Stolen Memories. Liz Johnson

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СКАЧАТЬ cringed at the noise, her hand balling into a fist. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Just the doctor.” Who had no bedside manner.

      Zach kept that last part to himself.

      The silver-haired man in the white lab coat marched across the tiled floor, the nurse right behind him. The doctor didn’t bother to introduce himself. He just started giving orders instead. “You need to go. You’ve waited around long enough, and now you’re just adding to her stress. She doesn’t need any of that right now.”

      Nodding, Zach pulled his hand away from hers. In a movement faster than he’d seen from her thus far, she scrambled her fingers until they clutched his.

      “Will you come back?”

      He paused just before stepping away, taking in the panic building in Julie’s eye. He didn’t begrudge her the fear. Even he couldn’t be sure exactly how much danger she was in. By the light of day, he’d been able to make out the marks in the grass at the park, where she’d been dragged away from the street and into the shadow of the trees. Someone had wanted her permanently out of the picture.

      Bending over so that she could clearly see his face, he gave her a slow wink. “Count on it.”

      * * *

      Letting the door to the station swing closed behind him, Zach walked to his desk, falling into his chair, which rolled away from his computer under his weight. He walked his feet forward, until he was right where he needed to be—staring at a blank screen and wondering if that’s what Julie felt like every waking minute.

      He grabbed the phone and jabbed in the number he knew by heart.

      “This is Tabby.”

      “It’s Zach.”

      Tabitha let out a deep, throaty laugh. “To what do I owe this pleasure, Detective Jones?”

      When people first met Tabby, they generally had a hard time believing that the sixty-year-old firecracker with a shock of white hair was the Tabitha Guster, Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter for the Star Tribune.

      Zach didn’t have any trouble believing it, though. Tabby had been his mom’s best friend since they were roommates at the University of Minnesota forty years ago. Tabby had become more family than friend, and as the reporter covering the police beat, she and Zach had spent plenty of family dinners talking cases.

      But the last time they’d talked, he hadn’t been able to give her any information about an ongoing investigation, and she’d been none too happy with him for it. Would she be willing to do him a favor now?

      Better to start off easy than dive in headfirst. Every Minnesota boy raised in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes knew to jump feetfirst the first time. This situation was no different. “How’re you doing?”

      “Just fine. And your mom and the family?” She was playing along. Tabby had almost certainly spoken to his mother more recently than he had.

      “We’re all doing very well.”

      “Glad to hear it.” She paused, waiting for him to speak. When he didn’t hop right in, she continued, “I have to interview the police chief in twenty minutes. Want to tell me what this is about? Or should I call you back later?”

      He leaned an elbow on the desk and rested his chin in his hand. “I need your help.”

      “Oh?” Her voice jumped an octave. “Work or pleasure?”

      “Work.”

      She laughed with the kind of giddy joy he’d expect from someone half her age. But the truth was that the police beat still made her heart thump a little harder. And as a detective in need of her help, he was at her mercy. “Whatcha got?”

      “I need to identify a victim, and I was hoping you could help.”

      “Which one?”

      He paused, questioning his decision. Maybe this was a bad idea. It wasn’t too late to keep this out of the papers and off-line. But then how was he going to figure out who she was and why she’d been attacked? He’d been checking the missing-persons database every day, but still hadn’t found anything. If no one noticed Julie was gone, then he had no clear indication of how much danger she might really be in. “The one from Webster Park. She woke up.”

      “And she can’t tell you her own name?” Tabby laughed like it was a funny joke, but stopped at his grunt. “She has amnesia?” Her words ran together, her tongue moving faster than she could enunciate.

      “Uh-huh.”

      Measured breaths were the only sound coming from the other end of the line. Finally she sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

      Zach chewed on the inside of his cheek and scratched at his chin. “Any chance you could run an article and a picture? See if anyone can identify her?”

      “You think this was a mugging?” She sounded hopeful, and he hated to dash that theory, but all the evidence pointed away from that simple of an explanation.

      “Well, her purse was missing and hasn’t been located yet. But she was wearing a gold tennis bracelet and diamond earrings that weren’t touched.”

      “And?” Apparently she could hear the unstated question in the tone of his voice.

      “And she was dragged about fifty yards into the park to conceal her body between trees.”

      A rush of air slipped through Tabby’s lips. “I should guess not, then. And you think it’s safe to run her picture? If we post it on our social media networks, it could be seen by anyone in a matter of minutes. You want her attacker to be aware that she can’t remember her own name?”

      “I don’t know.” He shoved his fingers through his hair, curling his fingers into a fist and pulling on it. Why couldn’t this be an easy case? Nothing about it was black-and-white. Nothing was straightforward. Nothing really made much sense.

      Then again, most of his cases started this way.

      They just didn’t usually start with a live victim.

      Clearing his throat, he glanced at the blank computer screen. He had to do something to help Julie find her memories. Whatever it took.

      “You run her prints?” Tabby asked.

      “Of course. No hits on the regional database, and the feds said there’s a backlog for IAFIS right now. Who knows how long it’ll take? Two weeks. Maybe three. What if we don’t have that long?” The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System was the largest database of its type in the world. It was also managed by the FBI, and Zach had no clue where his case fit into the thousands of others looking for information from the system. Julie’s case certainly wasn’t at the top of their list, even if she was at the top of his.

      “What if the dirtbag is still out there? How are you going to keep him from coming after her?”

      “That’s why I called the best writer in the state.”

      She laughed. “Don’t go blowin’ smoke, young man.”

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