Left to Kill (An Adele Sharp Mystery—Book Four) Read online

  She glanced past Marshall, her eyes flicking to John, who was leaning against a chipped, rusted support beam protruding from the motel railing.

  “You’re up early,” she said, frowning.

  John winked at her. “Slept like a babe. You snore, you know.”

  Adele glared at him. “I do not.”

  John grinned in response. Adele glanced at Agent Marshall hesitantly, looking for confirmation to John’s comment. The younger agent, though, just stood by.

  “Are you two ready?” Marshall said at last. “I’m supposed to take you to the Black Forest station. The truck driver who found the victim is waiting there.”

  “Ready and willing,” said John.

  Adele’s eyes narrowed on him. “I’ve never known you to be much of a morning person,” she said.

  John glanced toward the pretty Agent Marshall and wiggled his eyebrows over the back of her head where only Adele could see. “Sometimes the early bird just needs the right incentive,” he said. “Besides, this place,” he waved vaguely to the airport motel, “is not unexpected. I came prepared with two extra pillows. Executive Foucault is notorious for shacking agents up in dumps when they’ve irritated him.”

  “Yeah?” Adele glared. “You could have warned me.”

  “Slipped my mind.”

  Adele heaved a sigh skyward. “You chuck a camera off a cliff, but I end up sleeping on a box of springs. How is that fair?”

  John reached out and patted her on the cheek. “I admire how you suffer in silence. Anyway, how about we let the nice young agent take us to speak with the truck driver.”

  He extended an arm, which Agent Marshall accepted with a quiet chuckle. With her arm looped through his, they descended the metal stairs from the motel’s second level, the sound of an airplane engine buzzing overhead.

  “Nice young agent my ass,” Adele muttered beneath her breath. She double-checked her holster, adjusted her belt, and then, with a sour mood, still feeling every creak in her body from the night before, she followed after them toward the waiting car.

  ***

  The Black Forest police station was smaller than Adele remembered from the last time she’d been there. Only a couple of officers lounged in the entry hall, and one desk sergeant had to be called from the back to attend the new arrivals.

  Agent Marshall, Adele, and John waited patiently to be escorted into the back of the building.

  The truck driver awaited them in one of the interrogation rooms. The man wore a corduroy shirt, and had a neatly trimmed gray mustache to match the salt-and-pepper stubble along his temples.

  The moment Adele spotted him, she decided he had kind eyes. There were soft laugh lines around them, and though he clasped his hands together, he didn’t fidget or twist nervously.

  As Adele and John took seats across from the truck driver in cushioned, metal chairs, she reflected this man had to be made of stern stuff to stop for someone in the middle of the night on an abandoned highway.

  “Are you Herman Carmichael?” she asked, softly.

  The truck driver nodded at her in greeting, meeting her eyes and then flicking his gaze to John.

  Agent Marshall stood, allowing the more senior agents to lead the interview.

  “Can I get you anything to drink? Eat?” said Adele.

  “Danke. Coffee would be nice,” said the man.

  John raised an eyebrow at Adele. In French, she translated, “Could you go get him a coffee?”

  John sniffed. “Merde. Why should I?”

  “Because you can’t understand a word he’s saying. Try to be useful.”

  John grumbled to himself and then left the table, stomping out of the interview room.

  Adele returned her attention to Mr. Carmichael. “You found the girl?”

  He passed a hand wearily over his face, his expression darkening. “Yes, unfortunately she was in a bad way. I was told that heating her too fast might have caused damage. Did I hurt her?”

  Adele shook her head. “From what I was told, she was in a bad way before you found her. Leaving her out there would’ve been a death warrant. Waiting for an ambulance just the same. You did what you could, don’t trouble yourself about it.”

  Mr. Carmichael breathed again, a bit more relaxed now. Some of the exhaustion creasing his face, introducing itself in lines next to his eyes and across his forehead, seemed to fade a bit at Adele’s words.

  Adele cleared her throat. “Is there anything else you can tell me? Anything you’ve thought of since?”

  The trucker ran a hand through his beard and shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve already told—”

  Before he could finish, two people entered the room, the door clicking.

  Adele stowed her annoyance, glancing over her shoulder. John had returned. Next to him, a woman in a suit had arrived as well, a small, white coffee cup held in a cardboard heating pad in her left hand. She didn’t wear the normal blues of a police officer, but she carried herself as one. Detective, Adele guessed. Homicide most likely.

  “Hello,” the detective said in German. She extended the cup toward the man, and, before John could beat her to it, sidled into the chair next to Adele. “I’m Detective Klopp,” she said. “Precinct policy, but I’m required to be here for this interview.”

  Agent Marshall remained quiet in the back of the room, her notebook out, her eyes flicking between the different participants in the room. Adele shifted a bit in her chair, her hands pressed against the cool surface of the metal table. She waited for Mr. Carmichael to take a drink from the steaming coffee. He smacked his lips, wincing against the heat.

  “You’ve already interviewed him?” Adele glanced toward Detective Klopp.

  “Ja. Just here to verify and help in any way I can.”

  Adele gathered herself and indicated the truck driver. “Well, I was just asking him if he could think of anything else from that night.”

  “And as I was saying,” Mr. Carmichael replied, quietly, “there’s nothing. No cars, no one else. Just the girl, with bloody footprints.”

  “As you told us already,” said Detective Klopp, nodding. “And also the wild, far-fetched claims she made.”

  The truck driver hesitated at this. “She said there were others,” he said, swallowing then raising a hand as if signaling a teacher in class. “Said someone had them captured, and was going to kill them all.”

  Adele, though, looked over at the German detective. “You don’t think the girl’s comments are to be taken seriously?”

  Detective Klopp was shaking her head. Her hair was pulled back in a neat bun, and she had the barest traces of makeup on her features. Her cheekbones were high, and her eyes searching as she studied Adele. “The girl was malnourished, starving, freezing, and in the middle of the forest,” she said. “Taking anything she said seriously, especially,” she cleared her throat and shifted a bit, “secondhand, might be inadvisable at this point.”

  Adele glanced toward Agent Marshall, then back. “Is that the official position of this department?”

  Detective Klopp smiled in a comforting sort of way toward Mr. Carmichael. She addressed Adele, but still had her eyes fixed on the truck driver. “It is. Herman,” she said, “tell her how the girl was behaving when you first encountered her.”

  The truck driver shifted uncomfortably. “Well, like I was saying, she said there were others. But when I first came upon her, she didn’t say anything at all. In fact, it almost felt like she couldn’t see me. I drove my truck off the road trying to avoid her. She was standing in the middle of the highway. Not wearing any clothes.” He blushed a bit, clearing his throat and shaking his head. “Bad business. Bad business. Anyway, the fräulein was standing there; didn’t seem to see me until I was right upon her. I was even talking, but she just stared off in the distance.”

  Detective Klopp waved a hand, as if displaying something in the air. “As I said,” she said, “might not be best to take the girl at her word.”

  A
dele dipped her head once to show she’d heard; she pressed the same line of questioning for another few minutes, but the truck driver failed to convey anything Executive Foucault hadn’t already told them: someone, according to the girl, had others in jeopardy. The girl had seemed upset, for obvious reasons. She had been covered in small cuts and bruises from running through the forest. Besides that, the truck driver had nothing to add.

  Adele thanked him quietly and pushed up from the table. John hounded her with questions in French, but she ignored him and said to Marshall, as they exited the interview room, “Where’s that hospital?”

  Marshall looked at Adele. “You want to speak with her yourself?”

  “By the sound of things that’s not going to be possible.”

  Marshall shook her head. “She’s in a coma. But I can take you to the hospital if you want.”

  Adele nodded. “Maybe the doctors found something they missed at first. The truck driver is not going to be much help anyway.”

  Adele could feel something worming in her gut. Executive Foucault’s seeming premonition came back to her. This was a bad one. Something about this case felt off, eerie. Adele was beginning to feel a similar sensation. She wasn’t sure why. But somehow, she wasn’t sure she wanted to witness the culmination of this investigation. Her stomach twisted as they exited the police station and made their way back to the car, preparing to head to the hospital.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “This time, I’m not fetching coffee,” John said, sternly.

  Adele shook her head as she took the steps up to the front of the hospital.

  Agent Marshall was already standing next to rotating glass doors. She smiled politely and gestured for Adele and John to follow. The three agents entered the hospital lobby, confronted by the sickly sweet smell of cleaning fluids and disinfectant. Adele felt a sudden itch at the back of her neck. She shook her head. Something about hospitals always gave her the creeps. Secretly, she hoped if ever she got too sick, people would be kind enough to leave her in peace to die in her bed, rather than dragging her off to a horrible place like this. She didn’t particularly like doctors either.

  John strode across toward the front desk and said, in French. “Mademoiselle. Do you have any French-speaking doctors who have treated Amanda Johnson?”

  The woman behind the counter just stared up at him, hesitant. She glanced at one of her partners, but the young man just shrugged back.

  Agent Marshall approached, gently touching John on the elbow. She spoke quietly and quickly with the nurses, and eventually they were redirected to an elevator at the far end of the large atrium. They passed a couple of faux potted plants. Again, Adele was reminded how much she hated hospitals.

  “Are you all right?” John asked, as the elevator doors dinged open and they stepped in.

  “Fine,” she replied, curtly.

  “You’re sweating,” he said. “It’s cold. Why are you sweating?”

  “I’m not sweating, shut up.” Adele turned away, but when John returned his attention to Marshall, chatting up the young agent as the elevator dinged up the floors, Adele quickly reached up and wiped her forehead. Damp. She was sweating. Damn. She would have to get her emotions in check, even in a place like this.

  They stepped off the elevator and were confronted by another long hall with glass windows on either side. She could hear distant beeping sounds. Another noise as grating to her as bones on a chalkboard.

  “You sure you’re all right?” John murmured in her ear.

  “I’m fine, let’s go see if we can find this doctor.”

  Marshall, hearing this, said politely, “The head doctor in charge of Amanda’s case can speak English. I requested for him to meet us outside her room. This way.”

  Marshall led them past three closed doors. Two of them had curtains, but one was open, with three nurses inside, wearing green scrubs, trying to lift an old, frail man onto a sliding table.

  The scene, the scents, the beeping, all of it, sent Adele into another spasm of existential dread. For some reason, she thought of Robert. She thought of his coughing, his age. Perhaps she should run an extra couple hours tomorrow. Yes, that would help clear her mind.

  They finally came to a stop in front of an open glass door. A man was waiting for them. He had a stethoscope jammed unceremoniously into the pocket of his blue scrubs, and had a name tag pinned to his chest.

  “Dr. Samuel,” said Agent Marshall, “we spoke on the phone earlier.”

  The doctor was an older fellow, with a pure white beard and crinkling eyes. But where the truck driver’s eyes had lines from smiling, Dr. Samuel’s lines were those of a worrier.

  “I don’t have much time,” he said, without exchanging pleasantries. “How can I help?”

  The doctor spoke nearly perfect English. John’s expression brightened at this, and he replied in heavily accented English of his own. “You’re in charge of Amanda Johnson’s case?”

  The doctor nodded once. He didn’t volunteer anything else, waiting, one foot in the room, one foot out.

  Within, Adele spotted the crumpled form of the victim lying on a bed. The room was dark, the lights off. Three different screens displayed the girl’s vitals, with numbers and flashing lights pulsing. The girl lay motionless beneath two blankets. The ventilator seemed a foreign contraption—some invading device. The tubes and metal and blinking lights all only served to deepen Adele’s anxiety. The girl seemed so small, like someone caught in a giant bear trap, or cocooned by tubes and metal and a glass coffin the size of a hospital.

  Adele shivered and looked away, refusing to stare any longer. “Is there anything you can tell us?” Adele said through tight lips. “Is she going to make a recovery?”

  The doctor spoke in quick, clipped tones. It sounded like he was annoyed with them, but Adele suspected he was annoyed with everything. “The poor girl had the run of it,” he said. “Spent hours in that forest. Here,” he said. “See for yourself.”

  He pulled a clipboard from a slot next to the door and extended it to Adele. She glanced down, flipping through large photos, her eyes narrowing with each one.

  First, she saw the girl’s feet. Deep cuts all along, flesh peeled off, dirt beneath the toenails and in the wounds. Two of the toenails were missing completely, and a couple of the toes had a bluish tinge to them.

  “Frostbite?” Adele said.

  “Almost,” said Dr. Samuel. “Those cuts, see them? From running through the forest barefoot. Harsh terrain, whatever had her scared kept her going despite the pain.”

  Adele nodded. “And the rest of her?”

  The doctor pulled off the top picture, flipping it over the back of the board. He pointed at the next one. “Other bruises and small cuts along her body, here and here.”

  Adele glimpsed scrapes above a belly button, and more bruises along the top of the girl’s chest.

  “But here,” he said, “these are old wounds. Old scars.”

  “How old?” Adele asked, quickly.

  The doctor shook his head. “In her state, it’s hard to tell. We’re still looking into it. We don’t think it’s relevant to her current situation though.”

  “Five months old?” Adele.

  But the doctor shook his head. “Longer. This, though,” he said, quietly, “is about within that timeframe.”

  He flipped to the final photo, which displayed the top of the girl’s head, with some of the hair shaved back.

  “What is that?” John asked.

  Adele, though, just looked. There was the faintest of scars over a jutting flap of flesh. It had healed, but poorly.

  “That’s five months old?” said Adele.

  “Five months without treatment or hospital. Five months of someone picking at it. Yes. You can see how the scar tissue has spread, and how the wound never fully sealed.”

  Adele turned slightly toward John and Agent Marshall, raising her eyebrows. “Five months ago. You think this is how the assailant subdued her?”

&
nbsp; Dr. Samuel cleared his throat. “It was a blow to the back of the head. It could very well have knocked her unconscious if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  Adele pressed her lips tightly together, thinking. She looked up at the doctor’s wrinkled countenance. “Anything else?”

  “I found some other injuries. Signs of abuse. A broken arm, poorly set. Marks consistent with bruises from punching. I also saw scrapes across the girl’s back from an animal or long fingernails.”

  “Perhaps one of the others kidnapped by the psycho?” said John, quietly. “She said there were others.”

  Adele paused, considering this troubling notion, then addressed the doctor again. “What are the chances of her being able to speak with us?”

  The doctor still stood with one foot in the doorway, one out, shaking his head. “Not good. Chances of recovering at all are slim. Like I said, she was out in that forest for hours, running through the trees. The cuts aren’t the only thing we need to worry about; the cold itself took its toll on her lungs. She was hypothermic when she came in.”

  “She’s sedated?”

  “For some of the pain. But not much. She’s in a coma. On a ventilator.”

  Adele glanced back into the room, and it took her a moment, but then she spotted the air compressing machine, a white, beige plastic thing with many buttons.

  “The girl only stayed on her feet that long because she was made of tough stuff,” said the doctor. “Most people couldn’t have made it that far in the forest. Especially not for that long. Adrenaline kept her going. She’s lucky she found the highway when she did. If not, she would’ve died in some hole in that woods.”

  Adele frowned. “That’s a morbid thought.”

  “And yet true. Look, I have other patients. If there’s nothing else,” Dr. Samuel said, trailing off.

  Adele glanced at her companions, but they remained quiet. The investigators bid farewell to the doctor and watched him leave, striding down the hall with lengthy steps that countered his aged looks.