Unseen

by Nancy Bush

  “You must have told me earlier. I drifted in and out for a while.”

  “I wouldn’t have,” he said positively.

  Something feathered along Gemma’s skin. A cold whisper of awareness. “Maybe I dreamt it and it just happened to be true.”

  He gazed at her a long moment, then pushed out the door.

  I’m a mind reader.

  She rolled that idea around and found she didn’t like it much. But it felt…real.

  Gemma didn’t waste any more time. She found her shoes again and after a quick, horrifying look in the mirror—the whole right side of her face was a technicolor mess—she took a deep breath and prepared herself for an uncertain future.

  She was in the hallway when an orderly holding a wheelchair stopped short. “Ma’am, you need to take a seat. Hospital policy.”

  She suspected it was hospital policy to take her to administration for check out, too, but the orderly did not appear to be someone who would take no for an answer so she perched on the wheelchair, wondering wildly if she could make a break for it when he rolled her near an exit.

  Mind reader, she thought again, and felt decidedly uncomfortable.

  Billy Mendes was lanky and bowlegged, as if he’d just gotten off the ranch. He walked with a kind of cowboy strut as well, though it wasn’t an affectation, more like a natural hip swing to get his bowed legs in line.

  He came inside the ER and shot a look at Lorraine, the battleaxe nurse with the dyed black hair and orange lips, before crossing the waiting room in a couple of big strides and walking up to Will.

  “You the guy lookin’ for me?” he asked. “From the sheriff’s department?”

  “Detective Will Tanninger,” Will acknowledged, and the two men shook hands. They moved toward a section of striped chairs near the window where no one else was sitting at the moment.

  Mendes kept standing, his hands shoved in his pockets. “You wanna know about the woman who staggered in on Saturday? The one that got out of the silver Camry? I thought the guy who dropped her off was gonna park and come inside and help her, but he never came back. He just drove off and then she just kinda walked from side to side, like she had no balance, y’know? Swaying, like. And then she makes it inside and just crumples to the floor. I came runnin’ from the ambulance.” He waved in the direction of the portico outside the ER. “We were just gettin’ ready to go, but there she was, and I got my ass chewed for that one.” He threw a dark look in Lorraine’s direction. “But hey, we had an accident victim right here. I thought we should help her first.”

  “It delayed you from making your call?”

  “Not much, it didn’t,” he asserted. “Thirty seconds? Lorraine started screamin’ and I helped the woman to lie down flat. She was out cold by then, but breathin’ okay. ER team grabbed her up and Pete and I took off to the accident on Highway 217. One of those nights where everybody smashes up their cars. Couple of fatalities.”

  “So, you saw a man drop her off in a silver Camry?”

  He nodded.

  “It was definitely a man?”

  “Yeah…” He started to sound uncertain.

  “Can you remember why you thought so?”

  Billy looked puzzled for a moment. “I guess ’cause he was drivin’ kinda fast. Not that girls can’t, too, but not so much in a hospital parking lot. He kinda screeched in and then she got out, and then he reached over and pulled the door shut and left. I thought it was weird he didn’t help her when I saw that she couldn’t walk so well. Maybe it was a chick. Since she didn’t even try to help her friend? But then I thought he or she or whoever was gonna park the car and come back. I don’t know.”

  “Could the driver have come back after you left in the ambulance?”

  “I suppose…you can check with Lorraine…” He grimaced, letting Will know exactly what he thought of that idea.

  “Was there any body damage to the Camry?”

  “Uh…I was lookin’ at the girl, and I just saw the car’s rear end, mostly. Don’t recall any passenger-side damage. Didn’t see the front.”

  Will grilled him some more and learned Gemma had arrived at the hospital in the early evening, just as it was getting dark. If she were the woman who’d run down Edward Letton, that would mean there had been a lot of hours in between the accident and her appearance at Laurelton General.

  There didn’t appear to be anything more to learn from Billy, so Will shook his hand and thanked him for the information, then he turned back to the exit. He was out the door and heading to his department vehicle, when he abruptly changed direction and returned to the hospital, making for the bank of elevators. What was it about Gemma LaPorte that kept him wanting to see her again? Was it just this investigation? The fact that she was an enigma that he couldn’t quit puzzling over? Was it that he both wanted her to be innocent of hit-and-run, and yet somehow hoped she was that avenger? Someone who wanted to rid the world of sick scum no matter what the cost?

  That was the kind of thinking that could get him fired, or worse, he knew. That kind of vigilante philosophy that the bad should be punished without benefit of a trial. That murder, in the name of good, was almost okay.

  He’d seen it a couple of times in his career. Law enforcement officers who, burned out and frustrated, took their job to that next level. Not waiting for the judicial system to pass its verdict. Deciding to wipe out the offender first and ask forgiveness later.

  Only there was no forgiveness. There was prosecution and jail time.

  But Will didn’t think he had burned out. He didn’t truly condone Gemma’s behavior. Vigilantism was not to be tolerated at any level. It was just that inwardly—and this Will would never admit to anyone—he applauded her courage and ability to act.

  The elevator took him to the fourth floor, and when the doors opened he saw Gemma in a wheelchair, being pushed toward the elevators by an orderly. Simultaneously, another elevator’s doors opened. Edward Letton’s wife, Mandy, stepped out and glanced over at Will, whom she’d met briefly in Letton’s room. Then as both sets of elevator doors closed behind them she turned to Gemma, whose bandage had been removed, leaving the splendor of her bruised face and swollen eye for all to see.

  Mandy understood who Gemma was instantly. “You…” she said tautly. “What are you doing on my husband’s floor?”

  Gemma, who’d seemed locked in her own thoughts, looked blankly at Mandy.

  “This is the fourth floor,” Will told Mandy. “Your husband’s on five, but he’s not allowed visitors. You know that.”

  She didn’t even register a word. “You’re the woman who ran him down.”

  Gemma’s eyes widened.

  “Ms. Letton, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Will said, stepping between Gemma and Mandy Letton, whose gaze had zeroed in on Gemma like twin laser beams.

  “I don’t know what kind of monster you are,” Mandy said with a catch in her voice, “but my husband’s barely alive because of you! Were you drinking? On drugs? Or was this some kind of thrill kill! Luckily, you didn’t succeed. He’s still alive and he’s going to make it.”

  Gemma’s gaze turned from Mandy to Will. He could read the questions in her eyes: Why didn’t Letton’s wife know what Letton had been about to do? Will would have loved to tell her that members of both the Winslow County Sheriff’s Department and the Laurelton Police Department—the city where Mandy and Edward Letton lived—had tried to explain about the guard at Edward Letton’s door, but Mandy was actively not listening to anything they said that alluded to—or explicitly described—the van and its special chains, cuffs, and restraints.

  “You should be the one with the guard outside your door,” Mandy declared in a shaking voice.

  Gemma’s lips tightened. “I’d choose my words carefully if my husband were a predator.”

  “Wait.” Will put up a hand and blocked Mandy’s view of Gemma and vice versa.

  “You’re the one who started those vicious rumors! I should sue you for assau
lt and slander!”

  “If your husband survives, he’s going to jail,” Gemma stated certainly. “He earned that all by himself.”

  “He’s going to survive. And you’ll be the one going to prison for attempted murder!”

  “Ms. Letton, I’m going to escort you downstairs,” Will said, turning to Gemma’s orderly. “I’ll meet you down there,” he said, actively blocking Mandy from any further progress toward Gemma.

  Gemma was having none of it. She climbed out of the wheelchair and walked the last few steps to the elevator, slamming her palm on the call button of the second elevator. “I’m leaving on my own power. You can tell whoever’s in charge of hospital policy, what they can do with that wheelchair.”

  Mandy Letton tried to get past Will, who kept his body between her and Gemma. He realized he would probably find humor in the situation later on, but in the moment he was aware that, given their own devices, these two women could end up in a physical fight. Stranger things had happened.

  Mandy struggled again to get past Will. The orderly tried to convince Gemma to get back in the wheelchair. Gemma’s elevator car arrived with a bell-like ding. Will watched her get inside and turn to tell the orderly she didn’t want him or the wheelchair anywhere near her, then the elevator doors closed.

  Mandy Letton pushed Will hard in the center of his back. “Damn you. You’re letting her go? She tried to kill my husband!” Hysteria flooded through the anger.

  The orderly said in awe, “You just pushed an officer of the law.”

  Mandy whirled her flash-fury on him. “Shut up. Shut up! Everybody shut up!”

  “Ms. Letton, you need to get control of yourself,” Will warned. He didn’t want to arrest her. Didn’t want this scene to become a deep hole and more fuel for the media on the Letton case.

  Her mouth quivered and her eyes grew hard. When the second elevator arrived, she turned into it blindly and faced to the back. Will and the orderly joined her. Nobody said a word.

  As soon as they hit the street level, Mandy pushed past both Will and the orderly. They watched her hightail it to the parking lot and Will was hot on her heels. If she was looking for Gemma LaPorte, he was going to make sure no physical violence occurred.

  Gemma was nowhere in sight and Will was annoyed. He followed Mandy out to her car, a white compact, and waited under a watery sun as the wind threw a shimmer of rain at him.

  Then he slowly turned around, searching the lot for a glimpse of a woman with straight brown hair whose movements were cautious with the need to keep pain at bay.

  She had no idea how to get home, but she was outside the hospital. In the parking lot in a fitful rain. No purse. No socks. No damn underwear. No funds. No means at all. She couldn’t think of the number of a close friend—for that matter she couldn’t think of the name of a close friend—and her half-baked plan to ask hospital administration to loan her cab fare and add it to her bill, was out the window. She wasn’t going back in there for any reason. Any reason at all.

  She was free, and she intended to stay that way.

  And she was insanely furious at Letton’s deluded wife. Insanely furious. The pounding in her head was rage which was aggravating her injuries.

  Had she tried to kill the man? She hadn’t believed herself capable, but God, she hadn’t expected the depth of her revulsion, the extent of her anger. She wanted to throttle that blonde, pillowy bitch. The woman was all curves and boobs and hips and a mouth that just kept yammering.

  And she was driven by fear, too. Mandy Letton’s threats about Gemma’s possible incarceration had been heard, processed and given her more impetus to get…the…hell…out!

  But now she was stuck. Standing in the gray, late-morning light, a cold breeze throwing rain at her, cutting through her clothes and making her quake like she was stricken with seizures, she scanned the lot for deliverance. She’d used up all her strength just leaving the building. Now she wanted to collapse on the ground and hug herself to contain the little warmth that had followed her outside.

  She heard the footsteps behind her and whipped around, nearly overbalancing herself. She knew before seeing him that Detective Tanninger had followed her. She heard a car turn down the lane, squealing a little as it came too fast, then the detective grabbed her arm and pulled her aside.

  Tanninger grated, “Let’s not make it your day to die. Come here. I’ll drive you wherever you want to go. My car’s over there.” He actually put an arm around her and guided her toward the department-issue car at the end of the row. She could have cried, the warmth and strength of him felt so good. She sensed dimly that she’d been negotiating life on her own for a long, long time, and the support was welcome yet unfamiliar.

  He bundled her inside, grabbing a jacket from the backseat and laying it across her knocking knees. She smelled leather and maybe a hint of aftershave and a whiff of coffee from the forgotten paper cup in the cup holder. He climbed into the driver’s side with a squeak of leather. He switched on the ignition, put the vehicle in gear and eased toward the exit.

  “Quarry?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  And that was all they said until they were away from the hospital and down Highway 26 to just outside of the Quarry city limits, some thirty minutes later. Will drove the patrol car through the city’s downtown area—basically one street with businesses on either side that petered out and turned into rural farmland at the far end. Gemma gazed out the window as they passed Thompson’s Feed & Grain, Century Insurance Co., Pets and More, the Burger Den, and other businesses whose names rippled through her consciousness, familiar and yet it was like she’d entered a parallel universe, everything felt so out of sync. At the west end of the street she saw LuLu’s, a one-story rectangle painted green with white trim with a handicap ramp leading to the front door. Her family’s diner. Now hers. Across the street and facing a different direction was the PickAxe, Quarry’s only tavern and bar. She ran through several remembered moments from each establishment, pictures from her own youth. Yes, she was definitely from this place, although the particulars were still hazy.

  “Am I still going the right direction?” Will asked.

  “Turn on Beverly Way,” Gemma directed. “Go almost to the end. My house is down the lane to the right. The fields back up to the quarry for which the town’s named.”

  “You have acreage?”

  “Farmland…ranchland…my father dabbled in both.” She gazed out the window and thought about Peter LaPorte. She could scarcely visualize him. He’d blended in with the surroundings, a quiet man who seemed content to let his wife run the show. Jean LaPorte had been fiery and intense and opinionated. She’d been the one who’d insisted they adopt Gemma.

  Adoption…

  And suddenly Gemma was hit by a memory so sharp she was surprised she wasn’t cut and left bleeding. She wasn’t even sure the memory was true, or if it had been fed to her so well and so often that she believed it to be real. It didn’t matter. It was part of her history either way.

  She’d been found on a Washington State ferry when she was five or six years old, alone, shivering, freezing cold. She’d been wearing several layers of clothing—one of them being a leather shift that was reminiscent of Native American dress, specifically from the Chinook Indian tribe. The note pinned to her outer jacket said simply, I am Gemma. Take care of me. It was scrawled in a spidery hand, and the law enforcement officials believed she’d been raised by an elderly person from one of the tribes living on the Olympic Peninsula. These tribes were modern-day Native Americans, yet the chemise was very traditional. The authorities believed that Gemma had been deliberately placed on the ferry and abandoned, and though they questioned various groups of people—and also the people on the ferry—all they learned was that a very stooped woman with iron-gray hair in braids, was seen with a girl, maybe Gemma, when they were boarding the ferry. Some felt the elderly woman got off the boat before it sailed. No one was sure. All that was for certain was that Gemma was sitting qu
ietly on a bench when it docked and complaining of a headache.

  And in truth she’d had crippling headaches as long as she could remember. The LaPortes, her adoptive parents, had taken her to doctors who prescribed pain medication, and Gemma had taken this medication most of her life.

  Now, she lifted a hand to the injured side of her face. Yes, there was pain, but it was the pain from physical force. It was not from something inside her head.

  “What?” Will asked, throwing her a look as he turned onto Beverly Way.

  “I just remembered something I’d forgotten.”

  “About the accident?”

  “No.”

  Her adoption had been messy. She had no papers. No record of birth. The process went on for years before she was given proper credentials and therefore a social security number, the one she’d recalled at the hospital. She knew that sometimes she felt like she could almost remember the old woman who’d left her on the ferry. She could smell charred firewood and taste a cornmeal patty of some kind. There were words, too, but they were singsong, like a chant, for her young ears. A nursery tale. Indian lore.

  But where did she fit into all that? There was nothing about her that said Native American. Her eyes were greenish/hazel. Her hair was medium brown. Her skin was white and burned like a son of a gun when she spent too much time in the sun. Will Tanninger’s was far darker than hers. If any part of her was Native American, then its percentage was small for she sported no latent features.

  And why had she been left on the ferry? Why had she been rejected? Was there something about her parentage that had spurned her from their group? Some reason she was tossed out?

  Maybe because she possessed extra unwanted abilities?

  She shivered, then tried to reach back into her consciousness as far as she could. The effort made her head hurt like hell and all she recalled was a plastic hospital mask descending on her face and a sickly, chemical scent. She gagged at the memory.