Chapter 37

Melender dried her hands in the single-stall ER bathroom but avoided looking in the mirror. She didn’t need it to tell her she resembled something the cat had dragged home, one of Sudie’s favorite sayings. Fatigue pulled at her. She hadn’t felt this beaten down since the days after her conviction. Every step had been hard, every breath even harder. Only the continual loop of Sudie’s voice in her mind, quoting and singing Scripture, had gotten her through those dark days.

Now her quest for the truth threatened to drag her down again. She had never considered Jesse’s death might have been an accident and the coverup designed to keep Jillian and Ruby safe. But then Jared had tried to cash in on his little brother’s disappearance, and things had snowballed beyond Quentin’s control. Melender had no doubt her uncle was behind the coverup. Even as a teenager, she’d known his love for Ruby was like an all-consuming fire, gobbling up everything in its path and leaving only ashes in its wake. Everything that had happened to her and Brogan since Ruby had accosted her at the Kwikie Mart took on new meaning when viewed through the lens of Quentin struggling to keep Ruby from finding out the truth.

Maybe more answers would be forthcoming now that the police had heard the recording. She exited the bathroom, moving slowly as her body responded to new aches and pains, courtesy of the car accident. Wait a minute. Had the truck driver deliberately rammed Brogan’s SUV? Her recollections of the accident were fuzzy. Brogan’s memory might serve better to answer that question. A nurse had said he was in the ER as well with non-life-threatening injuries. Outside the bathroom to steady herself, Melender nearly lost her balance as someone brushed by.

“Watch—”

Someone put a hand on her shoulder and hissed, “Don’t say a word if you want to avoid a shootout in the ER.”

Her Don Quixote-quoting assailant was back. Melender stiffened as the man pressed the barrel of a gun into her back, his body pressed close to hers.

“We’re going to turn to the left and exit the ER through the stairway door. Do you see it?”

She turned her head in the direction he indicated and spotted the glowing Exit sign, then nodded.

“Good.” He slide his arm around her waist from behind and hugged her closer, the gun boring into her side. “Let’s go.”

Melender kept her body facing forward but tried to look around the busy ER, hoping to spot Brogan or one of the detectives who had briefly talked to her about the accident. No one paid any attention to her or the man at her back. All too soon, she pushed open the stairway door.

The man maneuvered her through it into the deserted stairwell. He pocketed the gun and grabbed her by the elbow. “Keep moving.”

With his fingers digging into her arm, Melender went along with him as he tugged her down a short set of stairs and out a door that led to the hospital’s parking garage. Another few steps brought them to a black SUV with tinted windows.

The man unlocked the vehicle, twisted her arms behind her. and in one fluid movement, shoved her face down into the back seat. She had no time to protest or fight before plastic zip ties secured her arms, then her feet. The restraints brought memories of her arrest, and helplessness clawed at her like a hungry mountain lion.

“I’ll leave a gag off if you stay quiet. Will you be quiet?”

Melender nodded, her heart pounding. The man’s identity again tickled her memory. She’d seen him before the warning he’d delivered outside her work but couldn’t place him.

“One peep out of you and the gag goes in.” Don Quixote slammed the door. Within seconds, he’d settled into the driver’s seat and backed the SUV out of the parking space.

As the vehicle exited the parking lot, Melender closed her eyes and concentrated on slowing her heart rate. Lord, you are my refuge, you are my champion. Bits of Psalms she’d memorized in prison flitted through her mind, kicking the panic out as the peace of God filled her soul.

If she hoped to get out of this alive, she needed to have all her wits about her. Sudie singing the hymn “Everybody Will Be Happy Over There” echoed in her mind. Melender’s body relaxed against the seat as she sang the lyrics into the seat, careful to keep her voice low. “There’s a happy land of promise over in the great beyond, where the saved of earth shall soon the glory share. Where the souls of men shall enter and live on forever more. Everybody will be happy over there.”

* * *

Brogan rushedto the nurses station, where an older woman wearing bright green scrubs with dancing frogs tapped on a keyboard. “Do you know where Melender Harman is? She was in cubicle C.”

“And you are?” The nurse met his eyes.

“I’m a…” Brogan wasn’t sure what to call his relationship with Melender. “Friend.” Livingston came up beside Brogan.

“I’m sorry, I can only give that information to family members.” She turned her attention back to the computer.

“Ma’am, Detective Livingston, Fairfax County Police Department.” Livingston flipped open his badge to show the nurse. “Ms. Harman was in a suspicious car accident along with this gentleman.” The detective indicated Brogan. “I need to question her further about the incident.”

“In that case, let me check.” The nurse typed for a few minutes. “It says she signed her release papers twenty minutes ago.” She glanced up from the screen. “She might have gone into the waiting room to make a phone call. We don’t allow cell usage in the treatment areas.”

Brogan took off toward the waiting area, Livingston right behind him. An initial sweep of the filled room didn’t turn up Melender. A slower perusal had the same results. She wasn’t there. Brogan stepped outside and scanned the sidewalk on either side of the sliding glass doors. No Melender.

His heart pounding, Brogan slipped back inside. Livingston stood in conversation with a doctor at the far end of the waiting area. The doctor left just as Brogan reached the detective.

“She’s not outside,” Brogan said.

“A doctor saw her go into one of the restrooms in the ER. I’m going to check the security cameras to see where she might have gone after that.” Livingston started down the hall.

Brogan followed him, relieved the detective was taking her disappearance seriously. His heart rate accelerated as his thoughts ping-ponged around to various scenarios, each more dire than the last. Please, God, keep her safe. Help us figure out where she went. He had no doubt she was in some kind of danger. No way would Melender simply vanish without telling anyone, not after all that had happened over the last couple of days.

Ten minutes later, Brogan and Livingston crammed into the small security office with Tavon Carstairs, head of security. Sasha Brown, a female technician on the security team, keyed up the ER cameras for the right time frame.

On a surprisingly clear recording, Melender exited cubicle C and went into the single-stall restroom on the far side of the busy ER. A few minutes later, she left the bathroom and paused. Then someone wearing a baseball cap and a hoodie bumped into her and touched her shoulder. A minute later, Melender and the person, who appeared to be a man by height and stature, walked to the stairway exit door and disappeared from view.

“I’d like a copy of that footage, please. Do the stairwells have cameras?” Livingston asked.

Brogan stared at the monitor. The stiffness of Melender’s posture attested that she hadn’t gone willingly with the man.

“Yep.” Carstairs motioned to Sasha to tap into that camera. Minutes later, Melender and the man appeared on the other side of the stairway door. The man kept his head down and his body turned away from the camera as he put something in his pocket, then grabbed Melender’s arm to hustle her down the stairs and out another door.

“Was that a gun he put in his pocket?” Brogan figured his guess was spot on, given Melender’s acquiescence in the ER.

“That’s what I think,” Livingston concurred. “Where does that door lead?”

“To the parking lot.” Carstairs didn’t have to ask the tech to move to the parking lot cameras. “Last year, we had a rash of parking lot thefts, with the thieves disabling our security cameras. So we beefed up our video coverage in all of our garages and installed hidden cameras in addition to the visible ones.”

On the bank of screens, multiple images of the area near the exit door Melender and the man used popped up. Sasha reversed the recording to reach the right time frame, and soon Melender and the man appeared again in the far-left screen. Cameras tracked them to a black SUV, where the man opened the back door and shoved Melender into the car face first.

The camera didn’t capture what the man did, but Brogan caught sight of a plastic zip tie in the man’s back pocket. “He’s tying her up.” The thought of Melender being trussed like a turkey made his blood pressure rise, but Brogan tamped down his anger. He needed to keep his cool to figure out where this man was taking her. He couldn’t ever remember getting this worked up over a story before, but then this wasn’t just the injustice over something happening to a source. It was a woman he cared about being manhandled.

“That’s what it looks like,” Livingston agreed.

The man got into the driver’s seat and backed the car out of the space. The license plate was missing from the front of the vehicle, but another camera showed the back plate, slightly smeared with mud but still readable.

“Pause it there, please. Can you zoom in on the plate?” Livingston waited until the tech enlarged the plate area, then he jotted down the number. “Thanks. Would you print that for me?”

“Sure.” Carstairs leaned over and moved the mouse to access another camera while the tech printed the blown-up license plate screen shot.

“Any way to tell which exit he took?” Brogan asked while Livingston made a phone call to request a check on the plates.

“There.” Carstairs pointed to a screen on the right. “He’s exiting onto Blue Road, which will take him straight to Gallows Road.”

“Stop it right there,” Livingston requested.

Carstairs complied. Through the SUV’s windshield, the camera captured a partial view of the driver’s face.

“Can you enhance that at all?” Brogan leaned closer. The man looked familiar. He had a good memory for faces, an asset in his line of work.

“Gonna take a while, since he’s in the shadows.” Sasha isolated the photo and clicked over to another screen. She glanced up at Carstairs. “I’ll text you when I have something.”

“Sounds good,” Carstairs said. “Let’s grab a cup of coffee.”

Brogan started to protest, but over Sasha’s head, Carstairs nodded toward the door. The trio departed, leaving the tech muttering to herself as she manipulated the photo.

Once outside, Carstairs led the way toward one of the hospital cafes. “Sasha’s my best tech. She’ll work much faster if we’re not looking over her shoulder. Detective, I hear you know Bob Knightman.”

“Yes, we go way back,” Livingston answered.

As the two talked about Bob, Brogan prayed again for Melender’s safety. Please keep her safe. Help us to find her. And let the truth about Jesse finally come to light. She’d become so much more than a source, than a story. He had to find her, to tell her how he felt. For the first time in a very long time, he had found someone to share his life with, the good and the bad.

He only hoped he’d have an opportunity to tell her.