When they reached the street, there was no Annie's to be seen. Discouraged, the reporters gave up their search and went into their vehicles, disappearing in a few minutes.
Alone, Richard concluded that Annie, barefoot and on a rainy night, couldn’t go very far. He got in the car and ended up running nearly an hour going through the whole neighbourhood. He decided to go back and checked the room, but what he found was only a journalist who had the same idea. Without losing hope, he returned to the car and resumed the search.
It seemed that Annie had simply evaporated...
Annie just stopped running when she could breath and began to feel a sharp pain on the left side of her abdomen. The soles of her feet were burning due to friction from her soft skin with the asphalt. When she stopped and looked around, she realized she was in the middle of a park full of trees, and all the shadows at night seemed so frightened.
With a height of desperation, she had run aimlessly, and now she didn’t knew what part of the city she was.
Her wet clothes clung to the body, and it was hard to see in the dark and through the rain. She was so tired and cold, she decided to take refuge under a tree, sitting on its root.
She was so exhausted she couldn’t even cry.
Shivering, she hugged her knees and remained in that position for a long time. Without noticing when Richard's figure came through the bushes in front of her.
- Annie! Thank God I found you! - He screamed at her.
She lifted her head and Richard could see that in her eyes, before they were hostile, and now he could see indifference
- Go away... - she managed to say weakly.
Richard leaned over and placed a hand on the ground, the other on Annie's forehead. Although bathed by rainwater, her skin was burning intensely.
- You have a fever! - He exclaimed. Decided he took her in his arms, the body down and unable to offer any resistance, they walked toward the car.
Feeling protection and warmth of a strong body, Annie, almost unconsciously, wrapped his arms around Richard’s neck and buried his face in his red wool sweater. She was so weak that she couldn’t distinguished where she was, just knew the warmth of those strong arms that held her gave a pleasant feeling of comfort.
Richard walked distressed because he felt responsible for her being there unprotected and exposed in the rain. He narrowed his arms as he could, to get to the body protecting it from the cold temperature.
Arriving in the car, settled her gently on the back seat and, after undressing the sweater he wore, tucked her icy body.
As he drove, Richard called to Paula Halls, his doctor and also a great friend, wondering if she could take a leap to his house urgently. She didn’t want to know why, the doctor readily agreed and when he arrived there, the professional already awaited them.
Richard got out with Annie in his arms and asked his friend to open the door of the house. They climbed the stairs into the guest room, he straightened her fondly on the mattress, covered by a white satin duvet.
With a hurry snatched the soaked clothes and seeking for a towel hanging behind the bathroom door, he began to dry her naked body that was burning due to fever, increasing by the minute.
When Paula approaches the woman lying on the bed, she was amazed to recognize Annie.
- Actually isn’t she... - asked in amazement, wondering what she was doing there naked and semiconscious.
- Yes - Richard said. – Don’t worry about it now. Take a look at the wounds of her feet while I try to control fever.
- The best thing to do would be to take her to a hospital - noted the doctor, with a logical and prudent attitude.
- It’s better not - he resumed. - The way things are would be a plateful for reporters and she needs a moment of peace and quiet.
- Richard are you crazy? Keeping this woman in your home is the same as store dynamite!
He, however, seemed don’t even listen to the wise words from doctor's friend, while rummaging through the drawers looking for something suitable that could wear Annie.
- After all, Richard, how did this woman get here? – Insisted the doctor, trying to make him understand the trouble he was arranging for himself.
As if in another world and deep in thoughts he said nothing, leaving the room, returning with one of his clean pyjamas.
The doctor, realizing that it was useless to argue with him, she decided to take care of Annie injury and didn’t insist.
- Is she going to catch pneumonia? – Asked Richard, when Annie was already medicated, dressed and wrapped in two blankets.
- I think it is just a bad cold. But if she gets worse, call me immediately.
Driving him a worried look the doctor assured:
- In the coming days it will need a lot of attention.
- Don’t worry. What is not missing me is time right now... - he replied.
She smiled and dictates him the final recommendations, said goodbye and left.
Annie felt her entire body aching and a weakness, impossible to describe, causing her such a cinch that it took a lot of effort to lift her head, to receive a pill painkiller with Richard’s help with a glass of warm milk.
- No ... I have to go ... - she stammered with difficulty.
- It's all right - he insisted. - Take the medicine and sleep. I'll take care of everything.
As an obedient child, she swallowed the medicine and then let her head fall heavily on the pillow.
Standing beside the bed, Richard watched her beautiful face now with dark circles, witnesses of anguish and suffering.
"What did I do, my God?" He wondered in thought, while a lacerating pain gnawed his breast only imagine the cause of so much misery. The only thing that soothed him a little consciousness was sure he would do everything in his power to repair the damage he had caused her.
In fact, nobody in the world could have had more attention than the one he dismissed him in those days. Always vigilant, hardly stepped of the head of the bed where she lay. And even when she deeply slept, he visited her all the time to see if everything was fine.
In the time that followed, between the intervals when fever lowered, she could have a vague awareness that someone was beside her. She just didn’t know who.
And it was so good to feel supported at least once, to feel that someone cared about her. That hasn’t happened since the day she lost her parents when she was just sixteen years. Since, she had to face the world alone.
Her beauty made her a model. Success came soon afterwards and, with it, the involvement with Frank Pearce, accountant of a major advertising firm. In the beginning she fell in love with him, but when the decided to live together, she realized he was a vain man, who only interested in the glory to be seen next to a beautiful woman.
She was about to leave him, when she found out she was pregnant and joy how Frank received the news, he immediately began making plans for the wedding. And she though in her ingenuity, who knows a child's could bring us closer?
However, money and success seemed to be the only things that really mattered to Frank. He was furious when Annie decided to give up her career to stay home and taking care of her son.
When Jimmy was one year old, Frank decided to open his own agency. From there, they started the endless social dinners, to which she was obliged to attend because, as he said, it’s very important for both, and it will be very useful in financial terms.
The distance between Annie and Frank increased every day and the sexual relationship between them had ended long ago.
However, Annie was willing to continue maintaining a marriage of appearances, but it was not until the final boldness of her husband, suggesting to her that she was a good girl with a particular desire of being very rich and eccentric. In that night, she took Jimmy and left home and never returns.
He used every means to bring her back, denying helping her financially to for her to return, even for the boy.
So Annie had no choice but to get a job, which she did. She accepte
d a companion work, which forced her to leave for numerous trips. It was not what she wanted, but at least she was earning enough to support herself and her son.
Everything seemed to be coming together next to her dear son – she began to experience happiness that she missed for so long. Until it appeared in her home that insolent police and, in only one minute, the world crashed down on her head...
Annie recovered consciousness gradually completely. She opened her eyes and tried to keep the heavy eyelids open that insisted closing. Still half asleep, she tried to recognize where she was. It was a spacious and comfortable room with some furniture there was only the bed, a white wardrobe with three doors golden locks, which combined with the threads of the contours, decorated with two tables of each side of the bed and over them a couple of brownish lampshades matching the bedspread details. A small table and two chairs completed the setting.
"What is this place?" She wondered alarmed. Has she lost her mind and didn’t recognize her own house?
But the worst was just about to come...
When the door opened and Richard came to her, Annie didn’t understand anything.
Despite her aching body and head still reeling, she suddenly sat up on the bed and asked in amazement:
- What are you doing here?
- Actually this is my house - he explained with a smile. - I brought you here after finding you in a park in the north of the city. You were very sick with fever.
- Oh yes? And you were so willingness to do a good deed that you didn’t take me to my place?
- Because there might still be some reporters waiting for you ... During the time I was looking for you, on the night I felt desperate, and went back to your flat to see if by any chance you had arrived and I found a journalist probing over there - said Richard, as he sat on the bed. - So I thought it would be best to take you elsewhere.
- And it needed to be here? Why not a hospital?
Richard bit one of the lower lip corners and calmly tried to convey to her the reasoning he thought made at the time:
- You needed tranquillity and who would think to look for you in my house? So here was the best place to hide you from the press.
Before she could answer, a constant cough hit her and Richard hastened promptly giving her a scoop of syrup that was already left on the table beside. Then, very gently he helped her lying down.
- Still with high fever - he concluded, as he placed his right hand on her forehead and felt the temperature. - You need to rest more.
And rising up, he added:
- I'll fix you something to eat, if you want to use the bathroom, it’s just next door.
He turned his back and walked to the door, but before leaving he still remembered:
- Oh, you can wear it - and pointed to the cream robe, stretched out on the back of one of the chairs.
As soon as he left, she decided to get up. She needed to find a way to get out, she thought, stretching out to reach the clothes he indicated. However, it took more than ten minutes for her to wear the robe – the weakness she felt was too much.
In the bathroom she watched indifferently to the battered image she saw in the mirror. It had been some time since she cared more about the appearance...
Minutes later, she tried to return to the room, trying anchoring on the walls of the corridor, staggering from one side to another. Richard, who was bringing dinner for her, put down the tray on the floor and ran immediately to help her out.
- Let me help you - insisted, holding her by the elbows.
- Don’t touch me! - She snapped.
Getting rid of his arm, she continued its winding path to bed. He followed cautiously, with open arms and ready to catch her if she lost her balance.
In the bedroom, she behaved a bit more docile, accepting the medications he offered. And without protest, ate part of the lunch he had brought. Falling into a deep sleep for the rest of the afternoon.
While she slept in one of the intervals when left alone, he used to call Spencer and put into practice what they had planned the night before. The colleague welcomed with joy to hear what Richard asked him:
- Are you a crazy guy? Do you want to see me on the street? - Spencer exploded.
- I know I’m asking a lot, but no one will suspect. And return to you tomorrow, early.
- Cornwall breaks my neck if he finds out!
- I guarantee he will not find out. Trust me. - Richard reassured.
Richard received through a currier, a package in which he could read a message manuscript: "Leave everything ready for when I go out there, in the morning, or we'll both be in serious trouble."
Richard went to the back room, where he kept audio and video equipment, one of the few luxuries that were allowed. Once entered, he closed the door behind him and opened the package containing several tapes of interviews he had with Annie, including notes from books on the case.
He spent the night duplicating documents, and when Spencer arrived in the morning, the service was over and he returned the originals.
After thanking his friend, Richard prepared breakfast and took it to Annie's room. She coughed and sneezed all the time and as much as he insisted she could only eat a little bit.
Richard changed the bed linen and helped her to lie down again, which she did without protest. In fact, she seemed not to notice his presence, falling asleep soon after.
Taking advantage that she was sound asleep, he decided to examine the tapes and notes. Who knows he could remember something else had happened at the time ... It was not unusual for a police to forget details of their cases, much less that he had always been respected for his phenomenal memory capacity.
He entered back to the room, settling behind the narrow desk and, with his head in his hands, he thought: "Who knows I can recover memory, focus on what happened before this case started?"
Unveiled gradually the forgetfulness that had imposed since the fateful day when his wife and young son lost their lives, victims of a reckless drunk driver that barely remembered the accident.
His thoughts returned to the Day of Judgment, the killer driver who stood and received with a cynical smile the minimum sentence imposed.
Forcing Richard’s memories, he suddenly remembered the elegantly woman who had accompanied Harris the courthouse, and heard her comment:
- Didn’t I say that everything was going to work?
At that moment, Richard had put in front of them and forced to stop. He just wanted to face in the eyes the man who took him the best that he had.
Harris blanched and lamely justified:
- It’s not my fault, it was an accident.
Richard's eyes, enraged by hatred that gnawed his chest, made the man flinch and turn to the woman who accompanied him, seeking protection.
It was clear how much Harris leant that woman. Perhaps on the day of the accident, when he was taking her home, she had encouraged him driving at high speed intoxicated.
Funny ... Richard concluded in thought, he will never the image of that man, but the woman had cleared up completely until now.
Spencer had been with Richard during all sessions of the trial. He was a great friend. And when he saw Harris challenging the court's door, she took him by the arm and pulled away as quickly as possible. The two were drown his sorrows in the first watering hole they found.
- Take a vacation - Spencer insisted, between sips.
- No - Richard answered. - On the contrary. Now I need to sink at work.
I know, but this state of mind...
- I overcome. You will see.
And that's what Richard did. From there on, the only reason he found out in the morning to get out of the bed, was the dedication to his work, he worked hard for hours until complete exhaustion. Maybe that's why his memory was impaired to the point of forgetting many details of that occasion.
But he needed to remember...
He rubbed his forehead with his right hand, sliding his fingers in a gentle rocking motion, as if he c
ould clarify the ideas.
Thoughts turned to Tom Phelps, the owner of a small building, which had been found dead with a head injury caused by a heavy instrument.
Richard was in charge of the investigation, and all the clues found pointing toward Annie Pearce.
While he was remembering the facts, he decided to put one of the tapes in the video and immediately recognized his own voice asking Annie:
- Let's go back to the fight you had with Phelps, Mrs. Anderson.
- It was just an argument. He tried to win me over and I put him in place.
- It was not what his neighbours said. According to them, the fight was violent. They heard screams and curses.
- I was nervous. Phelps was just a disgusting worm.
- A worm that needed to be crushed?
- I didn’t kill him, if that's what you're implying. He was very much alive when I left the building. Moreover, I was miles away when the body was found.
- You told me you were in Windsor, but so far and not even a witness who saw you there. Isn’t that strange? Don’t you remember having talked to someone that day?
- I went there just to be alone. I was very disgusted with Phelps behaviour.
Richard analyzed with criticism their behaviour by observing the scene on the screen before her. He looked like a caged lion, circling around the table and, occasionally, staring at prey with glare. It's a shame that, at that time, he didn’t noticed what seemed to him now so evident in the voice of Annie ... A bored and worried tone, but not frightened. It was as if she knew it was a mistake that would be clarified soon. Instead, the face he saw on the screen was a sick and obsessed man who kept repeating:
- Let's start all over again from the beginning.
- Oh, no ... Again!?
*****
Chapter 4
After three days of rest, the fever had finally given in and Annie’s body didn’t hurt anymore.
She puts on thick socks that Richard had left her, puts the robe on and left the room.
As she coursed through the long corridor, she watched the wide and old rooms. The house appeared to have been built a century ago.
Me Before You Page 2
