Blood on Copperhead Trail

by Paula Graves

“The older man?” Doyle asked.

  “Yes.” Janelle’s face crumpled. “He aimed the gun at Missy and sh-shot her. I think he must have just wounded her the first time, because she started to run away.”

  “And he chased after her?”

  Janelle shook her head, her whole body shaking. “Not then. First, he came into the shelter and aimed his gun at me.”

  Doyle heard Laney’s soft intake of breath, but he didn’t let himself be sidetracked by his concern for her. Janelle needed to tell him what she remembered as much for herself as for his case. “Is that when he shot you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered through her tears. “I think I must have turned away, to try to get up and run.” She wiped her eyes with the edge of her bed sheet. “That’s the last thing I remember.”

  “You said before that you girls met someone on the trail earlier. Someone named Ray—”

  “Stop.” Laney’s hand snaked out and grabbed his arm. She turned fierce blue eyes on him. “Enough. Leave her alone.”

  “We need to know everything she can recall,” Doyle said with quiet urgency, understanding her need to protect her sister but not willing to let it stop him from getting the information he needed. Janelle may have been injured and traumatized, but she was going to live.

  He wanted to give Joy Adderly the same chance, if she had any chance at all.

  “I’m tired,” Janelle murmured, closing her eyes. He could feel her starting to withdraw behind the comfort of forgetfulness.

  “Janelle, please, I need just a little more information.”

  She ignored his quiet plea, and Laney slid off the hospital bed, standing firmly between him and her sister. “I think you need to go now.”

  He stared at her, angry and frustrated. “I’m not the enemy.”

  Laney’s expression softened, but only slightly. “I know. I’m just asking you to give her a little time to recover.”

  He nodded toward the door, where Ivy stood guard. Laney frowned, obviously reluctant to follow him, but when he moved, she followed.

  “Please go to Jannie,” she murmured to Ivy as Doyle led her outside the room. “She’s upset.”

  Ivy squeezed Laney’s arm. “Okay.”

  “Come get me if she needs me.”

  Doyle led Laney down the hall to the waiting area, which was empty, since visiting hours wouldn’t be over until nine. He waved toward one corner of the room, where a couple of chairs sat half facing each other. When she sat, he pulled out his chair so that he faced her directly. “I’m sorry for pushing.”

  She seemed surprised by the apology, and just a little suspicious, as well. “I know you’re doing your job.”

  “I am. And what your sister just told me is a huge break in the case, you know. I need to know everything she remembers.”

  She pushed her hair back from her pale face, looking tired and sad. “I know. I just hated watching her relive it.”

  He put his hand over hers. “She’s starting to remember things, though, and that’s good. Not just for me and this case but for her, too.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t see how remembering someone trying to kill you could be a good thing.”

  “She already knows it happened. Remembering it helps to demystify what happened. She can’t make it any bigger in her mind than it was.”

  “She can’t make it any smaller, either.”

  He didn’t know what to say in response. Laney was right. The more her sister remembered, the more she’d have to deal with emotionally.

  But remembering could be the difference between finding Joy Adderly alive or bringing her home in a body bag.

  “I think we should consider hypnosis.”

  Laney looked at him as if he’d just suggested torture. “No.”

  “I know it’s not admissible in court, and I’m not even sure how reliable recovered memories are, but I do think hypnosis could help Janelle work through her fears. There are things she may not be remembering because she’s afraid to, and hypnosis could help her control her fears enough to allow herself to get a clearer picture of what happened.”

  “She had a pretty clear picture of the man who shot her,” Laney countered, rising to her feet and pacing across the room until she reached the wide picture windows that normally looked out on the mist-shrouded mountains to the east. But nightfall had turned the windows into large mirrors, reflecting Laney’s conflicted expression and the concern in his own eyes.

  “I know.” He needed to call it in to his office, he realized, to see if the description rang any bells for his officers. He also needed to see if the department had access to a sketch artist who could come to the hospital and work with Janelle on a composite.

  “You don’t know what it was like before.” Laney’s breath fogged the glass of the window. She ran her finger through the condensation, making a streak. “When she was in the accident, I mean. We’d lost Bradley and the doctors weren’t giving us a lot of hope for Jannie. She was so little.” Laney lifted her hand to her mouth briefly, then dropped it to her side. “So many tubes and bandages. Her face was bruised and swollen—I remember the first time I saw her that way, I told my mother the paramedics had made a mistake. That wasn’t Jannie.”

  He touched her shoulder, let his hand slide lightly, comfortingly down her back. She met his gaze in the window reflection, her lips curving in a faint smile.

  “But it was, of course.”

  “She was ten, right?” He thought that was what she’d told him before.

  “Yeah. Smart as a whip, and full of crazy energy. A pistol ball, my daddy used to call her. God, he loved her so much. She was his comfort when he was dying. His little pistol ball.”

  He wrapped his arms around her, tugging her back against his chest. She rested her temple against his cheek. “How long did it take for her to recover?”

  “She lost two years of forward movement, basically. When she woke up from the coma, she had to learn everything all over again. The doctors weren’t sure she ever would get all her functions back, but they didn’t know Jannie.”

  “She can’t remember anything from the first ten years of her life?”

  “No. She doesn’t really remember Bradley or Dad. Only the stories we told her about them once she was able to understand everything that had happened.”

  He thought about his own parents, about the brother he’d lost, and the idea of not remembering them was so wretched he felt tears sting his eyes. He kissed the top of Laney’s head. “I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe it was easier, not remembering what she’d lost.” There was a wistful tone in Laney’s voice, a reminder that whatever memories Janelle had lost had remained vivid and painful in her older sister’s memories.

  “I’m not sure avoiding the pain is worth losing the memories,” he murmured.

  She turned around to look at him. “Is that your way of saying I’m being stubborn about the hypnosis?”

  “No, I’m just saying I’d hate to lose my memories of my parents and David. Even if I also lost the memory of losing them.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully for a long moment. He didn’t know if he’d convinced her he was right about Janelle, but at least she seemed to be considering what he’d said.

  “I’d like to go down to the gift shop and find something to cheer Jannie up.”

  He nodded. “Okay. I’ll come with you.”

  She pressed her hand against his chest. “No. I need to be alone for a little while. To think about everything you said.”

  He frowned, remembering why he’d come to the hospital in the first place. “I’m not sure I like you wandering around here by yourself.”

  She gave him an odd look. “You’re never really alone in a hospital.”

  “I know, but—”

  “You’re t
hinking about that photograph.”

  “I don’t think it was some coincidence.”

  “Obviously not. But it also doesn’t mean someone’s going to hunt me down in a busy hospital and try to shoot me.”

  He knew she was probably right. And she was right about the hospital being a place where a person was never really alone. Between patients, visitors and staffers wandering around the halls at all hours, privacy was about the last thing a person was able to find in a place like this.

  And there were security guards on the first floor, where the gift shop was located—he’d seen them as he entered earlier that evening.

  “Okay. I’ll go back and make sure Ivy and Janelle are doing okay.”

  “Have you arranged a guard for tonight?” she asked as he walked with her into the hallway.

  “Ivy asked Sutton Calhoun to fill in until I can find a replacement. He’s probably on his way here by now.”

  She nodded with approval. “Sutton’s a good guy.”

  He bent and pressed his lips to hers, the touch undemanding. But he felt a pleasant rush of heat pour through him even so. “Hurry back.”

  He headed down the hall toward Janelle’s room, sparing a look back down the hall over his shoulder as he reached the door. Laney stood near the elevator alcove, her gaze on him. Her lips curved in a brief smile, then she turned and walked into the alcove, disappearing from sight.

  He went into Janelle’s room and found her napping, while Ivy and a tall, dark-haired man conversed, head to head, in quiet tones near the window. They both turned at the sound of the door opening, their hands dropping to the weapons holstered at their waists. They relaxed when they saw who had entered. Ivy caught the tall man’s hand and tugged him with her toward Doyle.

  “Chief, this is my fiancé, Sutton Calhoun. Sutton, this is Doyle Massey.”

  “Nice to finally meet you,” Sutton said with a smile of greeting. “I know a couple of friends of yours—J.D. and Natalie Cooper.”

  “Oh, right,” Ivy said. “I forgot you worked with Natalie down in Terrebonne.”

  “Worked with J.D. once, too.”

  “Where’s Laney?” Ivy asked.

  “She went to the gift shop to get something for Janelle.” He glanced at the hospital bed and lowered his voice. “How is she?”

  “She drifted off soon after you left,” Ivy answered quietly. “Shouldn’t you have gone with Laney? What happened to being her bodyguard?”

  “She needed some time alone,” he answered, hoping he hadn’t made a mistake. “I figured, since there’s security here in the hospital, she’d be okay.”

  Ivy didn’t disagree, but she also looked concerned, which made him second-guess his decision to let Laney go to the gift shop alone.

  Fifteen minutes, he decided. He’d give her that long to get the gift and return to the room. If she wasn’t back in fifteen minutes, he’d go look for her.

  What could happen in fifteen minutes?

  * * *

  LANEY ALMOST TURNED back to her sister’s hospital room when she reached the first floor and found that the normally busy hospital lobby was nearly empty. Even the employee who normally manned the front desk was missing in action. If she hadn’t known better, she might have thought the hospital had been abandoned.

  But she shook off her nerves and walked down the silent corridor until she reached the gift shop. It was mostly empty, too, but a woman with curly gray hair stood behind the counter and greeted her with a smile when she entered, making her feel less vulnerable and alone.

  She needed to get her emotions under control. Janelle needed her to be strong and unflappable. She couldn’t fall apart every time she heard some new detail about her sister’s ordeal. She needed to be the sane one. The one her sister could depend on to be her rock.

  As she searched for something to cheer her sister up, her mind wandered back to the question of who had called Delilah Hammond off her guard assignment. From what Doyle had told her, it almost had to be someone familiar with the Bitterwood P.D.’s procedures. Possibly even someone in the police department itself.

  She’d been assigned to look into corruption in the department before her sister’s injury and Missy Adderly’s murder had distracted her. Maybe it was time she got back to the job assigned to her.

  She had an idea where to start.

  Down the second small aisle of the gift shop she found a plush pony the color of copper pennies. It reminded her of Sugar, Janelle’s favorite horse at the Brandywines’ trail-riding stable. Even though a stuffed toy was far too juvenile a gift for a young woman of twenty, she bought it anyway. At least it was cute and, if nothing else, Janelle could concentrate on feeling miffed at being treated like a baby rather than thinking about the details of her ordeal.

  She paid for the stuffed horse, waved off the cashier’s offer of a bag and headed back to the elevators. The doors nearest to her slid open with a dinging noise, and Doyle stepped out, nearly running into her.

  He put his hand on her arm to steady her, looking down at the stuffed horse she held tucked under one arm with a quirk of his eyebrows. “Nice pony. I didn’t realize your sister was still twelve.”

  She made a face at him. “How is she?”

  “Sleeping. Sutton Calhoun’s up there watching over her with Ivy. And your mother arrived as I was leaving.”

  “You’re going home?” She hadn’t meant the question to sound as needy as it had come out.

  If he noticed the desperation in her voice, he didn’t show it. “I came to look for you. Your mother said you would try to stay here tonight and that I should try to talk you out of it.”

  She looked up at him skeptically. “Do you always do what people tell you to do?”

  “Only if I agree.” He ran his hand slowly down her arm, from shoulder to elbow. “How much sleep have you had since we left the cabin this morning?”

  “I napped in Jannie’s room.”

  “For what, an hour?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Let’s get you home.”

  The temptation to do as he suggested was more powerful than she’d expected. The truth was, she was exhausted, her exertions of the day before conspiring with her lack of sleep during their long, cold night in the cabin to wipe out most of her stamina.

  “Okay, but there’s one thing I want to do first. Two things, actually. At some point, I need to take Sugar here up to Jannie.”

  “But first?”

  “First, I’d like to go talk to hospital security.”

  * * *

  THE HOSPITAL SECURITY office consisted of one small room with six video monitors, two of which covered the lobby and the parking entrance full-time, and the other four rotating between cameras in the elevator alcoves of each of the hospital’s eight floors.

  “We don’t cover the hallways so much, since there are nurses and other personnel on duty at all times,” the head of security, Roy Allen, explained. “We mostly cover the ways in and out so we have a record of who’s coming and going at any given time.”

  A security technician manned the live feeds at all times. The one on duty now continued doing so, while Roy Allen, who had told them he was a retired police sergeant as if he felt the need to provide his bona fides, had pulled that day’s video covering Janelle’s floor and set it to play for them at double speed on a smaller monitor set apart from the live feeds.

  “There.” Doyle pointed to the security monitor as a man in dark green scrubs walked into view of the security camera positioned in one corner of the elevator alcove. He had shaggy brown hair, a thick mustache and horn-rimmed glasses, and he kept his head down as if aware of the camera. “Why does that guy look familiar?”

  “He doesn’t,” Laney said, frowning at the screen. “Does he?”

  Doyle frowned
, wondering why the man had caught his eye. Something about the curve of the head, maybe.

  About ten minutes later in the recording, Delilah Hammond appeared on the surveillance camera and entered the elevator.

  “There goes Delilah,” Laney said. “Have you heard anything from the station about who might have called her?”

  “None of the dispatchers have copped to it. Delilah’s pulling the records for her cell phone to see if we can get a number, but that could take a while.” He paused as the camera image running across the monitor caught the same man with the mustache heading into the elevators a few minutes after Delilah’s departure. He looked the same as before, but there seemed to be something dark sticking out from the pocket of his pants. “Pause the video,” he said.

  Allen hit Pause. “Back it up?”

  Doyle nodded. “To where the man steps into the picture. Can you run it at a slower speed?”

  “Sure.” Allen backed up the video to where Doyle had asked. The man in the scrubs came into view.

  “Pause,” Doyle said.

  Allen pushed a button and the video froze.

  “What’s that in his pocket?” Laney asked, bending closer to the monitor.

  The video picture wasn’t clear enough to tell. But whatever it was bulged in the pocket, suggesting it had some size to it. It was too big and bulky to be a cell phone. Not the right shape to be a pistol.

  “Maybe a camera?” Roy Allen suggested.

  Doyle and Laney exchanged a look. He saw excitement, liberally tinged with worry, shining in her blue eyes. He knew they were both remembering that Polaroid photo they’d found on the mountain. Someone had targeted Laney, in a very personal and specific way.

  Could this be the same man? The man who’d taken the photos on the mountain? The man who’d killed Missy Adderly, tried to kill Janelle and done God only knew what with Joy Adderly?

  “Maybe we should get a screen grab of the best shot we have of the guy,” Laney suggested. “We could show it to the desk nurse, see if anyone saw the guy lurking outside Janelle’s room.”

  “Good idea.” Doyle looked at Roy Allen, who immediately told the technician to get them a screen grab of the best image and print it out. Ten minutes later, they left the security center with a large printout of the man in the green scrubs, his face partially lifted toward the camera, enough to make out shaggy brown hair, a thick brown mustache and glasses with brown plastic rims.