Left for Dead (3 page)

Phillip started to untie the cord from around her neck.

“You shouldn’t touch her,” Alan warned. “You—”

Once again, Alan was struck dumb. His brother didn’t seem to care about disturbing police evidence. Phillip tore away at the plastic bag. Alan suddenly realized his brother’s intention: he was trying to help the woman breathe.

She was still alive.

“Can you talk, honey?”

Her eyelids fluttering, she tried to focus on the plump, black nurse at her bedside. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to move. All she wanted to do was go back to sleep until the pain in her chest went away. Her head hurt too, worse than any hangover.

The nurse reached for the telephone on the night table. She punched a couple of numbers. “Our girl’s up again,” she said.

The patient saw the intravenous tube in her arm and some kind of monitor near the nightstand. “What—what happened?” she managed to ask.

“Up—and
talking,”
the nurse said, then she hung up the phone. She pulled a pen-light from her breast pocket, then leaned over the bed. She shined the light in her eyes for a moment, then gave her a warm, reassuring smile.

The nurse had a pretty face, a pale cocoa complexion, green eyes, and a short pageboy hairstyle with auburn streaks. “I’m Sherita,” she said. “What’s your name, honey?”

The woman just stared back at her. “What happened to me?” she whispered in a raspy voice. Her throat hurt too.

Sherita seemed to read her mind. At the night table, she poured some water from a plastic tumbler into a glass with a bendable flexi-straw. “Take it easy now,” she purred, bringing the straw to her lips. “You’ve had a rough time of it, honey. But you’re going to be okay. You’re a fighter. You practically came back from the dead. Your name ought to be Lazarus, but they’ve got you down as ‘Jane Doe.’ You’re in a hospital in Bellingham. We’ve been taking good care of you.”

Sherita set the water glass aside. Some commotion out in the hallway distracted her for a moment. But she kept talking in a calm, soothing voice. “A lot of people have been rooting for you, hon. You’re lucky to be alive. If not for a couple of little holes in a plastic bag, it might be a different story. You were six hours in surgery. The last three days, you’ve been drifting in and out, mostly out. But you’re up and talking. And that’s a good thing. Can you tell me your name?”

Now that she’d had some water, her throat didn’t hurt quite as much any more. It would be easier for her to speak now—if she could answer Sherita. She gazed up at the nice nurse, and slowly shook her head.

She had no idea what her name was.

“‘Albinia?’”
Sherita said, glancing up from a paperback called,
Names For Baby.
She sat at Jane Doe’s bedside, a Tootsie Pop in her free hand.
“‘Alcina?’”
she continued,
“‘Alda…Aldora…Aleria…’”

Frowning, Jane Doe shook her head. They thought she’d recognize her name if she heard it, and someone suggested going through a Name-Your-Baby book. She forgot which doctor had this brainstorm. So many of them had been in and out of her room for the last twenty-four hours, she couldn’t keep track. She felt so weak and frail, everything seemed muddled.

Two police detectives had questioned her last night, but it was pointless. She couldn’t remember who she was—or how she’d ended up in the hospital with a hole in her chest and a bad bump on her head. Nor did she recollect someone shooting her five days ago. The more questions the detectives asked, the more upset and frustrated she became.

She hadn’t been out of bed yet, but apparently, a policeman was guarding her door, and they’d beefed up security on this particular wing of the hospital.

Sherita and a couple of the doctors said the extra precautions were to keep all the reporters out. Maybe. But what they weren’t telling her was obvious. Whoever had tried to kill her probably wanted to finish the job.

Did this killer know that she didn’t remember him at all?

This morning, one of the doctors had tried to explain how her amnesia had been caused by the trauma, shock, and injury. She’d just nodded and pretended to understand as he explained about the workings of the frontal, temporal, and parietal lobes. He said amnesia was a temporary condition, lasting from a few seconds to a few hours. Only in the most severe cases did the memory loss continue for weeks or months. Hers was a form of retrograde amnesia. “But you’re one for the record books,” the doctor had admitted. “Completely forgetting one’s own identity, that’s not retrograde amnesia. That’s
As The World Turns
Amnesia. It only happens in movies and soap operas.”

She’d had no idea what he meant by
As the World Turns.
At the time, she wondered if the doctor thought she was faking. It was almost as upsetting as her interview with those two police detectives. She felt so stupid and useless, a total disappointment to all these detective and doctors who wanted her memory to work for them.

“‘Alethea?’”
Sherita said, slouching a bit in the chair.
“‘Alexandra? Alexis?’”
She gave the Tootsie Pop a quick lick, then peered up from the book. “Tell me it’s not
Alexis.
Remember that show,
Dynasty?
That Alexis, she was a real bitch.”

Jane Doe just shook her head.

“Girl, you don’t remember
Dynasty?
Joan Collins? She was
Alexis.
Let me tell you, she was mean. I loved that show. Me and my girlfriend, we used to call it, ‘Do-Nasty.’”

Shrugging, Jane Doe glanced down at the bedsheets. “Sorry. I don’t know it.”

With a sigh, Sherita went back to the baby-naming book.
“‘Alfonsine?’”
She laughed. “Hell, who would name their kid, Alfonsine?”

Jane Doe cracked a tiny smile. “Maybe someone named Sherita isn’t in a position to criticize.”

“Well, aren’t you the smart ass?” Sherita chuckled. “It’s a family name. Sherita is my favorite aunt.”

“Sorry,” she murmured, gazing at the bedsheets again.

“Did you have a favorite aunt when you were a kid?” Sherita asked.

“Dig, dig, dig.” Jane Doe gave her a shrewd look. “You don’t give up, do you?”

“Nope.” Sherita nursed the Tootsie Pop for a moment.

“Well, thanks for not giving up on me,” she whispered.

Sherita glanced down at the book again.
“‘Alfreda…Alice…Alina…Alison?’”

Jane Doe kept shaking her head. She didn’t think this would work.

Last night, she’d dreamt she was playing on the beach with a handsome, sporty-looking man and an eleven-year-old boy. They both had wavy golden-colored hair and the same guileless smile. She was with her husband and son. The three of them were laughing and playing tag with the waves along the shore. But then she remembered she had to have her portrait painted by some artist, and he wanted her there on time. He was very strict about that. She watched her husband and son stroll along the water’s edge without her. They didn’t seem to realize she’d stayed behind. She tried to call to them, but couldn’t remember their names. She felt a pain in her chest—as if something had speared her heart.

She’d told the doctors that she had a husband—and a son, who was about eleven years old. But even as she’d described the man and boy in her dream, she’d had a feeling they were lost to her. Where were they? Why hadn’t they come for her? Didn’t they miss her? She felt so alone.

She’d also told the doctors about the artist in her dream. She didn’t remember his face. She hadn’t really seen him. But in the dream, she knew he was waiting for her.

“‘Alma…Aloha…Althea…’”
Sherita continued, her eyes on the book.

“I have a name you might help me with,” Jane Doe interrupted. “It’s
Rembrandt.
Who is he?”

Glancing up from the book, Sherita worked on her Tootsie Pop for a moment. “He’s an artist, Dutch, I think,” she answered steadily. “It’s also a brand of toothpaste.”

“And it’s what they call this man who tried to kill me,” Jane Doe said.

Earlier, she’d heard a couple of doctors talking outside her door when they’d thought she was asleep. One of them wanted to show her a newspaper. He figured if she read about what had happened to her, it would trigger her memory. His colleague argued that it was a terrible idea, and reading about “Rembrandt” might only traumatize her further. She kept hearing that name, whispered about.

“Do they think he’ll come after me?” she asked.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Sherita assured her. “You have a couple cops on babysitting duty, just outside the door, honey. Nobody’s getting past them.”

Jane Doe sighed, and tugged at the bedsheets a little. “I bet they’re hoping Rembrandt tries to pay me a visit,” she muttered. “That way, they’ll catch him. Am I right?”

Frowning, Sherita pitched her Tootsie Pop in the wastebasket. She picked up the book again. “I don’t know what the cops are thinking, honey.”

“I hope they don’t kill him,” Jane Doe said.

“Even after everything he did to you?” Sherita asked.

“Oh, I’m not being nice,” she replied. She shrugged helplessly, and her voice cracked as she spoke. “What if he dies without telling anyone? Don’t you see? Right now, he’s the only person in the world who knows me.”

“This clown offered me three hundred bucks.”

“Three hundred—just for taking her picture?”

Sherita nodded. She picked the lettuce off her prewrapped turkey and Swiss on rye. “Those reporters are all dying to get a look at her. Might as well be Madonna in that private room.” She ripped open a small bag of barbecue potato chips.

Sherita never ate anything that was actually cooked in the hospital cafeteria. She bought only prepackaged stuff that came from an outside vendor. Serving her patients their dinner, Sherita often wanted to warn them that the food was so fatty and low grade, they were guaranteed to come back with heart problems—or a parasite.

Her friend, Naomi, had no qualms over the cafeteria fare. She didn’t work at the hospital, but was meeting Sherita there for lunch. Naomi eagerly dug into the fried chicken—even though it was dripping in grease. Like her friend, she was a big girl. But Naomi was white, with a corkscrew-curly blond perm and a pierced nose. At twenty-six, she was a couple of years younger than Sherita. They’d first met at a Weight Watchers orientation five years ago. They’d both decided life was too short to live without real cheese or ice cream, and walked out during the break. Naomi and Sherita had been friends ever since.

They met for lunch or dinner every week or so—usually some place nicer than the hospital’s cafeteria. At this hour, it was crowded, and all the good tables—the ones by the windows looking down at the parking lot—were taken. Sherita and Naomi had to settle for a two-top by the bus station.

“So—are you going to take the three hundred bucks or what?” Naomi asked, working on her fried chicken. “That’s like—half your rent for the month.”

“I don’t care,” Sherita said, scowling. She munched on some chips. “I’m not doing that to her. I told you, she’s a nice lady. She doesn’t want her picture in the paper. Hell, she’s been through enough.”

“My friend at work, Cindy, she’s been following the newspaper stories,” Naomi said. “And she thinks this Jane Doe is faking. Cindy says she’s holding out for the publicity or a book deal—and
then
she’ll start talking.”

Sherita rolled her eyes. “How can you hear what your friend Cindy says when she’s talking with her head up her ass? I’m Jane Doe’s nurse. I’ve been looking after her for six days now. I’d know if she was faking. She doesn’t remember a damn thing. Poor girl’s all alone, and she’s scared.”

With a sigh, Sherita picked up her sandwich again. “I only hope this guy coming in today…” She trailed off, then took a bite from her sandwich.

“Who’s coming in today?” Naomi asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” Sherita shrugged, her mouth full.

“Oh, c’mon, you started to say something. Now, give. Is somebody coming in to identify her today? Some guy?”

Sherita dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “This is on the hush-hush, okay? The newspapers and TV people don’t know about this. Swear you won’t tell anyone?”

Naomi leaned forward. “Swear to God and kiss my elbow. What is it?”

“Well, you’re right,” Sherita admitted, her voice dropping to a whisper. “They’re bringing in someone this afternoon—up from Tacoma. He says he’s her husband. He gave the cops a couple of photos that—I guess—looked enough like her. And he described her fairly accurately, even mentioned a birthmark on her elbow. They think this guy’s on the level. I hope so—for her sake.”

Sherita turned to a man sitting alone at the next table. “Excuse me, hon, could I borrow your salt?”

He handed her the white plastic salt shaker. Sherita salted her sandwich, then handed the shaker back to him. “Thanks, honey.” She turned to her friend again.

“I think he’s interested in one of us,” Naomi whispered. “I saw him looking over at us earlier. He’s cute.”

Sherita glanced at the man, whose nose was in a newspaper.

“Did I tell you?” Naomi continued. “I joined an Internet dating service. It’s really fun, and cheaper than you’d think…”

Naomi was whispering. But the man at the next table could still hear her. He’d been listening to every word they’d said to each other.

The nurse’s friend was right: he was interested in one of them. For the last four days, he’d been following Sherita Williams, trying to find out all he could about her.

She lived alone in a rented house. Contrary to the decals on the door and front windows, the place didn’t have an alarm system. He knew when her boyfriend came by, and when she was alone. He knew her hours at work, and where she parked her car in the hospital lot. He knew the patient with whom she spent the most time, a woman they called Jane Doe.

He had placed Jane Doe into a Dumpster in North Seattle a week ago. He’d expected her corpse to be discovered in that Dumpster—or possibly in a nearby garbage dump. He hadn’t counted on her ending up—alive—in a junkyard nearly ninety miles away in Bellingham.

Sherita Williams said her amnesia wasn’t an act. But that was just a temporary condition. If this man coming in today was truly her husband, he might help her recollect certain things.

He had to act quickly.

At the next table, Sherita was listening to Naomi talk about the three candidates who had answered her ad on the Internet dating service. She turned to borrow the salt from the man at the next table again. She did a double take.