Headlights(33)

“No,” Hannah eventually says. And I see it there, behind the anxiety and pain. She’s got fight in her.

Frazier walks in, sets a map on the table in front of Hannah. Hannah leans away again, her breath coming faster at the proximity. She points immediately to a spot on the map.

“Wow. Pretty far from your cabin,” Garcia says.

Hannah shrugs, relaxes when Frazier moves away again.

“How many miles?”

“Twelve or so, probably.”

“That’s a lot.”

“Oh, um. Not really?”

“You hike a lot? That part of the job?”

“Not for everyone, but for me.”

“You ever worry about your safety out there? Have anything to protect yourself?”

“I wasn’t taken from my cabin,” she says. “I was down closer to people.”

Garcia pauses, seems to consider. “But you don’t remember being taken.”

Hannah looks agitated, glances around the room again.

“You have a background in psychology,” Garcia says. “What made you switch to—”

“I was awake when he put the tongue in my mouth,” Hannah says.

Garcia stills.

“That’s what you want to know,” Hannah says. “I’ll tell you.” She braces herself. “I know those plains. I know how to stalk and what it is to be stalked, and I heard and sensed nothing. Until that twig snapped. And then in the next second I was in a motel room with my arms duct-taped behind my back and my legs taped together, and I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed, I guess. I figured he must have given me something. And I, um…”

She closes her eyes. A strand of her hair falls loose over her face. She tucks it back.

“The guy on the ground,” she says, “most of his skin was off already. I couldn’t see his face. It was hidden, from where I was. But he was still alive, for a while.”

“How did you know he was still alive?”

“He was screaming. Trying to. There was something in his mouth or it was muffled. But the screaming … I couldn’t hear at first, at all, like I was deaf or something, for a while, just this static, and like pressure. But then when my hearing came back I heard it, and the man with the knife, he bent down and did something to the screaming man. I figured out not too long after that he had cut out his tongue. But the man on the floor, he kept making sounds after that, kept crying for help, then moaning. I knew he was dead eventually when he stopped.”

Garcia pauses, silent. “And what happened next?” she says after a moment.

“The guy with the knife turned to me. It smelled like a slaughterhouse. I can’t…” Her eyes start to tear up, but she blinks, doesn’t let them. “I can’t get the smell out of my nose.”

“Did you recognize this man? Either of them?”

Hannah shakes her head. “No. I’d never seen him. I’d know. I don’t see, you know, so many people. Um. The knife was strange. The blade was maybe off-white? Kind of homemade looking. And … He came toward me. I couldn’t move, at all. I tried. I couldn’t fight him. He turned me on my side and taped me down to the bed, facing in. Then he took the man from the floor and put him in with me, taped us together, so we’d be looking into each other’s faces. The last thing he did was put the tongue in my mouth. I don’t remember him leaving. I was in and out the rest of the time. Some light came in through the shades, but it was hard to tell how much time was passing or how long it was in between each time I was awake.”

“We think that you were in there for almost three days.”

Hannah takes this in.

“Did the man with the knife say anything? When he was doing all this, did he speak?”

Hannah shakes her head. “Not that I can remember.”

“And would you be able to identify him if we showed you a photograph lineup?”

Hannah nods.

“Can you think of anyone, anyone at all, who would want to harm you?”

“No.”

Something in my senses prickles at this. I think she’s lying. Maybe. It’s the first lie I’ve felt from her. It grates on me, more than normal.

Frazier goes in one last time, sets some photographs on the table in front of Hannah, who flinches back more than before. The shadow slips into the room with Frazier. Stays after she leaves.

I watch the shadow move slowly around the interrogation room behind Hannah.

Hannah leans forward to look at the photographs, Garcia putting them all side by side.

The shadow slides against the wall, coming around to the window side of the room. Moving as though it wants something.

Hannah stills.

She lifts her head. Her eyes go wide again as she tenses.

Hannah staring at the shadow that doesn’t exist.

“Is everything okay?” Garcia says.

Hannah watches it for another moment.

And … I’d almost think …

She can see it.

Then she blinks, looks down at the photos, and nods her chin toward one of them. I can see from here it’s Everett Brown.

“You’re sure?” Garcia asks. “You can look closer.”

Hannah looks to the shadow again, on edge. After a long minute, she turns back to the table and takes hold of the photographs.