“I don’t know. Some lake.”
It could be any one of ten lakes in a fifty-mile radius.
“Anyway, he took me out there. And I spent the afternoon.” Terri reached for the call button and squeezed. “God. I really need something for my head.”
Cardinal touched Delorme’s shoulder. “Why don’t we pack it in for now,” he said. “We’ll come back when she’s feeling better.”
Delorme didn’t even look at him. She kept her eyes on the girl, whose lower lip was now quivering. “What happened at the lake, Terri?”
“We had a fight. A quarrel.”
“What did you fight about?”
“I don’t know. Personal stuff. What’s it matter?”
“Obviously it matters very much. You have a bullet wound in your head. What did you fight about?”
“I wanted him to come back to Vancouver with me and he didn’t want to, all right? Where is that fucking nurse?”
Emotions would certainly appear to be coming back, Delorme noted, but there was something about the display of anger she didn’t trust. Something a little stagy.
“What happened then? You fought, and then what happened?”
“Sergeant Delorme,” Cardinal said.
“Tom didn’t shoot me, if that’s what you’re thinking. He’s the most harmless guy you’d ever want to meet.”
“So tell me what happened.”
“We had a fight. I left. I walked down this endless dirt road. It was hot as hell and there were flies everywhere. It was a long way back to town so I put my thumb out. The second car that came along stopped.”
“Make? Colour?”
“Some bright colour—white or silver or something. It flashed in the sun and nearly blinded me.”
“And the driver?”
“I don’t know, all right? He had sunglasses on. Jesus Christ, lady, will you lay off me? Who the fuck do you think you are? I got a fucking bullet wound in my head and you’re treating me like a goddamn criminal!”
She turned over on her side, jammed a pillow over her head and wept loudly.
Just like they do in the movies, Delorme thought.
The duty nurse came in. She looked at the girl quivering on the bed, then turned to the two detectives. Her glare was a vote for their immediate execution. She pointed to the door and said one word: “Out.”
“Nice work,” Cardinal said in the corridor. “You should win some kind of sensitivity award for that little effort.”
“Cardinal, we need information out of that woman. I don’t see why you’re pussyfooting around with her.”
“Miss Tait is the victim here, remember. She has a bullet wound in her head. Browbeating her is not going to help. What would help is if you get on the horn to the Vancouver police. See if they’ve got a missing persons out on her.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Get them to check school records, hospital records, anything that’ll give us some background.”
“I thought you trusted her,” Delorme said.
“I do. It’s her memory I don’t trust.”
“You believed that stuff about having a fight? About hitchhiking? You think someone that looks like this woman is going to put her thumb out and accept a ride from a strange man?”
“Maybe. If she was very upset. We don’t know her yet.”
“I think she was making it up.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Her manner. Lack of eye contact. Vague when it suits her.”
“Oh, you’ve worked with a lot of amnesia victims?”
“I think she’s hiding something.”
Dr. Paley was coming down the hall toward them. “Finished so soon? Why don’t we talk in my so-called office?”
They followed him back to the overstuffed closet with its tin desk and stacks of files. Dr. Paley closed the door behind them and excavated a couple of chairs for them to sit on.
“I don’t understand,” Delorme said. “You told us on the phone Miss Tait was overjoyed to have her memory back. But our red-haired friend seems evasive and nervous and depressed.”
“‘Depressed’ is not the right word,” Dr. Paley said. He made a note in a file, set it aside and swivelled to face Delorme. “I think ‘overwhelmed’ is closer. Miss Tait has been through a hell of a trauma—someone put a bullet in her head—and the implications of that are just beginning to sink in.”
“But she doesn’t even remember anything about that.”
“No, and she never will. But she knows it happened, now. She knows someone tried to kill her. And that knowledge is sticking—she’s not forgetting it like she has been for the past week—so this is her first continuous awareness of her predicament. I think anyone would be nervous and upset.”
A sparrow landed on the windowsill beside the doctor’s desk, eyed Delorme suspiciously and flew away.
“What you’re saying sounds right,” Cardinal said. “And we don’t want to press her too hard …”
“That would be counterproductive. Right now she’s trying to bear up under a tidal wave of self-knowledge. And frankly, I think she’s doing rather well. She may be remembering things she doesn’t want to mention. We all have things in our past we’re less than proud of. They’re not necessarily relevant to her gunshot wound.”
“Doctor, it’s going to be the negative stuff that leads us to her attacker,” Delorme said. “The Partridge Family isn’t going to cut it.”
“I understand, Detective. I’m sure she’ll be more forthcoming as the days go by.”
Delorme flipped through the pages of her notebook. “I’m looking at my notes from our first conversation. At that time you were certain that when she got her memory back, she would get it all back at once.”
“Yes. Amazingly, that’s the way these things work. It’s as if a short circuit has been fixed. Suddenly the picture comes clear.”
“Not this time,” Delorme said. “Miss Tait is remembering some things and not others. She remembers that she was staying in a motel, but not what colour it was. Not whether it was brick or wood. She doesn’t remember how many days she was there. She remembers visiting a place on a lake, but not which lake.”
“Perhaps she never knew the name. If she was driven somewhere to a tiny lake, she wouldn’t necessarily know the name. Some of them don’t even have names. Or it could have been a bay of Trout Lake. Someone from out of town isn’t likely to know that kind of thing.”
“Would she be capable of hiding something at this point?” Cardinal said.
“Oh, yes. She could remember things she doesn’t want you to know. She might make something up to cover them. But as to actively misleading you—well, none of us knows her well enough to say whether she’s the kind of person who would do that.”
Cardinal and Delorme were usually pretty much in agreement on how to proceed with a case, how to handle a witness, but the silence in the car was thick. Delorme stopped for a red light, and Cardinal silently counted the seconds.
“Okay,” Delorme said. “How come she remembers that a silver car picked her up but she doesn’t remember who was driving?”
“Come on. We get that all the time. People remember what shoes a guy had on but not whether he wore a hat or not. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You didn’t have the impression she was picking and choosing what to tell us?”
“I have the impression she’s recovering from a shock.”
“Well, as far as I can see, she already has enough nurses. One more isn’t going to help.”
“I think she’s telling us what she can. I mean, look at her. Does she look like a femme fatale to you?”
Delorme gave him a sidelong glance. “Do you realize you’re always easier on women? You never question them as hard as you would a man.”
“Not true,” Cardinal said. “I’ve put a few women behind bars in my time. You, on the other hand, seem to cut men a lot more slack.”