Unidentified Woman #15 (4 page)

She was wearing black boots, jeans, and a purple ski jacket zipped all the way to her throat—all of it new. Her hands were in her pockets. She had the expression of a junior high school student summoned to the principal’s office without knowing why.

I approached from the elevator and extended my hand. “I’m McKenzie,” I said. That was as far as I got. Nina swooped past me.

“Look at you,” she said and wrapped a protective arm around the young woman’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“It’s hard to say.”

“My name’s Nina Truhler.”

“I’m … They call me Fifteen.”

“One of my favorite numbers. Let’s get you upstairs.”

“I don’t want to impose. The man said…”

“What man?”

“The policeman.”

“Bobby Dunston?”

“Commander Dunston. I didn’t know his first name. He said McKenzie—are you McKenzie?”

“I am,” I said.

“You saved my life.”

How do you respond to something like that?

“Think nothing of it,” I said.

“He said you might help me.”

“And we will,” Nina said. “Come along.”

Nina led Fifteen toward the elevators. As they passed, she gave me a look I’ve been seeing more and more as our relationship developed. It said, “What the heck?”

I waited until they were on the elevator and going up before turning to the security guards.

“How did she get here?” I asked. “Did you see someone dropping her off?”

The guard behind the desk pointed at one of the many monitors that allowed the guards to scrutinize all the corridors and public areas inside the building as well as the sidewalks and streets that marked its perimeter. The name on the tag pinned above his jacket pocket read
SMITH.

“She came on foot from the direction of the train station,” he said.

“I want you to monitor her every movement as long as she’s in the building,” I said. “Anyone she meets, speaks to, waves at; any vehicles and their drivers that seem to show interest in her when she’s outside—I want to know about it. Okay?”

One of the guards behind me chuckled and said, “All right.”

I turned to him—his name tag read
JONES
—and back toward the desk. Smith smiled.

“Of course we checked you out, Mr. McKenzie, before you moved in,” he said. “SOP—we do it for all the tenants. Orders from the company that manages the building. We know your reputation. We’re delighted that you’re staying here. The job gets boring sometimes, you know?”

The security guards looked if they expected me to start performing magic tricks.

Oh, for God’s sake,
my inner voice said.

*   *   *

Nina and Fifteen—I guessed that’s what we were calling her now—were sitting knee-to-knee in the chairs we had arranged near the piano. Nina took the young woman’s hand in hers as they spoke quietly, earnestly. I didn’t announce my presence. Instead, I scooped my cell off the desk and made my way to the secret room. I found the hidden switch, swung open the bookcase door, and stepped inside, shutting the door behind me. A minute later, I had Commander Robert Dunston on the phone.

“What the hell?” I said.

“I told you six weeks ago that I might need a favor,” Bobby said. “This is it.”

“What favor, exactly?”

“Take care of Fifteen for a few days.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“McKenzie, I’ve already kept her in the hospital weeks longer than I had any right to. I don’t have grounds to hold her as a material witness. But I can’t just cut her loose either. The people who tried to kill her are still out there; the reason they tried to kill her still exists.”

“Whatever that is.”

“I interviewed Fifteen many times, showed her the footage of them heaving her off the back of the pickup. She still insists she doesn’t remember a thing.”

“Maybe she doesn’t. It’s extremely unusual, but that kind of amnesia does happen, right?”

“That’s what the doctors say. If you were one of her attackers, though, would you bet your life on it, bet that she doesn’t remember and won’t remember? My biggest fear is that they’ve been waiting for her to leave the hospital so they’d have another chance at her.”

“So you sent her to me?”

“If you were still living in Falcon Heights, I wouldn’t have done it. Your old house, that place was about as secure as a bag of Old Dutch potato chips. Your condo, though? It’s like a fortress.”

“Hardly. A seasoned professional—”

“These people—three of them, at least two males—they’re not pros. What they did before, that was sloppy. There was no guarantee that the girl would have been killed even if you had run her over. They are determined, though. Something else. Fifteen’s skull fracture was caused when she hit the freeway, not by a blunt object. They wanted her to know what was happening when they rolled her out of the truck; they wanted her to suffer. Which raises the question—why? What reason did Fifteen give them to try to kill her like that?”

“You’re assuming that she’s not an innocent victim? That it wasn’t the husband and a couple of guys trying to get rid of the wife?”

“There’s no indentation on her third finger left hand that indicates a wedding ring. Besides, if she had been married, the husband would have come forward by now. He would have had to.”

“A mistress who was about to put the kibosh on someone’s marriage?”

“You’re just guessing now.”

“Aren’t you?”

“The thing is, I don’t believe she lost her memory. I believe she decided not to give up the guys who tried to kill her—or even reveal her own name—because she’s afraid we would learn things that would put her in big trouble.”

“Bigger trouble than this?”

“I’m going to make another assumption. She and her pals are dirty as dirt can be. She turned on them and got caught. Or maybe they turned on her. Either way, the lady is in danger.”

“Give her to the ten o’clock news, then. Make her a celebrity. Unidentified Woman Number Fifteen—the media loves that crap.”

“What if I’m wrong? What if Fifteen really is telling the truth about not knowing who she is?”

“Then Mommy and Daddy will come forward to claim their lost little girl.”

“Except Mommy and Daddy aren’t looking for her. There’s been no missing persons report that resembles her filed anywhere in the country. Or Canada, for that matter.”

“After six weeks? Someone must be looking for her.”

“You mean besides the men who already tried to kill her?”

“Bobby, you are going way above and beyond with this. You are not following department procedures.”

“Yeah, like you always obeyed the rules when you were in harness.”

“Whether I did or not, you always did. Always. You’re the best cop I know, and this is very uncoplike behavior.”

“I don’t want to cut her loose, then come into the office tomorrow morning and read a bulletin that says she’s been killed.”

“Why do you care so much?”

“It’s my job to care. Besides, McKenzie, don’t you think she looks a lot like Katie?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Hang on to her for a few days. Lying or telling the truth—if you spend time with her, talk to her, she might drop some hints that could help us learn who she is. She might do something foolish, try to make contact with people she knows. Hell, she might even contact her pals, remind them she’s still alive; go the extortion route. Once we get a handle on her, we can figure out who’s trying to kill her. And why.”

“What if she does none of those things? If she really did lose her memory?”

“I don’t know. Give her to the media, I guess. Hope for the best.”

“All right, I’ll do it. I owe you one.”

“You owe me a helluva lot more than one.”

“True, but this is going to cover all debts.”

“Fair enough.”

“One more thing. The clothes she’s wearing—they’re new. The money for her train fare. Where did all that come from?”

“I took it out of petty cash.”

“I didn’t know the Major Crimes Division had petty cash.”

“A lot of things have changed since you were a cop.”

*   *   *

I turned off the phone and stood in the center of my man cave. There was hockey equipment, golf clubs, bats and balls and a Paul Molitor–autographed baseball glove that I haven’t used in years, gun cabinets—some locked, some unlocked—shelves loaded with knickknacks and memorabilia, and a small desk with a laptop. Inside desk drawers were a stack of bills—twenties and fifties, $25,000 worth—and a couple of passports, credit cards, and driver’s licenses with my picture and someone else’s name. A few years ago I had to “disappear,” and it was difficult because I hadn’t been prepared. Now I was. I had kept all of this in a safe when I lived in Falcon Heights. Unfortunately, the safe was imbedded in my basement floor, and I had to leave it behind. I’d been meaning to get a new one installed in the secret room, only I hadn’t gotten around to it.

I wasn’t thinking about that, though. I was thinking about amnesia.

I found a number in my cell phone’s contact list and called it up. A few moments later, I was speaking to Dr. Jillian DeMarais. She was a psychiatrist. For a brief period of time, back when I was with the cops, she had been my psychiatrist. Afterward, we started sleeping together. That didn’t work out, and we became enemies. Time passed, though, and now we were friends again. The circle of life.

“I need help,” I told her.

“I’ve been telling you that for years.”

“Seriously.”

“Okay, what?”

“Tell me about amnesia.”

“Traumatic, hysterical, anterograde, retrograde, transient global…?”

“Work with me, Jill.”

“Traumatic amnesia is usually caused by a hard blow to the head.”

“I know that one.”

“Hysterical amnesia is almost always triggered by an event that the patient’s mind can’t cope with.”

Like being thrown from a pickup truck,
my inner voice said.

“Patients forget not only their past but their very identities. They wake up without any sense at all of who they are. Driver’s license, credit cards, pictures in their wallets are meaningless to them. The person in the mirror is a complete stranger.”

“That sounds promising.”

“You think so? In most cases the memory returns either slowly or in a rush, usually within forty-eight hours. The patient might forget the cause of the memory loss. Beyond that, though, recovery is usually complete.”

“Okay, that’s not it.”

“McKenzie…”

“Jill, please.”

“Patients with anterograde amnesia can’t learn anything new; they’ve lost the ability to make new memories. Retrograde amnesia means they can’t remember anything that happened before the event that caused the memory loss. Transient global amnesia is a mild form of memory loss usually associated with vascular disease in older patients.”

“Retrograde, then.”

“What about it?”

“Can you fake it?”

“We call it malingering.”

“Jill…”

“Of course you can. According to one study, nearly thirty percent of all criminals sentenced to life imprisonment claimed amnesia at their trials.”

“How can you spot a faker?”

“Malingerer.”

“How can you—”

“There are ways, tests.”

“Like what?”

“McKenzie, do you know someone with retrograde amnesia? Because this is so rare, I’d like to meet him.”

“Her.”

“Of course. A damsel in distress, no doubt.”

“I think that might be a good idea, if you talked to her.”

“I have a patient waiting, the last of the day, so what I want you to do—call my service and we’ll set up an appointment, probably the day after tomorrow. I’ll give you the ex-boyfriend rate.”

“Is that higher or lower than your usual fee?”

“Oh, much, much higher.”

*   *   *

I left the man cave and carefully pushed the bookcase back in place until I heard the click that meant it was locked. By then, Nina and Fifteen had left the chairs and were now sitting on stools across from each other at the island in the kitchen area. We didn’t have a kitchen and dining room, just “areas.” Fifteen was devouring a plate of leftovers as if she had never tasted food before—a chicken and cashew stir-fry that I made with my own orange marmalade barbecue sauce.

“This is amazing,” she told me.

“Do you like Chinese food?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I like this, though, so … It’s way better than hospital food, that’s for sure.”

I watched her face as she ate—a pretty face with eyes just a shade darker than cornflower blue. I was pleased that the scrapes on her chin and forehead had healed, leaving not a blemish on her smooth skin. She caught me staring and lifted her short golden hair a few inches above her ear.

“Want to see the scars where they drilled the holes in my head?” she asked.

“I’m sorry. I was staring.”

That’s why it’s short now,
my inner voice told me.
They cut her hair when she was in surgery.

“You were looking at me the way the policeman looked at me, like he wanted to see what was inside,” Fifteen said. “Problem is, I don’t know what’s inside. I would tell you if I did.”

“I apologize for being rude.”

“No, I—I apologize. I never thanked you for what you did. They showed me, the policeman showed me the film from the highway camera. He thought it might … I saw what you did. Thank you. I’m so sorry about your car.”

“The policeman is an old friend of mine. He’s very concerned for your welfare. He asked me to help, and I said I would.”

“People have been very kind to me since I woke up.”

“I have another friend, a psychiatrist—Dr. Jillian DeMarais.”

“That tramp?” Nina said.

Fifteen covered her mouth with her hand in a failed bid to hide her smile.

“One of McKenzie’s ex-girlfriends,” Nina told her.

Fifteen smiled some more.

“She’d be happy to see you if you’re willing to see her,” I said. “Maybe the day after tomorrow?”

“I don’t know,” Fifteen said. “I’ve spoken to so many doctors in the past month. Can I think about it?”

“Of course.”

“It’s just that … it’s so scary. Not knowing who I am, not knowing where I came from, I mean. I get images in my mind, but they’re cloudy, you know? I can’t quite make them out. It’s like looking at something through a telescope that’s out of focus. If you could just turn the knob—only I can’t.”