What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(54)

“How long was she in the hospital?”

“Just about four months. The doctors decided they’d done all they could to help her.”

“What do you mean? Was she physically hurt?”

“She had a head wound when they found her, but she couldn’t tell them how she got it. But that’s not what I meant. Seems the doctors concluded Childs had amnesia. They said her memories might or might not come back.”

“The doctors diagnosed her with amnesia?”

“That was their diagnosis.” Beltrán shrugged. “After four months trying to restore her memory, they helped her restart a life. She obtained a new driver’s license and a Social Security card, and she was given a place to live in a home until she got on her feet.”

“Eventually she went to school at Palomar,” Davis interjected.

“She was bright. There was nothing cognitively wrong with her.”

“So then she knows she has amnesia?”

Beltrán shook his head. “You’ll have to ask her, or somebody at the hospital.”

“It all just seems too coincidental, including the name, to not be her,” Tracy said. The name sounded like something a person in hiding might use. It was similar to her real name and could be easily remembered. Lisa Childress. Melissa Childs. “She has a middle initial of A. Do you know what it stands for?” Childress’s middle name was Janet.

Beltrán and Davis both shook their heads.

The conference phone in the center of the table rang. Beltrán answered it, thanked the caller, and disconnected. He looked at Tracy. “You can ask her. She’s here. I’ll go get her.”





C H A P T E R 2 1

The woman Beltrán escorted into the conference room looked tentative, confused, and uncomfortable, which was certainly understandable. Tracy thought again of Anita Childress’s description of her mother as being autistic, and she wondered if that explained this woman’s demeanor, or if it was the demeanor of someone hiding for decades who had just been caught. Whatever the answer, Tracy was still coming to grips with the realization that Lisa Childress was alive. She hadn’t truly expected this person to be Childress, even on the drive from the airport. When Davis mentioned the Irish accent, Tracy had resigned herself to the likelihood that she had found the wrong person. Even now, seeing Childress in the flesh, a part of Tracy still doubted it. The woman looked like the photographs taken decades ago, and even more like the forensic artist’s sketch drawing, but that isn’t what convinced Tracy. What convinced Tracy was Melissa Childs looked very much like Anita Childress—thick boned with dark hair; round, youthful features; and dark, inquisitive eyes that found Mark Davis, a familiar face, first.

“Hi, Mark,” she said, voice quiet and unsure.

“Hello, Melissa. How have you been?”

“I’ve been all right. In a bit of a shock at the moment.” Her accent reminded Tracy very much of Therese’s accent, which Tracy had become familiar with. She listened intently to see if Childs might break character and say a word that didn’t sound quite right.

“I think it’s a shock for all of us,” Davis said.

Childs looked to Tracy from across the conference room table.

“Are you the detective from Seattle, then?”

“I am,” Tracy said, offering a soft smile.

“Well then . . . I guess we should get down to it.”

They pulled out chairs and sat at the table. Childs repeated what Beltrán and Davis had already told Tracy, but Tracy let the woman talk, tried not to interrupt, and just listened to her story. She wanted Childs to relax. Childs told Tracy it was like she had awakened in the Escondido shopping mall from a deep sleep. She had no idea how she got there or who she was. Nothing she possessed, not the novel The Count of Monte Cristo or the bus ticket, had any context to her. She couldn’t recall being on a bus, and the fragment of the ticket she had only provided the destination, not the starting point.

“Sometime later, I don’t know when, I recalled a woman brought me to the mall, but not too clearly.”

“You must have been terrified,” Tracy said, still evaluating Childs, looking for any inconsistencies in her accent or her story details.

“I was for sure. It was as if I’d been dropped from space and landed here.” Tracy glanced at Davis, who smiled at Childs. “I was like a book that you open and find all the pages blank. I couldn’t remember a thing. Not one.”

Childs discussed the security guard at the mall and eventually how she ended up at the hospital. “That was tough. The confusion gave way to a deep depression. I looked at all the people around me —the nurses and the doctors and the people who came to visit other patients—and I could rationally think to myself that I should remember a mother and a father, at least. I wasn’t hatched, you know. I was born and raised just like all those other people. I knew, intuitively, I had to come from somewhere. I just had to.” Childs paused. A tear ran down her cheek.

Davis grabbed a tissue box from the back of the room and slid it down the table. Childs thanked him and pulled a few tissues, blowing her nose. Davis poured her a glass of water and set it on a coaster.

“It’s just such a lost feeling to not know who I am, or how I fit in this world. I had no choice but to forge ahead . . . stiff upper lip and all. But from where I was forging . . . I didn’t have a center post to ground me. I didn’t have any concept of my past. Was I married? Did I have children? I didn’t know if I had an education, and if so, in what subjects. I watched television in the hospital, and I’d lost everything historical as well. I didn’t know the people—not the actors or the news anchors. I didn’t know the news. I didn’t recognize anything happening in the world, or its meaning.” She dabbed at more tears.