THIRTY-FOUR
Ten o’clock the next day, Jessie was getting ready to head to the office when a knock at the door prompted Higgins to jump to his feet. The dog was filling out, had some meat on his ribs, and his patchy fur was looking better.
“It’s okay,” Jessie told Higgins as she made her way to the window.
Ben Morrison stood at the front door. He looked up, saw her standing there, and waved.
“It’s Ben,” she told the dog. “You’ve met him before.” But Higgins didn’t care who it was. He stayed close to her heels, growling all the way down the stairs. Holding tight to his collar, she opened the door.
It took Ben only a moment to calm Higgins down. When he finally straightened, he looked at her and frowned. “What happened to you?”
“I was attacked yesterday. Nine stitches. I look worse than I feel.” She gave the dog a pat on the head. “Thanks to Higgins, I was able to use my pepper spray and get away.”
“Good dog.” He stroked the animal’s back. “Where did it happen?”
“A few blocks from here.”
“I’m glad you’re okay. I went to your office first, but I realize now I should have called.”
“No worries. Come on in.” She headed up the stairs, leaving him to shut the door.
“Random attacker or something else?” he asked when they reached the living room.
“Not sure, but there’s a chance it could have something to do with Parker Koontz.”
“Why do you say that?”
“My lawyer, who also happens to be a good friend, lives a few miles from here. She was also attacked yesterday. Tied up inside her home while the place was ransacked. The only thing they took was the device I had used to get a video of Parker Koontz as I followed him across town.”
“Last I heard he was in critical condition.”
She nodded. “Nothing has changed in that regard. But this whole Koontz thing has spiraled out of control. My friends and loved ones are at risk, and yet so far I have found nothing to point me in a particular direction.”
It was quiet as he appeared to mull the news over.
“The police are looking into it.” Gazing at Ben, she noticed the telltale signs of little sleep: frumpy hair, wrinkled shirt, and heavy eyelids. Her gaze fell to the leather case at his side. “I’m assuming you came to talk to me about Sophie?”
“Correct.”
“Have a seat. Olivia is at a friend’s house, so now is a good time to talk. Can I get you anything?”
“No, thanks.” He took a seat and then picked up a book on the table in front of him: The Sherlock Holmes Book, Big Ideas Simply Explained. “You’ve been studying, I see.”
Jessie smiled. “Olivia is doing a report on Sherlock Holmes.”
“Following in her aunt’s footsteps?”
“Seems so. She believes investigative work might be her calling.”
“What do you think?”
“She’s only fourteen. I’m sure she’ll change her mind a dozen times before she graduates high school.”
“What about you?” he asked.
She sat in the chair across from him. “What about me?”
“Is what you do your calling? Your passion?”
She didn’t know what to think about the man. Even if he didn’t have amnesia, she had a feeling he would be a mystery to her. Although she hadn’t known him for long, he was easy to talk to. But something in those eyes of his told a different story, a dark story filled with twists and turns. Who was he, really? Even he didn’t know.
“My wife tells me I have a tendency to get overly personal. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.”
He chuckled.
“When I was Olivia’s age, I wanted to be a doctor,” she told him without further prompting. “But that plan was shot to hell when my friend rode her bike straight into a mailbox. Seeing all that blood did me in.”
“Did you faint?”
“Nope. Just stood there like an idiot. My blood pressure dropped, and I couldn’t function.”
“And you didn’t know about your aversion to blood before that?”
“No. Not until that day. And I knew it was worse than I thought when years later my sister was cutting a piece of fruit and sliced right through the tip of her finger. I froze. It was as if I was having an out-of-body experience. I could see her, the knife, the blood, the look of surprise on her face, but I was unable to do anything about it. Seeing her blood was too much. I’ve read that my reaction to blood is supposed to be unique to humans and primates, but possums and some breeds of goats also become unresponsive when they see blood. It supposedly triggers something inside that tells them they’re in danger.” She paused to take a breath. “After being cut open yesterday, I realized nothing had changed. I had hoped I would grow out of it, but I barely made it home after the attack.”
“But at least you didn’t freeze.”
“True. I could feel the blood oozing down my neck, but I refused to look. But enough about that—you asked about my dreams and passion in life.”
He said nothing.
“Two years after Mom left,” she said, “I was putting myself through school at Sac State when I discovered Dad was falling apart and Sophie was pregnant.” Jessie shrugged. “It didn’t really matter what my dreams and life goals were after that. My sister needed help.”
“So you quit school.”
She nodded. “I’m four years older than Sophie. She was sixteen when she got pregnant. By the time Olivia was born, Dad’s drinking had gotten out of hand, and I knew I needed to get a job and find somewhere else to live. I could make the most money as a cocktail waitress, so that’s what I did. And then I lucked out when I met a guy who said he had a run-down house in Midtown. We made a deal. He’d keep the rent low if I agreed not to ask him to fix leaky faucets or creaky wooden steps.” She sighed. “We’ve been here ever since.”
“And Sophie and Olivia moved in with you right away?”
“Yes. Sophie needed to finish high school, so I took care of Olivia during the day, and Sophie took over at night. I was too busy and too tired to worry about life dreams.”
“And then Sophie disappeared.”
“In the blink of an eye, it seemed.”
“And that brings me to the reason I came here today,” he said.
She waited.
“I want to talk to you about Sophie’s last day.”
When Ben Morrison had first contacted her, Jessie had been worried about Olivia, but she’d also worried about whether she could handle starting over again. In the past, every time new evidence was brought to her attention, she would start from the beginning and find herself reliving the nightmare. But after hearing Olivia talk about needing to know what happened to Sophie, she’d had a change of heart and found herself thinking that maybe this time things would be different.
“Would you rather do this another time?”
“No,” she said. “Let’s do this now.”
He pulled a manila file from his case. He then slipped a ring from his finger and set it on the table in front of her.
She picked it up. “What’s this?”
“I believe it’s the same ring the man who followed Sophie out of the Wild West was wearing the night she disappeared.”
She dropped it as if it were on fire. It clinked and then rolled across the table. “How? Where did you find it?”
“I’ll explain, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather start from the beginning.”
“Go ahead.”
“As you know, I’ve been seeing images—flashbacks, if you will—which could be the return of some forgotten memories, which possibly include remnants of things I saw when I was reporting on one case or another before the accident.”
“Okay,” she said anxiously.
“When we were talking to Leanne Baxter at the Wild West the other day, she mentioned a skull ring. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than my head felt as if it were about to explode—”
“I remember. You excused yourself for a few minutes.”
“That’s right.”
She did her best to sit quietly and listen.
“Months after my accident, after I was released from the hospital, the lead investigator called me into her office and showed me objects that were found at the scene of the crash. A pocketknife, two rings, some coins, and a key. She wanted to see if any of the items belonged to me, but she also hoped that one of the objects might help bring back memories of that night.”
“But that didn’t happen? The objects meant nothing to you?”
“No. Not until Leanne mentioned the skull ring.”
It took a second for it all to sink in. Jessie straightened. “I don’t understand—wait a minute. Are you telling me that whoever was in the car with you on the night of your accident”—she pointed at the skull ring on the table in front of her—“was wearing this ring?”
He nodded.
She felt the blood rush from her face. “But that would mean you were the other man Leanne saw walk out of the bar that night.”
“I’m left to assume the same thing,” he said.
Jessie jumped from her chair, grimacing from the pain that caused, since she was still bruised and sore from the attack. “This is crazy.”
He said nothing.
She pointed an accusing finger at him. “You were there,” she said, unable to fully comprehend what he’d just told her.
He nodded.
Unable to contain her anger and frustration, she felt her hands shaking. “So where the hell is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, come on.” She pushed her hair out of her face. “How convenient. My sister walks out of a bar after midnight. Two men follow her. One of those men is now dead, and my sister is missing. The one man who survives, the one man who holds all the answers, happens to have amnesia.”
“I’m as frustrated as you.”
“No, I don’t think you are,” she told him. “I’ve been raising a young girl for the past ten years—a young girl who has no idea who her father is—or who her mother is, for that matter, or why she disappeared. Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder what I could have done differently to stop Sophie from leaving the house that night. Have you ever felt so much guilt that it eats at you every single day until you feel less than whole? I don’t think anyone truly knows what it’s like to have someone you love go missing unless it happens to them.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
She drew in a breath, tried to calm herself by taking a seat again. “So you must know who this ring belongs to. What’s his name?”
“Vernon Doherty.”
“He was driving the night of your accident?”
“A stolen Ford Pinto,” Ben said with a nod as he pulled out a copy of the accident report and handed it to her.
She read it over before she looked at him. “Why were you at the bar that night?”
He sighed. “I have no idea. Nobody knows. I must have been working a case. I’ve gone through the files at work a dozen times, hoping to find something to point me to a case I might have been working on at the time.” He shook his head. “I’ve found nothing. I have no idea what might have led me to the Wild West.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “So what do you know about this Doherty guy?”
“I know he was bad news. Years ago I tracked down his parents in New Jersey. Vernon was the youngest of three boys. They said Vernon had been trouble since the day he was born. Judging from his rap sheet, they were being kind.”
Her head pounded. She stood, went to the kitchen, and took some ibuprofen, figuring she’d save the pain pills the doctor had prescribed for tonight. “So,” she said after she was sitting again, “you contacted me after you recognized Sophie’s image on TV.”
“That’s right.”
If he had anything to do with Sophie’s disappearance, would he be here now? Maybe he would be. Most of his life was a blank slate. Even he didn’t know how far his involvement in the case went.
He opened his mouth to say something, but she raised a hand to stop him. “For some reason,” she went on, “I find myself liking you. You’re good with animals. Olivia liked you right off. You talk well about your kids and your wife. Overall, you seem like a decent man, a family man. But beneath it all you’re a complete mystery.” She angled her head. “Or maybe a puzzle would better describe you. A puzzle with pieces missing.”
He said nothing, which was good because she wasn’t finished.
“For instance, I’m curious to know what else you haven’t told me. Maybe you know more than you’re letting on. How much did you remember about Sophie and that night at the Wild West before you called me about doing this story on my family?”
“Maybe this isn’t going to work, after all,” he said.
“Why?” she asked, surprised by his sudden change of heart. “Because I’m being honest with you?”
“No, because you don’t trust me.”
“I thought trust was something people earned.”
“The thing is,” he said, “I can’t tell you things I don’t know or simply don’t remember. And if you believe I have motives or reasons to keep the facts from you, then I don’t see how we can work as a team.” He scratched his chin. “From the first moment we met, you were wary of me.”
She started to protest, but he stopped her. “I could see it in your eyes and in your quickness in telling me that you had already done all you could to find your sister, and it was time to move on.”
Guilt. It swept through her in waves, her conscience reminding her that he was right. After all these years, she’d been ready to tamp down everything that had happened, bury it like a dog buried a bone, because that sounded a hell of a lot easier than carrying the shame on her shoulders, day after day. “You’re right on both accounts,” she said. “I thought I could forget and move on. But then you came along, and I realized pretending it never happened wouldn’t resolve anything. Eventually the sorrow and memories would leach through cracks and crevices and find a way to torment me. And I need to think of Olivia, too.” Her gaze met his. “Despite my concern over your motives, we need your help.”