Devil Smoke (6 page)

Since coming to work at Beacon Falls she’d cut back to only one physical therapy session in the morning, and then Nick helped her with stretches and a massage at night. But the damaged nerves around her ruined ankle had appreciated the neglect even less than they had the extra strain of the rehab sessions. Valencia had offered Lucy use of her pool in the residence wing’s solarium; maybe Lucy could start swimming over lunch.

As she reached the bottom of the steps, she let out a wry laugh. Here she was worrying if accepting her boss’s offer would be too intrusive, while at the same time they were about to go digging through every private detail of Sarah’s past to try to rebuild her life. Talk about intrusive. She hoped Sarah realized what she was asking for.

She waved to Missy, the receptionist, and went out in search of Tommy. She spotted him near the tall wrought iron tripod with its eternal flame, looking out over the river gorge to the rolling hills and farmland east of Beacon Falls. He’d stopped pacing, but the worry hadn’t left his posture.

“Burroughs was right,” he said without looking at her as she drew near. “I shouldn’t be on this case.”

Lucy mirrored his posture and simply nodded. Waited.

“Wednesday, it will be a year since Charlotte—” He swallowed. “What good have I done her? Leaving the ER, coming here to work her case after the cops gave up. At least Burroughs agrees with me, that something happened to her. The other cops, the PIs we hired, they all think she left me. That I must be some terrible ogre, must have done something horrific for things to be so desperate that she’d abandon Nellie. They say all the evidence points that way.”

Finally he turned to her, despair tightening his face. “No one seems to understand that the so-called evidence is just facts we twist, trying to make sense of it. Evidence isn’t truth. I know my wife. I know her truth. She didn’t leave. Not because she wanted to.”

“Her life was stolen from her,” Lucy said. “One way or the other. From you and your daughter as well.” She let her words hang for a moment, the spring breeze scattering them across the gorge. “Just like Sarah Brown’s.”

His posture straightened and he rocked on his heels. “You want me to stay on the case?”

“I think you can help her. TK and I will work with Sarah directly. But you’ve got a good eye for details, for evidence that doesn’t add up. I suspect that’s why you were such a good pediatric ER doctor. After all, most kids can’t tell you what’s really going on with them, and most parents are too upset, trying to create a story that makes sense of a world where their child could be sick or injured. I know that’s how I was when my daughter was sick.”

He nodded, still not making eye contact.

“Is the press hounding you about Charlotte’s anniversary?” she asked.

“Not just the press. Her folks think it’s important to remind the public, keep her story out there in case someone remembers or sees something new.”

“It’s their way of feeling like they’re not powerless.”

“But we are. Nellie, this morning, she asked me why I couldn’t bring Mommy home. That if I could save lives and make dying kids better, why didn’t I want to bring Charlotte back. Like I’m some combination of an uncaring god, neglectful husband, and lousy father all rolled up into one.” His lips thinned and the muscle at his jaw clenched. “Maybe she’s right.”

“She’s how old?”

“Five. How do you explain ‘missing’ to a five-year-old? She has a grasp on the idea of death, but the idea that her mommy could be gone, not dead, not alive, not home, not anywhere… hell, I can’t grasp it. A year now, and I still have no idea if I’m doing more harm by giving her false hope that Charlotte might come back or if it would be better for her to accept that Charlotte’s gone for good.”

“Maybe that’s the problem. She’s trying to follow your lead—”

“And I’m going nowhere except spinning in circles.” He drew in a breath, raising his shoulders into a shrug. “I think that’s why I’ve been avoiding the whole anniversary thing. A year is too long for Nellie to linger in limbo. It’s time to decide how we’re going to live.”

They stood in comfortable silence. Finally, Lucy said, “Maybe you’re right. You shouldn’t work this case. Take a few days off, be with your family.”

“Nellie’s in school today, and the empty house…” He gave a shake of his head. “Besides, you need someone to go over Sarah’s apartment, inventory her personal possessions. It’ll keep me busy. Shouldn’t take more than a few hours. But I think maybe I will take the rest of the week off. Spend time with Nellie. Figure out the answers to the questions I’ve been avoiding all year. Like how to say goodbye to Charlotte when it’s the last thing I want.”

Lucy nodded her agreement, not sure how to help Tommy deal with the turmoil other than to focus on work and the case at hand. “I know the doctors said Sarah was fine to go home, that she only had a mild concussion, but she seems so… unconcerned? I mean, relatively speaking.” She’d seen victims in shock, denial, even stunned. But Sarah was smiling, joking about her predicament.

“
La belle indifférence
,” he said. “The mask of denial. A kind of psychic defense mechanism for when things are so confusing the brain can’t make sense of them, so it defaults to whatever emotion is most socially acceptable. Usually a pleasant smile—best way to gain strangers’ trust and get their help. Evolutionarily speaking.”

“Okay. But it feels like there’s more.”

“You think she does remember something?”

“Maybe not consciously. Maybe this is more than a simple concussion. Maybe there’s something she wants to forget.”

“Psychogenic fugue?” His tone turned musing. “Rare. Very rare. And not something we see in kids, so I don’t have much experience with it. Maybe your husband does?”

“I’ll ask. But Burroughs and Oshiro both got the same impression after seeing Sarah’s apartment: that she’d purposely lived a life with no ties to her past.”

“Like she’s on the run from someone?” He straightened, his gaze traveling past her to the house behind them as if seeking any potential threat. “Then we need to protect her.”

“Hard to do until we know who she is and what, if anything, she’s running from.”

He nodded grimly. “Right. I’ll get her keys and head over, get started on her place. Maybe Burroughs missed something.”

NELLIE RACED THROUGH
the empty school courtyard searching for something to hit. Or some
one
. Anyone.

But the recess bell had rung, the playground was empty, and there were only the tall, heavy, mirror-like glass doors reflecting her image in waves, making her look like she’d soon wash away to nothing.

She was late. Not her fault—they’d made her chase the ball after it went over the fence—but Sister Agnes said if you came in late, you had to report to the office. Sign in. Be escorted to class. And no more recess for a whole week.

Nellie scrunched up her face, blinking back tears. Everyone was gone. Everyone always left her behind.

She thought of walking into class, Sister Agnes yanking her by the hand, giving her that “you’re wasting my time, young lady” look while she told everyone, including Miss Cortez—who was so nice and who Nellie wanted so much to like her—that Nellie had broken the rules and come in late from morning recess and disrespected her teacher and classmates and needed to apologize and promise not to disrespect again even though it hadn’t been Nellie’s fault, and why were grownups in charge of what she did, anyway?

They were all stupid, stupid, stupid. They left and didn’t say goodbye and they didn’t do what they were supposed to do like save people or not leave or not go missing and they were just…

“Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

The sound of her voice startled her. But she felt better. And the girl in the mirror-door looking back at her seemed to approve. Nellie hunched her shoulders hard, tightening up her elbows and fists, stomping around in a circle. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

The forbidden word filled her with power. No wonder grownups said it was a bad word. “We don’t use that word,” they said, but they lied—she heard them use it all the time.

“Stu-
pid
, stu-pid,
stu
-pid.” Oh, she liked that last way: it felt like she was spitting out something yucky. Another thing “we don’t do.”

Well, Nellie was going to do what she wanted, go where she wanted, and she was most certainly not going to walk into Sister Agnes’s office and say sorry for being late because she was the only one skinny enough to slip between the fence bars and chase after the ball. Her breath whooshed out of her and she reeled against the sandstone wall, dizzy with rebellion.

She glanced across the playground to the building that towered over everything, even Sister Agnes’s school. The church. It was older than the school—older than her Papa Callabrese, even. It had been here forever, built of stones that were slick and cold to touch and as big around as she was tall. Tall and quiet and solid and peaceful. The church wasn’t going anywhere. It was here to stay.

Plus, soon, Nellie thought, Miss Cortez would be leading all the K-1 students to morning Mass. Nellie could hide in the church and rejoin them—and no one would ever have to know. Especially Sister Agnes.

It took both hands and all her strength to haul open the towering wooden door to the church. Inside, it was dark, though not like at night when she couldn’t see, more like shadows stacked on top of each other. She shivered. Kinda spooky.

The door swung shut behind her with a thud, sealing her in, and she jumped. Then she dragged in a breath, inhaling vaporized beeswax and incense and all sorts of holy stuff that tickled her nose. She strode forward. It was church. Safe haven from evil—that’s what Father Stravinsky said.

Dipping her fingers in the holy water and dripping it as she made the sign of the cross, she stepped from the little room in the front past two more massive doors that were always open to the real inside. Here the ceiling went up and up and up until large wooden beams met like Noah’s ark turned upside down. Stained glass lined the walls, casting sparkly splashes of color across the gray marble floor and the dark wooden pews.

She stepped forward, feeling bold, ignoring the skittery feeling dancing inside her stomach. She crept past the alcove where the Lady of Sorrows was, making sure not to look at the larger than life statue of the young mother cradling her dead son, a big sword piercing her heart. If she looked at it too long, the Lady looked like Mommy, and she couldn’t even think about Mommy with a sword sticking out of her heart.

Where to go? Should she crawl into a pew and hide? Or behind the curtain that led behind the altar? Maybe hide in the back corner?

Glancing around at possibilities, she made the mistake of looking at the form hanging high over the altar, his face glaring right down at her, telling her bad girls went straight to H-E-double hockey sticks.

And she was a very bad girl.

Nellie scampered backward, her sneakers slipping on the marble floor. She hated Jesus-nailed-to-the-cross. The pretty, stained glass Jesus-walking-on-water and Jesus-healing-the-sick she liked. Jesus-nailed-to-the-cross she was angry with. He was supposed to be the shepherd of souls, but he hadn’t shepherded her mom back home. She had prayed to him every night to find Mommy, wherever she was lost, but he never answered her.

Jesus-nailed-to-the-cross made her wonder if anyone got to heaven. She shuddered; she didn’t want to think about that. Mommy wasn’t in heaven, singing with the angels—even though some of the kids said so. Her dad would have told her that if it was true. Her dad sometimes messed things up, like this morning, but he never lied.

Jesus wasn’t supposed to lie either, but Nellie didn’t really know or trust Jesus. She trusted her dad.

She stood still, scowling up at the bleeding Jesus so high up in the rafters that she had to crane her neck back to meet his angry, pain-filled gaze.

You’d better find my mommy soon and bring her back home, she shouted in her mind, not daring to give voice to her rage. You’d just better!

LUCY WATCHED AS
Tommy returned inside the house to retrieve Sarah’s apartment keys. She checked the time on her phone: nine fifty. Nick should be between patients. Usually she tried not to call him at work, but she needed his advice.

“What do you know about global amnesia and psychogenic fugues?” she asked when he picked up.

“Hey honey, how’s your day going?” he chided, but there was laughter in his tone. Nick was well accustomed to Lucy’s over-involvement in her cases. “Does this explain the messages on my machine from Oshiro and Don Burroughs?”

“Same case. Not a police matter, so they came to us.” She filled him in on Sarah’s predicament. “We’re digging into her past—credit check, searching her apartment, all the usual. I thought starting with a cognitive, sensory-based interview might help. But I don’t want to make things worse.”

“No, I think you’re on the right track. With a TBI,” traumatic brain injury, Lucy translated, “she might not be able to focus for long. Watch for headaches, vertigo, nausea. She might be confused, emotionally labile.”

“She’s pretty upbeat. Tommy said it was a defense mechanism.”

“
La belle indifférence
.” Nick said it in a fake French accent, which made it sound sexy. Of course, Nick could make anything sound sexy—to Lucy.

She forced herself to focus on the case. “Any other tips for the interview?”

“Patients with retrograde amnesia tend to follow Ribot’s Law: they lose more recent memories, the ones closest to the traumatic event, but may retain some sense of their remote past.”

“So we should start with trying to access memories from her childhood, then work forward in time?”

“Exactly. And don’t pressure her too much. Overwhelming her or adding any stress inhibits recollection. Let her set the pace.”

“If we can’t get anywhere, what would you recommend? Is it too soon to try hypnosis?”