Heroes In Uniform (262 page)

Liar
, said a little voice inside her head.

“Liar,” said Ashley. “Besides, John is easily the most honest, straightforward man I know. Not to mention, in a town like this, no one could get away with that. Speaking of, how did he get away with that? How did he fool you that whole time?”

Katelyn winced. Leave it to Ashley to get right to the point. Katelyn just shook her head. “I’ve been wondering that myself, honestly. I just didn’t see the signs. The worst part was, my friends knew. I thought they’d have the kind of response you did, but they didn’t. They knew he was married and assumed I did. Who does that?”

“Crazy people. Those crazy city people,” Ashley said in a conspiratorial tone and Katelyn had to laugh.

Katelyn picked at the tiny flowers embroidered in the comforter on her bed before giving in to the urge to ask. “When did John say he’d be back?” She should probably go visit her father, but if he saw her like this, he’d have questions and she didn’t want to upset him. Then again, how could she avoid him for days or maybe even weeks while her head healed?

“Not sure. At least a few hours, he said. I’ll stay, though.” Ashley popped off the bed. “I don’t cook so I grabbed breakfast on the way over from Two Sisters. Yours is waiting downstairs when you’re ready.”

“Thanks. Hey, Ashley,” Katelyn said as the dark-haired woman started for the door. “What do you do that you were able to just drop everything and come over?” Katelyn didn’t know why she wanted to know, but suddenly she was curious.

“Oh, I’m the librarian in town. I locked up and put a sign on the door. I have some volunteers that come by each day. One of them is on her way in to cover. She’ll stay if John doesn’t get back soon.”

Katelyn’s jaw dropped. “You’re the librarian?”

Ashley laughed. “Someday I’ll be offended that everyone gets that look on their face when I tell them what I do. For now, it’s just kind of funny.”

Everlasting: Chapter Nine

John punched in the number for Dr. Max Shapiro, an old colleague from his time in the New York City Police Department. He knew Max would be winding down at the end of his workday and he was hoping to catch him before he left his office.

“’Lo?” came the casual answer at the other end of the phone. John grinned. Max was not your typical psychologist. He wore jeans and sneakers with T-shirts that said things like “Trust me… I’m a therapist” or “I’m sorry your hour is up.”

“Hey, Max. It’s John Davies,” John said, and he could picture the giant bear of a man smiling as a booming “John!” came back at him.

They spent a few minutes catching up, talking about old times without really touching too much on anything happening with his former precinct or buddies. Max worked with a lot of the officers on John’s old force, but he understood better than anyone how hard it was for John to relive that time.

“So, I know you didn’t call to shoot the breeze. What’s up?”

“How much do you know about repressed memories, Max?” John asked. He didn’t feel comfortable talking about Katelyn’s possible memories with anyone from around Evers. He was hoping Max would be able to tell him what he needed to know.

“I’ve work with them, some. Is this for a case?”

“I’m not actually sure what I’m dealing with yet. I just wanted to find out more about it. Is it possible for someone to witness something as a child and not remember it at all afterward?”

“It depends who you talk to. For the most part, repressed memories are accepted in the psychiatric community,” Max began.

“What about the other part?” John asked.

“Some say they’re just made up memories. That they’re implanted with suggestive questioning from therapists who don’t know what they’re doing. Others blame television or books—say people piece together bits of what they’ve seen in the media and arrange it in their heads until their mind truly believes it happened to them. And, we have no studies yet to show one way or the other. A lot of times there isn’t independent corroboration and it’s just a he-said, she-said kind of thing.” Max paused for a minute, but John stayed quiet. He knew Max. If he let him keep going, he’d tell him what his gut feeling was. He could almost hear the gears in Max’s brain going.

“I’ll tell you, though, John. The mind is an incredible thing. If something happens that a person can’t handle, the mind is remarkably adept at protecting that person. If a person saw something as a child, something that was too hard for the brain to process, to make sense of, they might have blocked it out right away or it could have happened over time. I don’t like the idea of relying on repressed memories as the sole evidence in convicting someone, but it’s not a stretch for me to believe that it happens. Not a stretch at all.”

John lay a little of Kate’s story out for Max. “A woman was killed here twenty-four years ago. Her daughter was four at the time. We’ve never had reason to believe the daughter witnessed anything, but I’m beginning to have my doubts. She told me she’s had small flashes of what she thinks are a memory, but they don’t add up with the crime scene. Is it possible she could have seen something and then buried it for this many years?”

“If you’re asking for hard evidence, scientific data, I don’t have any. If you want my opinion, yes. I believe it’s entirely possible,” Max said without any hesitation.

“So, even right after the murder, she might not have been able to remember?” John asked. Maybe that’s why Alan had never told John that Katelyn witnessed something. Maybe she hadn’t been able to tell him anything even right after it happened. It’s possible Alan truly believed Katelyn had nothing to tell them—at least, nothing she
could
tell them if the memories were trapped in her head.

“Yes. It’s possible she either blocked it out immediately, or she could have been too traumatized to talk about it right away and then, over time, her mind blocked it out.”

“Could she have been coached early on about it and not remember the coaching? Every time I ask her about it, her denial is exactly the same:
I didn’t see anything. I wasn’t there
. Could those lines have been fed to her as a child?”

“It’s entirely possible. It could be a combination of her own mind helping her to forget and those around her encouraging the denial.”

“Would it be possible for her to have forgotten for this length of time? For twenty-four years?” John asked.

“You bet. And, we never know what will bring out those memories. In one case, a woman remembered witnessing her father kill another little girl when she was six years old. She didn’t remember until she was an adult with her own children. Then, the memories began to flash back in bits and pieces,” Max said.

John’s jaw dropped. “Was she in touch with her father for all of those years?”

“Yup. Raised by him as a child. I’m telling you, the mind protects us. It’s an incredible machine. It’s why I love what I do so much.”

“So, how do I get her to remember what happened?” John asked.

He could hear Max’s reluctance over the phone.

“Max, this killer has walked free for twenty-four years. Help me out here, give me something,” John said.

“You can talk to a psychiatrist about doing some regression therapy. I can get you some names of people in your area. You don’t want to work with just anyone on that kind of thing. Taking her to the scene of the crime might help. Might not.”

John cursed. He already knew the scene of the crime didn’t match her memory.

“But John, I have to warn you. Her mind is doing this for a reason. I know you want to catch a killer, and I can’t tell you what to do, but you need to give some thought to what it could do to her if she remembers whatever she’s forgotten. Pushing her on this, pushing to have those memories resurface before she’s ready—you could taint the memory by using too much suggestion, or risk harming her beyond what she’s already suffered through.”

John squeezed his temples as he listened to Max.
Great
. Choose between catching her mother’s killer to provide some closure to her dying father, and possibly harming Katelyn irreparably.
Just great.

“Thanks Max,” John said.

“Hey, don’t be a stranger. Call if you need anything. Anytime.”

John couldn’t help but smile. “You too, man. You, too.”

John stared at the phone a few minutes longer, then tossed it on the seat next to him. He couldn’t talk to his father about this. His dad was retired, but he still bled blue from his time wearing a shield. When John left New York, giving up his gold shield and all he’d accomplished, his dad hadn’t understood. Their relationship had taken a hit and it took a long time to heal. He wasn’t about to talk about something that would hurt it again.

And, to John’s father, there wouldn’t be any question. You do what you had to for the sake of a case. Whatever you had to, no matter the cost. John couldn’t talk to him about what was going on in his head when he’d left New York, and he couldn’t talk to him now. If asked, his father would always choose justice, no matter the cost. There was a time when John would have, too.

Nor could he talk to Alan about it. John would have to decide on his own if it was worth pushing Katelyn to remember what she’d seen. If it was worth risking her, risking the case to find the answers he so desperately wanted to give her father.

* * *

Katelyn couldn’t avoid seeing her father for very long. She gave herself a day to rest and then convinced John to bring her over to the hospital to visit. John was being a hair more overprotective than Katelyn would have liked—he wouldn’t let her drive herself yet, for fear she’d get dizzy and have an accident behind the wheel—but she tolerated it because she didn’t want him to leave her alone right now. With John on the couch in the living room, she could get a few hours of sleep. She knew if he left her alone at night, the fear would take over and she wouldn’t be able to sleep at all.

She didn’t know whether to be relieved her father was fully cognizant and seemed to be aware of who she was today or not. In some ways, every visit she had where he was living in the present and able to talk to her was a blessing. On the other hand, maybe it would be easier to convince him her injuries weren’t a big deal if he were having one of his off days.

In either case, she wasn’t about to tell him what had really happened.

“Katelyn, what happened? Who hurt you?” That struck Katelyn as an odd way to ask her about her injury. The bruising was mostly to the side of her face and forehead. It wasn’t the type of black eye you’d see from fists. It could very easily have come from a car accident or fall. Which made her cover story more believable, but her father’s question odd.

“Oh, it was nothing, Dad. I had an accident in my car. I didn’t see a deer at night and swerved to avoid it. I hit a pole and my head hit the side window. I’m fine, though, Dad. Really.” Katelyn bent and kissed her father’s cheek and put the flowers she’d brought in down on the windowsill.

Her father didn’t answer her, but turned to John instead. “John, you’d tell me if anything else was going on, wouldn’t you? First she falls down jogging and now this? There anything you need to tell me, son?”

It grated on Katelyn that her father would ask John as if she wasn’t even in the room. She wasn’t a child, but he never seemed to see that.

John covered for her, but she didn’t miss the look he threw her before answering her father. And, she knew why. They were both wondering why her father would ask that. Why wouldn’t he accept the story of an accident? The only reason not to accept it was if he knew there might be a reason for someone to want to hurt her.

“Nothing to worry about, Alan. She just tangled with a sign post, but we’ll get her car taken care of and she’ll be good as new in no time. The doctor said she’ll have a small scar from the stitches, but that’s it.”

Katelyn had to admit it. Maybe John’s theory that her father sent her away because she saw something when she was young wasn’t so crazy after all. Or at least, her father thought she saw something even though her memories didn’t match up with the crime scene. And, now it seemed someone else believed she saw something, too.

But how on earth do you defend yourself from a threat based only on the belief that you saw something if you can’t actually remember what you saw?

Everlasting: Chapter Ten

Katelyn and John stepped from the room while Alan’s nurse changed his sheets and got him cleaned up.

“Coffee?” John asked with a glance toward the elevators that would lead down to the cafeteria.

Katelyn shook her head but smiled at him. “If I drink another cup, I’ll burst. I feel like I’ve been living on coffee for days now.”

By unspoken agreement, they sat on one of the benches spaced out along the hospital corridor. They laughed when they both put their heads back against the wall with a loud sigh at the exact same moment. The strain of coming to the hospital each day was wearing on them.

“How are you managing this? I mean, it’s tough on me, but I’m not also running an entire county and taking care of the town’s police force.”

John turned his head toward her and grinned, those eyes connecting and holding hers as they always seemed to do. “I have really great guys working for me. They’re picking up the slack. Someday, I’ll have to pick up the slack for them when they have something going on in their family. It all evens out in the end.”

There was a time when Katelyn would have cringed to hear John talk about Alan as his family, but now it soothed her. She’d gotten over her anger, the resentment she’d been holding onto for so long. It felt good, actually. Really, really good to let that go and just lean on John a bit. He was right. It
would
all even out in the end.

The tinny ping of the elevator opening drew both their attention.

“Hi guys,” Katelyn said, stunned to see Shane, Ashley, and an older woman with ghost-white hair carrying a pot of somewhat dilapidated-looking flowers. The poor things were wilting and the petals had all dried up, but that didn’t seem to stop the smile on the woman’s face as they approached the group.