Forgotten Place

by LS Sygnet

  I stepped inside the room and jerked one thumb toward the door when her personal bodyguard looked askance at us. She complied with the silent order and I moved to the bed.

  "Journey."

  She smacked her lips and rolled over.

  I nudged her shoulder. "Journey, wake up. It's Detective Eriksson. We need to talk."

  Her sooty lashes fluttered before she came fully awake and sat up. Wide eyes conveyed how much my abrupt presence spiked her anxiety. "Come downstairs with me. We need to talk."

  She scrambled out of the bed and fell into step beside Devlin. I rolled my eyes. It was probably the night of all nights for alienating friends, lovers and colleagues. Devlin wasn't going to like my approach. I didn't see another way to snap Journey into the reality of how dangerous things had become.

  "Sit," I pointed to the chairs at the kitchen table and disappeared into my office only long enough to retrieve a pen and notebook. I waved them in front of her. "See these?"

  She nodded.

  "You're not going to use them tonight, Journey. This has gone on far too long. I need answers from you, and you're going to dig deep and find the courage to answer my questions. Is that clear?"

  She glanced at Devlin.

  "Don't look at him. He's not here to protect you, Journey. He's here as a cop, as a man who is trying to figure out what's really going on."

  She opened her mouth. Not so much as a hiss passed her vocal chords.

  "We caught the man who attacked you tonight."

  Wide eyes almost engulfed her face.

  "Do you think that means this is over? Do you think it means you're not in danger anymore, Journey? You, or your mother?"

  Fear radiated from her body. Mother? Lips moved around the silent word.

  "Tell me. Did anybody from that nursing home ever ask you about your father's visits to Isabella?" At her stunned expression, "Oh yes, Journey. Apparently your father has visited her in the nursing home. Not only that, he calls regularly to see if her condition is stable or not. Do you know what I think that means?" I slammed the notebook on the table.

  She shook her head.

  "I think it means your mother knew something, and the man that killed your father, the man who attacked you last Monday, is afraid she might wake up one day and start talking."

  Her lips moved with exaggerated enunciation. She can't talk anymore.

  "I saw her yesterday. She spoke to me."

  Journey's jaw dropped. She opened her mouth to mime speech again, but I kept talking.

  "You're going to remember what happened to you on Monday. If you love your parents, if you want to honor them, you're gonna dig deep and remember what that man said to you, and you're gonna open your mouth and speak the words. Are we clear?"

  A single tear snagged in her eyelashes, broke free when she nodded.

  "I realize that all this attention has been very... soothing for you, Journey. God knows any woman would love having a guy like Detective Mackenzie fluttering around playing the white knight, but he's not gonna be around forever, and I can promise you this. If one more person is injured or killed because you don't have the guts to tell me what happened that morning, Devlin's gonna loose all interest in you."

  He squirmed a little bit and frowned at me. Fortunately, Devlin didn't choose that moment to argue.

  "I came into that parking garage and heard voices. Your voice and the man we arrested earlier. You recalled offering to let him take whatever he wanted. Something happened, Journey. You went from doing the right thing, not risking your life over a purse or a car, to fighting this man.

  "I heard you hit him, heard his grunt. He yelled bitch! And then I made my presence known. He cut your throat and left you for dead. What did he say to you, Journey? What made you abandon all common sense and fight a man with a knife to your throat?"

  She opened her mouth and a soft hiss passed her lips. "Give me the disk, or do you want to end up dead like daddy?"

  That damned disk again. I started pacing.

  Her voice squeaked. "What did Mother say to you?"

  "The same thing she did when she last spoke to you. Honor thy father." I thought about Ireland's references again. My head tilted to one side, and I braced my arms on the table. "Journey, what's the deal with that phrase? Were your parents that superstitious, that fearful that you'd grow up and dishonor them that they were obsessed with the ten commandments?"

  "No," what little voice she had was fading fast.

  I slid the notebook across the table. "Write it down."

  Devlin and I watched the words scrawl across the blank page. They weren't crazy religious. I never remembered hearing that phrase before Daddy died. In fact, Mother first spoke those words to me after his funeral. She took me to the headstone and said I must always remember – honor thy father.

  Frustration knotted in my gut. This was about as helpful as Painless Carl's gun to the back of my head. My fingers reached back and skimmed the tender oozing wound. Yep, it hurt. I was still alive and not living in a continuously looping nonsensical nightmare.

  "At the funeral?" Devlin asked.

  Journey nodded. Mother had it put on his headstone.

  Our eyes met.

  "Oh my God. Devlin, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

  "I'm not sure."

  "EX2012. Exodus 20:12. Honor thy father and mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the lord thy God giveth thee. She put it on his headstone, Devlin. It's been right in front of us the whole time! David's disk!"

  "You've lost me."

  "Journey, I need your permission to do something. I want you to know that we wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

  She nodded.

  "I need to exhume your father."

  Journey recoiled at the mere suggestion. I never understood the bizarre sentimentality over the final resting place of the dead. They had no awareness of life anymore. It seemed silly to revere a corpse.

  "Why?" she croaked.

  Gloves off. "We may have caught the man who tried to kill you, the man who did kill your father," I said, "but the one who hired him to do it is still out there. He's looking for your father's disk. He's looking for the information your father took with him to his grave that implicates him in something serious, something illegal."

  "We'll be respectful, Journey," Devlin promised. "I think Helen's right. This will never be over until we arrest the man who hired someone to murder your father. You won't be safe. Isabella won't be safe. Will you consent to let us search your father's coffin?"

  "Will you put him right back?" she whispered.

  "You'll never know he was moved. I promise."

  Journey acquiesced, mostly because I was right about her feelings toward Devlin. He could probably talk her into anything if he put his baby blues behind the effort.

  "Call Ned," I told him. "I'll get Journey back upstairs."

  "Detective Eriksson, who do you think is the man trying to destroy my family?" she whispered.

  I was about to tell her when my cell phone rang. I held up one finger and answered.

  "Eriksson."

  "Helen, it's Crevan. You need to be here."

  "Here?"

  "The hospital," he said.

  My heart froze. "What's wrong? Tell me what happened. Oh my God, that idiot doctor was wrong." I charged down the stairs yelling Devlin's name.

  "Helen, calm down. He's waking up."

  I sank to the bottom step, one hand clasped to my chest. "Does he want me there?"

  "Don't be ridiculous. Of course he wants you here. Or he will. I said he's waking up, not that he's awake. I know Tony's pissed, Helen, but I think Johnny will be devastated if you're not here right away."

  Devlin's shoes entered my peripheral vision. "We'll be right there."

  I was shaking too much to navigate through the city even in the dead of night. Car keys were pressed firmly into Devlin's hand. No words were necessary to communicate where I needed to go. I was already crying again. I
guess he took it as a sign that Johnny wasn't doing as well as expected. He sped across Darkwater proper like the autobahn relocated to the western states.

  Fear gripped my heart outside Johnny's room. Crevan told me that the doctor was testing him, some test he didn't understand. I did. They had to determine if his cognition was intact.

  No one exaggerated when they said the party moved from Hennessey Island to the hospital. The waiting room overflowed with tuxedos and formal dresses. I felt the eyes on me, accusing, judging, offended by my very presence.

  Finally, the door to his room opened and a new doctor emerged. "Helen Eriksson?"

  I stepped forward. "I'm here."

  Dr. No Name beckoned with one hand and started walking down the corridor away from the throng pushing in behind me. I wasn't sure why they didn't follow, but suspected Devlin might've had a thing or two to do with it.

  The ID badge read Kervilles and identified him as part of the neurology service. His voiced dipped low. "You're Mr. Orion's next of kin?"

  "His family is deceased. Tell me what's happening."

  "I was told he spoke to you before he lost consciousness at Dunhaven."

  I shook my head with such force that the dried blood and hair stuck to my sweater pulled the gash on my head open. Another warm gush oozed out.

  "He never said your name at the scene?"

  "Before the police arrived," I said. "He said my name." Sort of. Was it a technicality that he called out that nickname I tried so hard to break him of using?

  "He said Helen?" Kervilles fished more, little furrows of skepticism aligning vertically between his eyebrows.

  "It was a nickname," Jesus, did he want me to explain it? "It's something he only calls me." At least that's what I thought. "Doc," the word tumbled from trembling lips. "He called out Doc."

  "I see."

  "What aren't you telling me?"

  Kervilles glanced past me down the hall.

  "Johnny Orion would want you to tell me what's going on with him. He's my –" My what? My partner in crime? My friend? My professional colleague?

  "He's asking for someone else, ma'am."

  One hand shot out and strangled his wrist. "Who? Who is he asking for?"

  "Someone named Gwen."

  "Oh my God."

  "You know her?"

  I nodded, didn't give a damn about the warm trickle that reached the back of my neck. "She's dead, Dr. Kervilles. He's asking for Gwen Foster."

  The name sparked a memory. I could see it in the doctor's eyes. "That seems to explain a few things."

  He's not intact. He's not intact. The knowledge battered my body. All of that tightly coiled, adrenalin fueled energy rushed in a flood out of my body through the tips of my toes and pooled in defeat around me. "He doesn't remember anything." Dull, flat words thudded out at the plodding rate of a heart too tired to fight another moment.

  "I suspect he remembers plenty, ma'am."

  "Detective Eriksson," I muttered with the enthusiasm of an automaton right off an assembly line. Or maybe more aptly, one ready for the junk heap. "He doesn't remember anything about me."

  "Oh." As in oh. "I'm sorry detective." One shoulder rolled toward his ear. "It could be temporary."

  "Or not."

  "We'll need to conduct more testing, possibly do more in depth memory –"

  "I'm aware."

  Memory loss was not uncommon during properly conducted electroconvulsive therapy. Typically, it was transient and not permanent. God only knew what Johnny was facing after the abuse Southerby and company inflicted.

  "Perhaps you should see him now."

  "No," I whispered. "That's the last thing I should do. He's got life long friends and associates from his career in law enforcement. If he's asking for Gwen Foster, in his memory at least, she hasn't died, which means I'm a literal stranger to him."

  The battle for emotional control was skidding precariously toward defeat of the stoic front I felt the need to project to the world. I always pushed my feelings behind a stronghold of machismo. I ran with the big boys. I needed to behave like one too.

  "Tony Briscoe and Crevan Conall have more personal information about him than anybody else waiting for word," I said. "They can help you. I cannot."

  A brisk walk took me back to Devlin, whose eyes sought answers much like everyone else's did. Bodies parted for me like the Red Sea mythically had for Moses. "Let's go, Dev. We have a case to close."

  "But aren't you going to –"

  My gait quickened, bordered a dead run.

  Chapter 39

  "Dammit," Maya muttered under her breath. "You've been to the hospital how many times tonight and never bothered to get that gash looked at?"

  Indifference numbed every nerve in my body. "You're a doctor. Sew me up. After you call your grave digger pal."

  My brain was thousands of miles away, somewhere in Hawaii to be precise, with the crosshairs of a sniper rifle trained on the back of Datello's head. Kill him, kill him had replaced the usual lub-dub in my chest.

  Ned, who met us at the morgue, looked at Maya and gave one of those incommunicado shakes of the head. "I'll call Carney and have him meet us at the cemetery with his crew. See if you can talk some sense into her."

  "Helen, I staple my patients shut with a device designed to close the sternum for God's sake. I don't have suture kits."

  "Improvise."

  She moved to one of the cabinets and started digging. I watched a growing pile materialize on the countertop. Gloves. Hydrogen peroxide. Saline solution. Gauze. Forceps. Prepackaged something or other.

  "I don't have any anesthetic."

  "Don't need it. Sew."

  She continued to mutter objections under her breath, things like malpractice and ethics and a few choice observations on bedside manner being wasted on forensic pathologists.

  I didn't feel a prick, just a tiny tug and tingling sensation as she drove suture after suture through the long laceration that started at the crown of my head and descended southward. I didn't move, didn't wince, most important, didn't cry. The burning sensation in my throat was gone. Sure, I felt about a bucket of sand in each eye, but I'd been up all day and night.

  One glance at the Rolex told the story succinctly. Twenty three hours, seventeen minutes. It would be dawn soon. Not the optimal time for a little stealth grave digging.

  I didn't care. My path was committed the second I realized what Datello, through his arm of Southerby, had done to Johnny. Evidence meant about as much to me as getting my head sewn shut.

  I turned abruptly toward Ned and Devlin. One was green, watching with something akin to horror at Maya's ministrations, the other staring at the floor.

  "Ned."

  He lifted his eyes.

  "You and Devlin should be at the cemetery supervising this exhumation. Bring Ireland's casket back here and we'll examine it in a secure environment."

  Maya didn't grill for details. Ned muttered something to Devlin and disappeared. I stared with dull resolve at his new partner.

  "Run along, Detective Mackenzie."

  "No can do, Helen. Ned's got the exhumation. I'm staying with you."

  Perhaps my flat affect and dissociation from Maya's needle conveyed more of my agenda than I realized. I broke eye contact and stared at the floor, plotting, always looking for the next way to do something – legal, illegal, it didn't matter anymore.

  "Hold still, Helen. Are you trying to make me stab myself with a dirty needle?"

  Fifteen stitches later and Maya was dragging me by the arm down the hall to the women's locker room. "Detective Mackenzie, you may wait outside the door. Helen will shower and change into something less stained, and I'll stay with her to make sure she doesn't pass out from blood loss."

  Head lacerations bleed like a mother. Hadn't thought about that until the ruined cashmere hit the floor with a wet smack. Blood had run down as far as the waist of my leggings and stained them with a half-moon that looked somewhat like a wide, toothless
smile. Didn't care. Couldn't care.

  Water pelted me. Steam obscured my vision. A pink hue replaced the pallor on my arms and chest, probably elsewhere if I cared to look. I didn't. I stepped out of the shower on autopilot and accepted the towel Maya held out.

  Her pointed stare at protruding ribs and collar bones bounced off the armor of what-must-be-done.

  The vigorous rub was half-hearted. My skin remained lubricous enough for the scrubs to cling to every bony prominence before the rest of the soft fabric sucked against my skin. Shrink-wrapped-Helen in surgical blues.

  Maya shook her head. "Do I get the one word version of why you look like you don't really give a damn about anything anymore?"

  "No." Hey, she asked for one word. She got it.

  "Helen, what the hell is going on? The last time I saw you, you looked like you had the devil by his short curlies and were ready to send him straight to hell. You're exhuming David Ireland. Something tells me the case isn't dead in the water if you have cause –"

  "Johnny was hurt worse than the moron in the ED thought," I said. Emotionless. I might've said, "The weather will be cloudy in Darkwater Bay today."

  "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry."

  That armor was impervious to sympathy too. "He'll survive."

  "I thought you said –"

  "Zapped his short term memory pretty good, scrambled a bit more. He'll be fine."

  I stared at my watch. "How long do you think it'll be before Williams delivers the body?" It had been roughly an hour since Ned left.

  "It won't take that long. Why don't you take something for pain?"

  Because I didn't feel anything, not pain, not anger, not anything but resolve gnawing its way through every nook and cranny inside my body. I looked at her, recognized the concern etched around Maya's whiskey gold eyes. "Endorphins. I'm fine."

  "Are you hungry?"

  "No."

  "Helen –"

  "Fine. Bring on the Twinkies and Ho-Ho's."

  The greasy confection coated my tongue and made me want to gag. It tasted like sticky sawdust injected with a bolus of lard. The acidic carbonation of Coke didn't eat through the congealed goop that coated the roof of my mouth.