Liz Johnson - Stolen Memories

“What if the dirtbag is still out there? How are you going to keep him from coming after her?”

“That’s why I called the best writer in the state.”

She laughed. “Don’t go blowin’ smoke, young man.”

“Hey, if anyone could write up a story that conveniently left out the details of her location without making it sound like that’s exactly what they’d done, it’s you.”

After another chuckle, she agreed to meet Julie the next day. They hung up, but the tightness in his gut didn’t alleviate.

He had to find Julie’s real name and her family. Someone had to be looking for this girl. And after at least three days, they would know she was gone. Why hadn’t she shown up among the listed missing yet?

He flipped on his monitor and the computer hummed to life. The keys on his keyboard clacked as he hammered on them, opening up the missing-persons database for the fifth time since that night in the park. He narrowed the search down by her age—about twenty-five. Except it wasn’t easy to tell under all the scrapes and bruises. He widened it to anyone between the ages of twenty and forty just to be sure he wasn’t missing her. He continued to narrow it down. Female. Caucasian. Long brown hair.

Well, it had been long when he’d found her. At the hospital they’d chopped off most of the hair in front to get a better look at that gash.

And those eyes. Enormous and brown like a doe’s in spring.

The database searched its information, pulling from every corner of the state. Only two names reported missing within the past month popped up. AnnaBeth Doorsey, a thirty-nine-year-old mother of five from Duluth, and Elsie Sorenson, a twenty-one-year-old college student from Saint Paul.

Neither one looked like Julie.

Slamming his hand on his desk, he almost missed the sound of his name ringing through the bull pen. “Jones!”

He jerked out of his thoughts to stare at Lucas Ramirez, the new guy in Homicide. “What’s up?”

“The chief got a call today from the U.S. Marshals Service, asking if we had any reports of missing kids or babies.”

Zach stared at the man, squinting as he tried to shift his thoughts from the image of Julie in his mind. “Babies?”

“Yeah.” Ramirez looked at his notepad and read from his scrawls there. “We don’t have any active cases involving unidentified or missing kids right now, but the marshal who called, Serena Summers, said that they think there might be a Minneapolis connection to a witness they’re protecting.”

“Not that I know.” Shaking his head, Zach turned back to the only two women who matched his search but didn’t match his Julie. And then he added over his shoulder, “Any word on those security camera videos I requested?”

“Oh, yeah. I got those.”

Zach jumped to his feet and took the discs from the younger man. “You look at these yet?”

“Just this one. From out in front of Jack and Julie’s.” Hope bubbled in his chest. Until Ramirez popped it. “Nothing on it from the night of the attack. The manager said the camera is on a rotating recording system. It was recording the back loading docks during the night delivery after ten.”

Perfect. “What else did you get?”

“A few more restaurants, an ATM camera and the street camera from the corner of Thomas and Gavel.”

Zach kept the videos from two restaurants and the street camera and handed the others back to the other detective. “Do you have time to take a look at these?”

“Are you just looking for the dark-haired girl who was attacked?”

“Yes. And anything else that seems unusual or out of place.”

“Sure.” Ramirez sat back down at his desk, sticking the first disc into his computer.

Zach matched his motions, settling in to watch the silent black-and-white clips. The first two videos showed nothing but the evening crowd, bustling in and out of popular restaurants near the park. The gaggle of men and women jumbled together and made any specific face or feature indistinguishable. Even when he slowed the images all the way down, he couldn’t make out anything beyond gender.

After two hours, his eyes burned and head throbbed from staring so intently at his screen, hoping to see something he wasn’t even sure was there. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he got up and walked to the water fountain. Bending over, he took several long sips, then stretched his back as he returned to his upright position.

“You find anything?” he said as he strolled by Ramirez’s desk.

“Nope. Nothing yet.”

Zach nodded to show he’d heard the response, but his mind was already miles away in an almost deserted park. Maybe this was just a futile search.

He’d hit roadblocks in other cases, but he’d never felt quite so defeated so early into an investigation.

He’d just never had the image of such beautiful eyes seared in his mind, eyes that begged for his help. And the way she grabbed for his hand at the hospital, afraid he wouldn’t return, clutched at his heart.

Shoving his third and final disc into his computer’s player, he sighed. At least this camera, unlike the restaurant cameras, was angled toward the faces of the pedestrians, most of them walking toward their cars parked along Thomas Road. He sped up the video as the time stamp passed the dinner rush and through long periods without anyone using the crosswalk. The clock on the footage showed almost 2200 when a lone figure carrying some sort of case against her chest, with both arms wrapped around it, stopped at the corner.

He pushed his chair back and sat straight up in it before leaning closer to the screen. The figure looked like a woman with dark hair, and as she swung to look over her shoulder, her hair fanned out, long and just a little wavy.

Just about like Julie’s the night that she’d been found.

On the screen, the woman jabbed at the crosswalk button several times, looking behind her twice before she finally ventured out into the road, checking for oncoming traffic from both directions. The light hadn’t changed in her favor, but she still hurried into the street, pausing only to brush something from her cheek into the bag she was carrying.

And then she disappeared from the camera’s view.

He rewound the scene and slowed it to a crawl and zoomed in on her. Frame by frame the figure moved across the street. And then she stopped for a fraction of a second and looked right into the camera.

Julie.

Even without the scrapes and black eye she now sported, there was no doubt this was her.

His stomach lurched. It was their first real clue. But what did it mean? Only that she’d been attacked sometime after ten o’clock that night.

And then she reached for her cheek.

He’d thought it was a hair in her way, but at the slower speed, he could clearly make out the five little fingers and the care with which she tucked the wayward hand back into the blanket in her arms.

“Ramirez? Do you have the number for that contact in the marshals’ office you just told me about?”

“I think so.” Papers rustled on the other desk, but Zach couldn’t tear his gaze away from the woman looking directly into the street camera and carrying what was undoubtedly a baby.

* * *

Julie popped a piece of melon into her mouth, set her fork back on her dinner tray and picked up the newspaper for the tenth time, staring hard at the picture on the front of the section. Who was the woman gazing back at her?

She knew that it was her own likeness. After all, Tabby Guster had taken the photo when she’d stopped by the day before. Zach had told her this could help them identify her and begin to put the pieces of her life back together. She’d been only too eager to agree.

But now that she stared at the square chin, full lips, brown eyes and pixie cut that she didn’t recognize, it tore at her insides.