Stolen Memories

“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 gave 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.

Shoving his third and final disc into his computer’s player, he sighed. At least this camera, unlike the restaurant cameras, was angled toward the faces of the pedestrians, most of them walking toward their cars parked along Thomas Road. He sped up the video as the time stamp passed the dinner rush and through long periods without anyone using the crosswalk. The clock on the footage showed almost 2200 when a lone figure carrying some sort of case against her chest, with both arms wrapped around it, stopped at the corner.

He pushed his chair back and sat straight up in it before leaning closer to the screen. The figure looked like a woman with dark hair, and as she swung to look over her shoulder, her hair fanned out, long and just a little wavy.

Just about like Julie’s the night that she’d been found.

On the screen, the woman jabbed at the crosswalk button several times, looking behind her twice before she finally ventured out into the road, checking for oncoming traffic from both directions. The light hadn’t changed in her favor, but she still hurried into the street, pausing only to brush something from her cheek into the bag she was carrying.

And then she disappeared from the camera’s view.

He rewound the scene and slowed it to a crawl and zoomed in on her. Frame by frame the figure moved across the street. And then she stopped for a fraction of a second and looked right into the camera.

Julie.

Even without the scrapes and black eye she now sported, there was no doubt this was her.

His stomach lurched. It was their first real clue. But what did it mean? Only that she’d been attacked sometime after ten o’clock that night.

And then she reached for her cheek.

He’d thought it was a hair in her way, but at the slower speed, he could clearly make out the five little fingers and the care with which she tucked the wayward hand back into the blanket in her arms.

“Ramirez? Do you have the number for that contact in the marshals’ office you just told me about?”

“I think so.” Papers rustled on the other desk, but Zach couldn’t tear his gaze away from the woman looking directly into the street camera and carrying what was undoubtedly a baby.

* * *

Julie popped a piece of melon into her mouth, set her fork back on her dinner tray and picked up the newspaper for the tenth time, staring hard at the picture on the front of the section. Who was the woman gazing back at her?

She knew that it was her own likeness. After all, Tabby Guster had taken the photo when she’d stopped by the day before. Zach had told her this could help them identify her and begin to put the pieces of her life back together. She’d been only too eager to agree.

But now that she stared at the square chin, full lips, brown eyes and pixie cut that she didn’t recognize, it tore at her insides.

How could she not even know her own features? How could they be so foreign when they were literally at the tip of her nose?

With a finger she traced the short hair in the photograph then touched the real hair at her temple. The nurse said they’d cut off a lot of it that first night. But Julie didn’t have anything to compare it to.

The disposable cell phone that Zach had left with her let out a low hum as it scooted across the table at her bedside. Setting the paper down, she scooped it up. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Zach.”

“Hi.” She twisted to catch a glimpse of the clock on the adjacent wall. It was after eleven. “Are you still on duty?”

“No. Why?”

“Oh. It’s just kind of late—”

He sucked in a sharp bite of air. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”

“No. Not at all. I was just— I’m just looking at the article in the paper. Again.” Oh, why did she add that? She sounded like she was so interested in herself that she couldn’t stop reading about the woman without her memory.

“It’s a good article.” He paused for a long time, but she could tell he wanted to say more. Finally he filled it in. “It’s a pretty picture.”

Where her self-berating had just been, warmth filled her chest at his compliment. And with it a bit of trepidation. She wasn’t used to being complimented like that. At least she didn’t think she was.

He cleared his throat, effectively turning the conversation to less awkward ground and relieving her of the pressure of finding an appropriate response. Thank goodness.

“I was actually calling to let you know that we’ve gotten a couple tips from the hotline.”

“Already? Did you find out who I am?” The smile that tugged on her mouth refused to go away, growing as fast as the hope blooming in her heart.

“Not yet. But there are a few that we’re going to follow up on and see if anything pans out.”

Like a leaking balloon, hope escaped, leaving a weight heavy on her shoulders.

“Thanks for letting me know.”

“We’ll figure out who you are. I promise.”

His words were kind, but were they really in his control? She replayed them as she hung up the phone and leaned back against her pillows with closed eyes. She needed help beyond this world. God was going to have to heal her brain and restore her memories, or she might always be Julie Thomas—not who she really was.

A squeaking wheel jerked her out of her reverie, and she glanced up just as a large blond man in a maintenance uniform rushed across her room. He’d left his mop and yellow bucket sitting by the door, which he’d closed behind him.

She tried to wave him off. “I don’t need anything.”

But he ignored her, and before she could make sense of his presence, he reached her bedside, pressed his meaty hands to her throat and squeezed.

THREE

Julie tried to scream, but no breath could pass through her constricted airway. The pressure on her throat made her eyes water and her chest burn. Darkness clouded the corners of her vision, but she fought the temptation to succumb to its sweet release.

And she fought the man standing next to her bed, the man who was causing her agony.

All she could see were his broad shoulders and beefy arms, his face just out of her line of sight, but she clawed at him, digging her nails into every bit of flesh she could find. As she raked her fingers down his arm, he growled and yanked his hand away from her throat before hitting the elastic bandage covering the brace around her arm with his fist.

Every point from her wrist to her elbow screamed at the abuse, but she pushed it from her mind, gasping for oxygen before he pressed against her air pipe again.

He leaned in closer, but she could still only see his blond hair, wrinkled forehead and squinty eyes, the lines at the corners taut with the effort it took to keep her from flying out of the bed. She kicked and pushed and tried to scream, but again, there was no sound.

Grasping for the nurse’s call button near her waist, her fingers caught only the very edge before her attacker shoved it to the floor, the plastic landing with a sharp report on the tile floor.

She needed a weapon. Something. Anything to make him back off long enough for her to catch a breath and call for help.

And still the darkness called, willing her to just close her eyes and drift off to sleep, whispering that this fight wasn’t one she could win.

But she had something to live for. She did.

She just didn’t know what it was.

With jerking motions, she patted her chest and stomach, hoping to find a scalpel or a pair of scissors or a syringe. Her search came up empty, and she flailed her arms until her uninjured hand connected with the side table holding the dinner tray she’d picked at all evening. The metal lid clanged as it bounced off the wall and reverberated when it reached the floor. If she could just get a hold of the edge of the tray, maybe she could hit him in the side of the head. But her fingers couldn’t find a purchase on the rounded edge, and it, too, slipped from her grasp, clattering to the floor.

As the suffocating pressure below her chin increased, she swiped her hand over the table one more time. And then she found just what she needed.

A fork.

Clutching the handle in her fist, she swung it at his arm with as much force as she could muster. When the tines broke skin, she pressed it farther into his arm before yanking it back and stabbing him again.

“Ow!” he screamed, as if she wielded a dagger.

She plunged it into his arm, and his fingers loosened. Gulping air, she jabbed at him over and over, puncturing skin and pulling out every time.

She wasn’t seriously injuring him, but it couldn’t feel much better than a bee sting.

Finally he let go altogether, and she had the freedom to let loose the blood-curdling yell that had been trapped. It filled the room, went right through the door, flooded the hallway and was promptly followed by a ruckus outside her room that would have brought her out of a coma.

She knew Brad, her night nurse, was on his way just by the rhythm of his feet on the floor by the nurses’ station. And his steps were not alone. But her attacker vanished. He kicked the mop bucket by the door and it sloshed water, which fell onto the floor with a clap, a sweet pine scent filling the room. The chatter of a handful of high-pitched voices demanding to know what had happened reached her long before she could make out their forms.

“Who was that coming out of your room?”

“What happened?”

As Brad reached her bedside, she held a shaking hand out to him, needing the stability and support that she’d come to expect from the only other man in her life for the moment, but Brad didn’t reach out to her. Instead he picked up the end of her IV tube, which had pulled free during the struggle, and looked at the mess. Leaking saline had left a trail from her stomach down the side of the bed and halfway across the floor.

Where was Zach? He’d know what to do. He’d know how to make her trembling stop.

“What happened?” Brad asked again, his words nearly drowned out by the pounding of her heart in her ears.

“Call security.” Her words came out on a wheeze, and she sucked in air as fast as she could. “That man attacked me. Tried to—” She pointed at her throat. “Tried to strangle me.”

Brad’s eyes grew wide, if a little doubtful. “Are you sure?”

Hadn’t he seen the man running down the hall? She nodded, pushing herself up on her elbow and ignoring the pain that sliced down her arm.

He snatched up the phone and punched in a few numbers before telling the person on the other end to send up security and have them check the back stairwell and exits for a man with blond hair in a blue maintenance uniform. Two female nurses hovering in the doorway followed suit, hurrying in the direction of the attacker’s hasty exit.

As Brad’s voice chirped on, Julie sank back against the elevated bed. The rush of adrenaline had vanished, stealing her strength.

“I’ll be right back to get you cleaned up, Julie. Security is on its way.” Brad turned to go, but she grabbed at his arm.

“Call Zach. Please.”

“Who?”

“Detective Jones. Tell him...tell him I need him.”

* * *

Zach jabbed the hospital’s elevator button three times, probably harder than it required to light up, but he didn’t have time to wait for it. When the doors didn’t open, he abandoned the lift and ran into the stairwell, taking them two at a time for three flights before running down the corridor.

His breathing was rapid and painful by the time he reached the ICU. The night nurses shot him strange looks, but the big guy, the one who had called him, waved him toward the security guard in a black uniform.

“Tell me what happened.” His words were sharp, like the smack of a hammer against wood.