Never Look Back

by Mary Burton

  Her mind tumbled back to before the Shepards had adopted her. To the faint outline of a similar stuffed furry companion. She could not say if it had been a dog, cat, or bear, but she knew it had been soft and that when she’d held it close to her nose, the smell had given her comfort.

  She rolled her shoulders and head from side to side and practiced a smile before she opened the door to the private room. The overhead light was dim and the shades drawn. A television mounted on the wall broadcast an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. The girl lay in the middle of the bed, her eyes closed. Dark hair framed her small olive-skinned face. Small lips were pursed, and her brow was wrinkled into a frown.

  Melina struggled with the same anger that always threatened to get the better of her when she worked a case involving a child. It was one thing for her to have her abandonment issues. The damage had been done, and she had found a way to make it work for her. But that did not mean every kid had a coping mechanism and everything was going to be all right. She looked forward to meeting the driver of the car and locking his or her ass up.

  She pulled up a chair beside the bed as Ramsey stepped back into the shadows. She took the little girl’s hand in hers and for several seconds said nothing as she simply sat.

  The girl’s eyes began to roll back and forth under her closed lids, and her body began to twitch. She was dreaming, and judging by the deepening frown on her face, it was not good.

  “Elena,” Melina said softly. “Elena, shhhhh.”

  The girl shook her head, and a soft cry escaped her lips before her eyes popped open and she looked around the dimly lit room. Her gaze was panicked, reminding Melina of a cornered animal.

  “It’s okay, honey.” She heard Ramsey shift, but hold his ground. “You’re safe, Elena. You’re in the hospital.”

  The girl turned toward Melina, her eyes still as her grip tightened around Melina’s fingers. She was a stranger to the child, and in any other circumstance the child might have drawn back. But in this moment, she sensed the child was drowning, scrambling to stay afloat. Melina was her life raft.

  “You’re okay,” Melina said softly.

  The tiny girl was silent, panic turning her liquid-brown eyes brittle. No tears glistened, suggesting this was not the first time she had been left on her own.

  “My name is Melina.” Given the girl’s probable bias against cops, she planned to leave that detail out for now.

  “I want my mom,” the girl whispered.

  “I’m trying to find your mom, but don’t know where to look. What’s her name?”

  Elena’s mouth bunched into a frown.

  “I’m not mad at your mom. I just want to find her,” she said.

  Tears now welled in the girl’s eyes, and several spilled down her cheeks. “You can’t find my mom.”

  “I’m pretty good at finding people.” She held up the stuffed dog. “I found this guy.”

  “Petey!” Elena released Melina’s fingers and grabbed the dog, closing her eyes as she held the toy close.

  “I found Petey,” Melina repeated. “Help me find your mother.”

  “You can’t,” she whispered. She hugged the dog close, burying her nose in the soft fur.

  “Why not?”

  Silence stretched. Melina could feel the girl’s tension, as well as Ramsey’s behind her. The child sensed the agent had suspicions about her mother’s fate.

  “Why can’t I find your mother?” Melina asked.

  The girl didn’t open her eyes, and when she spoke, her voice was so faint it was hard to understand her. “My mom is dead.”

  It was Melina’s turn to be silent for a moment as she digested the words and juxtaposed them against the image of the glass pickle jar and its ghoulish contents. “Honey, what is your mother’s name?”

  “Christina.”

  “And where did your mommy live?”

  “California.” That tracked with the plates on the car.

  “Where in California?”

  “1040 Litton Lane, Imperial Beach, California. 619-555-1212.”

  “That’s your home address and phone number?” She quickly scribbled down the information.

  “Yes. Mama made me learn it.”

  “That’s very smart of you to remember. When did your mom pass away?”

  “On my birthday.”

  “When’s your birthday?”

  “August twenty-two.”

  “That was a couple of days ago,” Melina said. “What happened to your mom, honey?”

  “She never woke up that morning.”

  “Why not?”

  “BB said it was the needle in her arm. It would make her sleep forever.”

  “Who’s BB?”

  “My friend.”

  “Was BB driving the car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was BB in a hurry to get somewhere?”

  “She was mad.”

  “About what?”

  “Sonny yelled at her. She yelled back. Mama always said don’t make BB mad.”

  “What does BB look like?”

  “I dunno. Like BB.”

  “Does she have blond or brown hair?” Melina asked.

  “Blond. But it’s black on top.”

  Melina continued with more questions until she had a fuzzy profile of a middle-aged woman with bleached-blond hair and a taste for fast cars and flashy clothes. “Who is Sonny?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is Sonny a boy or girl?”

  “A boy.”

  “Did he seem to know BB?”

  “Sonny is her friend.”

  “Was Sonny in the car when it crashed?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know Sonny’s last name? I’d like to call someone that knows you or BB.”

  “Don’t call Sonny. He’s scary.”

  Her lips flattened into a small grim line, and whatever sense of calm the girl had started to enjoy vanished. “That’s okay. We won’t call Sonny. I promise.”

  The girl shook her head. “Promises break.”

  “Not mine.” Melina’s clear, direct tone did not allay the child’s fear. “Where is BB?”

  “She had to run for help. She told me not to worry and she would be back.” The girl twisted the fur on the dog’s floppy ear.

  “Do you know why the car wrecked?”

  “BB was driving really fast.”

  “Did she try to stop?” Melina asked.

  “I dunno. We just hit something hard.”

  Who left a kid in a wrecked car? BB sure as hell had not called the cops or paramedics. Melina smiled at the girl. “BB was right. Help did come. She sent me.”

  The girl studied her, and though there was no hint of a smile, some of the tension straining her face eased.

  “I’m tired. I want to go home.”

  “I’ll find BB, okay?”

  The girl nodded.

  “Until I do, you stay here with Petey and watch SpongeBob.”

  “Will you come back?” Skepticism and hope both flashed in the young gaze.

  “I will be back. And remember, Elena, I always keep my promises.”

  The little girl’s lip stuck out and trembled. “I don’t believe you.”

  Six-year-olds should not know that kind of distrust. But too many did. Melina tugged off her watch and handed it to the girl. “Keep this for me, and you can give it to me when I get back.”

  “It’s mine?”

  “Until I get back. Then I’ll need it.”

  Elena traced the clock’s face with her small index finger. “I’m going to keep it if you don’t come back.”

  At this stage, she did not want to ask the child about the jar of severed fingers. If the forensic team and medical examiner couldn’t tell her more, then she might have to ask the child about them. “I know. You’re a smart girl. But I’ll be back tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  Melina patted the girl on the hand, smiling even as she pushed back fresh waves of anger and frust
ration. She rose, and as she turned, the girl grabbed her hand.

  “See you soon, Elena,” Melina said.

  As she moved closer to the door, Ramsey ducked out of the room and waited for her in the hallway.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’ll be better when I get my hands on BB and Sonny.” She lived for the moment when she could lock handcuffs around the wrists of scumbags like them.

  Melina strode to the floor’s station and asked for Elena’s doctor to be paged. She and Ramsey waited less than a minute before a woman dressed in scrubs appeared. In her early thirties, she wore her blond hair in a french braid that accentuated a strong jaw. Wire-rimmed glasses magnified green eyes reflecting annoyance and fatigue.

  The doctor crossed to Melina and Ramsey. “I’m Dr. Savannah Lawrence. I’m Elena’s doctor.”

  Ramsey extended his hand and introduced himself. Melina followed suit. “Can you give us an update on the girl’s health?” he asked.

  “She sustained a contusion on her chest, but it was likely caused by the seat belt at the time of impact. MRI showed no head or back injuries.”

  “What about signs of sexual assault?” Melina asked.

  Anger climbed up Dr. Lawrence’s face, bringing color to an otherwise pale complexion. “I did examine her. From what I can see, she’s never been sexually active.”

  She hoped the doctor’s assessment was totally correct, and they had gotten to the girl in time.

  “The police forensic technician came by earlier and took her fingerprints. Do you know more about the girl’s identity?” Dr. Lawrence asked.

  “The prints are still being processed,” Ramsey said. “As soon as we do, we’ll let you know.”

  Dr. Lawrence shook her head. “She’s a sweet kid.”

  “At that age, they all are, or would be if they had a decent parent or guardian.” Melina recalled her mother’s stories about how she had been holy hell in the months after her adoption. It was as if she had been testing her parents’ promise to raise her.

  “I can keep her here a couple more days, but the hospital will discharge her once she’s medically cleared. They’ll need the bed. I’ve already placed a call to social services.”

  “Understood.” Melina handed Dr. Lawrence a business card. “But do me a favor and don’t move the girl without calling me first.”

  The doctor read the card and carefully tucked it in her breast pocket. “Of course.”

  It was not lost on Melina that Elena’s story was so similar to her own. She acknowledged her instant dislike of BB and would find a way to lock it away. When the time came to interview BB, she needed to maintain distance and perspective. Her emotions could play no role in the interrogation.

  After the doctor left, Melina and Ramsey walked to the elevators. He reached for his phone. “I’ll text the FBI office and see if we can find the address the child gave us. I’ll also have them search for the child’s birth certificate and the mother’s death certificate. We might get lucky.”

  Melina glanced at her wrist and remembered she’d left her watch with Elena. She fished out her phone and checked the time. “It’s almost six thirty. The car BB was driving will be towed to the TBI forensic bay this evening and gone over tonight, but I’m not expecting much of a preliminary report until at least tomorrow morning.”

  “The prints from the severed fingers should be processed fairly quickly,” Ramsey said, “but may take a little longer.”

  The medical examiner would feed the usable prints into the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS. From there they would be cross-checked against a database containing millions of prints in a matter of hours.

  “I have a couple of hours of daylight, so I’m headed back to the crash site to start knocking on doors. I’ll also call Sarah and see if any of the girls on the street have any news about our guy.”

  “Understood. When I have an ID on the victims, I’ll contact you,” Ramsey said.

  “Thanks.” Absently, she rubbed her bare wrist adorned only by the faint tan line left by her watch.

  No time for a quick session at the gym tonight, which was too bad. Nothing like driving a roundhouse kick into a punching bag to work shit out.

  “Why’d you give your watch to that child?” Ramsey asked. “It looked expensive.”

  Her mother normally would not have been thrilled to know she had handed off her college graduation present. But given the circumstances, she’d understand. “Trust always comes with a risk.”

  A ghost of a smile tipped the edges of his lips, but it looked rusty. The deep lines around his mouth and the crow’s-feet feathering from the corners of his eyes suggested frowning was his default expression. “You don’t strike me as the trusting soul.”

  That coaxed the day’s first and likely only real smile. “Oh, I’m not. I’d hate to lose that watch, but in the big picture, it’s a small risk.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Monday, August 24, 7:00 p.m.

  By the time Melina left the hospital, her stomach was grumbling, and she was craving a burger and fries. Some cops drank when they were stressed. Others smoked. Some worked out. Breaking a sweat did wonders for her, and it was her go-to vice. But when she could not work out, she ate. Thankfully, her fast metabolism burned through the high-fat calories found in a cop’s standard takeout meal. Her metabolism still worried her mother, who warned Melina that one day she would not be able to wolf down a second burger or have a late-night bowl of ice cream.

  Today it was a burger, fries, and a vanilla shake from a drive-through. She flattened the burger’s wrapper in her lap, balancing the burger between her thighs as she drove to the crash site. She alternated sips of the shake with bites of burger without a second thought. Fifty percent of her intake was consumed on the go. A meal at a table with no interruptions was a thing to be cherished. At least this grub was warm and did not come from a vending machine.

  She had polished off the burger and sucked on the straw—always important to end the meal on a sweet note—as she pulled onto the correct side of Cox Road.

  Ramsey had made a wrong turn and ended up on the other side. Had BB done the same, but was traveling too fast?

  She drove to the crash site. The car had been towed away, and all that remained were the red flares that had burned down to black ash. She shut off the car and stepped outside.

  The air was thick with a coiling humidity, and the evening sun still tipped the mercury well over ninety degrees. The summer heat in Nashville could be brutal. Most visitors pictured the cooler temperatures of the Smoky Mountains, which were a couple of hours east.

  She shrugged off her jacket and tossed it on her driver’s seat before locking the car door. The fresh strand of yellow crime scene tape stood still in the motionless air.

  She ducked under the tape and looked again for skid marks. There appeared to be none. BB had been rushing. Maybe worried about her encounter with Sonny? Had she been talking on the phone? Yelling at Elena? Distracted by the jar in the trunk? Whatever was going through her mind, she had not seen what was coming.

  She reached the edge of the woods and looked back. Twenty feet away she spotted very faint tire marks. Melina walked heel to toe along the length of the faint skid mark. Less than ten feet long. This had not been a frantic stop.

  She studied the distance to the woods. It was maybe twenty feet. There were equations that could determine how fast the car had been traveling based on the distance and the damage to the car.

  Mr. Brewer, her ninth-grade math teacher, had always warned her that there were real-world applications for algebra and geometry. His terse you-will-be-sorry lectures had not motivated her beyond a B minus, but now she might concede she owed the guy an apology.

  She got in her car, pulled around, and nosed the front of her car toward the marks. Guessing that BB might have been rushing, she punched the gas until her speed reached forty miles an hour. When she reached the existing tire marks, she hit her brakes, stopped.r />
  She parked her car on the side of the road, got out, and walked to the tire impression she had made. Next, she studied the tread left presumably by BB. They were almost identical, suggesting BB had been traveling at about forty miles an hour. It was not an excessive amount of speed, and she had stopped well short of the woods. There was no way she could not have seen the dead end.

  Maybe she had been spooked. Maybe she was being followed and knew she could not turn back. Cornered, she had chanced driving through the woods, never expecting the tree trunk.

  She looked down the tree-lined street to the houses. Had BB been visiting someone on the street?

  She walked to the end of the skid marks and nudged the burned-out police flare with the tip of her boot. She followed the tire marks off the road into tall grass and surrounding stumps. From the road, she could understand why someone desperate to get away would try to cross it when the other side was visible one hundred feet away.

  Pushing through waist-high grass and scrub, she followed the tent markers left by the forensic tech and trailing BB’s escape. Sweat collected between her breasts and shoulder blades. She shoved up her sleeves and kept walking.

  It took almost a minute before she reached the final yellow marker. She found herself standing on the cul-de-sac where Ramsey had dead-ended earlier. This street, like the one on the other side, cut through a middle-class neighborhood made up of small clapboard homes.

  Unless someone had seen BB running or a security camera had picked up her escape, she was in the wind.

  Time to knock on doors. She picked the first house on the right. There was a blue Chevrolet parked in the driveway. The house was one level and had an exterior porch running its length. There was a planter filled with bright-yellow pansies. Both the yard and house were well cared for. The porch was swept and the windows clean. This person was meticulous, which made them a better witness candidate. She rang the bell.

  Inside the house, the steady clip of footsteps drew closer before the door snapped open. The woman standing on the other side of the screened door appeared to be in her late sixties. She wore a floral sleeveless dress, and her gray hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail.

  “May I help you?” The woman’s rusty voice was laced with a deep Tennessee drawl.