All His Pretty Girls Read online

  Pulling out of the parking lot, he took the corner too sharply, and she reached up to grasp the handle above the door to keep herself from bouncing around too much. ‘Tell me what you have,’ she said.

  Cord flashed his lights at a slow-moving vehicle. ‘All I know so far is a young couple found a badly beaten female, partially buried up in the Jemez Mountains, off the main trails. Said they were hiking when they practically tripped over a woman’s arm sticking out of some brush.’

  Alyssa raised her eyebrows, skeptical, and said, ‘Hiking? Is that what we’re calling it these days?’

  The faintest of smiles tipped the corner of Cord’s lip up as he concentrated on passing a moving van. ‘Yeah, well, hiking, making out, that’s not really the point. Anyway, they started pulling leaves and twigs and branches off her.’ He paused. ‘She was nude.’

  Alyssa closed her eyes. She would not think about her own past right now.

  Cord swallowed before he added. ‘And apparently bound at the ankles.’

  ‘Christ,’ Alyssa muttered. ‘Why do we think it’s Callie McCormick?’

  ‘It might not be, but the description fits, despite all the cuts and bruises. Height and eye color match. Blonde hair, but with a large chunk apparently hacked off.’ He risked a quick glance at her. ‘Strawberry birthmark on her hip.’

  ‘Has Mr. McCormick been notified?’

  ‘Not yet. I thought we could call on the way. Plus, I wanted to let you know first.’

  Alyssa nodded even though her partner couldn’t see the movement. ‘Who called? If they were deep in the mountains, they couldn’t have had cell service.’

  Cord navigated a turn before answering. ‘They didn’t. The couple, Jack Henderson and Trinity Davis, hightailed it back to their vehicle, and the second they had reception, called it in to the Jemez police.’

  ‘You’re telling me they found a barely alive beaten woman, and they both left her there – alone? Are you freaking kidding me?’

  ‘It makes sense from a civilian’s point of view,’ her partner countered. ‘They were both too freaked out to stay behind. Think about it. Wouldn’t you be? And Henderson had absolutely no problem taking the officers back to the site. Said he hikes there all the time.’ Alyssa didn’t miss the emphasis on the word hikes.

  ‘Turnaround time?’ She asked.

  ‘Total turnaround from finding the body to getting her to the hospital was a few hours.’

  ‘So, they found her early this afternoon then?’

  Cord nodded. ‘Sounds like.’

  ‘What’s her condition?’

  She knew she wasn’t going to like his answer when he remained quiet. Finally, he said, ‘Critical. It’s not looking good.’

  That made her decision both easier and more difficult. Normally, standard operating procedure dictated a uniformed officer be sent to the family’s home – like they had when her family had suffered their loss – but in this instance, she was afraid they didn’t have time. ‘Let me notify Rafe McCormick. He has a right to know and to see her, especially if it might be his last chance to see her alive.’ The words caused her throat to swell, and she swallowed several times before she trusted her voice to make the call.

  ‘What if it’s not her?’ Cord asked, though she detected from his tone that he was pretty sure it was.

  ‘Then he has hope for another day,’ she said.

  Unlike that morning, the phone was answered immediately, and she dove in, head first. ‘Mr. McCormick, there’s a slight chance it might not be her, but it’s possible Callie’s been located.’ She held the phone away from her as he shouted out questions she couldn’t understand. ‘We don’t know anything yet. Detective Roberts and I are headed to the hospital right now… Rust Presbyterian in Rio Rancho. Are you familiar with the area? … Okay, we’ll see you there. But, Rafe,’ she addressed him by his first name to get his attention. ‘Please brace yourself.’

  ‘Well, that’s done,’ she said as she put her phone in the center console. ‘Any ideas on how long she’d been there?’

  ‘No telling. A couple of officers said she was dumped in a natural trench formed by all the rains this past fall.’ Cord looked over at her. ‘Hospital requested a couple of extra officers be on hand so they could post guards. No one’s taking any chances at this point.’

  ‘That’s probably for the best,’ Alyssa said. ‘Where are the hikers now?’

  ‘Jemez police interviewed them and sent them on their way after getting their contact information. We can talk to them when we finish up at the hospital.’

  Thirteen minutes later, Cord swung into the hospital’s parking lot. A car pulled out of one of the spaces near the front doors, and he whipped around the corner to stop a Ford Escape from beating him to it. The driver blasted his horn and gave him the one finger salute, shouting obscenities.

  Alyssa stepped out of the car and flashed her badge. It was getting dark, but with the parking area lit up like a stadium, it was still light enough to see. The driver sped off. ‘Hmm. Guess he had a change of heart,’ she said. She heard the chirp of the remote as Cord locked the SUV’s doors, and then they walked briskly into the hospital.

  They approached the information desk situated in the center of the huge lobby and held up their badges. ‘The woman found up in the Jemez?’

  The blue-haired lady didn’t need to look in the system to point the detectives in the right direction. Ever since the brutalized woman had been brought in, it had been all any of the volunteers could talk about.

  Chapter Twenty

  Thursday, March 28, 7:20p.m.

  The beeping sounds and strange, medicinal odors nauseated Alyssa. That combined with the stark white walls and the continuous beep, beep, beep of the machines made her antsy, sending her reeling back to a time when she was still desperately trying to atone for the biggest mistake of her life.

  She tried not to fidget as she and Cord stood in the corner and out of the way in the room with the person they believed to be Callie McCormick. The woman was hooked up to every conceivable contraption possible. Needles and tubes stuck out everywhere. Two nurses checked the woman’s vitals and pushed some buttons on one of the monitors. The wet suction sound of the respiratory machine turned Alyssa’s stomach.

  It was hard to tell if the woman really was Callie – battered and beaten, she was nearly unrecognizable as a human. When they’d first approached the nurses’ station, Alyssa had overheard some of the orderlies discussing fractured cheekbones, a broken wrist, cracked ribs, dehydration, and innumerable other issues.

  They’d only been there a few minutes when a doctor, her red hair streaked with gray twisted into a severe bun, walked in.

  Alyssa stepped forward. ‘Doctor, I’m Detective –’ The doctor ignored her outstretched hand and walked over to her patient. Alyssa’s arm dropped back to her side as she moved back into the corner to wait.

  ‘How’s our patient doing? Any changes?’ The doctor addressed the nurses.

  ‘Nothing. Vitals are still weak, and her blood pressure is low. Her bandages have been changed, except for the ones on her feet which we are about to do, but those infected lacerations are still oozing. The swelling in her knee has gone down slightly, but the gouge in her thigh is red and hot to the touch.’ The nurse – Ellen, according to her ID badge – looked uncomfortable as she stared at the detectives for a moment. Even though she knew they shouldn’t be in the room, Alyssa held the woman’s gaze until she turned away. ‘After we palpated the abdomen to check for the possibility of a ruptured colon, we ordered that ultrasound you requested. The results should be on your computer by now.’

  A look passed between the two before the doctor grabbed a clean pair of sterile gloves from the box mounted on the wall under the television and then pulled back the bottom corner of the sheet covering their patient. She used a metal instrument to peel back one of the bandages covering the woman’s left foot, and beside her, Alyssa felt Cord recoil when he saw the damage.

  With
out looking up, the doctor addressed them. ‘Detectives, you’re going to need to step out while we examine my patient.’ Then to the nurses, she said, ‘Let’s keep her as comfortable as possible and give the antibiotics time to kick in and bring this fever down. Right now, we need to tend to her feet and that broken nose. We’ll proceed from there.’

  Alyssa and Cord remained where they were.

  ‘We have privacy laws for a reason, so unless you were able to miraculously obtain an unidentified woman’s family’s permission, I don’t know how you two were even able to talk your way in here,’ the doctor said with a cool voice as she finally faced them, ‘but you will step out for a few moments.’ She held up her hand to halt Alyssa’s argument. ‘Look, I know you want answers; we all do. I’ll come talk to you as soon as I’m finished here. But right now, my priority is my patient.’

  Cord grabbed Alyssa’s arm before she could annoy the doctor. ‘I saw a vending machine around the corner.’

  Before the door closed, Alyssa overheard the doctor’s softly spoken words. ‘Well, young lady, we’re going to do all we can, but you’re going to have to do your part to help us help you, okay? Don’t let whoever did this to you win.’

  The door clicked behind them, but instead of heading for the junk food dispenser, they went into a special waiting room reserved for family members of intensive care patients. They found a couple of chairs far enough away from other people so they could talk without accidental or purposeful eavesdropping.

  Cord leaned over, hands between his knees, head hanging low. ‘Who does that to someone else? Why?’ He sounded tired, almost defeated.

  Almost exactly how her parents had sounded when… She shook her head, not allowing herself to be transported back to that dark place. Right now, she had a job to do, and the woman lying in that hospital bed had obviously been through hell and deserved Alyssa’s full attention with no distractions. ‘It doesn’t matter how many years I do this, it always comes back to me questioning humanity.’

  Nearly twenty minutes later, they heard a commotion outside near the nurse’s station, and the two of them sprang up and headed out in time to see Rafe McCormick shove a technician out of his way as he barreled through the ICU doors, a security guard right on his heels.

  ‘Sir, you can’t be back here,’ one of the nurses yelled.

  Rafe ignored the man and skidded to a halt when he spotted Alyssa and Cord. ‘Where is she? I want to see her!’

  Cord grabbed a passing nurse, flashing his badge. ‘Is there an empty room where we can talk privately to this man?’

  ‘I don’t want an empty room! I want to see my wife!’ he shouted.

  Alyssa spoke quietly, using a soothing tone in an attempt to calm Rafe’s escalating anger. ‘We don’t know one hundred percent that it’s her,’ she said, even though she was as positive as she could be that it was. ‘As soon as the doctor comes out to speak with us, we’ll have you go in and ID her.’

  ‘Why do I have to wait for the doctor?’ he asked as he turned away. But when the security guard blocked his way, he turned back around. ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Mr. McCormick – Rafe – I know you’re anxious to see if that’s Callie, but,’ she looked him straight in the eyes, ‘you need to prepare yourself. The woman in there is in bad shape, and it won’t be easy to see. Do you understand?’

  Rafe flinched as if she’d slapped him.

  ‘Excuse me?’ A voice interrupted, and all three of them turned to see the doctor standing there.

  ‘Detectives, I’m sorry I can’t apologize for my earlier abruptness. Preserving our patient’s integrity is of the utmost importance right now, whether she’s aware of it or not.’ She angled her body towards Rafe. ‘And you are?’

  ‘Rafe McCormick. That’s my – I believe that’s my wife – in there.’ His face was two shades paler than when he’d arrived, and Alyssa had an urge to put her arm around him, to lie and tell him everything would be okay.

  ‘I’m Dr. Homa,’ she said as she extended her arm, shaking each of their hands with a firm, no-nonsense hold, and then nodding her head down the hall, she added, ‘Why don’t we go somewhere we can speak a little more privately?’ At a door marked ‘Employees Only,’ she swiped her card to unlock the door, then stepped inside and waved them in.

  ‘Thank you for taking the time to talk to us,’ Alyssa said. ‘I’m Detective Wyatt, and this is Detective Roberts.’

  ‘Before we discuss anything, I’m going to need Mr. McCormick to positively ID our patient, and then if she proves to be his wife –’

  ‘Callie. Her name is Callie,’ Rafe whispered.

  ‘And then if it proves to be Callie, we’ll return here where we can speak in more depth.’ To Rafe, she said, ‘Sir, I overheard the detectives warn you about the condition of the woman lying in that hospital bed, but I need to reinforce that. Do you understand?’

  After a long hesitation, Rafe, his body trembling, his eyes telegraphing fear, nodded.

  ‘Then please follow me.’ Before they went in, the doctor opened the door, blocking their view as she asked the nurses to leave for a few minutes in order to give them a little more privacy. ‘Ready?’ she asked Rafe.

  ‘I’m ready.’

  The three of them held back as Rafe approached the bed, his footsteps heavy and loud in the enclosed room. And, even though they’d suspected – known – it was Callie lying on that bed, the way he lurched forward, sobs clawing their way out of his throat as he lovingly and carefully caressed his wife’s face, was all the confirmation they needed.

  Alyssa felt the weight of it on her shoulders. ‘Mr. McCormick, we need you to verbally confirm or deny that the woman lying in that bed is your wife, Callie McCormick.’

  He didn’t stop touching his wife’s face. ‘It’s her. It’s my Callie.’ Then quietly, he asked, the words sounding strangled as they emerged, ‘Was… was she… did they rape her?’

  Dr. Homa stepped up and gently placed her arm on Rafe’s. ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘But if you don’t mind, I’d like to discuss her condition elsewhere. I’m a firm believer that our patients can hear us, subconsciously or consciously, even in a state such as your wife’s.’ When he resisted, she assured him, ‘I promise to be as quick as I can so you can return to her as soon as possible.’

  With a gentle kiss to Callie’s forehead, Rafe agreed, and the four of them found their way back to the ‘Employees Only’ room once again, but this time, the doctor placed a ‘Conference in Session’ placard on the hook hanging outside the door. She glanced once at Alyssa and Cord, but then focused her attention on Callie’s husband.

  ‘Mr. McCormick, before we begin, I’ll need your permission to speak freely in front of the detectives.’ He agreed, and she continued. ‘First, I’m sorry for what you’re going through, but I’m going to shoot straight here.’ She gestured and said, ‘I’ve been on my feet all day, so if it’s okay with you, I’d like to sit.’

  Once everyone was situated around the table, she began. ‘This is always the toughest part of my job, being honest and upfront with families. That being said, I don’t want to tell you there’s no hope, nor do I want to offer false hope.’ Dr. Homa’s eyes held steady as she said, ‘Mr. McCormick, recovery is not looking promising. We’re doing all we can, of course, but you saw her. We don’t know how long she’d been in the elements, but we can estimate from her body temperature when she was brought in that it was likely anywhere from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and some of those would’ve been in freezing overnight temps.’

  She waited while everyone grappled with this bit of news. Then she said, ‘You saw the blunt force trauma to her head and face, and the cuts and lacerations covering her body, especially her wrists and ankles where she was obviously… held in bondage… but I am afraid these are only a small part of what we’re dealing with.’

  Quiet sobs shook Rafe’s body, and Dr. Homa slid a box of tissues over to him before she asked, ‘Do you need a moment?’

  He
shook his head, the movement weak, and waved a trembling hand for her to continue.

  ‘Most of her ribs are bruised, and some are cracked. The burns on her feet are badly infected, and we’ve started her on a very heavy regimen of antibiotics.’ She paused, ‘Does your wife have any allergies we should be aware of?’

  ‘Mushrooms, but no medications.’

  ‘Then we should be safe on that front. To continue: from the needle marks in your wife’s neck, there’s a strong possibility she was drugged. We should find out when the blood tests come back.’ She paused to give everyone time to process what she’d said so far before she resumed, this time looking at the detectives. ‘This is one of the worse cases of torture I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something.’

  Dr. Homa removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes wearily as if she was struggling with what she was about to reveal. When the doctor’s voice softened, Alyssa’s stomach tightened. How much more could Rafe McCormick handle before he completely broke down?

  ‘I told you your wife wasn’t raped, Mr. McCormick.’ When his head shot up, eyes wide, she held up her palm. ‘No, no. She wasn’t. I didn’t lie about that. But I am afraid to tell you that she lost the baby.’

  A collective gasp bounced off the walls of the small room. ‘Baby? My wife wasn’t pregnant, Doctor.’ The bewildered expression on his face was testament that he was being truthful.

  If Alyssa hadn’t been watching, she might’ve missed the slight drooping of Dr. Homa’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s entirely possible your wife was unaware of her condition as yet,’ she said. ‘But, when one of the nurses felt an unusual hardness in her abdomen, I ordered an ultrasound, and the pregnancy was confirmed. The blood tests will back that up.’ A heavy sigh preceded the doctor’s next words. ‘I’m very sorry, but I want to prepare you for the very real possibility that your wife may not wake from this ordeal, and even if she does, we don’t know what kind of damage her brain has sustained.’