Stolen Memories

by Liz Johnson

  He lifted his thick eyebrows as though his anticipation grew with every tick of the clock.

  Closing her eye and swallowing against the sandpaper in her throat, she opened her mouth and tried to form the word.

  But it wasn’t there.

  The name she’d surely heard thousands of times floated just out of reach. Like the string on a balloon caught in the wind, it danced away until her lips sputtered and a tear leaked down her cheek.

  Dear God, I don’t even know my own name.

  TWO

  Zach hated to see a woman cry. More than he despised all-night stakeouts and stale doughnuts, he hated when a woman cried.

  He cleared his throat, offering a low whisper. “Your name. Can you tell me your name?”

  “I don’t re-remember.” Her words, broken by a soft sob, barely made it to his ears.

  He swung another glance across the room to see if the nurse had heard the same thing that he had, but she had yet to return with the doctor.

  Turning back to Julie, he leaned a little closer. Maybe he’d misunderstood. “You don’t remember?”

  She shook her head again, uneven brown locks falling just onto the white bandage taped to her forehead. “I’m not— I can’t—” She looked away before blinking one watery eye filled with more questions than he could answer. A trembling reached her bottom lip, and she sank her perfectly straight teeth into it. But that wasn’t enough to stop the returning tears from escaping closed lids. Moisture appeared even at the swollen seam of her left eye, still purple and red like an overripe strawberry.

  Taking a deep breath, he did the only thing he could remember doing the handful of times Samantha had cried in his presence. With the tips of his fingers, he patted her forearm gingerly, avoiding the patch of road rash just below her elbow. She must have caught herself there because the scrape covered a good bit of real estate.

  At his touch, Julie jerked her arm away, then squeaked as every muscle in her body tensed. The veins in her neck popped out, her lips pulling back to reveal clenched teeth.

  “It’ll be all right.”

  The words didn’t hold much weight. How could they? The only person who could help him solve her case couldn’t remember her own name. She was locked somewhere in her own mind, and he had yet to decipher a shred of evidence to help her fill in the missing pieces, to figure out who had left her beaten and on the brink of death.

  The metal legs of the nearby chair scraped along the floor as he pulled it up to the bedside and slumped into it. Scrubbing a hand down his face, he rested his elbows on his knees, wrinkling the creases of his gray slacks.

  “I can’t see you.”

  He jumped up like her words had set the seat on fire and leaned over her bed, staring into her open eye. “Better?”

  The muscles in her neck relaxed, and even the steady beat of her carotid artery seemed to settle from a frantic rhythm. She patted at her mattress until her fingers found his hand resting close by. She didn’t exactly hold his hand. But she seemed to need the touch to confirm his proximity.

  He didn’t mind so much. Whatever he could do to help this girl. She sure needed it, and he felt somehow responsible for her. Of course, it wasn’t his fault that she’d been attacked. But since rescuing her, he’d kept an eye out for any word of a missing person matching her description. Nothing yet.

  Never taking her wary eye off of him, she said, “We don’t know each other. I mean, we didn’t know each other. Before. Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  She coughed, the sound low and raspy like her throat was retaliating after not being used for so many days. Grabbing the pink plastic cup from the table, he pressed the straw to her lips, and she drank greedily.

  When her gulps began to slow, he pulled the cup away and set it back on the rolling table. “Better?”

  Only her eye moved to look in his direction. “No. I still can’t remember my name.” Her words were soft but filled to the brim with a pain he couldn’t even imagine. She didn’t sound bitter, just betrayed. Her mind refused to do what she needed it to—give her the information stored in it.

  “It’ll be okay.” Another useless phrase. It promised something he couldn’t back up. But there wasn’t anything else to say, so he patted her hand.

  “How did I end up here? What happened?”

  He looked down at the spot where her fingers curled into his. She was clinging to anything that felt stable, and he didn’t blame her. The nurse had told him to take it easy on Julie. Telling her the whole truth wasn’t fair to her in this condition. It could send her reeling like a roller coaster. She didn’t know that she’d been some lunatic’s punching bag, that her face, covered with long, narrow bruises, suggested he’d used a pipe or other weapon. At least the doctor had confirmed that she hadn’t been sexually assaulted, and all her internal organs—except her brain—were in good shape. It was her mind he was worried about, so he picked his words carefully. “I was kind of hoping you could tell me.” He chuckled halfway, but she didn’t respond in kind. She wasn’t ready for that yet. “It looks like you got a pretty good knock on the head first. The doctor says you don’t have any defensive wounds, so you were probably knocked unconscious right away.”

  She raised a hand to her cheek, covering one of her bruises, unspoken questions brimming in her eyes.

  He nodded, confirming her injury. “But I’m not really sure what happened. We found you in Webster Park. Does that mean anything to you?”

  She closed her eyes, finally offering only a tiny shake of her head.

  He gave her fingers a little squeeze. “All right. We’ll figure it out.”

  “We?” Her tone rose, laced with hope.

  “You’re my case. I’ll see it through until it’s solved, which means figuring out your name and where you belong.”

  “Thank you.” Her words didn’t make much of a sound, but he had no problem reading her lips. They weren’t quite as white as they had been when he’d first laid eyes on her. In fact her whole face had gained some color, if not quite enough.

  Well, he’d been hoping to start with her real name. But that wasn’t going to happen today. Maybe there would be some good news back at the station. After seeing her safely to the E.R. on the night she’d been discovered, he’d immediately requested the footage from security cameras near the park. If those were in, maybe they’d have something telling. Or at least something to point him to the next step.

  There were other ways of finding out her name. Like canvassing both of the Twin Cities with her picture. No. That was impractical. There had to be a better way to show her picture to thousands of people. Like in a newspaper. Or online. Or both.

  He was about to ask if she’d be open to running a story in the paper when a booming voice filled the room. “Well, well. Look who finally decided to wake up.”

  Julie cringed at the noise, her hand balling into a fist. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Just the doctor.” Who had no bedside manner.

  Zach kept that last part to himself.

  The silver-haired man in the white lab coat marched across the tiled floor, the nurse right behind him. The doctor didn’t bother to introduce himself. He just started giving orders instead. “You need to go. You’ve waited around long enough, and now you’re just adding to her stress. She doesn’t need any of that right now.”

  Nodding, Zach pulled his hand away from hers. In a movement faster than he’d seen from her thus far, she scrambled her fingers until they clutched his.

  “Will you come back?”

  He paused just before stepping away, taking in the panic building in Julie’s eye. He didn’t begrudge her the fear. Even he couldn’t be sure exactly how much danger she was in. By the light of day, he’d been able to make out the marks in the grass at the park, where she’d been dragged away from the street and into the shadow of the trees. Someone had wanted her permanently out of the picture.

  Bending over so that she could clearly see his face, he ga
ve her a slow wink. “Count on it.”

  *

  Letting the door to the station swing closed behind him, Zach walked to his desk, falling into his chair, which rolled away from his computer under his weight. He walked his feet forward, until he was right where he needed to be—staring at a blank screen and wondering if that’s what Julie felt like every waking minute.

  He grabbed the phone and jabbed in the number he knew by heart.

  “This is Tabby.”

  “It’s Zach.”

  Tabitha let out a deep, throaty laugh. “To what do I owe this pleasure, Detective Jones?”

  When people first met Tabby, they generally had a hard time believing that the sixty-year-old firecracker with a shock of white hair was the Tabitha Guster, Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter for the Star Tribune.

  Zach didn’t have any trouble believing it, though. Tabby had been his mom’s best friend since they were roommates at the University of Minnesota forty years ago. Tabby had become more family than friend, and as the reporter covering the police beat, she and Zach had spent plenty of family dinners talking cases.

  But the last time they’d talked, he hadn’t been able to give her any information about an ongoing investigation, and she’d been none too happy with him for it. Would she be willing to do him a favor now?

  Better to start off easy than dive in headfirst. Every Minnesota boy raised in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes knew to jump feetfirst the first time. This situation was no different. “How’re you doing?”

  “Just fine. And your mom and the family?” She was playing along. Tabby had almost certainly spoken to his mother more recently than he had.

  “We’re all doing very well.”

  “Glad to hear it.” She paused, waiting for him to speak. When he didn’t hop right in, she continued, “I have to interview the police chief in twenty minutes. Want to tell me what this is about? Or should I call you back later?”

  He leaned an elbow on the desk and rested his chin in his hand. “I need your help.”

  “Oh?” Her voice jumped an octave. “Work or pleasure?”

  “Work.”

  She laughed with the kind of giddy joy he’d expect from someone half her age. But the truth was that the police beat still made her heart thump a little harder. And as a detective in need of her help, he was at her mercy. “Whatcha got?”

  “I need to identify a victim, and I was hoping you could help.”

  “Which one?”

  He paused, questioning his decision. Maybe this was a bad idea. It wasn’t too late to keep this out of the papers and off-line. But then how was he going to figure out who she was and why she’d been attacked? He’d been checking the missing-persons database every day, but still hadn’t found anything. If no one noticed Julie was gone, then he had no clear indication of how much danger she might really be in. “The one from Webster Park. She woke up.”

  “And she can’t tell you her own name?” Tabby laughed like it was a funny joke, but stopped at his grunt. “She has amnesia?” Her words ran together, her tongue moving faster than she could enunciate.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Measured breaths were the only sound coming from the other end of the line. Finally she sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

  Zach chewed on the inside of his cheek and scratched at his chin. “Any chance you could run an article and a picture? See if anyone can identify her?”

  “You think this was a mugging?” She sounded hopeful, and he hated to dash that theory, but all the evidence pointed away from that simple of an explanation.

  “Well, her purse was missing and hasn’t been located yet. But she was wearing a gold tennis bracelet and diamond earrings that weren’t touched.”

  “And?” Apparently she could hear the unstated question in the tone of his voice.

  “And she was dragged about fifty yards into the park to conceal her body between trees.”

  A rush of air slipped through Tabby’s lips. “I should guess not, then. And you think it’s safe to run her picture? If we post it on our social media networks, it could be seen by anyone in a matter of minutes. You want her attacker to be aware that she can’t remember her own name?”

  “I don’t know.” He shoved his fingers through his hair, curling his fingers into a fist and pulling on it. Why couldn’t this be an easy case? Nothing about it was black-and-white. Nothing was straightforward. Nothing really made much sense.

  Then again, most of his cases started this way.

  They just didn’t usually start with a live victim.

  Clearing his throat, he glanced at the blank computer screen. He had to do something to help Julie find her memories. Whatever it took.

  “You run her prints?” Tabby asked.

  “Of course. No hits on the regional database, and the feds said there’s a backlog for IAFIS right now. Who knows how long it’ll take? Two weeks. Maybe three. What if we don’t have that long?” The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System was the largest database of its type in the world. It was also managed by the FBI, and Zach had no clue where his case fit into the thousands of others looking for information from the system. Julie’s case certainly wasn’t at the top of their list, even if she was at the top of his.

  “What if the dirtbag is still out there? How are you going to keep him from coming after her?”

  “That’s why I called the best writer in the state.”

  She laughed. “Don’t go blowin’ smoke, young man.”

  “Hey, if anyone could write up a story that conveniently left out the details of her location without making it sound like that’s exactly what they’d done, it’s you.”

  After another chuckle, she agreed to meet Julie the next day. They hung up, but the tightness in his gut didn’t alleviate.

  He had to find Julie’s real name and her family. Someone had to be looking for this girl. And after at least three days, they would know she was gone. Why hadn’t she shown up among the listed missing yet?

  He flipped on his monitor and the computer hummed to life. The keys on his keyboard clacked as he hammered on them, opening up the missing-persons database for the fifth time since that night in the park. He narrowed the search down by her age—about twenty-five. Except it wasn’t easy to tell under all the scrapes and bruises. He widened it to anyone between the ages of twenty and forty just to be sure he wasn’t missing her. He continued to narrow it down. Female. Caucasian. Long brown hair.

  Well, it had been long when he’d found her. At the hospital they’d chopped off most of the hair in front to get a better look at that gash.

  And those eyes. Enormous and brown like a doe’s in spring.

  The database searched its information, pulling from every corner of the state. Only two names reported missing within the past month popped up. AnnaBeth Doorsey, a thirty-nine-year-old mother of five from Duluth, and Elsie Sorenson, a twenty-one-year-old college student from Saint Paul.

  Neither one looked like Julie.

  Slamming his hand on his desk, he almost missed the sound of his name ringing through the bull pen. “Jones!”

  He jerked out of his thoughts to stare at Lucas Ramirez, the new guy in Homicide. “What’s up?”

  “The chief got a call today from the U.S. Marshals Service, asking if we had any reports of missing kids or babies.”

  Zach stared at the man, squinting as he tried to shift his thoughts from the image of Julie in his mind. “Babies?”

  “Yeah.” Ramirez looked at his notepad and read from his scrawls there. “We don’t have any active cases involving unidentified or missing kids right now, but the marshal who called, Serena Summers, said that they think there might be a Minneapolis connection to a witness they’re protecting.”

  “Not that I know.” Shaking his head, Zach turned back to the only two women who matched his search but didn’t match his Julie. And then he added over his shoulder, “Any word on those security camera videos I requested?”

  “Oh,
yeah. I got those.”

  Zach jumped to his feet and took the discs from the younger man. “You look at these yet?”

  “Just this one. From out in front of Jack and Julie’s.” Hope bubbled in his chest. Until Ramirez popped it. “Nothing on it from the night of the attack. The manager said the camera is on a rotating recording system. It was recording the back loading docks during the night delivery after ten.”

  Perfect. “What else did you get?”

  “A few more restaurants, an ATM camera and the street camera from the corner of Thomas and Gavel.”

  Zach kept the videos from two restaurants and the street camera and handed the others back to the other detective. “Do you have time to take a look at these?”

  “Are you just looking for the dark-haired girl who was attacked?”

  “Yes. And anything else that seems unusual or out of place.”

  “Sure.” Ramirez sat back down at his desk, sticking the first disc into his computer.

  Zach matched his motions, settling in to watch the silent black-and-white clips. The first two videos showed nothing but the evening crowd, bustling in and out of popular restaurants near the park. The gaggle of men and women jumbled together and made any specific face or feature indistinguishable. Even when he slowed the images all the way down, he couldn’t make out anything beyond gender.

  After two hours, his eyes burned and head throbbed from staring so intently at his screen, hoping to see something he wasn’t even sure was there. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he got up and walked to the water fountain. Bending over, he took several long sips, then stretched his back as he returned to his upright position.

  “You find anything?” he said as he strolled by Ramirez’s desk.

  “Nope. Nothing yet.”

  Zach nodded to show he’d heard the response, but his mind was already miles away in an almost deserted park. Maybe this was just a futile search.

  He’d hit roadblocks in other cases, but he’d never felt quite so defeated so early into an investigation.

  He’d just never had the image of such beautiful eyes seared in his mind, eyes that begged for his help. And the way she grabbed for his hand at the hospital, afraid he wouldn’t return, clutched at his heart.