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Yeah, mine, too, he thought, trying like hell to keep his eyes above her neckline. Which was even worse, because then he had to look at those eyes. Round, innocent and full of uncertainty, they made him want to pull her into his arms and soothe away her fear. It was against his better judgment, and unprofessional, and wrong for about a dozen other reasons he didn’t even want to consider, but darn it, he couldn’t shake this irrational desire to protect her. He couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Want me to go with you?”
With her free arm, she hugged herself. “You think I’m a flake, don’t you?”
The truth was, he admired her spirit. She was tough, but not afraid to show her vulnerabilities. And if she was faking her apprehension, she was one hell of an actress. “You’ve been through a lot. You’re holding up better than most people would in your situation.” He nodded toward the bathroom, holding out a hand to her. “C’mon. We’ll do it together.”
She looked at his hand, then over to the bathroom door. “If I pass out, do you promise not to look at my butt? I mean…I don’t know what it looks like yet.”
It looked okay to me. He caught himself before the words tumbled out of his mouth. He had no right to be talking about her butt. Or looking at it for that matter. She could be someone’s wife, someone’s mother.
“I promise.” He walked to the bathroom and switched on the light. “You’ll feel better if you just get it over with.”
She shuffled over in bare feet, her face twisting into a grimace as she neared the doorway. He extended his hand, startled by the zing of awareness he experienced when she slipped her cold fingers into his. His first reaction was to yank his hand away, but it was too late to back out now.
Her fingers trembled in his. He tightened his grip, pulling her into the room. “You won’t see much with your eyes closed.”
“I’m working on it. Just give me a second.” She took a long, deep breath, blew it out, and opened her eyes.
She stared at her reflection for the longest time, while Mitch waited for recognition to set in, for a flood of memories to erase the uncertainty so clearly written in her eyes. With her free hand, she reached up and touched her cheek, ran a hand through her disheveled hair.
If he hadn’t believed her amnesia story before, it would be tough to refute it now. There was no doubt, she was looking at a total stranger.
“Well?” he asked.
“If it weren’t for the fact that you’re standing behind me, and I recognize you, I wouldn’t know this was me in the mirror. This is so…weird.” She frowned at her reflection, sticking her tongue out. “At least I’m not a troll. If I had to deal with losing my memory, having an abusive husband, giving birth to children I don’t remember and being ugly, it would be too much. Oh, and the fact that someone tried to kill me. Can’t forget that.”
He gave her hand another reassuring squeeze. “We’ll figure out who did this.”
She looked up at him in the mirror, then down at their clasped hands. “We?”
Poor choice of words. The glimmer of hope in her eyes hit him like a sucker punch. “We as in, the Twin Oaks P.D.”
“Ah.” She nodded. “Still planning on dumping me somewhere, eh?”
Christ, could she make him feel a little more guilty? He was only doing his job. “I do need to take you to the precinct to get your prints, and I’ll take you back to the scene if you feel up to it. Maybe it’ll jog your memory.”
“Hate to break up the party,” someone said from behind them.
They simultaneously jerked their hands free and spun around to see a nurse standing there with a pile of clothes in her arms.
“The doctor signed your release. Try these and see which ones fit. I’ll send an orderly in to take you downstairs.” She walked over and dropped the clothes on the bed, glancing with unmasked curiosity one last time before she left the room. Mitch was sure he looked guilty as hell. What had possessed him to take Ms. Doe’s hand, and even worse, to keep holding it?
Okay, it’s not like he didn’t have a distant history of this, of letting himself get sucked in emotionally. He had to keep reminding himself, she could be married. Never in a million years would he consciously consider touching another man’s wife.
Never again. But it hadn’t been a conscious decision then, either, had it?
“I’ll wait while you get dressed,” Mitch said, when the nurse was gone. He walked over to the window, leaving a reasonable distance between them. He looked down at the already crowded parking lot. The rising sun cast a golden glow over the city streets, warming his face through the glass. It would be a beautiful weekend, a weekend he would much rather spend fishing, or working on his yard. And sleeping. God knows he could use a few more hours of uninterrupted sleep.
“Detective?” Ms. Doe said softly.
He turned. She was standing in the bathroom doorway, the clothes stacked in her arms.
“I just wanted to say thanks, you know, for everything. You’ve been really sweet.”
Sweet? He nearly cringed. “I’m only doing my job.”
She smiled. She seemed to know as well as he did, he’d gone far above the call of duty.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
Mitch watched the video monitor with a deep sense of unease as the man in the hooded jacket stalked Ms. Doe through the store. He carried a basket, taking items from the shelves every so often to appear less suspicious, never getting close enough to be discovered, yet always keeping her in his line of sight. “He keeps his head down, so the camera never gets a shot of his face.”
“He knows what he’s doing,” Marco, the video tech, said.
This was no crime of opportunity. As Mitch had suspected, this had been a cold and calculated attack. But why? “How long does he follow her?”
“About twenty minutes. I spliced the tapes together so we could track their movements.” Marco fast-forwarded the tape. “When she leaves the grocery area, he’s right behind her. When he’s getting ready to strike, he puts the basket down in the middle of the aisle.”
“Because he knows we’ll eventually be watching the tape, and if he stashes it on a shelf somewhere we’ll find it.”
“So why not wear gloves? Then he wouldn’t have to worry about leaving prints.”
“Why attack her in a well-lit store when he could have done it in a dark parking lot? He’s arrogant. He’s showing us how cunning he is. He knows that if he puts the stuff in plain sight, some employee will probably see it, pick it up and put the stuff back on the shelves, thus removing any fingerprint evidence.”
“And one did. But I’ll get to that in a minute. First we have our victim walking down the toy aisle, our suspect is right behind her. Now look, see what he pulls out of his jacket?”
The fluorescent lights glinted off the object in his hand, making its shape clear for several seconds. Mitch mumbled a curse under his breath. “A gun.”
He watched as Ms. Doe stopped to pick up a toy. With her back turned, she didn’t see the suspect behind her. In a flash of movement, the man coldcocked her in the back of the head, sending her reeling forward. With swift efficiency, he checked her back pockets, then rolled her over to search her jacket. Within seconds, he’d searched her, shoved her small purse in his jacket, and disappeared through a stockroom door.
This was no robbery. He was looking for something specific. And something about the way he searched her disturbed Mitch. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“This isn’t good news.” He rubbed at a kink in the back of his neck. This was going to be a really long weekend.
“It’s about to get worse. Remember your basket theory?” Marco turned to a different monitor, running a second tape. “Here’s your basket, sitting there minding its own business, and here’s your reliable employee picking it up.”
“Tell me she takes it and drops it on a shelf somewhere where we can find it and get prints.”
“She drops it all right. Along with any evidence you might have had.”
Chapter 4
Mitch watched the monitor as the store employee carried the basket by the toy section, stopped dead in her tracks at the doll aisle, and seconds later dropped the basket on the floor. To the right of the screen he could see his own cart, and himself where he knelt beside Jane Doe.
Aw, hell, the basket she’d dropped had belonged to the suspect. Not half an hour later he’d told Greene it wasn’t part of the crime scene, which meant someone had probably picked it up and put all the evidence back on the shelves. “Son of a—”
“There’s more.”
Mitch sunk lower in his chair. “Great.”
“He was following her—” Marco paused as he stuck in a different tape “—and she was following you.”
Mitch leaned forward, watching himself enter the store, then Ms. Doe only minutes behind him. So it wasn’t a coincidence. But what had she wanted from him? What connection could he have to a woman he’d never seen?
“A couple of times she looked like she might approach you, then backed off at the last minute. When you went by the greeting cards, she broke off and went by the toys.”
Hell of a detective he was. He hadn’t even known he was being followed. He’d been so blasted tired at the time, he could think of nothing but getting home and climbing into bed.
“Kinda weird you ended up on the same aisle as her,” Marco said. It wasn’t a blatant accusation, but Mitch didn’t miss the implication.
“I was looking for a present for Jessica, Darren’s little girl. Her fourth birthday party is next weekend.”
“Party’s been postponed,” someone said from behind him. Mitch turned to see Darren Waite, his best friend and fellow detective, leaning casually in the doorway nursing a diet soda. “Heard you caught a case last night.”
“She was bashed in the back of the head with a piece by an unknown assailant. And not only can she not ID her attacker, she can’t ID herself. She has amnesia.”
Darren gestured down the hall. “Was that her in the squad room looking at mugs?”
“Yeah, I’m hoping something might trigger a memory. After I’m finished here, I’m taking her back to the scene.”
“I thought this was your weekend off.”
“Yeah,” he grumbled, “so did I.”
“So pass this off to someone else.”
“She was following me. She had my name in her pocket. I’m involved somehow and I need to know why.”
Darren didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His wary expression said it all.
To circumvent the inevitable lecture he knew was coming, Mitch asked, “So why has the party been postponed?”
“My mother-in-law had a mild heart attack last night. Diane took the girls and flew to Seattle to help out, until she’s back on her feet.”
“Man, I’m sorry. How long will she be gone?”
“A week or two. Maybe less.” Darren downed the last of the soda and tossed the plastic bottle into the trash. “I taped the Tigers game. If you’re not busy later, why don’t you come by?”
“Honestly, this case is probably going to keep me tied up most of the weekend.” Mitch glanced at his watch. It was already close to 11:00 a.m. He had to get back to the store and pick up that stuff for Lisa and his mom, before Lisa had a cow.
“I thought when the rape case broke you were going to take some time off,” Darren said.
“I was.” Mitch turned to Marco. “Could you print me out a few stills of the suspect?”
“Sure thing.” Marco keyed a few commands into the computer and the printer spit out two grainy shots.
Odds were, she wouldn’t be able to ID her attacker. But it didn’t hurt to maybe show the pictures around, see if anything turned up. The guy could have been anywhere from his early twenties to late forties, was medium height and build, wore grungy clothing. He could be one of ten thousand different men.
“Why don’t you pass this case off to Michaels or Petroski?” Darren asked, following Mitch to the squad room. “You haven’t had a day off in weeks.”
Mitch stopped in the doorway. Ms. Doe was sitting just where he’d left her, a pile of mug books on one side of the desk, a box of doughnuts on the other. The clothes they’d given her at the hospital were acceptable considering they were free, but far from flattering. The shirt was several sizes too big and the threadbare jeans would be down around her ankles if she hadn’t taken the tie from her jacket hood and knotted it through the belt loops. Still, there was something about her….
She chose that moment to look up and flash him a thousand-watt smile. After everything she’d been through, she was in surprisingly good spirits. He couldn’t deny that he was drawn to her. What man wouldn’t be? He also couldn’t escape the feeling that she was hiding something.
“She’s a doll,” Darren said.
Mitch shrugged. “I guess.”
“Aw, hell.” Darren glanced from Ms. Doe, whose nose was once again buried in the mug book, to Mitch. “You’ve got a thing for her, don’t you?”
“It’s not like that.”
Darren wasn’t buying it. On more than one occasion in the past ten years he’d claimed to know Mitch better than Mitch knew himself. And who knows, maybe he did. They’d gone through the academy together, rode shotgun for two years in uniform, and made detective within a few months of each other. Mitch had been the best man at Darren’s wedding, paced anxiously in the waiting room during the birth of his two daughters, Jessica and Lauren, and spent more Sundays than he could remember watching football in the Waites’ living room.
In turn, Darren had set him up with just about every one of his wife Diane’s single friends. He’d held vigil with him those last few days when Mitch’s father had lost his battle with stomach cancer. He was the brother Mitch never had.
“It’s not like that,” Darren mimicked. “That’s what you said before the Kim incident.”
Mitch did his best not to shudder at the memory. That isolated lapse in judgment would haunt him the rest of his damn life. “This is different. I don’t even know who she is. We have reason to believe she’s married and has kids. You know I would never get involved with a married woman.”
Again. The word hung between them unspoken, but there all the same.
“I’m telling you, don’t get yourself mixed up with this one. She’s got trouble written all over her. She could be anyone. That guy who attacked her could be her pimp, or her bookie. She could be dealing drugs.”
The suspect had seemed anxious to find something. Mitch tried to imagine Ms. Doe pushing drugs, or selling her body on a street corner. She looked more like a kindergarten teacher than a criminal.
“She could be faking the amnesia,” Darren said. “Jerking you around.”
“Yeah, I considered that. Every now and then she’ll say something and, I don’t know, it makes me wonder if she’s not just making it up. But then there are times when she seems genuinely scared and confused. You should have seen her expression when she looked in the mirror. Not to mention that she puked on me when she realized she didn’t know her own name.”
In his pocket, his pager vibrated. He pulled it out and looked at the display. “It’s Lisa. She’s already paged me five times this morning. She probably left fifty messages on my voice mail.”
“How’s your mom doing? She and Lisa kill each other yet?”
“Not yet. Of course, I haven’t talked to her today.”
“Well, I’m outta here. I figure I’ll get some stuff done around the house while Diane is gone.” He laid a hand on Mitch’s shoulder. “Watch yourself with Jane Doe. I have a bad feeling about this one.”
So did Mitch. But not bad enough to scare him off the case. He needed to know what possible connection they could have to each other. “As soon as we revisit the crime scene, I’m going to get her settled in a halfway house.”
“Using the one on Lexington?” Darren asked, and Mitch nodded. “That place isn’t so bad. Besides, someone will probably report her missing when she doesn’t show up for work Monday, right?”
“That’s what I’m hoping.” But deep down, something told him he wouldn’t be getting off that easily.
Undetected, he watched as she thumbed through the pages of the mug book. She was wasting her time. She wouldn’t find him in there. He was a master of the game, beyond detection or retribution. Minutes ago, she’d looked right at him, made eye contact even, and there wasn’t the slightest reaction.
After leaving the store, he’d searched her house for hours last night, tearing through one room after another. He’d found nothing to tell him where she kept them. She was smart for a woman.
But not smart enough.
