Their assumption wasn’t completely without merit. The truth is, I was more than a little wild as a teenager. I had no direction. I didn’t do well in school. I rebelled against everything and everyone that I could. My attitude got me fired from every job I ever worked.”

  Mitch shook his head and mumbled, “No wonder you and Lisa get along so well.”

  “My parents thought Mark was a godsend. They were thrilled when I got married. It seemed I had found some sort of purpose, something I was good at—becoming the perfect little housewife.”

  “All the broken bones… There must have been bruises. Didn’t they notice?”

  “He was careful to not hit me where my clothing wouldn’t cover the evidence. The times things were broken, or I had a visible bruise, he’d write it off as me being a klutz. I tripped on the stairs, or slipped and hit my head while I was washing the kitchen floor. My parents were more than happy to play along if it meant keeping balance in their perfect world. My mom would laugh it off and say things like, ‘Oh, she’s always been accident prone.’”

  “Were you?”

  “Until I married him, I’d never broken a bone. I’d never even had stitches. Convincing herself that it was my fault, that I was the one with the problem, was her way of shutting out reality.”

  “But you left him. You got away.”

  Talking about it, remembering each horrible detail brought back every bit of pain, every ounce of resentment. But none of it came close to what she’d felt those last few days—the agony that had finally given her the strength to run away.

  “I had to leave him,” she said, feeling as hollow and cold inside as she had that day. “He stole my baby from me.”

  Mitch curled his hands into tight fists, wondering just how much worse this could get. If her husband beat the kid, too, if he’d taken the kid away from Jane—Ellen—Mitch would have to find the guy and do some serious damage. And he would find him. “You have a child?”

  “Could have had. Should have had, but he took that from me, too.” The pain in her eyes was as stark and fresh as if it had happened yesterday. “I was under the delusion that if I could be perfect, if I could wear the right clothes, keep the house clean enough, say all the right things, that someday he would be satisfied. I thought that day had come when I found out I was pregnant.”

  A soft breeze lifted the hair back from her face. She was so beautiful, yet filled with so much sadness. What should have been a happy memory only seemed to bring her sorrow. And he ached with her. He felt helpless to make it all better. There was no way to fix this.

  And damn it, he wanted to fix it.

  She took a deep breath and continued. “We’d been trying to get pregnant for almost two years with no luck. When that test came up positive, I w
as so excited. I was sure he would change. I mean, what kind of man would hit the mother of his child.”

  “He didn’t change?” Mitch asked and she shook her head.

  “Not only did he not change, the beatings became more severe. He would actually threaten to punch me in the stomach, then go on a rampage if I cried. He was really good at making me cry. Then I got sick. Really sick, and that wasn’t allowed in our house. I’ve kept functioning through the worst cases of flu. I’ve cooked dinner and washed laundry with a temperature of one-hundred-and-four degrees. This was like nothing I’d ever had before. I remember hanging over the toilet vomiting until my whole body ached from dry heaves and fever. All the while he stood behind me, screaming at me to stop. Like I had some sort of control over what was happening to me. He threatened to kill my baby, to kill my parents. He went berserk. But I was so sick, I just wanted to die. I wanted it to finally be over with. I wanted him to kill me.”

  Mitch stared at his hands, taking it all in, slowly shaking his head. He couldn’t let himself picture her that way. Not his Jane, she was too strong for that. She was too good a person, with too much spirit. She deserved to have everything her heart desired. She deserved to be happy. “But he didn’t kill you.”

  “Almost. He kicked me hard in the stomach. The last thing I remember is an explosion of pain in my side, then everything went black.”

  “Your appendix,” Mitch said. “The doctor said you had an appendectomy scar.”

  She nodded. “It burst. I woke up in the hospital the next day. They saved me, but I lost the baby.”

  “In your sleep, you said ‘he took my baby.’ That’s what you meant.” It explained the strange nightmares. The bastard had taken her baby, and just like in her dream, no one had helped her. Someone should have seen it. Someone should have done something.

  “Everything changed after that,” she said. “I went numb inside. I finally realized that our marriage had never been about love. He thrived off control and manipulation. I would never be able to make him happy. He was his happiest, his most satisfied, when he was terrorizing me.

  “Then I knew, it was kill or be killed. And since I could never kill another human being, even one as vile as him, I left. The night before I was supposed to be released from the hospital, I waited until he went home, packed the few things I had with me, walked away from the hospital, and never looked back. That was almost three years ago.”