“Miss Milliard?”
Miss Milliard. He always called her Miss Milliard. It was Detective Milliard. She was a detective, not a four-year-old. She spoke carefully, calmly. “Nineteen, including staff,” she answered.
“And not one of them remembered Ms. Jensen from the bar?”
Kylie halted. “Wait. Jensen is her name?”
“Yes,” Vogel said. “Abigail Jensen. We were able to ID her with prints.”
Prints meant a record. “She had a record?”
“Not exactly,” Vogel said.
“What do you mean? Who is she?”
Vogel sighed. “Miss Milliard, can you confirm that no one in the bar saw the victim last night?”
Kylie tried not to scream. “That is correct.”
The DA let out a long breath that sounded, in her head, like flatulence. “You understand that this isn’t just any case, Miss Milliard,” he said after a moment’s pause. In her mind, his fat hands rested on his fat belly, stubby fingers interlaced.
“No, sir. It’s a murder case.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Vogel said, his voice dropping. For a moment, the pause made her wonder if he was considering a warrant.
“What do you mean, then, sir?”
“You remember Derek Hudson?” Vogel asked.
Even the name gave her chills. Images flooded her mind of the torsos of thin little girls, ribs showing from starvation, the strange cuts that covered their backs. “Of course.” But Hudson was dead, shot twice in the chest and once in the face. She recalled the case from a criminalistics course in college—Hudson lying in a pool of blood, left where one of his prisoners had shot him. Served the bastard right.
“This victim,” Vogel said, “Abigail Jensen—she was one of his.”
Detective Kylie Milliard’s shiver had nothing to do with the cold.
CHAPTER 10
LILY
Doing her best not to limp noticeably, Lily Baker entered the hospital through the main entrance. The hallways were painted a deep purple the color of boiled eggplant. If the choice was meant to be soothing, it had failed on her. It felt dark and unusual for a hospital. Then it occurred to her that she might not know what a hospital should look like.
Framed drawings of wildflowers lined the wall to her left, black-and-white photographs of old men on the right. In one corner was a fake tree. She recognized it as a ficus. How odd that she could recall the name of a plant but had no memory of her own life—not her sister or her parents.
Making her way toward the desk on her tender ankle, she experienced a sense of déjà vu, and yet nothing was familiar.
Behind the information desk, a receptionist typed on a keyboard, her fingers slow, her head down as she hunted for letters on the keyboard. The hair was a little too red to be natural, cropped in a straight line at her chin and parted in the center. A pair of reading glasses dangled from her neck by a long line of purple stones, as though she’d made an effort to match the decor of the hospital. She looked to be in her late fifties.
When the receptionist looked up, her eyes went wide. She rose from the chair, and Lily stepped back instinctively, pain searing her ankle.
“My God, are you all right?” The woman rushed around the desk. Sandra, her name tag read, the word blurred through the tears that filled Lily’s eyes.
“Lily, sit down. What happened?” Sandra tried to take her bag and lead her to a chair, but Lily clasped the strap in a clenched fist.
Before Lily could answer, Sandra was shouting down the hallway. “Tim! Beth! Lily has been in an accident.”
Two nurses ran down the hall, their uniforms the same blackish purple as the walls.
“I’m fine,” she argued as Sandra pressed her into a chair.
Then there were three faces staring down at her. The man pushed her hair off her face to look at her temple as the woman palpated her ankle. All of them talked at once.
“Were you in an accident?” the woman asked.
“Bike,” she whispered, the first thing that came to mind.
“What were you doing biking in this weather?” the woman asked.
“Christ,” the man muttered. Tim. His name tag read Tim Bailey. “What does the bike look like?”
She studied his face as he watched her, his mouth cracking into a smile that was a little too wide. He raised his brow. “Get it? What does the other guy look like?”
Lily couldn’t think of what to say.
The two nurses exchanged a worried look. “You think she’s concussed?”
Tim pulled out a cell phone and shone its flashlight in her eyes, his fingers pulling her lids open. “Doesn’t look like a concussion.”
Beth stood. “I’ll get some alcohol and gauze. We can clean her up. This ankle’s going to need an x-ray.”
“I’ll call down to radiology,” Sandra said.
After the others left, Tim studied her with concern in his eyes. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
She hesitated, wondering how well she knew him. Well enough to tell him the truth? Never talk about yourself. She noticed the wedding ring on his finger. He was married. Did she know his wife?
“Lily?” he pressed.
“I’m okay,” she lied, swallowing the dry knot in her throat, along with the thoughts of the car accident, the cash, the gun.
“It seems like—” He was cut off by the unmistakable shriek of an alarm. “Code CPR,” a voice said over the loudspeaker. “Code CPR.”
Tim ran for the doors. Beth dropped a bin of supplies at Lily’s feet and followed. As though by an instinct she didn’t recognize, Lily rose and went after them.
Two doctors from the code team passed, moving into the emergency room, and Lily followed.
Behind the doors was a giant room with a circular island at the center, where nurses in purple scrubs buzzed around a small cluster of desks. Yellow curtains divided the outer ring into individual rooms. A doctor ripped open one curtain to reveal Brent Nolan on a gurney. Quickly, he was surrounded by the doctors and Beth and Tim. Beth placed the bag valve mask while Tim started compressions, counting out loud. “Two, three, four . . .”
The monitor above Brent’s head showed a flat, straight line. He was in asystole. He was going to die. He couldn’t die. She clenched her fists, shifting her weight off her bad ankle as she studied the monitor.
Come on, Brent.
When Tim reached thirty, Beth administered two breaths, pumping the bag against Brent’s mouth. The doctor applied gel to Brent’s chest and pressed the ultrasound wand to his skin. There was the whooshing sound of the machine as the doctor studied his heart on the monitor.
“He’s got tamponade,” the doctor said, sounding discouraged.
“Pericardiocentesis?” Beth asked.
The doctor gave a brief shake of his head. “He’s got no cardiac activity.”
“Should we try?” Beth asked.
The doctor paused, then said, “Give him one milligram epi.”
“I’m on it,” Beth said and looked to Lily. “Can you bag him? Do you feel well enough?”
Lily hesitated. She had no memory, but she could perform CPR. Two breaths administered at every thirty compressions. She was a nurse. That was why she knew how to do it, why the people here recognized her.