Abandoned

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“We have a hit on her fingerprints, honey-love.”

It’s the first thing I hear when I walk into the office. This is one of the good mornings, the well-organized kind. I am already well caffeinated and awake.

“Tell me,” I say.

Alan and I had met in the parking lot and taken the elevator up together. James and Callie had arrived before us. Alan unscrews the top of his thermos and pours coffee into his mug. I gave him a coffee grinder for Christmas. He’d rolled his eyes at the time, joking that all the real cops grew up on Dunkin’ Donuts and 7-Eleven coffee, but not long after he’d started bringing the thermos.

“I’m a junkie now,” he’d confessed. “After fresh ground, everything else tastes like crap.”

“Her name is Heather Hollister,” Callie says.

I frown. “Why does that name seem familiar?”

“Because,” she continues, “Heather Hollister was a homicide detective. From our very own LAPD. She disappeared eight years ago, without a trace. No body was ever found.”

“I remember that case,” Alan says, nodding. “Eight years? Jesus Christ.”

I remember it too. “It was big news,” I say, “and not just in the law-enforcement community. She was married, right?”

“That’s correct,” James pipes in. “Husband worked for an Internet service provider. His name is”—he consults his notes—“Douglas Hollister. They had twin sons, Avery and Dylan. They were two at the time.” He looks up from his notes. “They’re ten now.”

It’s an unnecessary statement, but I understand why he says it. James is human, however hard he tries to hide it. The concept of this woman being held for eight years is difficult to grasp. Her children provide the necessary contrast.

Avery and Dylan were two when she went away. They would have been riding tricycles and speaking in small sentences, disobeying and acting out, like all two-year-olds. When she disappeared, they were still three years away from kindergarten. Now they’re closing in on the fifth grade or are already there.

I force myself to focus. “What do we know about the investigation that was done at the time?” I ask.

“Not much, I’m afraid,” Callie says. “The FBI assisted, of course, but the primary investigation was headed by LAPD.”

Of course it was. Heather was one of their own. No way they were ceding that to anyone else.

“Do we have any news on Heather’s status?” I ask.

“I called the hospital from home,” Alan says. “She’s quiet now, so they’re no longer sedating her. She still hasn’t spoken.”

I chew on a thumbnail, a bad habit that replaced smoking. I think it’s a pretty good trade.

“Callie and James, I want you to collect all the case files from that investigation. Do not, under any circumstances, tell anyone why we want them or release her name to the family yet.”

“Why?” Callie asks.

“Because,” James says, already keeping pace with me. “Everything points to either someone who knew her or collusion with someone who knew her. How else do you take a trained homicide detective without leaving a trace?”

“Understood,” Callie says. “What are you and Alan going to be doing?”

“We’re going to go and see Heather Hollister at the hospital. Maybe knowing her name will help us reach her. She’s the best witness we’ve got.”

James stands up and heads toward the door.

“Wait!” Callie cries.

Everyone stops.

She smiles a sly smile. “Aren’t any of you going to ask me how my honeymoon night went?”

James scowls. “Stop wasting time.”

“Ready?” I ask Alan.

He downs the last of his coffee, rolling his eyes heavenward in what I could swear is a brief prayer of thanks. He caps his thermos and stands up. “Ready,” he says.

Callie is pouting. I pat her on the cheek. “None of us is going to ask because we all know how it went,” I tell her.

She sniffs once, but seems mollified and follows James out the door.

Alan and I are driving to the hospital, both lost in our own thoughts.

We have an almost exact time period to put to Heather Hollister’s imprisonment. Eight years. It’s mind-boggling. Too much to take in. I think of all the changes just in my own life in that time and I am aghast. She’s missed everything.

I imagine there’s an empty coffin in a cemetery somewhere, perhaps filled with trinkets placed there by her family, friends, and coworkers. A headstone, maybe? What would it say? Heather Hollister, beloved wife and mother? Mother and wife? Which comes first—the eternal battle.

“You want to talk to her, or should I?” Alan asks.

“Let’s see who she responds to first. If she responds at all.”

He nods his agreement.

Eight years. That explains the scars. The doctor said that she was sun-deprived. Did that mean he’d kept her in the dark the whole time? A shiver runs through me.

How would I deal with that? Eight years shackled in the dark?

“Badly,” I murmur, before realizing I’ve said it aloud.

“What’s that?” Alan asks.

“I was wondering how I’d deal with eight years of prison with no sun.”

“Yeah.”

The sun is pale, which reminds me of Heather Hollister’s dusty alabaster skin. I decide to change the subject. “Did you give any more thought to the whole strike team thing?” I ask Alan.

“’Course I did. Talked to Elaina too.”

“And?”

“She agrees. I’ll stick with you on the start-up, if you decide to do it. After that, we’ll see. No promises.”

“Thanks, Alan,” I say, and I mean it.

He gives me a sidelong glance. “You decided yet?”

“Not officially.”

He smiles at my answer. “So that’s a yes, then?”

“It’s a probably.”

“If you say so.”

I stick my tongue out at him. “You know, it’s funny, but I can’t help thinking about the early women in the FBI.”

“Duckstein and Davidson.”

My mouth drops open. “You know about them?”

He fakes affront. “Hey, I have depth, you know.”

“And Lenore Houston.”

“Right.”

Alaska Davidson, Jessie Duckstein, and Lenore Houston served in the “Bureau of Investigation” before it was known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. J. Edgar Hoover took over the FBI in 1924. By 1928, all three were gone, at Hoover’s behest. They were the last female agents until 1972, when Hoover died. Things are different now. More than two thousand women serve, and gender lines are largely blurred. Results speak loudest, doing what we do.

“I remember reading about those three women and how angry it made me.”

“It should have. They got it even worse than the black man, and that’s saying something. There weren’t many, but even African American agents were doing investigations in the twenties, thirties, and forties.”

“Now we’ve had an African American president who fought a woman to get the Democratic nomination,” I muse. “Things change. I’m always kind of proud each time something like that happens for women. If that makes sense.”

“’Course it does. I count coup sometimes myself. We’re here,” he says, turning into the hospital parking lot.

Counting coup, I think. Great phrase.

I whisk everything else from my mind and focus on the problem of Heather Hollister. We need to see if we can get her to talk to us.

We’re in her hospital room, sitting next to her bed. I’m a little bit closer than Alan. Odds are, it was a man who did this to her. She might feel safest with a woman.

Her eyes are open, but I’m not sure if they’re really seeing anything. They are roving, in constant, endless, nervous motion, flicking from my face to the fluorescent bulbs above her to the barred window on her left that lets in the light. It’s outside that her gaze goes to most, I observe.

“Heather?” I ask. “Heather Hollister?”

The eyes flick at me, but she doesn’t answer or show any signs of recognition. Her pallor is still ghostly. It’s not the clean white of poured milk; there are too many scars. New scabs cover her shaved scalp and forearms, which will heal and then turn into scars of their own.

I watch as she chews her lower lip, biting hard enough once to draw blood. She winces and stops biting. A moment later, the behavior repeats. She breathes with her mouth open—quick, shallow breaths. The breathing reminds me of a cat in a hot car I saw at the mall one time. It was July, and the summer that year was sweltering. The cat was panting like a dog, and its eyes were rolling. The solution then was easy: I smashed the car window and removed the cat. I left a note saying I was from the FBI and giving my name and cell phone number and why I’d smashed the window. I said I was taking the cat to a no-kill shelter and even gave the address of the shelter. I never heard from the owner of the car, and neither did the shelter. The cat was adopted.

No windows here, I think, and she’s no cat.

“Heather?” I try again.

She laughs, an awful braying laugh, like a donkey trying to speak human. I jerk back, startled by its suddenness. It stops just as suddenly, and the eyes go back to roving. Her right hand goes to her left forearm, and she starts picking.

“No, no, honey,” I say, keeping my voice as soft and soothing as I can. I reach over to move her hand away.

“Nooooo!” she screams, jerking away from me. Her mouth opens a little and she juts her chin out. It’s meant to be a gesture of defiance. It makes her look primitive, cavewomanish. I pull my hand away. “Sorry,” I say.

She starts picking again. The eyes go back to roving. “She’s not ready,” Alan says.

I want him to be wrong, but I know he’s right. Some part of me—the selfish, ugly part—wants to shake her, tell her to snap out of it. It only lasts a second, though.

I reach into my purse and find a business card. I show it to Heather. “This is my card, Heather. It has my name and my number on it. I’m from the FBI, and I want to find the man who did this to you. When you’re ready to talk, just ask for me.” I stand up and lay the card on her bedside table, at the base of the humongous lamp. “Let’s go,” I say to Alan.

I don’t think she even notices that we’ve left the room.

“What’s the verdict, Doctor?” I ask.

Dr. Mills appears to be a decent guy. He’s in his mid-to-late thirties, balding early, and he looks like he’s probably tired all the time, but I sense genuine care there. I tend to be sensitive to that kind of thing.

“She’s got various vitamin and calcium deficiencies. We’re working to correct those. She needs to put on some weight. Aside from that, she has no other major physical problems. I expect her to bounce back.” He sighs. “Mentally? That’s another story. I’ve asked for a psych consult, which will happen this afternoon. She’s obviously in the middle of a psychotic episode. I’m fine keeping her where she’s at temporarily, but she needs medication and psychiatric help.”

“What about the picking thing?” I ask. “Biting her lips?”

“I’m actually encouraged by that.”

Alan frowns. “Come again?”

“She stops after doing superficial harm to herself. Look, I’ve had people in here who have cut off their own noses; I had a guy who said he was a reincarnation of van Gogh, which is why he’d chopped off both of his ears with a set of gardening shears and sent them to the object of his affection. Heather knows when to stop. That’s a good sign.”

“You’ll let us know of any change? I left my card on her bedside table.”

“Of course. And please find out if she had a general practitioner. If I can get her old medical records, I’d appreciate it.”

Alan stops and turns as we’re walking away. “Two ears? I thought van Gogh only cut off one?”

Dr. Mills shrugs. It’s a tired shrug, to go with his tired face. “He said just one didn’t work last time.”

Callie calls me as we’re getting onto the freeway. She talks as I watch the hills of burned grass and fire-withered trees roll by. The last few years of wildfires have been especially hard on Southern California.

“Heather Hollister’s partner on the job died of a heart attack last year,” she begins, “but I have the case files.”

“What did you tell the locals?”

“I told them that profiling was an ever-evolving science and that we’re going over old cases with a new eye in the hopes that we’d see something we missed before.”

“Where are you now?”

“About twenty minutes from the office.”

I check the exit sign to see where we are. “We’ll see you there in thirty.” I hang up. “Callie got the case files,” I tell Alan.

He nods. “Good. Let’s get some meat on this bone. I feel like a dog gnawing air.”