FOUR
It was a quarter past five when Ben Morrison left his workplace, a ten-thousand-square-foot cement-gray building that housed the Sacramento Tribune. He’d been working as a crime reporter there for twenty years, the first ten of which he had no recollection of, owing to a car accident that had left him with retrograde amnesia.
After the accident he’d had no memory of his sister or his deceased parents. But something beautiful had come from the tragedy. He’d fallen in love with and married the nurse who’d helped put him back together again. At his wife’s insistence, he’d tried to reconnect with his sister over the years, but she and her husband had moved to Florida, and his phone calls went unanswered.
Today was another hot one. The air was thick and dry, sucking the moisture out of every living thing and making it a chore to breathe. It had been a long day, and he was eager to get home. As he approached his 1978 Ford Club Wagon, he heard a distant call for help and stopped to look around and listen.
There it was again. Was somebody in trouble?
He ran to the edge of the parking lot, where pavement merged with soil that sloped downward into a wooded area covered with brittle leaves.
Although he couldn’t see any smoke, he could feel it burning his throat. He heard the crackle and snap of a fire, but he couldn’t see anything unusual. His heart rate accelerated. “Is someone out there?”
No answer.
“Ben! Is there a problem?”
He turned to see his coworker Gavin Whitney rushing to his side. “What’s going on?”
“Do you smell smoke?” Ben asked.
Gavin took a couple of sniffs. “No. I don’t smell anything.” He wiped his brow. “It’s hot as hell out here, though. I bet we could fry an egg on the asphalt about now.” He planted a hand on his hip. “If this heat wave lasts too much longer, people are going to start dropping like flies.”
When Ben didn’t respond, he added, “More people die from a heat wave than lightning, tornadoes, hurricanes, or floods.”
Ben had a difficult time listening to anything but the hiss of the fire as it moved closer.
“I’ve gotta get going,” Gavin said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
He wanted to grab Gavin’s shoulders and shake him. Couldn’t he hear the fire or smell the acrid smoke? When Ben looked back at Gavin, he imagined himself reaching into his briefcase for a hunting knife and plunging the blade into Gavin’s chest.
It seemed real, and it all happened fast.
The look on Gavin’s face when he realized he’d been stabbed made Ben wonder what exactly Gavin was experiencing. What did it feel like to be stabbed in the chest? Was there pain? Or did shock override all else? Definitely the latter, Ben thought as he watched Gavin stumble backward, leaving a trail of blood as he went.
Gavin’s eyes widened as he looked at the knife protruding from his body. There was no sign of pain on his face, only a shuddering shock wave of surprise.
Ben’s pulse rate spiked, and he blinked to clear his vision.
Suddenly Gavin was smiling and waving. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said in a cheerful voice. “Tell the family hello for me, will you? We’ve got to get the boys together again one of these days.”
It took a second for Ben’s foggy brain to clear. Gavin was fine. There was no knife protruding from his coworker’s chest. No blood anywhere.
Ben looked down at the briefcase still clutched within his fingers. He no longer heard screams for help or the crackle of fire.
He sniffed the air. It was smoke-free.
Relief mixed with apprehension consumed him as he made his way to his car. Injuries from long ago made it feel as if his left leg were made of solid steel, heavy and awkward.
The knife in Gavin’s chest, the blood, the screams . . . this wasn’t the first gruesome scene he’d conjured over the past few months, but this one had certainly lasted the longest.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
That was what his therapist would tell him to do if he were still seeing her. Although he didn’t like what had just transpired, he wasn’t too worried. In his line of work, he’d seen it all. It wasn’t the gory thoughts that concerned him, but the disorientation and lack of emotion that accompanied these random imaginings.
He unlocked the van and used the roll handle to pull himself in behind the wheel. Sweat trickled down both sides of his face as the engine roared to life. He drove out of the parking lot and merged onto Capitol Avenue. Forty minutes later, after stopping at the store to pick up a gallon of milk, he walked into the two-story house where he had lived for the past nine years with his wife and two kids. It was a quaint Cape Cod–style home at the end of a cul-de-sac in Citrus Heights. He set the milk on the wooden bench in the entryway and then headed for his bedroom upstairs so he could change his clothes.
“Ben, is that you?”
He made an about-face, grabbed the milk from the bench, and walked into the kitchen instead. His wife stood in front of the stove, making stir-fry. He gave Melony a peck on the cheek. She worked full-time as a trauma nurse at Mercy General, took care of the household and two children, and yet she always had a smile for him.
“Ben,” she said when she noticed his shirt was soaked through, “you need to get rid of that old van and get something with air-conditioning. This is ridiculous.”
“You know we can’t afford a new car right now. Abigail is going to need braces soon, and we need to fix the fence out back.” He sighed. “I’m going to go upstairs and change, and I’ll be as good as new.”
“Is your leg bothering you?” she asked, always perceptive.
“I’m fine.”
When he returned, both Abigail and Sean were in the kitchen helping Melony set the table for dinner. Sean would be eight soon, and his face still lit up every evening when Ben arrived home from work. “Dad!” he said. “Can we ride bikes around the lake this weekend? We could skip rocks like last time.”
“No,” Abigail said in a tone that made her sound sixteen instead of nine. “Mom and Dad promised they would both come to my soccer game.”
Sean frowned. “Soccer is boring.”
“That’s enough,” Melony cut in. “Get the napkins, Sean.”
Ben inwardly smiled. Every so often his coworkers asked him to join them for a beer after work, but he rarely said yes. He preferred to be home with his wife and kids. His nickname at the office was “Family Man,” which suited him just fine.
After dinner and homework were finished for the night, Melony put the kids to bed while Ben washed the dishes and then made his way to the family room to wind down and watch a little television. He settled into his favorite recliner. As he clicked through the channels, the image of a young woman flashed across the screen.
He sat up for a better look.
His breath caught in his chest. Dark hair, mesmerizing green eyes, and a full mouth. He knew that face. Not once since his accident had he felt such an intense feeling of recognition. To this day he had no idea why he’d been in a stolen car with Vernon Doherty, a man with a long list of traffic offenses, including two DUIs.
According to the show’s host, she had been twenty when she went missing ten years ago. He hit “Pause” so he could read the description of tonight’s Cold Case TV. This particular episode had originally aired three years ago and was titled “The Runaway Sister.”
He hit “Play” and listened closely as the host interviewed the missing woman’s older sister, Jessie Cole.
Melony entered the room, and he raised his hand to stop her from speaking. She crossed her arms and waited him out. When it was over, he hit “Pause” again. “Sophie Cole,” he said. “Does that name ring any bells?”
“No. Why?”
“I think I used to know her. There’s something familiar about her.”
“It’s a cold case,” Melony reminded him. “Was she from the area?”
He nodded. “Sacramento.”
“Well, that explains it. You probably did a story on her at the time.”
“I don’t know.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve been seeing things lately, Mel.”
She took a seat next to him and rested a hand on his back. “What do you mean?”
“Today as I walked to my car after work, I smelled smoke and I heard screams rising above a crackling fire. When Gavin Whitney appeared and asked me if I was okay, I saw a knife plunged deep into his chest.”
He looked squarely into Mel’s eyes. “I saw every detail of Gavin’s face when it happened. The shock. The horror. There was blood everywhere. It was as real to me as you sitting next to me right now.”
Ben couldn’t bring himself to tell her he was the one who had stabbed Gavin, mostly because the images had worried him—made him feel odd, confused—as if a part of him had actually enjoyed watching his coworker suffer. No, he quickly decided. It wasn’t enjoyment he’d felt, but curiosity mixed with fascination.
“But there was no knife,” Melony stated. “Gavin was fine, right? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Yes. Gavin is fine. There was no knife in his chest, no fire—no one was screaming. But I saw it all plain as day.” He looked away, feeling suddenly exhausted, the end of the day hitting him hard.
“Your doctor told you this might happen,” Melony said. “Do you remember? She said at any given time you might start to see things, disturbing images that could shock you, including flashbacks from the accident. The sound of the fire. The screams. It all makes sense.”
Ben said nothing. She had no idea about all the random images he’d been seeing, or how often. Gruesome scenes of murder and mayhem, dead bodies, lifeless eyes, too much blood, always blood.
“Ben,” she tried again, “you’ve been a crime reporter for twenty years. That coupled with the head injury has surely messed with your brain. It’s a wonder you haven’t been having flashbacks for years.”
There was a short pause before she added, “I’ve seen what head traumas can do to people. It’s obvious to me why you might be having these dark thoughts, but you should talk to Lori Mitchell and see what she says.”
He nodded. She was right.
The kids called for Mom from upstairs. She pushed herself to her feet.
“I’ll be right up,” Ben told her.
After she kissed his forehead, then left the room, he thought of Sophie Cole. He knew her. He’d met her. But where? He rushed to grab pen and paper and then rewound to the part where they provided a hotline number in case anyone knew anything about what happened to her. He jotted down, “Jessie Cole, sister to Sophie, private investigator living in the Sacramento area.”
And then he got an idea.