Inside, Dance glanced around, half expecting to see her mother. Then she got directions from reception and hurried down a corridor to the room where she’d find the witness in the Roadside Cross Case.
When she stepped into the open doorway, the blond teenage girl inside, lying in the elaborate hospital bed, looked up.
“Hi, Tammy. I’m Kathryn Dance.” Smiling at the girl. “You mind if I come in?”
Chapter 5
ALTHOUGH TAMMY FOSTER had been left to drown in the trunk, the attacker had made a miscalculation.
Had he parked farther from shore the tide would have been high enough to engulf the entire car, dooming the poor girl to a terrible death. But, as it happened, the car had gotten bogged down in loose sand not far out, and the flowing tide had filled the Camry’s trunk with only six inches of water.
At about 4:00 a.m. an airline employee on his way to work saw the glint from the car. Rescue workers got to the girl, half conscious from exposure, bordering on hypothermia, and raced her to the hospital.
“So,” Dance now asked, “how you feeling?”
“Okay, I guess.”
She was athletic and pretty but pale. Tammy had an equine face, straight, perfectly tinted blond hair and a pert nose that Dance guessed had started life with a somewhat different slope. Her quick glance at a small cosmetic bag suggested to Dance that she rarely went out in public without makeup.
Dance’s badge appeared.
Tammy glanced at it.
“You’re looking pretty good, all things considered.”
“It was so cold,” Tammy said. “I’ve never been so cold in my life. I’m still pretty freaked.”
“I’m sure you are.”
The girl’s attention swerved to the TV screen. A soap opera was on. Dance and Maggie watched them from time to time, usually when the girl was home sick from school. You could miss months and still come back and figure out the story perfectly.
Dance sat down and looked at the balloons and flowers on a nearby table, instinctively searching for red roses or religious gifts or cards emblazoned with crosses. There were none.
“How long are you going to be in the hospital?”
“I’m getting out today, probably. Maybe tomorrow, they said.”
“How’re the doctors? Cute?”
A laugh.
“Where do you go to school?”
“Robert Louis Stevenson.”
“Senior?”
“Yeah, in the fall.”
To put the girl at ease, Dance made small talk: asking about whether she was in summer school, if she’d thought about what college she wanted to attend, her family, sports. “You have any vacations plans?”
“We do now, ” she said. “After this. My mom and sister and me are going to visit my grandmother in Florida next week.” There was exasperation in her voice and Dance could tell that the last thing the girl wanted to do was go to Florida with the family.
“Tammy, you can imagine, we really want to find whoever did this to you.”
“Asshole.”
Dance lifted an agreeing eyebrow. “Tell me what happened.”
Tammy explained about being at a club and leaving just after midnight. She was in the parking lot when somebody came up from behind, taped her mouth, hands and feet, threw her in the trunk and then drove to the beach.
“He just left me there to, like, drown.” The girl’s eyes were hollow. Dance, empathetic by nature — a gift from her mother — could feel the horror herself, a hurting tickle down her spine.
“Did you know the attacker?”
The girl shook her head. “But I know what happened.”
“What’s that?”
“Gangs.”
“He was in a gang?”
“Yeah, everybody knows about it. To get into a gang, you have to kill somebody. And if you’re in a Latino gang you have to kill a white girl. Those’re the rules.”
“You think the perp was Latino?”
“Yeah, I’m sure he was. I didn’t see his face but got a look at his hand. It was darker, you know. Not black. But he definitely wasn’t a white guy.”
“How big was he?”
“Not tall. About five-six. But really, really strong. Oh, something else. I think last night I said it was just one guy. But I remembered this morning. There were two of them.”
“You saw two of them?”
“More, I could feel somebody else nearby, you know how that happens?”
“Could it have been a woman?”
“Oh, yeah, maybe. I don’t know. Like I was saying, I was pretty freaked out.”
“Did anybody touch you?”
“No, not that way. Just to put tape on me and throw me in the trunk.” Her eyes flashed with anger.
“Do you remember anything about the drive?”
“No, I was too scared. I think I heard some clanks or something, some noise from inside the car.”
“Not the trunk?”
“No. Like metal or something, I thought. He put it in the car after he got me in the trunk. I saw this movie, one of the Saw movies. And I thought maybe he was going to use whatever it was to torture me.”
The bike, Dance was thinking, recalling the tread marks at the beach. He’d brought a bicycle with him for his escape. She suggested this, but Tammy said that wasn’t it; there was no way to get a bike in the backseat. She added gravely. “And it didn’t sound like a bike.”
“Okay, Tammy.” Dance adjusted her glasses and kept looking at the girl, who glanced at the flowers and cards and stuffed animals. The girl added. “Look at everything people gave me. That bear there, isn’t he the best?”
“He’s cute, yep… . So you’re thinking it was some Latino kids in a gang.”
“Yeah. But… well, you know, like now, it’s kind of over with.”
“Over with?”
“I mean, I didn’t get killed. Just a little wet.” A laugh as she avoided Dance’s eyes. “They’re definitely freaking. It’s all over the news. I’ll bet they’re gone. I mean, maybe even left town.”