The Drowned Woman: An absolutely unputdownable mystery and suspense thriller (Jericho and Wright Thrillers Book 2)

by CJ Lyons

“Do you need me to check on Pops?”

  “No, Janine’s there and Ahearn sent a patrol unit to watch over them. But thanks.” He headed into the trauma bay. “Good luck with McKinley. I’ll see you soon.”

  Leah watched him huddle with Maggie, filling her in on the details behind Cliff’s death. She couldn’t explain why, but as she moved to rejoin Risa and the others, she felt a sense of unease, the shiver of someone walking over her grave.

  She shook it off. Losing a patient was never easy. But losing someone to an arrogant creep of a serial killer who had viciously targeted an innocent man? That brought a whole new sense of frustration and fury. Leah steeled herself. Chaos might have the upper hand right now, but she’d be damned if she was going to let him win.

  Thirty-Five

  Leah opened the door to the exam room to find Risa huddled in Jack’s arms, sobbing. They sat on the exam table, hips and thighs touching, Jack’s fingers threaded in Risa’s hair. Leah cleared her throat. “I can come back in a few minutes—”

  Risa jerked upright, wiping her eyes with her thumbs. “No, no. I’m not sure why it all just hit me, usually I can hold it together better.”

  “You don’t need to hold it together,” Jack murmured to her. “It’s all right to let your feelings out. This isn’t like when you were on assignment and had to bottle everything inside. You’re with me, you’re safe with me.”

  “I know. It’s just it feels somehow selfish—to even be alive to be upset, when poor Cliff is dead for no other reason than the fact that Chaos chose me to play his sick games with.”

  “That’s not selfish,” Leah said, sinking into the chair nearest the desk. “That’s human. It’s also okay to feel relief that you are still alive to feel anything.”

  Risa met her eyes and nodded.

  “Live to fight another day, right?” Jack gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Let’s get this over with so we can get you out of here.” He glanced at Leah. “So, you’ve reviewed her records, seen her symptoms; what are you suggesting, Doctor?”

  Leah was glad of his use of her title—it put them all back on neutral, professional territory rather than something more personal. “I also had a colleague review your chart, Risa. She plotted the symptoms against a timeline—”

  “The other doctors did that,” Jack put in. “Said there was no pattern, that was part of the reason why—”

  “Why they think I’m faking,” Risa finished.

  “Well, we found a pattern in the lack of a pattern. When you look at each individual attack, they suggest different causes. And if we suspect someone else is behind your symptoms then they might have been using different toxins at different times.”

  “Someone,” Jack scoffed. “Say his name, Doctor Wright. We heard the cops talking. It was Dom. It makes sense. She always got worse after he was around. And remember, Risa, he brought you those teas? Said they were from a Chinese herbal specialist—there could be anything in them. We should get them all analyzed. I can take them to my lab at Keystone.” He jumped down from the table. “What else do you want me to test, doc? I should’ve thought of this sooner—”

  “I think it would be best if we used the hospital laboratory services. Just in case we need to document a chain of custody and the like for when there’s a trial.”

  Risa glanced up at that. “First they need to catch him.”

  “How long will all this take?” Jack asked. “To get results?”

  “Some of it will be back in a few hours—the routine tox screen for drugs of abuse and the like. Again, I’m not expecting to find anything there, it’s more for documentation. The other assays will take several weeks.”

  “I could do it faster in my lab at Keystone,” he muttered.

  “Jack, let her do her job.”

  “First I’ll examine you and then we’ll get samples of your blood, urine, and hair.”

  “Hair?” Risa asked. “What’s that for?”

  “Heavy metals accumulate in the hair and can last there for months after exposure,” Leah explained. She stood and pulled a gown from the cupboard and handed it to Risa. “Do you want Jack to stay?”

  “No,” he said, obviously uncomfortable. “I’m going to go pack us up—and get you a new phone since the cops took yours. Call me when you’re done and I’ll pick you up, okay?” He kissed the top of her head. “It’s almost over. You know how we’re always talking about getting out of this dreary rain and gray and find a deserted beach in Fiji or Togo or someplace warm and sunny? Let’s do that. Just the two of us, where Dom will never find us.”

  She rubbed his arm and nodded, her gaze fixed on the gown clutched in her other hand. “Thanks.”

  Jack hugged her again and left.

  Leah started for the door to give Risa time to change into the gown, but Risa called her back. “Wait. Can we talk? I need to tell you the truth. I can’t keep hiding it—not with people dying. I couldn’t say anything in front of Jack. He’d be so disappointed.”

  Leah sat back down and waited. After several moments of silence, she asked, “Disappointed in what, Risa?”

  “Disappointed in me. It was right when we started dating. Dom and editors kept pressuring me to head back out, back into war zones. Lord knew there were enough to choose from. They kept at me, blaming Jack, saying I’d gone soft, wanted to settle down. And I did—I do.”

  “But?”

  “But Jack wasn’t the real reason why I quit—not the only reason. My heart was empty… no, that’s not right, it was like it was too full, but with darkness. And that darkness was eating away at me. I wasn’t sleeping; every time I closed my eyes all I saw were the dead babies and children and mothers and fathers who’d tried to save them but who couldn’t even save themselves…”

  “You were burnt out. Maybe even suffering from PTSD.”

  Risa shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe. Probably. But I couldn’t keep turning down assignments, not without looking weak. And if a woman in my field shows any weakness they’ll never get the choice assignments. I had a reputation to protect. So…” She blew her breath out, twisting the gown in her hands as if wringing someone’s throat. “I told them I was sick.”

  “Is that why there was ipecac in your closet?” Leah asked. “Have you been creating your own symptoms?”

  “Ipecac?”

  “Jack told me. He found it hidden in an old pair of boots.”

  Risa shook her head. “I never used ipecac. I don’t even own any. I lied about my symptoms, to Jack and Dom, to my doctor, but I never took anything. That’s why the first doctor couldn’t find anything wrong. But then, I really did become ill, with real symptoms. After that I wasn’t lying. But I guess the doctors were right—it must have been my mind, making me sick, because I wanted to be sick. Don’t you see?” She was close to tears. “It’s all my fault. If I’d kept working, Chaos would have never targeted me, none of this would have happened.”

  Leah slid up onto the examination table beside Risa. “It’s not your fault, Risa. Your doctors couldn’t find a diagnosis, that’s true. But I think I have an idea why—and it wasn’t all in your mind.”

  Risa sniffed and looked up. “It wasn’t?”

  “No. Your lab results were abnormal. But not always in the same way—which is why your doctors were so frustrated. Nothing fits with any one diagnosis. However, if you look at the pattern, it could fit with several different toxins.”

  “Toxins? You mean Jack was right? I was poisoned?”

  “I think so.” Leah paused, waited for that to sink in. Risa seemed overwhelmed, but there were still so many questions that Leah needed answers to. “You’re certain the ipecac isn’t yours?”

  “No. Someone must have put it there. But Jack’s the only person who’d go into my bedroom.” She raised her head to face Leah, eyes wide. “Unless Dom did during one of his visits. But why? How does that fit with him being a killer and wanting me to write his story?”

  “I’ve no idea.” Risa was right; it didn’t make sense t
o Leah either. “Maybe the ipecac was Plan B? To discredit you if you ever got too close to the truth about him?”

  “I guess.” She frowned. “I guess I’m not as smart as he thought I was, because I can’t put any of this together into a coherent picture.”

  There was another discrepancy Leah hoped to clear up: the timing of the nicotine administration—if indeed Risa’s symptoms this morning were from nicotine. “Jack said you got sick last night after Dom gave you your tea?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “You don’t remember it that way?”

  Risa bit her lower lip. “Again, please don’t tell Jack. I don’t want him to worry. But sometimes, I wake up in the morning and I can’t remember the night before—huge swaths of time, just gone.”

  “How often does it happen?”

  “A few times a month. I just lose time.”

  It could be PTSD, but it could also be a side effect of a toxin. Leah was glad she’d asked the lab to run the full tox panel. “What do you remember from last night?”

  “I remember you leaving. I remember Dom there, making me laugh with some crazy story about another one of his clients. I remember Jack cooking. After that, it’s all a blur.”

  “You don’t remember eating dinner or drinking the tea or Dom leaving?”

  “No.”

  “Do you remember getting sick? The nausea and vomiting and needing to spit, feeling flushed?”

  “Those woke me up this morning. Vomiting first, then the others kept me awake. Around five-thirty, it was still dark out. I woke Jack with my throwing up and he got up as well. We tried to ride it out, and after a few hours I was feeling better, keeping fluids down, but he was worried, so he called you.”

  “That was just after eight.”

  “Right. Does that help?”

  Leah considered her words carefully. “Risa, think hard. Did you get up during the night to eat or drink anything?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, I can’t remember anything until I started throwing up. Why?”

  “Nicotine poisoning has a fairly quick onset as well as a short duration for minor overdoses. Which means however the nicotine got into your system, it wasn’t at dinner or while Dom was there last night. It would have happened early this morning.”

  Risa frowned, shaking her head slowly as if bewildered. “I wish I had an answer, but the whole night is just a blank.” Leah blew out her breath in frustration. Risa reached over and gripped her hand, her gaze searching Leah’s face.

  “You believe me, don’t you?”

  Thirty-Six

  Emily couldn’t help but feel sad that her daddy hadn’t really come back. Last night was the first night she hadn’t had a nightmare about the bad man and what happened to Daddy. Instead, she’d dreamed that Daddy was there, watching over her and Nate, telling them how proud he was of them for being heroes. Only then she and Nate weren’t inside their bunkbed fort, instead they were dressed like explorers in the movies and were accepting medals for bravery for their trek through the woods to retrieve Nate’s great’s medal—and somehow saving Nate’s great-great-grandfather as well. At least that’s who she thought the man in the old-fashioned army uniform was, even though he wasn’t very old and looked a lot like Luka. Then the Homan twins and Ms. Driscoll were all carted off to jail.

  And then she woke up. Still half-asleep, she went downstairs, where she’d found Daddy’s name on boxes and his computer was back and she’d hoped and wished… but it was all like the dream. Not real.

  Still, that didn’t mean she and Nate couldn’t make it real. Be heroes.

  By the time Nate and Emily finished cleaning her room—and the living room and the breakfast dishes—the sun was shining bright, spilling tiny rainbows over the lavender plants lined up in their rows from the house to the woods. Emily had her plan finalized. The Homans scared her, not just because they were bigger than her but because they made her afraid deep down inside, like the bad man who killed Daddy had on that night she tried so hard to forget but never could. But Nate needed her help and she couldn’t let him down.

  She gathered what they needed. After lunch—grilled cheese and tomato soup—Ruby told them to go play and they finished their preparations, including dressing in proper exploration outfits: boots, jeans, T-shirts under a fleece top for Emily and a flannel shirt for Nate, baseball caps, then windbreakers for both.

  “Ready?” she asked Nate.

  “Yeah.” He didn’t sound as enthusiastic as he had last night. “Did you ask Ruby?”

  “Hang on.” She ducked her head into the living room where Ruby was listening to a book and flipping through one of Nellie’s old seed catalogues. “Ruby, can Nate and I play outside? It stopped raining.”

  Ruby glanced out the window. “Enjoy the sunshine while you can. Be back before it gets dark—supposed to rain again tonight.”

  “Thanks, bye!”

  It felt so good to be out in the sun that they ran through the mud between rows of lavender plants, racing each other to the tree line. Then they came to the edge of the forest leading up the mountain.

  The four-wheeler path wasn’t marked on the map on Emily’s phone, but it was pretty obvious where it began given the large patch of rutted and churned up dirt. Nate ran right up it, vanishing into the thick shadows of the trees, but Emily stopped. The trees were tall, with thick branches like long, knobby fingers that quivered in the wind, ready to wait until her back was turned and then they’d grab her. And the noises—they came from everywhere, above and below and around all sides. She hugged herself tight, trying to squeeze the panic away as her heart thudded and all she could see was blood…

  Then Nate raced back down the path, smiling as he took her hand. “Hey, c’mon.”

  She took a deep breath, her fear washed away by the clean scent of pine and wet leaves, then followed him into the trees.

  They quickly came to their first obstacle: the path converged with four others, all leading in different directions. Emily scrutinized the map. She’d studied it so much that she thought she had it memorized, but it was difficult to translate it into the real world. She’d googled the Homans’ address and it was marked; they just had to cross the patch of green on the map to get there. The measurements said it was between half a mile and a mile. That was easy.

  She held the phone flat on her palm beside Nate’s hand with the compass. Nate rotated until both were pointing the same way.

  “Pops said the arrows always go north,” he explained. “So we need to go this way.” He stretched his left arm pointing into the trees. “Not quite west.”

  She studied her map then the compass and nodded. “Right.” She chose the trail closest to their desired direction. “This way.” Emily led the way into the woods, following the ruts from the four-wheelers. The rain had left the tracks filled with puddles and the dirt around them was sticky mud, so they walked in the brush and leaves alongside the trail. The pine trees swayed in the wind and the naked trees that had lost their leaves in the winter had tiny red and brown buds breaking out. The air smelled fresh and wonderful, a promise of spring, and Emily forgot her fear. The woods weren’t dark and scary like she’d thought. Just different.

  Nate stopped as a large bird spiraled above them. “Is that an eagle?”

  “Or a hawk. Next time we need to see if we can use my daddy’s binoculars. Then we could tell for sure.” The thought of Daddy and her walking through the woods, on their own adventure, made her sad. She’d never get another adventure with him again.

  “We could go back for them.”

  “No. They’re at my old house. With all my other stuff.” They were both silent for a long time. But it wasn’t a bad or sad quiet, more like Nate understood how she felt—probably because all those fosters left him with not much stuff, either. Luka had gone to Baltimore and brought back what was at Nate’s old house, but it was mostly clothes for school and a few pictures of him and his mom.

  “I miss her,” he whispered i
nto the wind.

  “I miss him,” Emily echoed.

  They kept walking until the path forked, this time giving them only two options. “Which way?” Nate asked.

  “You’re the navigator.” They huddled over the compass and map once more. “We wanted to go towards the ten o’clock when we had the arrows lined up.” They rotated around and ended up standing in a mud puddle.

  “Neither path goes the right way,” Nate said.

  “Yeah, but that one is more the right way.” She pointed to the path that was seven o’clock away from the north arrow. “Plus the other path goes up the mountain and it looks steep.”

  Nate squinted at the compass and her map again. “Can you make it show where we are?”

  Emily tried to refresh the map but all she got was a whirling circle. “No cell bars.”

  “Okay. We just need to remember we went left, so that will be going right when we’re trying to get back.” He broke a branch from a pine tree and stuck it in the intersection. “And we’ll look for the branch.” As they ran down the path, birds flew away, flapping their wings in annoyance.

  But then a loud crack echoed through the forest. Both she and Nate stopped, looking around, their backs to each other as they scanned the shadows surrounding them.

  The wind swirled past them, carrying a man’s laughter—or was that a bird squawking? They pivoted to face the direction it seemed to be coming from, Nate stepping in front of Emily. She moved aside—he blocked her view and she wanted to see—but then came the crunch of footsteps and more laughter, this time from the other side of the trail.

  “Who’s there?” Emily called, trying to ignore the way her stomach churned—just like that night when Daddy’s shouts had woken her, when… She squeezed her eyes shut tight, shoving the memories away, taking deep breaths like Dr. Hailey had taught her. She wished JoJo, the therapy puppy, was here with her. Mommy should have let her have a dog.

  “Are you okay?” Nate whispered, taking hold of her hand. She opened her eyes and nodded. “I think we should head back.”