by Amanda Tru
“Stabbed?” Cosette’s hands instinctively raise to her chest. “I don’t feel anything.”
“That’s because the doctors have pumped you full of pain meds. You’ll feel it by tomorrow, I’ll wager.” Grace sighed. “So, let’s go back to this Josh. Who is he, what were you doing with him tonight, and just how well do you know him?”
“He was going to drive me to Glennallen. He’s from there.”
“You’ve told me that already, Miss Hitz. Now I want you to focus on my questions, all right? Can you do that for me? What is Josh’s last name, and how well do you know him?
“I know him well. We…” Cosette stopped herself. What was she supposed to say? She’d gotten into the truck of a man she’d only met an hour or two earlier?
“Do you have any contact information? An address? Place of work?”
“I have his number,” Cosette answered. “It’s in my cell.”
The Detective pulled out a handheld radio. “Give me a minute,” she told Cosette. “I want to call this in. See if they can pull up his contact info from your phone.”
She stepped outside just as loud footsteps approached from the hall.
“Oh my gosh, are you okay? I knew I shouldn’t have let you go with him. What happened? Are you hurt? Are you going to be all right?”
It took Cosette a moment to connect the face and the voice with a name.
“Missy?”
“It’s me.” She hurried up to Cosette’s bedside. “The cops called me. They saw my number in your phone. Thank God I thought to give it to you. What happened? Did he do this to you? Did they arrest him this time? He’s not going to get away with it, I promise you that. I should never have let you go.”
She was pacing the full length of the hospital room, making Cosette indescribably dizzy in the process.
“Tell me everything,” Missy demanded. “I want to know what he did so we can be sure that this time he lands in jail for good. Thank God you survived. I just knew something like this would happen. I knew it. I’d never have forgiven myself if you died too. Never. I’m so sorry. Will you forgive me?”
Cosette wasn’t quite sure exactly what crime she was supposed to forgive Missy for. Instead of replying, she simply blinked.
“You poor thing.” Missy wiped a stray piece of sweaty hair off Cosette’s forehead. “You look terrible. Not like, you know, ugly terrible. Just in so much pain. Do you hurt? Do you need anything? Is there something I can do? Can I get you a Tylenol or something? This is all my fault. I should have never dropped you off at that diner. But I’m willing to testify. Hand to chest, I’ll do whatever it takes to get that monster behind bars before he can do this to someone else. I’m just so sorry you had to go through this. And to think, I could have stopped it if I just managed to…”
“Do you have a reason to be in here?” Detective Grace strode deliberately into the room and stood with her hands on her hips, staring down at Missy.
“I’m Missy. I’m the one you guys called from Cosette’s cell.”
“Oh. Right.” Grace lowered her hands and pulled out her pen from behind her ear. “Give me just a sec. In fact, could you wait outside for a few more minutes? I’ll have questions for you as soon as I’m done in here.”
Missy hesitated. “Okay, but is she going to be all right? She’s not going to… you know… I’ll never forgive myself if anything bad happens. I mean anything worse than what already has. I feel so bad. She wanted me to drop her off at that diner. I told her it wasn’t a good idea, but she wouldn’t change her mind. I just wish I could have…”
“The hallway, please.” Grace pointed with her pen. “You can answer my questions when we’re done in here.”
Missy looked down sheepishly. “Right. Okay, well…” She took a timid step closer to Cosette’s bedside and leaned down. “You take care of yourself, okay? I’m so glad you weren’t more badly hurt. And I’m so sorry that I didn’t…”
The detective cleared her throat, and Missy straightened up. “Right. I’ll be outside if you need me.”
Grace didn’t turn to watch her go but stared silently at Cosette until the door shut.
“I had my men take a look at your phone,” she said. “They said they couldn’t find anybody in there named Josh. Did you have him listed under a different name in your contacts by any chance?
What? No Josh?
“No, he was listed as Josh. I texted him all the time. We were always talking…” Nothing made sense.
“Well, we’ll have our forensics team take a look,” Grace said, “but until then, I’m afraid the phone’s not going to do us much good. You don’t happen to have his cell number memorized, do you?”
Cosette shook her head.
“Figures,” Grace mumbled. “All right, so here’s what I need you to do. I need you to give me an exact accounting of everywhere you were from yesterday afternoon all the way up until right now. I want to know where you went, what you were doing, who you were doing it with… Don’t leave anything out. I’ll stop you if I have any questions.
“Starting from yesterday afternoon?” Cosette asked.
Grace waited with her pen poised over her notebook. “Starting from yesterday afternoon,” she affirmed.
Cosette glanced at the clock. If she weren’t so drugged up, she could calculate how many hours had passed since she first landed at the Anchorage airport. It felt like weeks had gone by since then.
“I’m ready whenever you are,” Grace stated, her voice flat, her eyes level.
Cosette took a deep breath. She heard her mother’s words in her head again, except this time it wasn’t questioning Cosette’s decision to fly out to Alaska to spend the weekend with someone she hardly knew.
God will always be there to protect you.
Mom was right. Even though Cosette still didn’t understand what was going on, even though her body trembled at the recounting, she told Detective Grace everything.
“So, what you’re saying is you flew to Anchorage to get into a truck with a man you didn’t know at all, and you planned to travel with him two hundred miles back to his hometown?”
Cosette stared at the IV in her hand. When the detective worded it like that, Cosette had to agree that it sounded more than a little rash. Except that wasn’t how it happened. Not really. She did know Josh. She knew he was trustworthy.
Hadn’t the waitress at the diner even confirmed that they were meant to be together? Cosette couldn’t remember Dottie’s exact words but could easily recall how true they rang in her soul.
“Josh would never hurt me.” Cosette wondered how many times she had to tell Grace the exact same thing. She knew it wouldn’t change the detective’s mind. Grace had already decided Cosette was just some young, immature, highly naïve victim, the kind who walked into dangerous situations without a second thought.
“Do you have any guess where this Josh might be? Where he might have gone to hide? Do you think he would head back to Glennallen? Or lay low in the city?”
Cosette wished she could get Grace to understand. Josh wouldn’t have run away when Cosette got attacked. He would have stayed to protect her. He would have been there with her. He would have…
Josh was in trouble. Why couldn’t the detective see that? Grace was busy trying to hunt down Josh as a suspect, but really she should be searching for him as the second victim in this terrible assault.
“You said his truck wasn’t there when the nurse arrived?” Cosette asked.
Grace shook her head. “No truck, and the snow was coming down so hard there weren’t tracks to follow either.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
Grace’s face was long. “It does if you accept the truth that the man you thought you knew was a master criminal. He lured you out here then brutally attacked you…”
Cosette couldn’t listen anymore. She needed to focus. She needed to remember what had happened at that gas station.
She needed to find Josh.
If Detective G
race wasn’t going to do her job and figure out the truth, it was up to Cosette. Think. What had Grace already told her about the case?
A nurse… a woman who called the ambulance provided first aid.
The security cameras were down. Cosette was stabbed. And Josh was missing.
Think, Cosette, think.
But as she tried to figure out what possibly could have happened to her boyfriend, all she could hear was her mother’s dire warnings in her head.
Oh, no.
Her mother.
Cosette made a futile attempt to sit up in bed. “I need to call my parents.”
“We’ve already contacted them. They’re on a flight up this way.”
Cosette didn’t know if Grace’s words made her feel more or less relieved.
“What about the weather?” she asked.
Grace shrugged. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.” Of course, an Anchorage detective would have more important things on her mind than figuring out how a middle-aged couple from Iowa would manage out here in the middle of a snowstorm.
What Grace should be focusing on was figuring out who attacked Cosette with that knife. Once they did, it would lead them to Josh. Where was he? Was he hurt? What if he’d defended Cosette and gotten himself even more gravely injured than she was? What if he was already dead?
No, she couldn’t think like that. She wouldn’t. God wouldn’t have lined up so many random events — her callback for the Alaska-based TV show, her settings changing on her dating app, everything that led to last night when she’d found herself wrapped in Josh’s arms for the first time. Even the waitress at the diner said it was God’s hand guiding and blessing this relationship. He wouldn’t have set all that up just to let Josh get killed the very first night they met.
Would he?
God will always be there to protect you. That’s what Mom always said. That’s what Cosette needed to believe.
She couldn’t give up. She had to keep her focus, had to figure out what really happened at that gas station.
“Hey, you ready for me yet?”
Cosette turned her head at the strange sound at the door. She’d forgotten all about Missy waiting in the hallway.
Detective Grace frowned. “I’ll be finished when I’m done,” she replied tersely. “Please shut the door while we continue our conversation.”
Cosette watched as the detective set a business card on her bedside table. “I’ll be back in a bit to see how you’re doing. If you remember anything else that might be relevant to this case, I want you to call me.”
“Okay.” Cosette leaned her head back on her pillow. She was glad the detective was leaving. Glad for the chance to have a little bit of silence, a little bit of breathing room to think. To figure out what possibly could have happened last night. And hopefully to solve this case before her boyfriend got himself killed.
She imagined how elated she’d feel once she solved the case and picked up her phone to call the detective.
“Wait a minute,” Cosette exclaimed before Grace could leave.
The detective turned around. “Yes?”
“You guys took my cell, remember? How am I supposed to call you?”
Grace stepped toward Cosette’s bedstand and pointed to the corded phone. “It’s called a landline. If you don’t know how to use it, one of the nurses will be able to assist you.”
Cosette let out her breath. She was ready for this meeting to be over.
Before she turned around to go, Detective Grace put her hand on top of Cosette’s for a brief moment. “You focus on getting better,” she said in a tone that was far gentler than Cosette would have expected. “I’m going to figure out where this man is, and you better believe he’s going to pay for what he did to you.”
Cosette thought that with the detective gone, she’d finally have the chance to think. To focus. To figure out what really happened.
What was the last thing she remembered? Stopping for gas, feeling sick…
The problem was that whenever her meds wore off, the pain from her wounds was severe enough, she couldn’t focus on anything else. She had a pump that would drip out more morphine, but it made her brain so foggy all she wanted to do was sleep.
This wasn’t working. She had to grit her teeth, set her mind against the pain, and focus. The pain was nothing but a stumbling block. She needed to save Josh. Needed to prove Detective Grace wrong. She needed to remember last night.
But first, more morphine…
Cosette timed herself, realized there was a period of several minutes where the pain subsided enough she could think about something else but wasn’t so groggy she was halfway to comatose. If she could just make use of that small window of time…
Okay. What did she remember? Josh stopping at the gas station. Snow everywhere. She’d been carsick. Or maybe something else. Wait, had the detective said something about poisoning? Or maybe that was the nurse.
Or was that something Cosette had made up?
It didn’t matter. She was carsick. She wasn’t feeling well. She got out of the truck… and what?
She remembered the feel of the cold snow on her body.
Remembered Josh leaning over her.
Remembered the fiery hot pain…
Oh, the pain. She couldn’t stand it. Didn’t know how a human could survive that intensity. Saw the snow turning scarlet beneath her.
Red blood stains on the perfectly white blanket…
Her moment had passed. Now her current pain clouded out every other thought. She looked at the clock. Looked at the handheld beeper the nurse had given her to dispense her own medicine. Clicked in vain because the machine knew it was too soon since her last dose.
But the machine didn’t know how the muscles around her ribs throbbed and burned. It didn’t know that when the pain got to this level, her entire mind lit up like one giant siren, screaming for relief.
She couldn’t wait another five or ten minutes, or however long it would be before this stupid contraption give her what she needed. What she needed was clarity. Focus. Answers.
But all she felt now was a flood of piercing agony. There were no words, no thoughts, no answers. Just torment.
Torment and waiting.
But her time would come. Eventually, the machine would dole out another drip of reprieve, another tiny chance for Cosette to figure out what was going on. She had to be patient. There was no time, no time at all, but still she’d teach herself to wait.
God will always be there to protect you. Well, if that was the case, then he was there to protect Josh too, wherever he was. Right now, Cosette couldn’t worry about him. Couldn’t even hold the thought of him in her head. Her entire body and brain had one goal — to survive until the machine gave her one small dollop of solace.
She drowned in the wave of pain that toppled her senses and left her lungs breathless, her body certain she was dying. There was nothing to do but wait.
Survive and wait.
Detective Grace did not look happy.
“What can you tell me about Adam Bird?”
Cosette’s entire face was drenched in sweat. She blinked her eyes. Could the detective have picked a more terrible time to barge in here?
Just a few more minutes. Cosette knew that the machine would bring relief in just a few more minutes. Whatever the detective had to say could wait until then.
“What can you tell me about Adam Bird?” Grace repeated sternly.
Cosette hoped her face communicated everything her tongue and mouth refused to say. She was in too much pain. She couldn’t talk, now. This wasn’t the right time.
Grace took a step closer to her bedside. “The woman who stopped in a little bit ago told me that she recognized the man in your profile picture as a man named Adam Bird. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
No, Cosette didn’t understand. The agony was overwhelming. She couldn’t comprehend why the nurses hadn’t come in. Weren’t they worried that Cosette’s body would just give up if sh
e didn’t get relief soon?
“If this lead is correct, if the man you knew as Josh Lawson really is one Adam Bird, then you’ve just stepped into the middle of one of rural Alaska’s biggest unsolved crimes. Is that what you intended to do when you hopped on that plane of yours and flew out here in a snowstorm?”
What was this woman talking about? And why hadn’t the detective called the doctors or nurses in to give Cosette more drugs?
Cosette gripped the remote that controlled the pain meds, gushing with gratitude when she pressed the button with her thumb and heard the tiny drip of solace. Another couple of minutes, and then she could talk to this detective. Answer any of her questions. Any questions at all.
She just had to be patient until the pain dulled a little more…
“Do you know the details of the murder of Dawn Crowley?” the detective asked.
Cosette shook her head. She was so relieved to know that her meds would kick in soon that she found herself able to focus even though the physical pain had yet to subside.
“Dawn Crowley was murdered following a fight with her boyfriend, Adam Bird. According to Dawn’s best friend, the one who identified our suspect for us just now, Dawn had planned to break up with Bird after their high-school graduation. She was found stabbed 26 times with a knife. All the evidence pointed to Bird, who was sentenced but later exonerated. Is any of this sounding familiar?”
“Vaguely,” Cosette answered.
“And this is why you don’t fly halfway across the continent and get into a truck with someone you’ve never met,” Grace mumbled. She turned a page over on her clipboard. “According to my lead, after his exoneration, Adam dropped out of the public eye and has been living under the name of Joshua Lawson for several years now.”
Cosette felt nauseated. Fire and acid throbbed in her chest, in her bones, between her temples. But even more intense than the pain was her sense of dread, of denial, of betrayal.
No, Josh wouldn’t have lied to her. He wouldn’t have been able to keep up such a complicated ruse for such a long time. He couldn’t have.
