One Good Man(5)
Finally, he found his words and spoke. “What Jamie didn’t mention is that I work with the UCIT, the Unsolved Crimes Investigation Team. Cold cases are what I do, where I pour one-hundred percent of my energies. Right now, this case, Jamie’s case, is my top priority.”
“But only because of Kass Duren. Not because of Jamie,” Kate said, and Jamie stiffened.
“Mom—”
“No, it’s okay. She’s right. Anytime there’s activity on a case, it gets moved to the top of the list. That doesn’t mean without movement it lies dormant. We’re always looking for a break, a lead, new clues and witnesses.”
“Looking?” Kate asked, her mouth grim and turned down, her Danby Veterinary Clinic ball cap pulled low. “Or waiting for them to fall into your lap? Because I don’t see how you can give one hundred percent to any single case when you’ve got dozens of others still unsolved and demanding your time.”
“He didn’t say he gave one hundred percent to any single case. He said he prioritized.” Jamie didn’t know why she was defending the Texas Ranger.
She should be siding with her mother. They were the ones living this hell, the ones forgotten by law enforcement and left to their own devices, starting over, creating new identities, protecting themselves however they could because if they didn’t, who would?
She decided it was because of Kell that her loyalties were wobbling. His sincerity. The pit-bull determination that had brought him all this way. He could’ve written a letter. He could’ve picked up the phone. He hadn’t done either one. He’d driven the three hours between his office and hers.
Since the initial investigators had packed up and moved on, he was the first officer from any law enforcement agency to involve himself with Jamie and her mother directly. Now that she’d had a few minutes to cool down, she wanted to hear what he had to say.
If she’d learned anything over the last ten years it was to keep her eyes, mind and ears open. She told herself that she owed him that much. She told herself, too, that it wasn’t because of his eyes. Or his shoulders. Or the size of his hands.
The fan whirring overhead stirred the hot dry air into a semblance of a breeze, pushing loose strands of her hair into her face. She plucked them away, ignored the heat stirring low in her belly and said, “Sergeant Harding—Kell—was about to explain forensic hypnosis to me.”
Kate squeezed Jamie’s wrist. “What?”
“I’m pretty sure he wants to jog my memory.”
“The same memory you’ve told everyone repeatedly is blank? Does no one believe you?” Kate shifted on the bench, closer to Jamie and away from Kell. “Or since they’re at a loss to solve this thing, are they now putting the onus on you?”
Kell had been sitting silent all this time, absorbing the exchange between mother and daughter as if searching for the best tack to take, or as if waiting his turn because, law enforcement or not, he knew he was the outsider.
But Kate’s accusation obviously riled him. His pulse throbbed in his temples, and he had barely swallowed the rest of his coffee before he crushed the cup.
“The onus is on us, Dr. Danby. On me. Completely. Coming to Jamie is not a shifting of responsibility—”
Her skin pale, Kate pulled her hand from Jamie’s and waved it to cut him off. “Then why are you talking to my daughter about hypnosis? Why—”
“Let him talk, Mom. Please.” Jamie so understood what her mother was feeling.
It had been Kate’s job to protect her daughter, to see Jamie from traumatized teen to a woman standing on her own, recovered, able to view the past from the distance she’d come in ten years. And she’d done it alone, while building a new life as a divorcée, coping with all of it at once because she’d had no choice. As much as Jamie did not want to return her to where this whole nightmare had started…
She tamped down the fear rising in a dark cloud around her and turned her attention on Kell. “Let him talk.”
His gaze captured hers, held, a potent thank-you for not writing off his proposal before he’d had a chance to explain. A brief nod, then he looked at her mother, as if her permission was as important to him as was Jamie’s.
She liked that. Found she was liking many things about him when the only thing that mattered was whether or not he would be the one to put an end to her hell.
Kate hadn’t objected, so Kell cleared his throat. “Before you arrived, I was explaining to Jamie that the memories she thinks she’s lost, well, she hasn’t. Not really. Selective amnesia is a coping mechanism—”
“Selective amnesia? Are you saying she’s forgotten on purpose?”
He shook his head. “Her subconscious won’t let her remember. Her mind is protecting her from reliving the trauma of that night’s events.”
“And yet knowing that, you want to hypnotize her and have her suffer them again?” Kate shook her head vehemently. “No. No. It’s not going to happen. Absolutely not.”
“Mom—”
“Jamie, no.” Kate’s voice grew shrill. “I won’t let you go through that again. You can’t—”
It was time for Jamie to take charge. “I can, but I haven’t said that I will. I want to know more before I agree to going back there.”
Kell’s expression changed, growing accommodating, respectful yet urgent, as if he was at her disposal for any little thing. “What do you want to know?”
Jamie wasn’t even sure where to begin. “What makes you think this will work? This forensic hypnosis?”
“I’m not sure that it will,” he told her, and she appreciated his honesty. “You may not recall anything we can use in our investigation. On the other hand, you might remember the very thing we need to track down this bastard and put him behind bars.”
“Such as?” Jamie couldn’t help but fear, what was for her, the unknown.
Her mother spoke before Kell could answer. “A license-plate number? Isn’t that what that bus driver in California remembered under hypnosis?”
“You’re talking about Chowchilla,” Kell said, and nodded.
“What’s Chowchilla?” Jamie asked.
“A town in California,” Kell explained. “In 1976, three men kidnapped a busload of students and their driver, and held them hostage in a moving van buried in a quarry. A ransom note was found in the house of the quarry’s owner. His son and two others were eventually charged.”
Bury? A van? For a kidnapping? In the movies, sure, but for real? “You’re kidding,” she said, and when he shook his head, asked, “Were they rescued?”
“They were,” Kell answered. “They dug themselves out, but by then, the kidnappers were long gone. The driver eventually underwent forensic hypnosis to see if he could remember anything helpful.”
Bizarre. “And it worked?”
“He remembered enough of a license-plate number on one of the vehicles involved, that authorities were able to track the men down through the registration, I think it was. Hypnosis was also used in Ted Bundy’s case. In the Boston Strangler’s. In Sam Sheppard’s. His was made into a movie. The Fugitive.” Kell’s expression fell into a goofy smile. “With Harrison Ford.”
Kate had been listening, and asked, “Are the memories refreshed during hypnosis even admissible in court?”
“Not everywhere, no. In Texas, they are, but we use them in conjunction with other investigative tools.”
Meaning a conviction or acquittal wouldn’t rest solely on what Jamie might manage to recall. “So if I remember seeing a license plate through the diner’s window…”
“Then we’ll track down what car those plates were on at the time and who it was registered to.”
And to play devil’s advocate. “Someone other than the owner could’ve been driving it.”
Kell nodded. “Which is why we don’t stop with the refreshed memory. We use it as we would any new lead. To help us find the irrefutable evidence that will put the perpetrator away.”
He was making this sound simple, logical. Making it sound like the right thing. Making it sound as if she would be smart to let him do his job. “If I remembered something that helped, would I have to testify at a trial?”
“You might be asked to, yes.”
“Would she have to?” Kate asked.
“Compelling her to do so wouldn’t be my call.” Kell turned his attention from her mother to Jamie. “Going into this you should think worst-case scenario to make sure all bases are covered.”
Yeah. This was the part she’d been afraid of, what she’d been waiting to hear. She reached for the antacids, stared at the strips of torn wrapper and said, “Worst case being the killer comes after me before he goes to trial.”
“That is my bailiwick. And that won’t happen.”
How could he know? How could he be sure? Things could go so wrong…“And if I go insane reliving that night, does the court pay my asylum costs? Because as much as I want this bastard behind bars, I’m not sure I won’t need bars of my own if those memories come back.”
Kate slapped her hand against the table, and dust bloomed in tiny clouds. “Then you’re not going to do it. I won’t have you spending the rest of your life suffering.”