Emma started. A memory flashed in the deep recesses of her thoughts, just out of view, like a moth beating its wings outside a window.
“Easy there, Bishop.” The sheriff placed a hand on the deputy’s gaunt shoulder. “We don’t want anyone overhearing our little chat and starting a panic. We’re only speculating.”
A sense of urgency swirled through Emma’s head like billows of smoke. Chasing down the memories was like navigating through a dense fog.
Deputy Bishop bounced his fist against his knee. “Don’t those guys usually leave a calling card or something? This is a waste of time. I’m following up on the jealous boyfriend angle. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it’s the significant other. Probably he’s been threatening her for years.”
“Then why isn’t there a single report of a domestic altercation under her name in the police records?” Liam challenged.
“Maybe she’s been protecting him. Happens all the time, and you know it.”
Emma’s throat closed. The tick-tick-tick in her head grew louder. There was something just out of reach. She felt it. Helpless frustration curled her hands into fists. Her body was letting her down. Her mind was letting them all down.
The sheriff was staring at her as though she might volunteer an answer, and she shook her head. “I honestly don’t know if I have a boyfriend—jealous or otherwise. None of this sounds familiar.”
“Too bad your phone is waterlogged,” the sheriff said over a tired sigh. “We could at least contact the most-used phone numbers.”
“Assuming she remembers the code,” Bishop added with a smirk.
He didn’t believe she had amnesia. Sure, her story sounded far-fetched—even to her own ears—but the sheriff and Deputy McCourt believed her.
Or maybe they were simply better at hiding their doubts.
“We can’t afford to ignore the possibility of a connection to one of her books,” Liam said, his callused finger tapping against the phone screen. “You specialize in Texas serial killers.”
Pictures flashed in her mind like slides across a screen. Faces. People she didn’t recognize though their features swam before her, taunting her. When she reached for the memories, they slipped further out of reach.
Disgust welled in her chest. Why couldn’t she remember?
“I don’t get the connection.” The sheriff tilted back his head and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. “All those cases have been solved. Doesn’t make any sense. There’s no motive.”
“What about the Killing Fields murders?” Liam asked. “Eighteen additional bodies. That’s a lot of unsolved crimes. Maybe she stumbled onto something and worried someone.”
Her ears buzzed. All those women murdered and abandoned. Their deaths unsolved. What must that be like for their loved ones? For their families?
Hopelessly desperate, she appealed to Liam. “You read the articles. Did I name a suspect that might want to silence me?”
“Yeah, McCourt,” Bishop said, his nasal voice grating on her nerves. “You did your homework, right? What else can you tell us about her?”
Emma shrank from the deputy’s pointed appraisal. He was studying her more than helping her. As though he was cataloging her reactions and searching for inconsistencies.
The sheriff glared at him. “Stand down, Bishop.”
“She named the Lonestar State Killer,” Liam said. “No surprise there. He was never caught. People have suspected everyone from politicians to famous touring musicians. Nothing has ever come of it, though. Most people think he’s dead. There hasn’t been a new victim in over a decade.”
“He hasn’t killed recently that we know of,” the sheriff corrected. “You said it yourself. Serial killers don’t stop until they’re caught. They want the attention. What’s the point of committing a crime if they don’t get the credit? If they don’t get the fame? He’s either dead or he’s moved to another jurisdiction.”
Their voices echoed around her head, and she tuned out their conversation. They were including her and ignoring her at the same time—which was a disquieting feeling.
She had to consider the facts impassively, without judgment.
She had temporal lobe swelling, but the doctor had hinted there was more memory loss than accounted for by the damage. He’d said that the brain had a way of protecting itself from trauma. For some reason her mind had chosen to become a stranger to her.
Had she erased something important? If so—why? Was she protecting herself—or someone else?
Liam gestured with his phone, jolting her back to the present. “What if it’s a relative of a killer or a copycat? Someone connected to one of the subjects? Someone who didn’t like how they were depicted in one of Emma’s books?”
“It’s a solid theory,” the sheriff said. “Contact her publisher. See if she’s gotten any death threats lately. We can’t rule out anything yet.”
Anxiety leached the air from her lungs. The same frustrating questions bobbed to the surface. They were all shooting in the dark. What had she chosen to forget? Why had she chosen to forget? She was trapped in this nightmare with no way of knowing who wanted her dead.
Liam cast her a sharp glance, and she kept her face impassive. He was far too sensitive to her moods.
The sheriff jabbed a stubby finger at Liam’s phone. “What’s she working on now?”
“Doesn’t say.” Liam studied the screen. “Only says the book will be released next year. I can do some digging on that too. Maybe she’s writing about an unsolved case, and research on the new book stirred up a hornet’s nest.”
Emma huffed. That was putting it mildly. She tapped her heel in a rapid tattoo against the floor. People left traces of themselves behind all the time. She was more than a waterlogged phone and a totaled car.
What was more frightening? What lay before her, or what lay behind her?
“I need to see where I live.”
At her sudden declaration, the three men turned abruptly to stare at her.
“I need to look for notes,” she continued, a thread of steel in her words. “A computer. Anything.”
“You will.” The sheriff winked. “We just gotta wait until the doc says it’s okay for you to leave. He’s the boss.”
“No. I’m the boss,” she said through gritted teeth. “This is my life on the line.”
Liam turned the screen toward her. “I understand your frustration. There’s a lot we can learn about you without leaving the hospital. This is your latest release. See if that rings a bell.”
His silvery blue eyes were filled with sympathy, and she focused her attention on the picture. Why was she lashing out? He was only trying to help. The accident had left her emotions raw.
She pressed her fingers against her brow bones and willed the memories to return.
The book cover featured a black-and-white portrait of an overweight, balding man with a thick neck and dead eyes. The title was written in bloodred, melting script: Killer Instincts.
Her head throbbed, and the room dissolved. Her breathing grew shallow.
The three men in the room faded away, leaving Emma a mental vision of a grisly double homicide in vivid detail.
Panic clawed through her. The horrific details scorched her brain, and she rubbed her eyes until she saw stars, willing the image away.
If this was her past, she no longer wanted to remember.
Liam knelt beside her. “What is it? Did you remember something?”
“No. Yes. An image.” Just as quickly as it had appeared, the vision melted away. “It’s gone. It was a crime scene. There were two people who’d been shot. It was Christmas. There was a tree in the corner of the room. Lots of presents.” She was rambling. Capturing the details to give herself a sense of distance. “The dead man was wearing a blue flannel shirt. The woman was...”
The image of the woman w
as too horrible to repeat. Emma’s vision grayed around the edges, and the room seemed to tilt.
“Breathe,” Liam ordered gently, his calm voice centering her. “Think of something else. Replace the images with something good.”
She flashed to him leaning over her, the rain streaming from his dark hair, and an immediate sense of peace enveloped her. Liam had saved her. She was grateful. But to him she was simply another problem to solve. Another case added to the staggering workload that had worry lines flaring from the corners of his eyes.
She physically shook her head, clearing the memory, and thought of the rust-colored dog instead. The Duchess was a good substitute. Almost.
“That’s all I remember,” she said. “At first, I was there, but then I was able to separate myself from the images. It was more like I was looking at a picture.”
In that brief instant, everything had seemed vivid and real, and her emotions had responded in kind. She’d placed herself at the scene, but when she’d looked closer, she’d realized she was on the outside staring in. She obviously had a graphic imagination. An asset for a writer, no doubt.
“You didn’t remember anything more personal?” Liam asked. “A detail from your life?”
“No. Nothing.”
Her stomach lurched. After battling to remember, why hadn’t she summoned a memorable vacation or her first pet? Why not think of a friend or a relative—her brother, at least?
Her mind was like a row of empty picture frames. A cold gathering of backgrounds with no sentiment and no recognizable faces, as though someone had stripped away her past, leaving only blank canvasses.
“Hmm.” The sheriff rubbed the back of his neck. “A couple killed around Christmastime. Ring any bells, McCourt?”
“No.” Liam moved away, and the air around her seemed to chill without his comforting presence. “But it shouldn’t take too long to sort through the serial killers she profiled.”
The images crept back, and she focused on Liam, forcing them away. The deputy’s hair was shaggy and his beard a little too long. There was no one taking care of him. No one to tweak his sideburns and remind him he needed a haircut. No one to keep him from working too hard. He’d kept watch over her until Tim had arrived that first night, and the stack of paperwork he’d retrieved from his SUV had towered on the floor near his chair.
The fatigue, the tiny imperfections in his looks, only added to his appeal, and she wrestled against an instinctive urge to care for him. To smooth the creases from his forehead. A troubled undercurrent flowed beneath his calm demeanor. There was something worrying Deputy McCourt, something that kept him up at night beyond his work schedule.
He caught her eye, and her heart did a little hopscotch. She was drawn to him. Was her response to him real, or was she merely clinging to the only familiar face in her shattered memory?
Liam retrieved a memo pad from his uniform pocket along with a pen. “You were probably recalling a photo from one of the crime scenes you researched. I’ll look into it. Write down everything you remember before any time passes. We’ll see what we can discover.”
Once she accepted the paper and pen, he rested his hand on her shoulder and a calming warmth spread through her limbs. How did he manage to do that? How did he know just the thing she needed when he barely knew her?
When she didn’t even know herself.
The hollow ache in her heart expanded. She was frantic to push this miserable loneliness aside. For one desperate moment she wanted to grasp his hand and press her cheek into his palm. She longed for a connection to someone, and he seemed to appreciate how lost and confused she felt.
Fearful of revealing her feelings, especially with the other two men hovering near, she bent her head and scribbled as many details as she recalled. She was no better than a drowning person clawing for help. Her weakness wasn’t doing any of them any good. She was vulnerable and not hiding her fear very well. Better to keep a tight grip on her feelings until she knew more about herself.
If he needed details, it was the least she could do to help him.
Data scrolled through her head like information across a computer screen, and she swallowed around the lump in her throat. The couple had been celebrating their first Christmas together. When they failed to arrive at a family dinner, the woman’s brother had volunteered to check on them. Haunted by what he’d discovered, years later he’d driven his car into a tree. His death was instant. His blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit. Though not directly, the killer had claimed another victim.
Horror mixed with excitement. “Dr. Javadi was right. Once I remembered the photo, I remembered more details surrounding the event. It’s not much, but it’s a puzzle piece.”
“One of many, I expect,” Liam said with an encouraging smile. “Be patient. If one thing has come back, then more will come back. That’s easy for me to say, I know. But this is encouraging. One memory will lead to another and another and another.”
Her past was taking jagged shape. This was her life. She recognized that. She interviewed murderers and their families. She searched for clues that other people missed. She craved understanding and healing for the victims. Murder had a way of collapsing in on itself like a black hole, sucking everything into its wake. Violent death was a community affair. No one close to the victim remained unscathed.
Everything that had seemed foreign to her moments before was suddenly clear. She gave the murder victims a voice. The dead were not simply names scrolling across the evening news, they were once living, breathing people with rich beautiful lives. She wasn’t ghoulishly reliving the crimes. She wrote about the people who were lost, and the families they left behind. That was her legacy.
She glanced at Liam, wanting to explain, but unsure how. He didn’t appear to judge her for her work, yet she’d judged herself.
The sheriff leaned forward and glanced at her notes. “That’s good stuff. Can you build on that to fill in something from your personal life?”
She reached deeper before she felt it once more—the wall against her memories. A lock she couldn’t open.
“No,” she said, exhaling a pent-up breath. “Nothing.” The moment she gave up on trying to remember, the tick-tick-tick in her head abated. “I’m still trying to wrap my mind around all this.”
“Sometimes we do things for the greater good,” Liam said, his gaze not quite meeting hers. “Things other people don’t understand.”
His expression remained shuttered, piquing her curiosity. What had Liam done for the greater good? She sensed the answer to what kept him up at night was buried in that question.
When he faced her once more, the implacable mask was back in place. “The articles you wrote for the Dallas Morning News were compelling. I must have recognized you from your bio, but it took me a while to put it together. You’re the reason those women haven’t been forgotten.”
Bishop grunted. “Or maybe someone didn’t like her making a living off of other people’s misfortunes.”
“It’s not like that,” she rasped, her own insecurities rushing back. “I write about people.”
“Ease off, Bishop,” Liam growled. “You know better than anyone that some crimes need the press to justify the man-hours. When victims are forgotten, their cases go unsolved. High visibility attracts more resources.”
Emma’s emotions hovered between relief and doubt. Bishop’s words had sliced directly to the heart of her uncertainties. Was she truly keeping the women’s memories alive, or merely capitalizing on tragedy? Would they be unforgotten without her?
Unforgotten.
The word sparked a flare of emotion. It meant something to her—but what?
She made a mental note to search for references in her personal belongings. There was something tenuous attached to that word—something that was just out of reach. She’d start with her computer and see if there was anything
in her notes. Maybe she’d spark another memory to build on.
Sheriff Garner rested his elbows on a tall counter at his back and crossed his ankles. “Let’s go back to what we know for certain. Can you tell us anything about the vehicle that forced you off the road? Make, model, even a number from the license plate?”
“No. Nothing. I want to tell you more.” Searching for the details was causing a pounding headache. “A white truck. That’s all I remember.”
Someone outside this room wanted her dead. Someone wanted her memories erased with her forever.
Liam drifted to her side once more. “Maybe we should give it a rest for today.”
Tears pricked at the edges of her eyes.
“I’m fine,” she said with a false smile. She didn’t need them treating her like a fragile, wilting flower even if she currently felt like one. “Don’t worry about me.”
She’d take some aspirin for her headache. There it was again. Aspirin. She knew about aspirin, but she didn’t know who wanted her dead. The next book she wrote was going to be about the mysterious, frustrating effects of brain injuries.
“Well, shoot.” Sheriff Garner chuckled, draining the tension from the fraught moment. “You’re gonna give good ol’ Redbird a bad name pretty soon. I wanna help, but I’m in kind of a pickle. First off, you can’t hardly spit a watermelon seed around these parts without hitting a white pickup truck. Second off, I got no witnesses. Not many folks were out driving in that weather.”
A knot of anxiety coiled in her stomach. “What are you saying?”
“My boys are good.” Garner flipped his palms skyward. “The best. But we’ve got no security footage from this morning. We’ve got a break room full of fingerprints. Too many. Your guy didn’t have the decency to leave us a calling card to identify himself. We’ll keep investigating, don’t you worry, but anything you can remember will help us.”
“What if I can’t remember?” She plucked at a loose thread securing a button to her navy cardigan. “What then?”
Killer Amnesia Page 5