Hold Back the Dark (2 page)

A stocky woman in scrubs with short, bristling reddish hair and a stethoscope around her neck bustled into the room. She looked Aimee up and down, clearly searching for an injury. “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Taylor Dawkin,” Aimee said into the round metal grate on the window.

The woman’s face slammed shut. “I’ll send someone out,” she said and turned on her squeaky rubber-soled heel.

Aimee closed her eyes, let her head fall back, and shrugged her shoulders, trying to release the tension that knotted them.

“Dr. Gannon?” the deep voice she recognized from the telephone said.

She opened her eyes. “Yes.”

Talk about tall, dark, and armed. He had to lean down to speak into the microphone in the triage room, braced on muscled forearms visible under the rolled-up cuffs of the shirt. His tie hung askew across his broad chest. His dark hair was a little too long; it curled a bit over the collar of his faded blue shirt and fell forward over his forehead. Everything from his broad shoulders down screamed
man
.

Something completely female in Aimee fluttered in response, even as she checked out the gun and badge on his belt.

His gaze traveled up and down, assessing her with deep brown eyes, intense and unblinking. Aimee stared right back. He’d need more than Intimidation 101 to make her step back.

“I’m Detective Wolf.” He hit the buzzer to unlock the door. “Thank you for coming,” he said, extending his hand but keeping his hip cocked back. His gun hip, Aimee realized. Lord save her from big men with guns.

“May I see Taylor?” Aimee asked. His palm was hard and dry, his handshake businesslike and strong.

“Sure.” He turned and walked out of the little room, leaving Aimee to follow.

They walked past the chaos of the nurses’ station and a series of curtained enclosures. All around, Aimee heard moans and sobs, gasps and whispered reassurances. Even on a Tuesday night, the ER was brutal emotional territory. She drew her denim jacket tighter around herself.

At the end of the hall a uniformed officer sat on a plastic and metal chair, chatting with a woman wearing a dark navy suit and white lace shell. Her skin was the color of a New Orleans café au lait and her dark, curling hair was pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. “You the doc?” she asked as they approached.

Aimee smiled. “Licensed clinical psychologist. I’m the Ph.D. kind of doc, not the M.D. kind.”

“Good enough for me. Plenty of the M.D. kind around here and they haven’t made much progress.” The woman held out her hand. “Elise Jacobs. I’m Detective Wolf’s partner.”

Aimee shook her hand. “Is Taylor okay?” she asked. “Is she in trouble? Did she do something?”

“We’re still trying to figure that out ourselves.” Wolf pushed aside the curtain. “She’s in here.”

Taylor Dawkin sat curled up on the floor in a corner. Her left wrist was handcuffed to the gurney, her arm twisted up above her head while the other wrapped around her knees. She had curled herself into a ball and was soundlessly rocking herself, eyes squeezed tight shut. Her arms and legs were scored with deep, sharp cuts that still oozed through the glistening antibiotic ointment. Her fingers were black with ink.

A cry escaped Aimee’s lips and she started toward the girl, but the world spun around her. She put her hands out to steady herself, but there was nothing to grab. She felt a hand at the small of her back, steadying her. She registered its strength and size and warmth and leaned into it. The heat of it traveled through her entire body. Then she realized the hand belonged to Wolf. She took a deep breath and tried to still the racing of her heart as she pulled away. “What happened to her?” she whispered.

“We’re trying to figure that out,” Detective Wolf said from behind her. “She’s not talking to us. She’s not talking to anyone.”

“She’s not talking, period,” Elise said, coming to stand next to Aimee.

“Where did you find her?” Aimee turned to look at the detectives.

“At home.” Wolf’s brown eyes watched her face, his gaze impossible to read.

“Home? Like this? Did someone break in?” Aimee turned back to look at Taylor and her gut clenched. Taylor had been cutting herself, but nothing remotely like this. The tentative cuts had been more for show than destruction. Aimee had interpreted them as a cry for help, an outward sign of the pain that the girl was feeling inside. This looked like Taylor had crashed through a plate glass window going ninety miles an hour.

“We don’t know yet,” Wolf replied.

“What about her parents? Were they attacked as well? Who did this to them?” Aimee’s mind raced through horrid possibilities.

Detective Wolf tilted his head at the uniformed officer in a silent command. The officer immediately stood and Wolf offered the chair to Aimee. “I think you’d better sit down to hear the rest of this.”

Aimee looked from one shuttered face to the other. She didn’t want to sit. She wanted to shake someone; she wanted to scream. But Taylor needed her, and to help Taylor, Aimee needed information. She sat, ready to spring up. “Please tell me what’s happening.”

Detective Wolf grabbed a chair from the other side of the hallway, turned it around, and straddled it. “We received a nine-one-one call from the Dawkin home at approximately ten thirty-five tonight. The father of one of Taylor’s friends had become concerned. Taylor had walked home from the Norchesters’ house after studying for a test with their daughter, and was supposed to call to let them know she’d arrived safely. When they didn’t hear from her and no one answered the Dawkins’ phone, Mr. Norchester drove there and found Taylor much as you see her now—sitting between her parents’ corpses.”

T
he shrink’s face went white. Her eyes looked huge in her face, wide and staring.

Her low, mellow voice on the phone had led him to expect someone older than the teenybopper outfit and the ponytail indicated. The harsh fluorescent lights showed the start of lines around her eyes, but hospital lights made newborns look wrinkly. Her eyes were startlingly blue in the frame of her dark hair, highly visible even behind the narrow black-framed glasses. The pull he felt low in his gut was totally unexpected; he hadn’t felt that in quite a while—not since Holly.

Elise tapped the back of his chair with her foot and Josh realized he’d been staring. He cleared his throat. “Taylor won’t speak to us. She’s covered with cuts, but it looks like she might have inflicted those herself. There was a lot of broken glass at the scene. We can’t tell if someone’s tried to hurt her, or…”

“Or what, Detective Wolf?” Dr. Gannon clasped her ringless hands in front of her. She looked calm, but Josh could see her fingers trembling.

“Or if she might have done some of the hurting herself,” Elise said behind him.

The comment was well put. They weren’t sure if Taylor had inflicted those cuts on herself, nor were they certain whether or not she had had something to do with killing her parents. Elise’s words left the question of whose wounds they were discussing ambiguous. How the shrink interpreted Elise’s remark could be just as informative as the answer itself.

Gannon took a deep breath, then rubbed her forehead. “Taylor has never been violent toward anyone. Her problems run more toward self-destructive behavior, but nothing anywhere near this level.” Gannon glanced over her shoulder into the curtained cubicle again. “Nowhere near,” she murmured.

So she could have made those cuts on herself. It wasn’t exactly a Sherlock Holmes–worthy deduction, what with the bloody broken glass that had littered the floor around her. The question in Josh’s mind was what kind of response that was to her parents’ murder. Guilt? Or had shock and grief made her attack herself? Violence touched different people in different ways.

Or was it something else? Something that he couldn’t possibly guess without help from someone who knew Taylor inside and out? Like her therapist.

If Taylor had stumbled on that scene, lost it, and needed help, he wanted her to get that help, and fast.

“How was Taylor’s relationship with her parents?” Josh asked.

Gannon sighed. “What seventeen-year-old girl gets along with her parents? It’s a difficult age. I certainly didn’t get along with my parents when I was seventeen, did you, Detective?” Her hands dropped back in her lap and the trembling lessened.

“So no more anger than a typical adolescent might have?” Elise asked. That honey-sweet voice and serene face fooled a lot of people into not noticing the razor-sharp mind beneath.

Gannon’s brow furrowed. “I wouldn’t say that, either. In fact, I’m not quite sure what I can and can’t say. There are confidentiality issues here.”

“There’s also a double homicide here,” Elise said icily. “Two people are dead. Murdered in their own home.”

“I realize that as well.” Gannon’s voice shook a bit and Josh thought he saw more there than shock. What precisely was Aimee Gannon afraid of? “And I want to help. There’s an aunt in Redding who’s close with Taylor. I’m not sure if she’s the legal guardian now, but there’s a good chance she is. If we could contact her and get permission to release my files…”

Wolf flipped open his notebook and scanned through his notes. “Marian Phillips? Of 2752 Hummingbird Lane?”

“Quite possibly,” Gannon said. “I can check my files.”

“Not necessary,” he answered. “We’ve already called. She’ll be here in the morning.”

Gannon nodded and twisted her hands in front of her again. “All right, then. Contact me when she gets here and we can talk more about why I was seeing Taylor.” She hesitated. “May I to speak to Taylor?”

Josh exchanged a look with Elise, who gave an imperceptible nod. If she could get the girl to do something besides make little animal noises, maybe they could get some information out of her. It was entirely possible that this girl held the key to the case. If she hadn’t done it, she may well have seen something that could break the thing wide open. “Of course, be my guest.”

The uniformed officer pulled the curtain aside again and Gannon stepped through.

“Taylor,” she said, her low voice quiet. “Taylor, it’s me, Dr. Gannon.”

If Taylor heard her, she gave no sign. She continued rocking and making the whimpering noises she’d been making since she’d been found.

Gannon knelt beside the girl, placing her hand lightly on her back. “Taylor, it’s all right. You’re safe now,” she murmured.

Taylor rocked faster.

“No one here is going to hurt you,” Gannon said.

Taylor kept rocking.

“Can you tell me what happened? What happened to your parents? To you, Taylor? Can you tell me what happened to you?” Gannon’s voice was nearly a whisper, as if her throat had constricted.

Taylor didn’t even look at her.

Gannon turned the force of her blue eyes onto Josh, who now leaned against the counter that ran along the side of the cubicle, arms folded across his chest, legs crossed at the ankle in front of him. Fatigue dragged at him like cement boots. He’d been on duty for eighteen hours, and everything that happened in these first few hours of the investigation was crucial. Mess up now, and he could find himself in the kind of quagmire that never got fully resolved and would leave a stain on his record. He’d push through it. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done it before.

People expected homicides to be cleared up fast. People especially expected to have homicides involving upstanding citizens who were knitting in their homes when they were bound and strangled to be cleared up lightning fast.

“She’s in shock,” Gannon said.

“Really,” Wolf said. Did she think he was an idiot? He was hoping for some way to bring Taylor out of shock that didn’t involve a slap across the face. “I’d never have guessed.”

Gannon’s eyes narrowed and her lips pursed. “Do you have a plan to deal with that?”

She was cute when she was mad, especially with those hot librarian glasses. Not that he was noticing or anything. “Calling you pretty much
was
my plan.”

She sighed and sat back on her heels, her hand never leaving Taylor’s back. “She’s freezing. She needs a blanket and someplace to sit besides the floor.”

“She wouldn’t stay on the gurney,” Smitty, the uniformed cop, volunteered. “She kept climbing down onto the floor. After a while, I figured it was easier to let her stay there.”

Gannon’s head turned toward him with a laser-beam stare. “Easier for whom?”

Smitty blushed.

“And why is she handcuffed?” Gannon’s voice rose a bit.

Smitty glanced over at Josh, and Gannon’s gaze followed. Josh felt that tug in the pit of his belly again.

“Because we didn’t—don’t—know what we’re dealing with here,” he said.

“Meaning what?” Gannon asked, rising to a standing position.

“Meaning that I don’t know if Taylor had something to do with her parents’ murder or not.” Josh shoved himself off the counter to stand up straight.

“Is Taylor a suspect?” Gannon’s feet were spread, her hands fisted on her hips. Her eyes narrowed into slits.

He liked that she challenged him about it. He also liked that she was almost tall enough to look him in the eye. “Yes, as far as I’m concerned, she’s still a suspect here, Dr. Gannon. She’s lucky I’m not putting her under arrest and sending her over to the correctional medical facility.”

“Taylor didn’t do this. She couldn’t have.” Her chin jutted out.

“Can you alibi her? You have something that proves she didn’t do it?” If the shrink knew something more solid than namby-pamby feelings, he needed to know it now.

The blue eyes shuttered closed. “No,” she said on an exhale. “No. I don’t have anything like that.” Her head dropped.

Josh felt disappointed, and he wasn’t sure if it was because she didn’t have any info to further his case or if it was because he wasn’t looking into the deep blue lakes of her eyes anymore.

“Could we at least uncuff her and get her some more blankets?” Gannon’s head rose back, challenge in her voice.

“Sure.” He was willing to give a little, especially if it might get him something. He glanced over at Smitty, who came over and uncuffed Taylor’s arm. The girl wrapped the freed arm tightly around her knees and rocked a little faster.

“I’ll see about more blankets,” Elise said, heading down the hall toward the nurses’ station. Most of the staff were too busy for requests for things like blankets.

“Where will you keep Taylor until her aunt gets here?” Gannon asked.

Josh held aside the curtain and motioned with his head for her to follow him. Once they were outside, he said, “Right here. Her wounds aren’t deep enough to admit her, according to the doc. We’re lucky they’ll let us have this space. She won’t be alone. We’ll keep a guard on her.”

There was no pysch ward at Mercy. He looked around the understaffed ER. Keeping her here on the floors would mean restraining her physically or chemically. Gannon was probably more aware of that than him.

“Here?” Gannon didn’t sound pleased.

“You got another suggestion? I could 5150 her, but then she’d be in the system for days. Juvie doesn’t seem like the place for her right now, either.”

The doctor’s hands unclenched and she nodded thoughtfully. “This way the aunt can get her out of here tomorrow. I suppose it’s the best we can do for now. I’m not crazy about it, though.” She pulled her jacket closed and rubbed at her arms as if to warm herself.

Elise returned with two thin blankets. “This is the best I could do.”

Gannon took the blankets from Elise. “Thanks. I’d like to wait with Taylor until she’s more settled.”

“Of course. Any idea what could have made her act like this?” Josh asked.

“I’m guessing that finding your parents’ murdered bodies would send anyone into shock,” Gannon answered. Sarcasm tinged her reply.

“Sure. Being in that house upset
me
tonight, and I’m used to it. But shocked into being totally nonverbal? Not so much.” He crossed his arms across his chest. “Anything I should know about this girl?”

The blue eyes narrowed for a moment as if she was considering, then she took a deep breath. “I’d prefer to wait until the aunt gets here and gives me formal permission to discuss Taylor’s case with you.”

Damn, he’d thought he had her on his side. Maybe he could still eke a little more information from the good doctor. “The first twenty-four to forty-eight hours of a case are crucial. If there’s information that could lead to arresting her parents’ killer and I don’t have it when I need it, I doubt anyone’s going to congratulate you on what a great job you did of protecting client confidentiality by withholding information from the police.”

She bit her lip, and Josh could see the indecision on her face. Then she took a deep breath and said, “Taylor’s parents brought her to me because her behavior changed about six months ago. She’d started cutting herself, although nothing like what I saw tonight. Her grades had dropped. She’d become uncommunicative. We’ve been getting closer in our therapy to her revealing what had happened to start all this, but we haven’t gotten there yet. I suspect it was something quite traumatic, something that she’s been repressing. Being close to remembering something like that puts a person in a very emotionally fragile state. And finding your parents dead on your living room floor would affect a fragile person more than one who was emotionally stronger.”

“What kind of traumatic event?” Josh pressed.

Gannon bit her lip and leaned toward him. He caught the floral scent of her shampoo and swallowed hard. She straightened again and shook her head. “I don’t know anything for sure.”

Josh leaned forward. “But you suspect something?”

“Nothing definitive.”

Josh uncrossed his arms, his face impassive. “That’s all you’re willing to say?”

She massaged the wrinkle that had formed between her brows, and Josh’s pulse quickened. He was wearing her down. Screw waiting for the aunt. He wanted whatever information Dr. Gannon had
now
.

Then his cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He sighed and pulled it out. Miss one step in these delicate dances of negotiation, and you never got back in the rhythm. He flipped the phone open. “Wolf here.”

“We’ve got some preliminary fingerprint information you’ll want to see,” Clyde said on the other end. “And the PIO wants to see you and Jacobs pronto. All the morning news shows are going to lead with this thing. He needs to know what you’ve got.”

“We’ll be there in twenty.” He snapped the phone shut, then looked at the shrink. “Detective Jacobs and I are going to have to leave.”

Aimee settled Taylor as comfortably as she could on the bed with a few blankets tucked around her. Her skin was no longer ice cold to the touch and the rocking had almost stopped. She lay on the thin mattress and stared at the wall, her dyed black hair limp against the hospital pillow. The room smelled like antiseptic. Not exactly where Aimee wanted to see her traumatized patient warehoused for the rest of the night. She wanted to wrap her in soft quilts and make her feel safe again, but neither was remotely possible at the moment.

The police would never let her take Taylor home with her, even if she dared to do it. She continued patting Taylor’s back, one of the few places not covered with scores of cuts. How much pain had she endured? How much pain was it masking? And was there anything Aimee could do to make it stop?

For months, they’d been circling the issue that had sent Taylor into the self-mutilating, substance-abusing tailspin that had prompted the Dawkins to bring her to Aimee. In the past few sessions Aimee had become convinced that they were about to come in for a very bumpy landing, but a landing that could be the beginning of the healing for Taylor.