Find Her (Detective D.D. Warren #8)(19)

A symbol of civilization, we decided at last. A note of beauty and culture and care.

In other words, his shoes represented everything that I’d lost. Everything I thought I’d never see again.

The brain has a way of simplifying complex thoughts into a single, simple symbol. Coping, Samuel would tell me. In the beginning, it was too hard for me to put into words everything I’d lost, everything I feared, everything I’d gone through. So instead, I fixated on a highly polished pair of men’s dress shoes.

“You called her,” I say now. Not a question. We’ve been through this drill too many times for that.

“You knew I would.”

Samuel drives with both hands. His hands are relaxed, fingers long and elegant on the wheel. He’s a shockingly beautiful man. Unsettling even. In the beginning, I held that against him. How can you take anyone, but especially a doctor, seriously when he looks like he should be starring in a Calvin Klein ad?

In the years since, I’ve come to understand better. We all have our burdens to bear, even someone as pretty as Samuel.

He doesn’t dress down, however. Or do anything else that might detract from his physical perfection. Far from it. I’ve never seen him in anything other than impeccably tailored clothes, hundred-dollar head shaves, and perfectly buffed nails. Even off duty, he looks like he stepped from the pages of GQ.

I think it’s his own test. I dress myself up in cool-girl trashy, waiting for the next asshole to take the bait. While Samuel presents himself as just another pretty face. Then, he waits for you to underestimate him, because in that moment, he has you, and he knows it. His car matches the rest of him. Acura SUV, black on black. Immaculate leather seats, freshly vacuumed carpet. I’m surprised he didn’t put down a towel before allowing me to take a seat. I might be immune to the scent of garbage, but he isn’t.

Maybe he’s planning on removing the cushion later and burning it. When it comes to Samuel, nothing would surprise me.

“If you’ve met one survivor,” he told me that first day in the hospital room, “then you’ve met one survivor.”

That’s what Samuel and I have in common: We are both survivors.

“Any chance she stayed in Maine?” I ask now, forcing my voice to sound light. I turn away from Samuel and look out the car window. Daylight is still shocking to me. All these years later, mornings remain a surprise.

“What do you think?”

I think he not only called my mother, but she’s now waiting in my apartment. I think I’d rather go back to the crime scene, duke it out with the blond detective again.

“What are you doing?” Samuel asks presently.

I smile; I can’t help myself. And I keep my face turned away. Samuel, of all people, knows me too well. Which is why I keep calling him. To remind myself that somewhere out there, someone knows who I am, even if I can’t always remember.

When I woke up that day in the hospital in Atlanta, my mother and brother were still en route from Boston’s Logan International Airport. Given that I had no friends or family in the area, Samuel had remained in the room as a source of support.

The minute the FBI agents started asking all their questions, however . . . I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t talk; I couldn’t remember what they wanted me to remember; I absolutely, positively could not relive what they seemed to feel I should recall at a moment’s notice. Instead, I curled up in a fetal position and shut down. They tried kindness, impatience, and then out-and-out badgering. It didn’t matter. I didn’t talk.

I couldn’t.

Eventually, they left, under doctor’s orders to let me rest.

Only Samuel remained. He took his seat. Crossed his left leg over his right. And that was that.

He never said a word. I closed my eyes. I fell asleep. Or tried to. The room would spin away. Other images replaced it. Light and dark. Screams and laughter. The feel of shampoo in my hair. The smell of ammonia. The way blood soaks into cheap carpet.

I saw things I didn’t want to see. Knew too many things I didn’t want to know. And I had my first real insight into victimization. There’s no undoing. There’s no rewind, or erasing, or unmaking. The things that happened, they are you, you are them.

You can escape, but you can’t get away. Just the way it is.

I reached my decision then. I would tell my story once and only once. To Samuel. And then, that would be it. I would talk, he would listen, and then I would never speak of it again. For his part, Samuel wanted to ensure I understood that he was an agent of the police. Anything and everything I told him he’d be reporting back to the special agent in charge; he wasn’t my shrink; we did not have doctor-client privilege. But as long as I understood that, he would listen to whatever I wanted, needed, to say.

So I talked. The words rushing out, pouring out. One long, horrible deluge.

I spoke for hours. Nurses came, checked vitals, adjusted monitors, then scurried away. Dark agents appeared in the doorway, only to be hastily dismissed. I don’t know. I couldn’t take it in, the room, the equipment, the endless interruption of bodies. I kept my body ramrod straight, hands at my side, gaze on the overhead lights, and I talked, and I talked, and I talked.

First a whisper. Then louder, steadier. Then . . . maybe I ended in a scream.

I don’t really remember, to tell you the truth. It was like an out-of-body experience. All this horror I had to get out of me, and the only way to do that was to talk and talk and talk.