by B. J Daniels
She felt dread settle in the pit of her stomach. Something was wrong. She knew she should stop the police officer now, not answer any more of his questions. But she desperately wanted to know why he was asking them, why his manner was even more suspicious than it had been earlier. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“Your husband said he not only saw you last night, but that the two of you argued. When you left, he said, you were threatening to kill someone.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she snapped. “You don’t know Marc. He…” She thought of something Gillian had once said about Marc. He likes drama in his life. It’s his drug of choice. He gets high on it. And when he doesn’t have enough drama, he makes it. Or forces you to.
“Marc overreacts sometimes,” she said simply.
“Have you been under the care of a psychiatrist?”
“No, I mean, I was but I stopped going.”
“Mrs. Collins, did you purposely drive your car into the lake last night?”
“Of course not!”
“Were you even in the car when it went into the lake?” he asked, sounding aggravated with her.
She felt close to tears. “Why would I lie about something like that?”
“You tell me.”
She couldn’t believe this was happening.
“Maybe for the same reason you threatened to kill someone? To get your husband’s attention?”
She wanted to argue that even if she was stupid enough to pull a stunt like that, she no longer cared enough about Marc to even threaten to kill herself—let alone try. Nor did she believe Marc would care.
That thought rang so true she was momentarily stunned by it. “If you’re telling the truth, Mrs. Collins, then you don’t remember what you did last night, isn’t that right?” the cop asked.
She blinked, focusing again on him and his question before she slowly nodded. She’d lost the hours before she’d swerved to miss the deer. Just as she’d lost the reason she was on that highway to begin with.
And the truth was, in the state she’d been in since coming out of the coma, she couldn’t swear to what she might have done. Maybe she had tried to kill herself last night. But she had to wonder what would have pushed her to that point.
“I suppose you also don’t remember being so upset that you forgot about getting a speeding ticket about thirty miles outside of Shadow Lake.”
She shook her head.
“Or telling Dr. Brubaker to look for your son?” The cop sounded angry.
“No.” A headache was building. “I told you. I was confused when I first woke up. Everything I’ve told you is the truth.”
“Why didn’t you tell us, Mrs. Collins, that your son Tyler is dead?” Walker snapped. “That he was killed eight months ago in a hit-and-run accident. The same one that left you in a coma.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
DR. BRUBAKER’S GAZE shot to Anna’s at the cop’s words. The sympathy Anna saw in his eyes made her want to weep. She felt awash in confusion, her emotions running too high.
“Why were you driving to Shadow Lake, Mrs. Collins?” Walker asked.
“I don’t know.” She heard the hysteria rising in her voice again and tried to tamp it back down, but it was impossible.
“It’s her head injury, Walker,” the doctor said quietly. “The loss of memory is normal. It’s a form of retrograde amnesia. Memory of the traumatic event is not the only thing lost, but often minutes or even hours leading up to the event.”
She looked at the doctor with gratitude. Clearly Officer Walker didn’t believe her memory loss. Or anything else she’d told him.
The cop glanced at the doctor, then at her, before taking out his notebook. After a moment, he removed the pencil from behind his ear and held it over the paper. His gaze rose again to hers.
“You have a global-tracking device in your car, Mrs. Collins?”
She frowned. “Yes,” she said hesitantly.
“When your car went off the road and the air bag deployed, a call went out to the police station here. I talked to your in-car system provider. It seems your last communication to them was a request for a route from Seattle to Shadow Lake.”
This town had been her destination? “I have no idea why I would have done that.” She could hear the apprehension in her voice. “As far as I can remember, I’ve never even heard of Shadow Lake before.”
“There was a suitcase in the backseat of your car,” he said.
A suitcase? She had a flicker of memory and saw herself packing furiously. “Maybe I was going on a short vacation.” But the clothes hanging in the hospital room closet certainly didn’t go with that theory. She feared what she would find in her suitcase.
“It’s a little early for a vacation in Shadow Lake,” the cop said. “Most of the motels and cabins aren’t even open yet.”
She sighed, exasperated by his inability to accept that she couldn’t remember. “How many times do I have to tell you I don’t know?”
“You also asked for directions to the Shadow Lake Police Department,” Walker said.
Out of the corner of her eye, Anna saw Dr. Brubaker swing his attention to the cop in surprise.
Anna tried not to let her own shock show. She couldn’t imagine any reason she would be interested in where the police department was located in Shadow Lake. Maybe someone had programmed her car. Even as she thought it, she knew how ludicrous that sounded.
For some reason she’d come to Shadow Lake—and thought she was going to need the police.
“I have no idea why I did any of those things. Please, tell me why you’re asking me all these questions.”
“Why don’t you tell me, Mrs. Collins?” Walker said. “Why drive up here in the middle of the night?”
“Don’t you think I would tell you if I knew?” Anna said, hearing the panic in her voice. “None of this makes any sense to me. You act as if I’m hiding something from you. I’m telling you everything I know.”
“But you didn’t tell us about your son,” he said.
“I think we should give Mrs. Collins a chance to rest,” Dr. Brubaker said.
“Just one more question,” Walker said, without looking at the doctor. His eyes were locked on Anna. “I want to hear about this person who you say was in the lake with you.”
“Not with me. In the water outside the car.” She swallowed, afraid that when she told him what she’d seen, he really would believe her a liar. She took a breath and let it out slowly, reassuring herself that she’d seen the man. He had to have saved her life. How else had she gotten out of the car?
Maybe more important, the man would be able to back up her story. He must have seen her lose control of the car and go into the lake. He could prove she was telling the truth.
“I saw a man at my side window,” she said, knowing her story would be met with more than skepticism. “I couldn’t get my seat belt to release. I thought I was going to drown.”
The cop was waiting patiently.
“The car was upside down and I was under the water. I remember thinking I couldn’t hold my breath any longer. I heard what sounded like someone tap on my side window. I turned and…” She faltered. “I saw a face.”
“A face?” Walker asked.
“It was a man’s face. He had black hair that floated around his face and—” She grimaced. “His face was badly scarred.” She turned her own face away for a moment, jarred by the memory of the man’s monsterlike appearance. She was reminded of her own scar, her own shame that went with it.
“Scarred how?” Walker asked, his voice sounding oddly strained.
Her fingers trembling, Anna touched her face, starting at just below her left eye and swinging over the bridge of her nose and down under her right eye across her cheek to her jawline.
“And his eyes,” she added quickly. “I’d almost forgotten about them. They were a pale smoky gray reminding me of a wolf’s.” She saw the doctor exchange a look with Walker.
“You know someone with a scar
like that?” she said. “It’s a small town. If he’s from here—”
“You’re telling me that you saw all of this on the bottom of the lake in the dark,” Walker demanded, now clearly angry.
“There was a light coming from somewhere,” she said, uncertain, though. “Maybe he had a flashlight or I saw him somehow in the glow of my car’s headlights. But I saw him.” She had, hadn’t she? She couldn’t make something like that up.
Obviously the cop thought her capable of making up just about anything—including being in the car at the bottom of the lake.
Her fingers went to her scar again. She traced its path nervously as she caught another exchanged look between the two men.
“I saw a badly scarred man under the water. He saved my life,” she said as she looked from the cop to Dr. Brubaker and back, confused by their reactions. “Don’t you see? The seat belt was jammed. He must have gotten me out and brought me here. I can’t imagine how else I survived. If you find him, he’ll tell you—”
Walker let out a curse. His face was crimson, his brown eyes wild with anger and something she’d hadn’t seen in them before—pain.
The doctor clasped a hand on the cop’s arm. “Walker, I need a word with you in the hall, now, please.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” Anna demanded, her voice rising as high as her emotions again. “You keep looking at each other. Do you know this man I described? Is that it? If you just find him, he’ll tell you—”
“Please, Mrs. Collins,” Dr. Brubaker said as he forcibly ushered the cop out the door. “Let me speak to Officer Walker a moment and I will be back.”
Before the door closed, Anna saw the brief heated exchange before the cop said something that silenced Dr. Brubaker. The doctor glanced back at her. She saw his expression as the door swung shut.
Fear made her fingers tremble as she reached for the phone and tried her friend Gillian’s number again. She needed more than a friend now. She had a bad feeling she needed a lawyer.
And she had no idea why.
Or why Marc would tell the police she’d been threatening to kill someone last night.
Gillian didn’t answer her cell phone this time, either. Anna left a message to call the Shadow Lake Hospital in Shadow Lake. “It’s urgent.”
When she tried Gillian’s office, she was told that her friend had taken a few days off. She’d left no forwarding number. Odd. Gillian hadn’t mentioned anything about it when they’d had lunch. Nor was it like Gillian to take any time off. Anna couldn’t remember the last time her friend had gone on vacation.
Something was terribly wrong.
WALKER ONLY MADE IT AS far as his patrol car. He sat in the darkness, his head swimming, anger eating him up inside. All he wanted to do was storm back into the hospital and make that woman tell him the truth.
She’d lied.
But for the life of him, he couldn’t think of any reason she would do that.
He ran a hand over his face.
“You need to get control of yourself,” Dr. Brubaker had told him as he’d led him down the hallway away from Anna Collins’s hospital room.
“You heard her in there. She’s lying.”
“You don’t really believe that woman in there killed anyone last night, do you?” Doc had demanded.
“Her husband seems to think she might have.”
“Go home. Get some rest. You aren’t thinking clearly. Give her some time to get her memory back. I’m sure all of this can be sorted out.”
Walker had seen the way Doc was with the young woman. Protective, as if she were his own daughter. Who wasn’t thinking clearly? he’d wanted to demand, but he’d had the good sense to keep his mouth shut and get out of the hospital before he did something he’d regret.
He didn’t need Doc to tell him that he was running on emotion right now. A lot of loss of his own.
Maybe he’d pick up a six-pack and drop by Billy’s. He went off shift over an hour ago.
Walker dialed the police chief’s cell. It rang four times before Rob finally picked up.
“Yeah?”
Nash sounded funny.
“Sorry to bother you, but I thought I should give you a headsup on this case I got last night around midnight,” Walker said.
“The car that went into the lake,” Chief Nash said.
“Yeah.” He wondered how the chief had heard about it. “Anyway, I suspect it was an attempted suicide. The woman’s over at the hospital. Doc seems to think she’s going to be fine. But she swears she can’t remember a thing including an argument with her husband when she threatened to kill someone.”
“People make threats all the time, you know that,” Nash said.
“Yeah. I just have a gut feeling about this one,” Walker said, a little thrown by the chief’s response. Nash always had questions, convinced the answers were always in the details. “How are things over in Pilot’s Cove?”
“Fine. I got through sooner than I thought. I’m on my way back to town now.”
“Anything you need help on?” Walker asked, still wondering why Nash had let him believe it had something to do with the Pilot’s Cove Police Department.
“No.”
“We tried to get the car out, but Mac had to find a larger, newer tow truck,” Walker said, just for something to say since clearly the chief wasn’t interested. “Once we get the car out, maybe we’ll know more.”
“Sounds like you have everything under control. So if there’s no problem…”
He bristled at the chief’s irritation. No problem except for who she said saved her life last night. The chief was probably just tired and trying to get home to his young new wife. “I got it covered.”
“Good.”
Walker hung up, wondering what the hell was going on with the chief. Something, that was for damned sure. Nash had sounded like he had more important things on his mind. Like what? Walker wondered.
The chief’s job had been all that Rob Nash had had for so many years Walker couldn’t imagine the old man giving it up. But maybe the position would be coming open. And sooner than Walker had even hoped.
ANNA HAD NEVER FELT SO alone. Everyone in her life had abandoned her. Even Gillian, the one person she’d depended on the most since Tyler’s death. She’d finally reached rock bottom. What did it matter if the cop didn’t believe her story? Nothing mattered. It hadn’t from the moment she’d awakened to find that her son was dead.
But Anna found herself getting angry. She was tired of just lying down and taking it. Then she picked up the phone and called Marc’s number, planning to demand to know why he had told Officer Walker all those awful things about her—and find out what she’d done last night to make him say them.
But when Marc’s voice mail came up, she hung up and dialed Mary Ellen back.
“Anna.” Mary Ellen sounded relieved to hear her voice. “Where are you? I tried to call you back—”
“Tell me why Marc didn’t go through with the divorce.” Anna felt anger bubble up inside her. “He’s the one who wanted it so badly.”
“You don’t know how hard it’s been on him,” Mary Ellen said. “For six long months he didn’t know whether or not you’d ever wake up. He’d already lost his son—”
“I lost my son, too,” she interrupted.
“Yes, but Marc had months of not knowing if he was going to lose you, too. Then when you came out of the coma and didn’t even know what had happened…”
Anna couldn’t help but bristle at the words. She’d tried so hard to remember the hit-and-run accident that had taken Tyler and nearly killed her as well. The driver of the car that had hit her and her son was never apprehended because Anna couldn’t provide a description. With what little the police had to go on, they hadn’t been able to find out who had hit her car, killing her son and putting her in a coma. She’d never known if she had been somehow partly responsible.
“Marc had to relive it all again with you,” Mary Ellen was saying. “He was dealin
g with all of it and then…”
Yes, Anna had come back from the darkness to make Marc’s life even harder. She’d often gotten the impression he’d wished she’d died along with Tyler at the scene.
“I think Marc thought divorce would put an end to the pain by distancing himself from you and the memories,” Mary Ellen said.
Anna sniffed and wiped her eyes. She wasn’t insensitive to Marc’s pain. But she had also overheard him question the doctor about whether or not it was possible she’d stayed in the coma because she couldn’t face the truth. “I know it was harder on him than it was on me.”
“But you can put things back together again,” Mary Ellen said brightly. “That’s really what Marc wants. To start over, no more secrets between the two of you.”
Anna had wanted that, too. She just hadn’t expected Marc wanting to come back to her to be so bittersweet.
“He said he told me all of this last night?” Anna asked.
Silence, then Mary Ellen said hesitantly, “Yes. Are you saying he didn’t?”
Had Marc told her? Then why had she taken off to Shadow Lake alone?
Anna had a flash of memory. A nasty argument. Had it been last night? She couldn’t be sure.
Maybe it was last night, because she had a strong feeling that something had happened. Last night. And while she was in a coma. Something that Marc and her friends were keeping from her.
Marc’s change of heart made her suspicious, given what he’d told the Shadow Lake police. Not that she was about to share that with Mary Ellen.
She’d learned that Marc was very deliberate in his decisions. Maybe that was why the outcome always benefited him the most.
If Marc had told her last night that he hadn’t gone through with the divorce, he would have been expecting her to fall to her knees in gratitude. So maybe the argument she vaguely recalled had been last night, because she doubted she’d indulged him in that fantasy.
In fact, she suspected she hadn’t been even gracious. If anything she would have been angry.
You scare me, Anna.
His words came back to her so clearly that they could have been from last night.
