Cooper sat straighter. "Him? Who is him?"
"The stringy-haired guy from the grocery store, the man with the frosty eyes." I banged my fist on the table. "I knew that creep was following us around in the store."
Cooper shook his head. "You've totally lost me."
"That's because I didn't tell you about parading through Kroger with newly diagnosed diabetic Aunt Caroline—an event that was rather like getting a root canal from a plumber, by the way. I'm sure the guy who jumped me was hanging around us in the store."
He smiled. "You know what he looks like, then. Maybe Jeff can get a sketch worked up. Anything else?"
"Oh yeah. It's all there now. He said, 'Stop digging around in her past. You don't know what you're getting into.' Since the only past I'm digging around in is JoLynn's, he certainly meant her . . . but what are we getting into?"
Cooper cocked his head and said, "Beats the hell out of me. Then he lays you by your car, where I'm guessing no one could see you and maybe take advantage of your altered state of consciousness. Very strange."
"I like that. Altered state of consciousness. Sounds like the name of an intellectually challenging piece of artwork. Anyway, I was in the shadow of the wall and the sun had gone down. Garage lights were dim, too. No one could have seen me where he left me."
We went over the scenario one more time, but nothing else came back to me. Then Cooper made a call to the hospital and of course had trouble getting anyone to answer his questions about JoLynn and what was planned for her today.
"Guess I have to go over there and wait them out," he said. "Wanna come?"
But before I could answer, the kitchen landline rang. It was Penny. "I have details about your comatose client, Abby. You may want to take notes."
"Really? Can you hang on a sec?"
"Sure."
I placed my hand over the receiver. "Cooper, it's the friend at CPS I told you about. She has information. I need a ride to the hospital to pick up my car, so don't leave me. Give me a minute to talk to Penny first."
"Information is what we need. I want to hear everything, but I'll make myself scarce while you talk, make another cup of that green tea, if that's okay?"
"Go for it." I went to my end table drawer and took out the pad and pencil.
"Okay, Penny. I'm ready," I said.
She had everything on JoLynn and I was glad she'd told me to take notes because there was plenty. I thanked her profusely once she'd finished, and silently vowed to get another donation check in the mail for the fostercare program.
"We can go, Cooper," I called from the foyer. I grabbed my shoulder bag from the hook on the hall tree and he met me at the front door.
He'd found the Starbucks car cup I'd put in the sink to dry. "Thought I'd take this to go. Green tea unclogs your arteries, or so I'm told. Maybe it's effective on brain cells, too."
After we climbed into Cooper's truck, I gave him directions to the scene of last night's ugliness and started telling him what Penny had told me, my notes in my lap to help me along.
"JoLynn, or Elizabeth, as she was called when she was in the foster-care system, came late to CPS, when she was nine years old."
"That means she should remember who her parents were. Who adopted her."
"Here's the thing," I said. "No one adopted her. Apparently she was abandoned at the Houston bus station— not a nice place, if you've ever been there. When CPS got ahold of her, she said she didn't remember anything. Not her name, not her parents, not where she came from. Nothing. She picked the name Elizabeth for herself and aged out of the system at sixteen."
"Is that unusual—her aging out and not being adopted?" Cooper asked.
"She was an older child and I've heard that's a more difficult placement, but I'm not an expert in foster care. I've had a few dealings with them, that's all. Penny said JoLynn ran away from every foster home she was placed in—sometimes more than once. They'd find her at Covenant House almost every time."
"The teen shelter?" Cooper said.
"Yeah, anyway, there was also a medical report about her having had heart surgery, probably no more than six months before she was found. She was followed by a cardiologist through her entire stay in foster care. That may have been a factor in her never being adopted— even though she didn't require medicine and had no activity restrictions."
"Did they pursue where she might have had this surgery?"
I sighed, remembering my last big case and what I had learned about Children's Protective Services—the overextended, overworked, overpopulated system. "Let me tell you what I know about CPS. They're not an investigative agency and neither is family court. They don't have the time or the people power to hunt down leads. Apparently the police checked Houston-area hospitals looking for anyone with her condition who might have had recent surgery, but came up with nothing. The investigation probably went no further than that."
Cooper's jaw tightened. "But local law enforcement should have done something more."
"Like the FBI would have?" I cast him a cynical glance.
"Touché. We wouldn't have touched her case, especially if she wasn't a kidnap victim or the media wasn't involved." He did cynical better than I did.
"Penny said the kid's picture appeared in the newspaper once and that was it. No one claimed her. They put her in foster care, where she apparently caused enough problems to be reassigned about ten times. JoLynn sounds like a girl who was lost—even to herself. She had no identity, Cooper. So she made one up." Sadness welled and stuck in my throat. I'd been damn lucky. Kate and I struck it rich when it came to our adoption— and not literally, even though we ended up with money. Daddy loved us . . . cherished us. And JoLynn never had that. There are probably so many kids who never get a chance to be truly loved.
"Her family abandoned her in a bus station?" Cooper said. "That's pretty cold if you ask me. But hold on. She could have been snatched, abused, then abandoned. Maybe she didn't remember anything because she blocked things out. We saw that all the time in the bureau with kidnap victims—even the adults."
I considered this. "Yes . . . and with the missingpersons system as overwhelmed as it seems to be, she might have been lost in that labyrinth, too. Someone could have been looking for her since she was nine— not only since Roberta reported her missing last year. Kate needs to talk to JoLynn—if she comes out of this coma okay, that is. She could help her, Cooper."
"She's a shrink, right?"
"A good one, too. She's helped me deal with families over and over and taught me so much about how to get people to open up."
"If she's anything like you, she has to be good. You've got an investigator's brain," he said. "If JoLynn was kidnapped, I might be able to find out something. Child abduction is always taken seriously. If some local law enforcement agency called us—listen to me? Us. Jeez, I'm out of there. Anyway, the FBI does have to be asked in before they can act on local kidnappings, which are usually parental abductions."
"I learned that unfortunate fact from my Web surfing," I said. We'd pulled into the parking garage and after we wound up and around and up and around, Cooper found a spot near my Camry.
As we got out of the truck, I said, "Penny tells me they have photos of JoLynn for every year she was in the system. She'll be sending them to me."
"Good. Then maybe we can match her up with any unsolved kidnappings. There'd be photographs, flyers, reports, if a local law-enforcement agency was involved in a possible abduction."
We started toward the elevator and perhaps because I was already emotional about JoLynn's situation, last night's events came roaring back in 3-D Technicolor.