LITMIR.BIZ

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Hands shaking, he threw the pillow across the room and fell back on the bed to stare up at the water-stained ceiling.

      It all came back like a swift kick to his gut. His cheating wife. The wild drive to Pilot’s Cove. The rain and darkness and falling-down-drunk pity party he’d thrown for himself.

      He’d awakened a motel clerk demanding a room sometime after four in the morning and been forced to show his badge to keep the clerk from calling the cops on him for disturbing the peace. Kind of like the run-in he’d had at the Past Time bar and liquor store where he’d gotten the bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

      The memory made him as sick of the smell of fear and alcohol permeating the motel room.

      Nash had heard about men hitting bottom. He’d seen his share that were certainly on their way if not already there. He’d just never thought he’d be one of them as he reached for what was left of the Jack Daniel’s and plotted how to kill his wife and her lover.

      OFFICER WALKER OPENED the door to the doctors’ lounge to find Doc Brubaker nuking a frozen beef burrito. On the way in, he’d passed Sheila leaving. She’d gone off duty, leaving the elderly Connie Danvers at the nurses’ station monitoring the small hospital’s only patient.

      “I thought doctors ate better than that,” Walker said as he helped himself to a cup of coffee.

      Doc shrugged. “She told you?”

      He nodded. “She swears she was confused when she woke up earlier and thought her son was in the car with her, but that he wasn’t.”

      “You don’t believe her?”

      Walker shrugged. “Who the hell knows? I’m not even sure she knows.”

      “Which wouldn’t be unusual given her head trauma.”

      “Which is why I haven’t called off the search.” He pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “I called the Seattle Police. They’re canvassing her neighborhood to see if they can get some information. But it’s one of those neighborhoods where the houses are a quarter mile apart and the neighbors don’t know each other. I’m also trying to find out if maybe there was a custody problem with the kid. So far nothing. I’m afraid her son is out there somewhere in that lake and she knows it and just doesn’t want to face it.”

      “Understandable. That’s a hell of a thing to have to face.”

      “Especially if she panicked and left him down there to drown.”

      The doctor grimaced. “Maybe she couldn’t get him out of his car seat. Or maybe he’s with family or friends or even his father, alive and well, and nowhere near Shadow Lake.” He sighed. “Let’s hope that’s the case.”

      Walker glanced out the window toward the cliffs, unable to shake the bad feeling he had. “What I’d like to know is what the hell she was doing on that road at that time of the night. The divers found the car, but the water down there is so murky they couldn’t see shit. Even if the kid’s car seat is in the back, it doesn’t prove he was with her—or that he was even strapped in.”

      “Still no luck reaching the husband?”

      “Ex-husband. She says they recently divorced.” Walker took a sip of the horrible coffee. If anything the coffee was worse than the cup he’d had earlier, and the smell of the burrito as the microwave dinged was enough to make him sick to his stomach.

      “She’s still wearing the ring though,” he said. “There’s something there that’s not right. Did she say how she got that awful scar?”

      “I haven’t asked. But I think whatever pain the woman is in isn’t necessarily visible,” Doc said.

      “Yeah? Well, we’re all in pain, aren’t we.” He finished what he could of the coffee, needing something to keep him going. As he rose to rinse out his coffee cup, he said, “The towing crew should be getting to the site any time now. See what you can get out of Anna Collins, Drake, whatever. But I gotta tell ya, she’s lying about something.” His cell phone rang. He apologized and took the call.

      DOC BRUBAKER WATCHED WALKER pull out his notebook to jot something down, worried. He felt bleary-eyed. His lack of sleep was starting to hamper his ability to think clearly. Only his concern for his patient was keeping him here.

      An added concern was Walker. He’d delivered Walker, had watched him grow up in Shadow Lake, seen him change into the cynical, angry man he’d become after his wife left him and his best friend died.

      It saddened Brubaker, even though he knew that life shaped a person. Walker had been through a lot, but nothing more than other people faced every day. Brubaker worried that Walker was taking this case too personally, that he’d seen similarities between his ex-wife and this woman and that ultimately, it would cloud his judgment.

      Doc finally got up to retrieve his burrito from the microwave, hoping it would be cool enough to eat. He wasn’t hungry, but he knew if he didn’t keep something in his stomach, he’d regret it.

      Walker snapped his phone shut. “The divers are going back down to hook up the cable from Mac’s tow truck. I need to get up there.”

      “Let me know what you find. As soon as I eat, I’ll go down and see our patient.”

      Walker nodded, frowning. “I’ll be at the accident site if you need me.”

      Doc ate part of the burrito, forcing what he could down before tossing the rest in the trash. When he pushed open the door to Anna’s room, he found her awake and staring up at the ceiling, her eyes red and swollen from crying. She didn’t seem to hear him come in. He studied her for a moment before approaching her bed.

      “How are you feeling?”

      She said nothing when she looked at him, her eyes hollow as he drew up a chair.

      “Do you remember your car going off the road and into the lake?” For a moment, he thought she wouldn’t answer. There was a frightening dullness to her eyes.

      “It was raining,” she said in a distant tone.

      He watched the pupils of her eyes and saw that she was starting to recall the accident.

      “I lost control of the car.” He could see the fear, hear it in her voice. “Water was coming over the hood, filling the car…” She shuddered. “That’s all I remember.”

      He nodded but wondered if she hadn’t remembered more than she was saying, from the way her eyes filled with tears.

      “That must have been terrifying.” As he put his stethoscope in his ears and moved closer to check her heart and lungs, she brushed back her bangs to run her finger along the old scar on her forehead.

      When he was finished, he stepped back and she pulled her hand away from the scar almost guiltily.

      “That’s a lonely stretch of highway to be traveling, especially that late at night alone,” he said. “I doubt there was much traffic with it being off-season and raining. Were you on your way to Shadow Lake or leaving town?”

      “I don’t know.” She looked at him, the admission clearly painful. “I’ve tried to remember, but…”

      “Don’t worry about. You’ll remember when the time comes.” He reached over to brush back her bangs. “How did you get the scar?”

      Instantly, she looked self-conscious. “I’ve been told it was from a car accident eight months ago.”

      He weighed that information. This wasn’t the first time she’d experienced memory loss then. “Were you unconscious for long from the accident?”

      “I was in a coma for six months.”

      He tried not to let his surprise show. Six months was a long time, but probably not for a head injury of that magnitude. He asked, although he already suspected the answer, “And you’ve never regained your memory of that accident?”

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