Her Mind's Eye

by D C Vaughn

  ‘She fired the shots,’ Hannah said, convinced. ‘We know the how. What we don’t know is the why.’

  Kieran said nothing more as they reached the private wards and a nurse greeted them at the entrance.

  ‘Rebecca is able to take visitors,’ the nurse informed them, ‘but she’s still weak. Keep things simple, please.’

  ***

  III

  Rebecca heard the voices outside the ward and her heart soared as she recognised Kieran Russell’s among them. The DS was one of her most trusted confidants and as she saw him walk into her room, she smiled for the first time in days. Kieran was tall with a shaggy mop of light brown hair and carried himself with a sedate lack of ostentation, the casual yet ever–prepared gait of the professional soldier. He didn’t look his forty years, his hair not yet greying and his skin not yet lined, but despite his youthful appearance nobody was under any doubts about his competence after years as a commando.

  Kieran’s smile in return was as quick and infectious as ever, but she sensed the cloud shadows behind his eyes as he approached. Her quickened heart faltered a little as Kieran moved to the side of her bed and took a seat alongside her.

  ‘Good to see you awake again. How are you holding up?’ he asked.

  Normally Kieran would have flipped her a demand for how much longer she’d be sitting on her arse, or whether she hated the job so much that she’d decided to check out of life. But with Sam’s loss, his humour was tempered and respectful.

  ‘I’ll live,’ she replied, then nodded coolly at Hannah.

  Rebecca had never quite warmed to Hannah Marchant, an eager Detective Constable who was prone to being somewhat aloof around Rebecca. She’d assumed it was because Rebecca had been on the MCIT team for a couple of years longer and thus held more experience, which meant that Hannah would forever be the “second in line” for promotions. That, and the fact that Rebecca had teamed so well with DS Russell. Now, she didn’t miss the fact that Hannah was basking somewhat having taken over her role at Kieran’s side.

  ‘Welcome back,’ Hannah said with a smile that somehow managed to be warm and frosty at the same time, a shark moving to bite but thinking again. ‘We have some questions for you.’

  Down to business then, Rebecca thought. If Kieran noticed the enmity between them, he didn’t mention it.

  ‘So, I know that this has been a tough time but we need to go over what you recall about the night of the shooting.’

  ‘I don’t remember much,’ Rebecca replied.

  Kieran and Hannah exchanged a glance as Kieran folded his hands together before him and leaned his elbows on his knees. She noticed that he did not produce a notebook, that he recited to her the details of the case from memory.

  ‘You’ve been in here four days,’ he said, ‘ever since the paramedics brought you here with a suspected gunshot wound to the head.’

  Rebecca’s jaw hung open as she tried to process what the detective had said.

  ‘I was shot too?’

  Hannah’s eyes fixed upon hers like a hawk’s upon a field mouse. ‘You know about Sam?’

  Rebecca swallowed, closed her eyes briefly. ‘One of the nurses told me. He’s gone, isn’t he?’

  It wasn’t a question and Kieran no longer tried to dodge the subject. ‘We haven’t located the body yet but it’s unlikely Sam survived the encounter. More than one gunshot was heard.’

  There was a long and uncomfortable silence in the room. Rebecca leaned back into her cushions and wondered why she did not yet feel the crushing sense of loss that she had expected. Shock, maybe. Trauma. She wasn’t herself right now. Sam’s image flickered in and out of her awareness like a phantom stealing from shadow to shadow, and she forced herself out of her reverie in case her emotions finally caught up with her in front of Hannah and Kieran.

  ‘I got shot,’ she repeated, accepting it now and breaking the silence.

  ‘Right temple,’ Kieran replied as he tapped his own head. ‘You were hit at close range by a fragment of a nine–millimetre parabellum round that skimmed your skull. It caused a fracture that brought you here, and an induced coma to prevent any swelling that would otherwise have killed you. Turns out that the surgeons found no permanent damage and you were brought out of the coma.’

  Rebecca nodded.

  ‘How did it happen? Why was I shot? Why was Sam shot?’

  Kieran took a breath before he replied.

  ‘We don’t know,’ he replied as he watched her carefully. ‘You were found at the scene lying on your back in a pool of blood, and we need to know how you came to be there.’

  ‘Came to be where?’ Rebecca asked. ‘Where did all of this happen?’

  ‘You don’t remember anything at all?’

  Rebecca shook her head.

  ‘I didn’t even remember Sam to start with, although everything is starting to come back. I can remember my apartment near the River Exe.’

  ‘Do you remember anything about the night that Sam was shot?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Rebecca replied. ‘I didn’t know that he was shot at night.’

  ‘And you don’t recall anything about Sam prior to that evening, anything at all?’

  Rebecca shook her head, frowning as she concentrated.

  ‘I can see him in my mind but it’s like he’s a character in a television program. I know him, but I don’t know him properly. How did the night play out?’

  Kieran seemed to hesitate for a moment. Hannah took advantage of the delay, apparently trying to keep Rebecca off balance.

  ‘You and your fiancé left a local bar and were walking alongside the river when, for reasons unknown, we believe that you produced a firearm and shot Samuel Lincoln at close range. You then turned the gun upon yourself.’

  Rebecca stared at Kieran for a long beat.

  ‘We don’t own a gun,’ she said. ‘I’ve never fired one in my life.’

  ‘You seem certain of that, but you cannot remember what happened down at the riverside?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘Apparently, I was shot,’ Rebecca retorted. ‘It can have a funny effect on people, you know?’

  Kieran had been holding a file tucked beneath his arm, and now he opened it.

  ‘Why did you not disclose the fact that you were suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, for which you were receiving treatment?’

  Rebecca’s heart seemed to stop in her chest. She closed her eyes and tried to breathe normally.

  OCD. Ironically, the injury she’d received had made her forget about her condition. Nothing like a gunshot to the head to cure mental illness, it seemed. The thought provoked a spasm of regret, her own callous degredation of the condition probably a symptom of her weakened state.

  ‘OCD isn’t what you think it is,’ she replied. ‘It’s not arranging soup cans on a shelf.’

  ‘I know,’ Kieran replied, with some semblance of sympathy. ‘I read up on it. You can see how it looks though.’

  Rebecca felt some of the old anger come back, a pale flame gusting back into life somewhere amid the darkness within her.

  ‘Sure, I’m a nut–job who pulls a gun on my fiancé and makes a bad situation far worse. Come on Kieran, you know me by now. You think I’d do something as daft as that?’

  ‘We know more about you now than we did then,’ Hannah replied for Kieran. ‘It’s put the events of that night into a different light.’

  Rebecca peered at Hannah, felt her heart begin to thump in her chest and her fists clench beneath the bedsheets.

  ‘My fiancé might be dead and you’re putting me in the frame because of a medical condition?’

  ‘Easy Becca,’ Kieran warned. ‘The medication, you were taking it at the time of the shooting.’

  Rebecca nodded. ‘Prescription’s in the apartment, the number of pills left in the bottle will correspond with the last day that I was there. Simple detective work, no?’

  She shot Hannah a glance with her last but the detective constable continued to make notes, still
basking in Kieran’s glow.

  ‘The medication is effective?’ Kieran asked.

  ‘It did the job,’ Rebecca replied. ‘But it wasn’t anywhere as good as Sam.’

  Kieran raised an eyebrow, Hannah watching expectantly. Rebecca sighed.

  ‘Sam taught me to control the condition so that I could come off the meds,’ she said. ‘He was good at things like that, and of far more use to me than the damned pills.’

  If Kieran was convinced, he gave no indication of it.

  ‘Look,’ Rebecca said, ‘I know that I didn’t shoot my fiancé. Why the hell would I? We were going to get married next year. We were happy together.’

  Kieran’s features fell slightly and Rebecca noticed straight away. ‘What?’

  Hannah said nothing, glanced at the floor. If Kieran had intended to say something he changed his mind, deflecting her question as he gestured to the file in his hand.

  ‘Your clothing from the night is being held as evidence in the case,’ Kieran replied. ‘The right sleeve of your coat is covered with gunshot residue consistent with the firing of a small pistol at close range to the victim. Can you explain that?’

  Rebecca swallowed thickly, and shook her head.

  ‘I don’t understand how that could be,’ she insisted. ‘I don’t own a gun. Sam never owned any weapons either. You can ask his parents.’

  ‘We did,’ Hannah replied, her gaze fixed upon Rebecca. ‘We talked to everybody. The reason we haven’t arrested you for murder right now is that we don’t have a body and we don’t have a weapon. I was wondering whether you could help us with that, and save us all a great deal of time and energy in solving this case?’

  ***

  IV

  ‘I told you I don’t remember anything,’ Rebecca insisted.

  ‘That’s convenient,’ said Hannah. ‘Fortunately, we have several witnesses who have confirmed both hearing two gunshots, seeing you lying on the riverside walk and Samuel’s body hitting the water. What’s crucial here, Rebecca, is that they also confirm that there were no other people present on the towpath when the shooting occurred.’

  Rebecca stared at them in horror.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ she gasped. ‘I’ve just woken up from a coma, with no memory, and you’re both accusing me of murder? How the hell can I defend myself if I can’t remember what happened?’

  Kieran waved her down, apparently concerned for her.

  ‘We’re not here to arrest you Rebecca,’ Hannah promised with a conviction that Rebecca did not entirely trust. ‘Right now, all of the evidence that we have suggests that you were the last person to see Samuel Lincoln alive and that you were the one who fired the pistol that caused your injury…’

  ‘I don’t own a weapon,’ Rebecca hissed back.

  ‘So you’ve said. Either way, you’re our prime suspect and we have absolutely no other players in this. There’s no evidence of Samuel Lincoln ever being in trouble with the police before, or of any criminal activity in his entire life.’

  ‘Either of us,’ Rebecca pointed out.

  Kieran inclined his head in agreement. ‘That’s true, but you know what they say about behind closed doors…’

  Rebecca felt her strength returning a little as she sat up straighter in the bed. ‘So now you’re insinuating that our relationship was to blame for the incident?’

  ‘Was it?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘Stop putting words in my mouth.’

  ‘That’s what you just did,’ Hannah countered. ‘A statement of fact doesn’t mean an accusation, does it now? But you took it as one.’

  Kieran was silent, letting the exchange play out before him. Rebecca knew that Hannah was angling her, trying to see if she was hiding anything. Standard police questioning tactic. But she wondered if there was something that Kieran was holding back, a card up his sleeve that he was reluctant to play.

  ‘I don’t remember anything about what happened that night and I don’t give a damn about your accusations. Sam and I were in love and had been for a long time.’

  Kieran sighed softly. From the file he pulled a single sheet of paper.

  ‘This is a complaint filed against Samuel Lincoln, accusing him of assault,’ Kieran said softly. ‘It was filed by you, a few days before Samuel was shot.’

  Rebecca’s train of thought slammed to a halt. She snatched the piece of paper from Kieran and read through it. The report was not from the police but from a solicitor based in Exeter, who had forwarded the complaint to Neuray Solutions, informing them that if the situation persisted then Rebecca would be forced to go to the police with an official complaint that could lead to his arrest for assault.

  Rebecca’s jaw hung slack as she stared at the paper, the sheet beginning to tremble in her hands.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered.

  ‘Nor do we,’ Hannah replied in a gentle tone that Rebecca could not take as anything other than patronising. ‘All this tells us is that to one degree or another you were both unhappy at the time of the shooting.’

  Rebecca shook her head, confused and agitated.

  ‘But there’s no way that I’d pull out a gun and kill him just to…’

  A bright lance of pain bolted through Rebecca’s skull and she yelped in shock, tucking her chin into her chest as one hand flew to her head. Stars flared in her eyes, whorls and spirals of light, and then she saw a vivid flash of imagery burst like a neutron bomb in the field of her awareness. Something from deep inside Rebecca welled up like a black wave as the realisation and impact of what had happened began to overwhelm her. Sam is dead. He was shot. She might have pulled the trigger. What the hell had happened?

  Tears spilled from her cheeks onto the sheet of paper although she heard nothing, her shoulders shaking and her long brown hair falling in thick locks past her face, trembling with her sobs. She heard voices enter the room and then the detectives standing up as nurses comforted her.

  Rebecca sat for a moment in silence, the nurses asking her if she would like to curtail the interview. Rebecca did not respond, her mind filling swiftly with images that flashed like fireworks amid an immense darkness and then faded away, their ghostly remains populating her mind with memories as the pain in her skull subsided.

  She saw Sam, studying at the dining room table in their apartment. There were flowers in a vase nearby, fresh, something that he had bought for her. She couldn’t recall why. Sam seemed troubled, frowning as he tried to study something to do with work. She walked across to him and convinced him to take a break, to head out for a drink, away from the rigours of his work. She saw a local pub that they often frequented, The Wheatsheaf, the lights glowing in the misty gloom of a damp but humid autumn evening, the air fresh with the scent of recent rain and the River Exe glittering with reflected street light.

  She saw the pub interior, booths filled with couples and friends drinking, saw Sam sitting next to her. She sensed his tension, that something was wrong with him. With them. Maybe the flowers had been a peace offering of some kind? Had they argued? Had they made up? She saw him shaking his head as she asked him what was wrong, brushing it off, avoiding the subject.

  She saw them walk outside, the last of the sunset long gone and the sky filled with stars. There were no people sitting outside the pub because of the damp seats from the rain. She saw them set off down the old tow path alongside the river, saw the lights of the town, and then…

  Then…

  ‘Are you okay to talk? We can tell them to leave if you want.’

  Rebecca blinked and the vision faded abruptly. She turned and looked at the young nurse beside her.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she replied, ‘it’s just a lot to take in.’

  Kieran and Hannah waited near the door until the nurses moved away again, then Kieran moved to stand at the end of Rebecca’s bed.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked her.

  Rebecca could not tell if Kieran was playing the companiable detective seeking answers or the dogged investigator
who would do anything to get his suspect to talk. Maybe he didn’t know himself. By turns friendly and aggressive, his mercurial nature was keeping her off balance and she didn’t know how to convince him that she hadn’t a clue about what had happened.

  ‘I don’t remember anything about a shooting,’ she said as she looked up at him. ‘Which means I could be sitting here guilty of murdering the man I loved and I don’t know a damned thing about it.’

  Kieran raised one eyebrow at that and he seemed to reappraise her once more.

  ‘The perfect murder,’ he said, ‘one that the perpetrator has no idea that they’ve committed. That’s what we’re here to find out, one way or the other, guilty or innocent.’

  Rebecca nodded, sniffed back some of her tears. Kieran was on–side again.

  ‘I remember the pub, the Wheatsheaf, and I know that we were there together. It was evening and it had been raining.’

  Kieran nodded but said nothing, waiting for her to continue. Hannah stayed back near the door, letting her talk.

  ‘Sam was troubled by something, and I was asking him what it was but he wouldn’t say. We left the pub and headed back for home along the tow path. That’s it. There’s nothing after that that I can remember yet.’

  Kieran nodded thoughtfully. ‘Head trauma can result in temporary amnesia, but it still doesn’t explain the gunshot residue on your clothes from the night.’

  Rebecca said nothing, unable to begin to understand how that could have happened. She could see the nurses waiting outside the door and watching closely, and she shot them an anxious look. They both entered the room immediately.

  ‘That’s enough for now,’ one of them said. ‘She needs rest.’

  Hannah closed her notebook, peering at Rebecca with interest as Kieran stood up.

  ‘Get better,’ he said with a genuine smile.

  ‘Get to the bottom of this,’ she replied. ‘Something’s missing and I don’t know what it is.’