Or so she told herself.
But then, as she passed a half-filled waiting room and caught a glimpse of her own face on TV, she understood. It was starting up all over again. Just as Michael had said, she was the girl who had lived: a never-ending story, apparently, especially considering what she had grown up to become.
The knowledge made her feel cold all over.
Detective Sager was standing outside the door to Jenna’s room, along with a second man—who Charlie assumed was another detective—and two uniformed cops.
“Since that initial interview last night, she’s clammed up. We’ve been ordered to keep a guard on the door, but not to enter the room or let anyone else in—unless authorized by the parents. But only a few minutes ago we got a call telling us that you were on the way up and we should let you through,” Sager informed Tony with barely concealed ire. “So I guess that makes you and Dr. Stone here special.” His eyes slid over Charlie, and not in a friendly way.
Seeming to take no offense, Tony frowned at him. “Family has some clout, I take it?”
Sager grimaced. “Her father’s a federal judge. He’s in there now, along with her mother and somebody I think is the family lawyer. What I want to know is, why don’t they want her to talk to us?”
Charlie was pretty confident she knew the answer.
“Teen Queen’s feeling guilty,” Michael said, echoing her own thoughts. Charlie knew he was remembering Raylene Witt’s accusation just as she was. If Jenna had killed Raylene, and possibly Laura, too, she very well might not want anyone to know. Telling Jenna up front that having his victims kill one another was part of the Gingerbread Man’s MO might or might not make her feel better about what she had done, but it would also taint any account that she gave of what had happened. When it came time for trial, defense lawyers would have a field day painting investigators as having led the witness. Tony had explained this on the way over, and Charlie knew it was true. She only hoped that Jenna knew what had happened was in no way her fault.
Tony shrugged. “Couldn’t say.” Then, with a nod at Sager and a brief knock, he opened the door for Charlie and followed her—and Michael—into the room.
It was a typical hospital room, small, cool from the air-conditioning, bright from the overhead light, and smelling of antiseptic.
“Special Agent Bartoli?” A tall, silver-haired man in a dark suit was the first to react to their presence. He stood on the opposite side of the hospital bed alongside another man, who was shorter, stockier, with thinning gray hair, in another dark suit. A well-dressed woman of around fifty was seated on the near side of the bed. She had short, expensively styled red hair, and as she looked sharply around at the new arrivals Charlie saw that her features were remarkably similar to Jenna’s: delicate, pretty, upscale. Jenna herself was in the bed, in a semi-sitting position which allowed her to see and be seen without obstruction. She was still pale, but aside from that and the bandage on her forehead there were no outward marks of her ordeal that Charlie could see. Her long, inky black hair hung in a single thick braid over one shoulder, and she wore a satiny pink bed jacket on top of her hospital gown. A blue hospital blanket covered her from the waist down. An IV was in her left arm, and her expression as she looked at the newcomers was both nervous and wary.
“Hello, Jenna,” Charlie said softly as Tony and the silver-haired man, who introduced himself as Jenna’s father, Judge Alton McDaniels, shook hands. For a moment Jenna’s eyes locked with hers, and Charlie could see the horror lurking in that golden brown gaze. Jenna was going to see a lot of people who would talk to her about putting what had happened behind her, about moving on, about forgetting. Charlie knew the girl never would.
Jenna simply looked at her without replying.
“Who are you?” Jenna’s mother asked sharply.
“I’m Dr. Stone. We talked on the phone last night, remember? Your daughter ran to my house for help.” The woman’s face wasn’t exactly hostile, but it wasn’t encouraging, either. However, it was Jenna Charlie was interested in, Jenna she hoped to help. “I’m a psychiatrist. I’m working with Agent Bartoli”—she nodded at Tony, who was talking to Jenna’s father and the other man—“and his team to help catch the man who did this.”
“Why did the freak send me down to your house?” There was an edge of suspicion in Jenna’s voice.
The freak,
Charlie knew, was Jenna’s way of referring to the Gingerbread Man.
“Did he specifically send you down to my house?” Even as Charlie asked the question, she knew the answer: of course he had. “How did he do that?”
“He said that the only place in the world where he wouldn’t kill me was the big white house at the bottom of the path. He said if I could make it there before he caught me, he’d let me live.” The rising emotion in Jenna’s voice caught the men’s attention.
“He wanted to get me involved,” Charlie told her, at the same time as Jenna’s father said, “Jenna, are you all right?”
As Jenna nodded, the man looked at Charlie with narrowed eyes.
“And you are?”
His wife told him. Charlie allowed herself to be distracted by introductions, shaking hands with Judge McDaniels; his wife, Jill; and Clark Andrews, their family attorney, in turn.
“Thank you for letting us talk to Jenna,” Tony said when the last of the introductions was finished.
“Only as long as she doesn’t get upset.” Jill McDaniels was holding her daughter’s hand. Beneath the strain on her face she, too, looked wary, and Charlie wondered exactly what Jenna had told her.
“We’re going to do everything in our power to catch the person who did this,” Tony promised them all. He looked at Jenna, and his voice gentled. “It would help us a lot if you could answer a few questions. We’ll stop whenever you want.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Jenna nodded.
Tony asked, “Do you mind if I record this? So I don’t have to try to remember everything.” Jenna looked at her father. Both parents looked at the lawyer. He nodded.
“As long as you’re prepared to turn it off if I tell you to,” Clark Andrews said.
Tony said, “Absolutely.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small tape recorder and set it on the bed table alongside the glass of water and other miscellaneous objects that were already there. Pressing a button, he turned the machine on, and looked at Jenna again.
“Okay, here we go.” Tony smiled at Jenna. Charlie found herself impressed by the air of calm reassurance he projected. “Can you tell me where you were and what you were doing when you were abducted?” Charlie knew that he wanted to get some concrete information under their belts as quickly as possible, in case the session had to be stopped.
Jenna took a breath. “In Hampton. On Pembroke Avenue, near the intersection with Mallory Street. We—my sorority—were having our run. You know, the No Excuse for Child Abuse 5k. I was handing out water at the three mile mark. I gave out all my water, and everybody had passed, and then one of the golf carts came by and gave Skyler—the girl I was with, she was feeling sick—a ride to the finish line. They were going to come back for me, but it was getting dark, so I started walking on in by myself. There were other people from the race heading in, too, and I was kind of following them, so it didn’t feel like I was really alone or anything. I remember the strap on my sandal came unfastened, and I sat down on a curb to fasten it, and everybody else was still walking and talking on up ahead. Then … I don’t know, I … blacked out.” Her mouth started to shake. “When I woke up I was in this—cage.”
Tony asked: “While you were walking, did you see anyone suspicious? Anyone you now think could have been the man who grabbed you?”
Jenna shook her head. “No. Nobody unusual, nobody who stood out that I can remember. I only just—I heard a voice, okay? Then later, when …” Clamping her lips together, she swallowed.
“One of the doctors who examined her last night said that there are marks on her that are consistent with the use of a stun gun,” Judge McDaniels told Tony. His face was rigid, and his eyes were alive with anger at what had been done to his daughter.
Tony nodded acknowledgment.
“You said you heard someone speak. Do you remember what he said, Jenna?” Tony’s voice was incredibly gentle.
Jenna closed her eyes briefly. “Last thing I remember hearing before I blacked out was a man saying in this kind of weird voice
, ‘Hi, there.’
Like, behind me. I never saw who it was. Then, when I woke up in the cage, I started screaming. I screamed my head off. He—I couldn’t see him. It was so dark. All I heard was this disembodied voice again. He told me that if I didn’t shut up, he would cut my throat. I believed him. I shut up.”
Even from where she was standing, Charlie could see the girl’s shiver.
“Would you recognize the voice if you heard it again?” Tony asked.
“I—think so. Like I said, it was weird.”
Tony’s gaze was intent on the girl’s face. “Where was the cage, Jenna?”
“In some sort of vehicle. A van, I think, or maybe one of those small camper trucks. The cage took up almost the whole back. It had sleeping bags. And—kind of a toilet.” Jenna stopped, and took a deep breath. “There was food—packages of peanut butter crackers. And a two-liter of water. After the first day, we—we rationed it.”
“We?” Tony questioned carefully. This was a sensitive area, Charlie knew.
“The other girls—and me.”
“You were kept in the same cage?” Tony asked. “How many of you?”
“Three.”
“Including you?”
Jenna nodded.
“Did you know the other girls previously?”
Jenna shook her head.
“Were the other girls put in the cage before or after you?”
“I don’t know. I kind of kept passing out and waking up, but at some point I remember seeing them and realizing I wasn’t alone. They were just—lying there, even when I was screaming, and later I figured out that they were passed out, too. Then we finally all woke up at about the same time.”
Drugs?
Charlie wondered
. Possibly a gas that was pumped into the back of the truck?
The autopsy on the two deceased victims, which if all was going according to schedule would be under way at that very moment, should tell them what substances the girls had been exposed to. Jenna’s blood had certainly been drawn last night for testing, and the analysis might be able to tell them the same thing, although it was possible that whatever it was had already metabolized out of her system.
Tony asked, “Did you talk to the other girls?”
Jenna nodded again. “They were … nice. Whatever happened, we made a pact to stick together. When he came—we knew he would come—we were going to attack him. Raylene—Raylene …” Jenna’s voice shook. “She was tough. She made a weapon out of this big metal comb she had in her hair, by bending over some of the teeth and holding it in her fist. Sort of like brass knuckles with spikes. She said she was going to go for his eyes. Only—she never got the chance.”
Breathing hard, Jenna stopped.
“Oh, baby,” her mother whispered, and Charlie could see how tightly their hands were clasped.
“Why didn’t Raylene get the chance, Jenna?” Tony’s voice was soft.
Jenna was lying back against her pillows now, looking at him out of eyes that were stark with remembered horror.
“We agreed to never sleep at the same time, that one of us would always stay awake to keep watch so that he couldn’t sneak up on us. But—we must have all fallen asleep anyway. And … and when we woke up we were at the bottom of this well.” She took a breath, glanced at her mother. “I was so scared.”
“Jenna,” Mrs. McDaniels said piteously.
“What happened then, Jenna?” Tony prompted.
“I won’t have her getting upset,” Mrs. McDaniels flashed at him.
“Jill, let her talk,” Judge McDaniels told his wife.
Mrs. McDaniels cast her husband an angry look, then focused on her daughter. “Honey, do you feel like you want to go on?”
Jenna looked at her mother. They were holding hands so tightly now that Mrs. McDaniels’ knuckles showed white. Jenna wet her lips. Then she nodded, and looked at Tony again.
“Last night—I can’t believe it was just last night. Oh, my God.” She paused, and swallowed. Then she went on. “Anyway, it was really dark. We could barely even see one another. At first we didn’t know what was happening. We didn’t know where we were, or anything. Only that we were in this moldy-smelling place that was wet. We got up and started feeling around, feeling the walls, to see if we could find a way out. Raylene’s the one who said she thought it was a well, and I think she was right. It was really deep, with curved stone sides that were slimy and disgusting and impossible to get a grip on. Way up above we could see this little circle of night sky. There was nothing we could do, no way we could climb out or escape. We were screaming but it didn’t help. It just echoed back at us, and nobody came. There was this rushing noise, and we looked up. Then water started pouring in on us, nasty cold water, like from this giant hose, gushing, and we tried to get away from it and we did, kind of, by hugging the edges of the well. But the water kept pouring in and getting deeper and deeper and Laura started crying and saying that she couldn’t swim.”