Page 19 of Last Seen
“Why would she come after me?”
“Halley. Honey. She tried to kill you, too.”
Halley sits with the words, trying, and failing, to comprehend what her father has said.
“She tried to kill you, too.”
Halley had been there. She’d witnessed all of this. She’d been attacked. She’d survived and was the one who’d called for help. How was this even possible? She has no memories of it at all.
“I can’t believe you lied to me. Kept this from me.”
“I should have told you sooner. I’m so sorry, jellybean. I guess I hoped you’d never figure it out.”
“Did you know that she’s missing? Cat?”
“Missing?” He tries to sit up, and Halley puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Yeah. For fifteen years now. I don’t know any more than that. There’s a very vague missing persons report.”
“That’s . . . strange.”
“It is.”
They sit, not speaking, listening to the sounds of the hospital, the beeps and whirs and whooshes and overhead pages. Finally, Halley sighs deeply. “You knew already, didn’t you? That she had a life. That she went missing. If she was so much of a threat, of course you did.”
His silence gives her the answer.
“God, Dad. You know, I’ve had a lot of guilt over the years about that accident. That I made it and they didn’t. I mean, I had to go to therapy. Did everyone know about the murder but me?”
He turns his face away from hers. “Better a little guilt than remembering. God, Halley. What I came home to, no one should ever have to see.”
Chapter Eight
Halley forces herself to spend the rest of the morning at the hospital, talking to doctors and nurses and therapists, listening with half an ear to the plan for her dad over the next few weeks, trying, and failing, to wrap her head around the story her father shared.
Her mind veers away whenever she tries to think about the reality of her mother’s death. The crash is always there; it always has been. It’s a sudden thing, the pain, the blackness, the sirens. A sense of panic. There is nothing else.
She’s never remembered any details, only fragments. Now she knows why. She knows there are neural pathways that are rebuilt after trauma. She knows people can rewire themselves to not feel pain when thinking about painful situations. Was she able to manipulate her own brain to protect herself from the emotional upheaval the truth would bring? According to her dad, she hadn’t told him she saw her mother murdered, only that she woke up to find her dead. So maybe Halley was unconscious when the act occurred. With any luck, she will never access that memory. She doesn’t want to relive it. She heard the agony in her dad’s voice when he said no one should have to see what he did.
But.
“She tried to kill you, too.”
She can’t leave it alone now. There is a rabbit hole for her to go down. There will be crime scene photos, maybe even video. Definitely drawings. Evidence collected. Blood-spatter analysis. All the thingsshe’s been trained to examine, divining truth from the heavens with an analyst’s eye. There have been a lot of changes in forensics since 1989, too.
And there will be an autopsy report.
God, can she even? Her own mother’s autopsy?
She had considered, for a moment, becoming a forensic pathologist. A noble and interesting occupation, for sure, gleaning answers from the dead. But it was not her path. She made the decision not to go on to med school her sophomore year, after her pathology class spent a week in the DC morgue. It was oddly too static for her taste. Halley knew then she wanted to solve the crimes through the science of the case, not by determining cause of death. Her talent lies in the detailed aftermath, not in the biological truth. She needs to be removed from the situation to see the evidence presented clearly. She’d moved away from evidence collection to run the lab itself, but there was a time, early on, when that was her total jam. The bloodier, the better. She had a discerning eye, could always find the truth, then use the lab to back it up.
You’re removed from this situation, for sure. God, Cat tried to kill me, too?
If there was a trial, there would be transcripts. But if Cat pled guilty, there might have been just an arraignment and sentencing. No matter; there will be legal and forensic documents. Her mother’s murder, and the fallout, will be findable.
Will Halley be able to analyze her own mother’s crime scene with any sort of impartiality? Read the horrific details about the murder and not come apart at the seams?
Impossible to predict,her empirical mind provides.It could be fascinating. It could leave such deep scars you’ll never recover. The chances of the latter are high. But you might get answers. You might remember.
