The Body Finder

CHAPTER 22

WHEN VIOLET AWOKE, SHE WAS CONFUSED. Disoriented, like the strange sensation of waking up in a bed that wasn’t your own and then struggling to remember where you’d fallen asleep.

Only this time, Violet was pretty sure she hadn’t fallen asleep in the back of an ambulance.

The details of how she’d gotten there were hard for her to grasp and felt like scraps from a dream-or a hallucination-pieced together in incomplete segments.

She remembered running…

And being chased.

And a voice calling out to her.

She tried to sit up, only to find that she was fastened to the stretcher and her neck was being held immobile by a huge brace strapped around her.

She remembered falling, a memory made more clear by the pain shooting up from her ankle. She assured the paramedic riding with her that her neck was just fine, but he insisted that she stay put, and no amount of pleading on her part could change his mind.

“How did you find me?” Violet finally asked him, giving up on the idea that he would release her.

“Some kid called it in, said he was your boyfriend. He’s coming right behind us.” He waved his metal clipboard toward the rear doors of the vehicle as if Violet could see out of them. She couldn’t of course; she was strapped to a gurney. “I think he thinks the sirens are for him too.”

Violet closed her eyes. Jay had been there, it hadn’t been a dream after all. He’d come looking for her. She didn’t allow herself to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t.

Relief spread through her, insulating her in the knowledge that she was safe now. She kept her eyes closed and concentrated on the sounds of the wailing sirens to distract her from the throbbing pain in her ankle.

She was embarrassed by all the attention she drew when the ambulance pulled into the emergency bay at the hospital. Jay met her inside, and never left her side, holding her hand silently-reassuringly-throughout the triage process, where she was cleared from the restraints. And when she was finally wheeled back to a room with long curtains hanging down to separate one bed from another, Jay pulled a chair close to her.

He captured her hand between both of his and touched her fingertips to his lips. “Are you okay?” he finally asked, seeming to breathe for the first time since she’d seen him.

She felt guilty for causing him to look so troubled. “I’m fine, really. I think I just twisted my ankle a little. It’s nothing. As soon as my parents get here, we can go home.”

She hated being in the hospital. She’d already felt several imprints moving around her. She doubted those who carried them were murderers exactly, but Violet was certain that echoes attached to those who administered lethal doses of painkillers too…even when it was done to give the dying a more peaceful passing.

Jay’s mom was a nurse and carried an old, faint imprint of her own. Violet had never asked Jay about it, but when she’d told her mother once, her mom had explained that sometimes it was too much to watch someone suffering when they died.

“What were you doing so far off the trail, Vi?” Jay continued to cup her hand tenderly.

She didn’t answer him. This wasn’t a question she wanted to discuss yet-especially not with Jay. She asked him a question of her own. “I thought your mom needed you. How come you came back?”

She didn’t tell him how grateful she was that he had. Or why.

It was enough of a diversion to keep him occupied for a moment. “She only needed me to let her into her car. She locked her keys inside, and I had her spare with me. But by the time I got back to your house, your mom said you’d gone for a run. I was gonna try to meet up with you on your way back and walk with you, maybe sneak you behind the bushes for a few minutes.” He smiled at her before turning more serious. “And then I heard you yelling for help…and crap, Violet, it scared the hell out of me. How did you fall, anyway? What were you doing down by the river?”

She heard her parents then, before she saw them, and their chaotic arrival saved her from answering Jay’s questions. She could hear them at the nurse’s station outside her door, asking about their daughter’s condition, still questioning one of the nurses as they dragged her into the room with them.

Violet assured her parents-in the same way she had Jay-that she was fine. That it was just a fall, some bruises and scrapes, nothing to worry about. And still, no one seemed to believe her.

After a full workup, and a painful, and humiliatingly unsuccessful, attempt at standing on her own, she was sent down to Radiology for an X ray on her right ankle. By the time Uncle Stephen arrived with Aunt Kat, Violet was ready to make a run for it. Only she doubted she could get very far.

On the other hand, her uncle was exactly the person she wanted to see right now. She had been biding her time until she could tell him what had really happened to her. But now that he was there, she wasn’t sure how to start. So she waited for the right moment.

He ruffled her hair as he came in, all uncle and no cop about him now. She far preferred her uncle to the chief; he had inherited the sense of humor in the family, while her father got the receding hairline and mad skills with numbers. “Geez, Vi, you didn’t need to break your own leg to get out of going to the dance with Grady Spencer. A simple ‘no’ would have been just fine, I’m sure.”

Apparently no one had noticed that Jay had barely let go of her hand for a second. His thumb was now tracing lazy circles around her palm, and he answered her uncle’s teasing comment without looking away from Violet for even a split second. “She’s not going to the dance with Grady,” he announced, smiling at her mischievously, and for a moment Violet forgot how to breathe. She hoped she never got used to how a simple look from him could turn her into a blithering idiot.

“Really?” her aunt Kat asked, her eyes narrowing as she glanced from Violet to Jay, and then down at their intertwined hands. Clearly she wasn’t going to let the comment pass unnoticed. “Why is that?” she asked in a voice filled with unspoken meaning.

Stephen Ambrose looked at his wife curiously, a little slow to catch on, which was sad, really, considering it was his job to seek out clues and solve mysteries.

Jay answered Kat without missing a beat. “Because she’s going with me.” He winked at Violet, whose cheeks had flushed to a brilliant shade of scarlet. She wasn’t entirely sure she was ready for this.

Violet saw her mom and Aunt Kat exchange meaningful glances.

They knew, she realized. And now her uncle did too.

Uncle Stephen gave Jay his best I’m-keeping-my-eye-on-you look, but a quick “Hmm” was the only sound he made.

How much embarrassment could one person possibly survive?

There was a moment of awkward silence, made even more uncomfortable by Jay’s refusal to look anywhere but at her. He reached out and brushed his finger along her cheek. Violet almost forgot to care that everyone in the room was looking at them.

Her uncle Stephen cleared his throat, and Violet jumped a little.

“So, what exactly happened, Vi?” Suddenly the police chief was back in the room with them.

Violet pursed her lips. She wasn’t sure where to start, but she knew it needed to be said. “Well,” she began, “I went for a run.” She paused to chew her lip, trying to put her words in the right order. “Anyway, I thought I, you know, heard something. An echo.”

“Really?” her uncle asked. “Do you think it was a body…a person? Did you stop?”

Violet shook her head. “No, it wasn’t that, exactly.” She cursed herself for being such a chicken, but she was afraid of how everyone was going to react if they knew she’d been followed-and very nearly captured-by a man who had obviously been chasing her. “I…it wasn’t a body.” Spit it out, already! “It was a man.”

The words didn’t have quite the impact she’d expected, and she knew from the clueless looks on their faces that she was going to have to explain it to them.

“Someone was following me,” she stated, and finally she had their full attention. Before they could bombard her with questions, she plunged ahead. “It was a man, and he was carrying an imprint on him. That was how I first knew he was there. He was hiding, wearing camouflage so I couldn’t see him, and he was…following me while I ran.” She paused to take a breath, feeling a little light-headed now that she was in the middle of her explanation. “When he realized that I’d seen him, he started to chase me. I knew I needed to get off the trail to try to get home faster, but I got turned around and ended up heading toward the river instead.” She looked at Jay gratefully, fresh tears stinging her eyes. “That was when I heard you calling for me.”

Violet glanced up. Everyone was watching her uncle, who was pacing now. He seemed to be deep in thought. It wasn’t quite the reaction she’d expected from him.

“What is it?” her dad asked his brother.

Stephen didn’t hesitate. “I knew we were missing something” was his only explanation at first.

“Missing what?” Violet’s mom rounded on her brother-in-law like a protective mother bear. “If you know something, then tell us…now!” she demanded.

Her uncle looked torn, but his familial obligation won out. “Look, Maggie, I’m not even supposed to be talking about this. We’re in the middle of a murder investigation, and the things we uncover are confidential. I could be compromising the case just by discussing it with you.” He sighed then, having gotten it out of his system, and continued. “But we’ve been following a lead based on evidence we recovered at the suspect’s home.” Violet thought it sounded strange to call him a “suspect” when she knew exactly what he’d done-what he’d confessed to doing-to those girls. As far as she was concerned he was the killer, not the suspect.

Her uncle went on: “I was hoping we were wrong, but it looks like it might be true after all.” He shook his head, as if he were having a hard time believing it himself. “We were starting to suspect that he wasn’t acting alone, that he might have had a partner.” He held up his hand when Violet’s dad was about to interrupt him. “I know what you’re going to say, but up till now it’s been more speculation than fact. We have no idea who this accomplice might be or even if there is an accomplice at all. My detectives are going over phone records and following every lead they can, but most of them have been dead ends. We’ve even enlisted the help of the FBI forensics to go through his computer. But so far, nothing.”

“Until now,” Jay challenged.

“Until now,” he agreed, ignoring the accusation in Jay’s words. “I’m sorry, Violet. If there was any chance, any chance at all, that I thought someone might come after you, I would never have kept this to myself. As it is, only a handful of men are even working on this aspect of the case.”

“So then why Violet? How would this…person… know that Violet was involved?” Now it was Kathryn Ambrose who was criticizing her husband.

He shrugged. “That’s just it… I have no idea. It could just be a coincidence, but I doubt it. And if it’s not, if somehow he knows about Violet, then we need to find him. Fast.” He sounded resolute now.

When the doctor came in with Violet’s discharge orders, he explained that a bad sprain like hers could take weeks, even months, to heal properly, and that she would need to stay off her foot as much as possible. One of the nurses expertly wrapped the Ace bandage to the point that Violet thought her toes might not be getting enough blood circulation. Her parents were handed a prescription for some painkillers and heavy-duty-strength ibuprofen for the swelling. And Violet was fitted for crutches, which always sound like fun when you’re little, but in reality chafe your underarms and make your muscles burn from the constant strain.

Her uncle was on his cell phone, ordering a round-the-clock police presence at Violet’s house. And Violet could feel the walls closing in on her. Between her current inability to walk on her own, and the suffocating notion of being watched 24-7…and not just by the cops, she thought, as she glanced at the worried faces of her already overprotective parents, she could sense her world shrinking. She had just barely escaped being on lockdown, and now she was going to be in maximum-security solitary confinement.

Jay smiled at her encouragingly, taking in the ashen look of horror on her face, and she could practically read his mind as he imagined the two of them locked up together until this maniac who had hunted her in the woods was finally caught.

She supposed that, if she had to be in isolation, isolation with Jay might not be so bad after all.