“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?
“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
