“I don’t see how she can help,” Grace says. She reminds me of the amnesia. “She doesn’t remember what happened.”
I’ve asked Mia down this morning to see if we can jog her memory, see if Colin Thatcher told her anything inside that cabin that might be of value to the ongoing investigation. Since her mother wasn’t feeling well, she sent Grace in her place, as Mia’s chaperone, and I can see, in Grace’s eyes, that she’d rather be having dental work than sit here with Mia and me.
“I’d like to try and jog her memory. See if some pictures help.”
She rolls her eyes and says, “God, Detective, mug shots? We all know what Colin Thatcher looks like. We’ve seen the pictures. Mia has seen the pictures. Do you think she’s not going to identify him?”
“Not mug shots,” I assure her, reaching into a desk drawer to yank something from beneath a stash of legal pads. She peers around the desk to get the first glimpse and is stumped by the 11x14 sketch pad I produce. It’s a spiral-bound book; her eyes peruse the cover for clues, but the words recycled paper give nothing away. Mia, however, is briefly cognizant, of what neither she nor I know, but something passes through her—a wave of recollection—and then it’s gone as soon as it came. I see it in her body language—posture straightening, leaning forward, hands reaching out blindly for the pad, drawing it into her. “You recognize this?” I ask, voicing the words that were on the tip of Grace’s tongue.
Mia holds it in her hands. She doesn’t open it, but rather runs a hand over the textured cover. She doesn’t say anything and then, after a minute or so, she shakes her head. It’s gone. She slouches back into her chair and her fingers let go of the pad, allowing it to rest on her lap.
Grace snatches it from her. She opens the book and is greeted by an influx of Mia’s sketches. Eve told me once that Mia takes a sketch pad with her everywhere she goes, drawing anything from homeless men on the “L” to a car parked at the train station. It’s her way of keeping a journal: places she went, things she saw. Take this recycled sketch pad, for example: trees, and lots of them; a lake surrounded by trees; a homely little log cabin that, of course, we’ve all seen in the photos; a scrawny little tabby cat sleeping in a smattering of sun. None of this seems to surprise Grace, not until she comes to the illustration of Colin Thatcher that literally jumps off the page to greet her, snuck in the middle of the sketch pad amidst trees and the snow-covered cabin.
His appearance is bedraggled, his curly hair in complete disarray. The facial hair and tattered jeans and hooded sweatshirt surpass grunge and go straight to dirty. Mia had drawn a man, sturdy and tall. She applied herself to the eyes, shadowing and layering and darkening the pencil around them until these deep, leering headlights nearly force Grace to look away from the page.
“You drew this, you know,” she states, compelling Mia to have a look at the page. She thrusts it into her hands to see. He’s perched before a wood-burning stove, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his back to the flame. Mia runs her hand over the page and smudges the pencil a tad. She peers down at her fingertips and sees the remnants of lead, rubbing it between a thumb and forefinger.
“Does anything ring a bell?” I ask, sipping from my mug of coffee.
“Is this—” Mia hesitates “—him?”
“If by him you mean the creep who kidnapped you, then, yeah,” Grace says, “that’s him.”
I sigh. “That’s Colin Thatcher.” I show her a photograph. Not a mug shot, like she’s used to seeing, but a nice photo of him in his Sunday best. Mia’s eyes go back and forth, making the connection. The curly hair. The hardy build. The dark eyes. The bristly beige skin. The way his arms are crossed before him, his face appearing to do anything to conceal a smile. “You’re quite an artist,” I offer.
Mia asks, “And I drew this?”
I nod. “They found the sketch pad at the cabin with your and Colin’s things. I assume it belongs to you.”
“You brought it with you to Minnesota?” Grace asks.
Mia shrugs. Her eyes are locked on the images of Colin Thatcher. Of course she doesn’t know. Grace knows she doesn’t know, but she asks anyway. She’s thinking the same thing as me: here this creep is whisking her off to some abandoned cabin in Minnesota and she has the wherewithal to bring her sketch pad, of all things?
“What else did you bring?”
“I don’t know,” she says, her voice on the verge of being inaudible.
“Well, what else did you find?” Grace demands of me this time.