Who’s That Girl Read online

  LuAnne bustled up beside them. “How’s that little gal? Is she doin’ any better?”

  “I’m going to find out in a little while,” Kate told her, then mentioned her plan to visit the hospital that afternoon.

  “Well, you be sure to let us know what’s goin’ on, will you? I’m gonna keep prayin’ for her recovery until I know she’s all right.”

  “I’ll keep y’all posted,” Kate promised.

  KATE CHECKED at the emergency-room desk when she reached the hospital and learned that the girl had been transferred to a room in the hospital’s small ICU.

  “She isn’t in critical condition,” the receptionist reassured Kate, “but seeing that she hasn’t regained consciousness yet, the doctor wanted to be sure someone was able to keep a close watch on her.”

  A hush hung over the room when Kate tiptoed inside and looked down at the still form on the bed. The intermittent beeping of a monitor was the only sound, apart from the girl’s breathing. Kate spotted a padded vinyl chair at the far side of the room and pulled it over beside the bed.

  Now what? The girl’s pale hand lay motionless on top of the sheet. Kate picked it up and sandwiched it between her own hands, wanting to find some way to give the poor bruised waif the comfort of human contact, even in her unconscious state. She bowed her head and offered a heartfelt prayer for the girl’s recovery, as well as wisdom and guidance for herself.

  Feeling a bit awkward, she leaned forward and cleared her throat. “I don’t know whether you can hear me or not. This is Kate Hanlon, the woman you asked for. I just wanted you to know that I’m here.”

  Kate sat back and tried to think of what to say next. Without any response, she wasn’t quite sure how to proceed. Trying to communicate with someone who couldn’t respond was never an easy thing.

  She stroked the girl’s hand gently. “In case you’re wondering, you’re in the hospital in Pine Ridge. It has a wonderful staff, and you’re getting good care.”

  She paused again and looked around the room. There wasn’t much to see but a large clock on the wall and the monitors. No inspiration there for anything to talk about. Kate leaned forward and tried again. “Everyone at our church is praying for you. We’re asking God to help you heal so you can get back to normal soon.”

  The girl stirred and gave a low moan. Her eyelids fluttered open, and Kate’s heart leaped. Seconds later, Kate’s shoulders sagged in disappointment when the girl’s eyelids drifted shut again. Still, activity of any kind was surely a good sign.

  Taking heart, she started talking again, rattling on about anything that came to mind: Paul, their children, the Faith Briar congregation, her life in San Antonio prior to their move to Copper Mill, her stained-glass projects, her favorite Bible verses.

  Her voice trailed off. She needed inspiration to keep going. What would she say if she were talking to one of her own children? A smile curved Kate’s lips as she remembered the times she sat by their bedsides when they were sick. Back when they were little and feeling ill, they often preferred hearing her sing instead of trying to make conversation. Softly, Kate began singing the words to “Jesus Loves Me.”

  At the end of the song, she reached out to brush a strand of blonde hair back from the girl’s forehead. “God really does love you. I hope you know that.”

  She studied the girl’s face, trying to determine the shape of the bone structure beneath the puffy skin. Did her features bear a resemblance to anyone Kate knew? None that she could see. She sighed.

  The limp hand twitched in her grasp, and the girl’s eyes flickered open. She moaned softly and turned her head until she was facing Kate. Once again, Kate’s heart raced.

  “Well, hello there,” Kate said.

  But the girl gave no indication that she had heard. Her eyes continued to stare, fixed and unfocused. Kate shifted in her chair, leaning from one side to the other, but the girl didn’t follow her movement. A moment later, her eyes closed again.

  Kate felt a tightness in her chest, and tears filmed her eyes. She wrapped her fingers around the girl’s hand. “Who are you, sweetie?” Frustration choked her voice. “You just have to wake up.”

  AFTER PAUL LEFT FOR HIS OFFICE on Monday morning, Kate went to her studio to work on a pattern for a small stained-glass window panel she planned to make. But rather than coming up with drawings of dogwood blossoms and hummingbirds, her fingers kept doodling as if they had a mind of their own, sketching instead a series of sinks with bits of crumpled paper underneath.

  After wadding up yet another sheet from her sketch pad and tossing it into the trash in disgust, Kate was ready for a change of scenery. It was obvious her mind wasn’t on the task at hand. All she could seem to think of was the mystery of the injured girl’s identity.

  She pushed away from her worktable and pondered her options. Dr. McLaughlin had promised to have one of the hospital nurses call her if the girl regained consciousness. Since she hadn’t heard anything from them, she assumed the patient’s condition hadn’t changed. She could return to the hospital and sit with the girl again to lend moral support, as she had done the day before. Or...

  Kate brightened. Or she could do a little sleuthing to see if she could come up with some answers on her own. The note had implied a connection between the girl, the campground, and her request for Kate, but she didn’t have much to go on beyond that. Maybe Skip had learned something more. She walked briskly to the kitchen phone and punched in the number for the deputy’s office at the town hall.

  “I don’t know a whole lot more,” Skip said in response to her question. “You were right about the stains on the paper. They were blood, all right, but that’s all I can tell you at the moment.”

  Disappointment washed over Kate. She leaned forward and propped her elbows on the kitchen counter. “In other words, you’re telling me that we really aren’t any farther ahead than we were before?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. At least we know it’s likely that this girl was at the campground. The lab is also checking the note for fingerprints. If the blood types turn out to be the same, we’ll find out if there’s a match on the prints too.”

  “Can you do that?” Kate asked. “Take her blood and fingerprints without her knowledge?”

  “Under these circumstances, yes. We have no idea how long she’s going to be unconscious, and we need to establish an identity. A lot of parents have their children fingerprinted and keep the prints on file in case they’re ever lost or abducted. If her parents did that, there may be a record somewhere that will help us find out who she is.”

  He paused a moment, then added, “But even if we get a match on the blood and the prints, that still won’t tell us how the blood got onto the note.”

  “Or how she wound up on the side of the road,” Kate put in.

  “That’s about the size of it.” Skip’s sigh whooshed over the line. “We’ll have a little more to work with, but it will mean we’ll have more questions to answer.”

  “Did you go back to look at the campground?” Kate asked. “Was there anything else that might help?” She braced herself for his answer.

  “I went back.” Skip’s flat tone confirmed her fears. “There were still traces of blood in the sink, but I didn’t find much of anything else. Let’s just say that you were very thorough, Missus Hanlon. You left that restroom as clean as a whistle. A good forensics team could probably turn up more, but I can’t move a simple question of identity to that level of investigation.”

  Kate winced. “Well, maybe something else will turn up. Or maybe the girl will wake up soon and explain the whole thing to us.”

  After the call ended, Kate turned and leaned back against the kitchen counter. Had she destroyed vital evidence that would have pointed them to the girl’s identity?

  Without being aware of any connection between the girl and the campground, she’d had no way of knowing she might be compromising an investigation. She gnawed on her bottom lip. That explanation might work on a logical le
vel, but it didn’t keep her from feeling guilty about making it more difficult to find out who the girl was.

  Kate pushed away from the counter and walked over to the table where she’d left her handbag. Scooping it up, she headed for the front door with purposeful strides. Skip had only seen the cleaned-up version of the restroom. But she had seen what it looked like before. Maybe if she went back there, she would be able to remember some telling detail. She checked to make sure she had her keys before locking the front door behind her.

  WITH A SENSE OF DÉJÀ VU, Kate eased her Honda into the Ash Grove Campground parking lot for the second time in three days. What a difference a few days made. Instead of looking forward to spending time in the great outdoors, Kate felt a sense of trepidation she couldn’t shake. Scattered clouds filled the sky, and one inched its way across the sun, adding to the gloomy atmosphere.

  You’re being ridiculous! she chided herself. Instead of parking where she had the last time, Kate drove to the far side of the lot and parked nearer to the restroom building. She turned off the engine, and as the silence settled around her, she felt a sudden reluctance to open the door and get out.

  No one is here but you. You’re perfectly safe.

  Kate rolled down her window an inch or two, berating herself for her excessive caution but unable to prod herself into motion.

  She kneaded her keys between her fingers. What was wrong? Under normal circumstances, she wasn’t one to jump at shadows, but there was something about the place that didn’t feel right. She studied the concrete building through the window, wondering if their mystery girl had received her injuries at that very spot.

  Steeling herself, Kate opened the door and stepped out of the car, then closed the door with a soft click. It didn’t seem right to make noise in this quiet place.

  She felt certain that the girl had been there, although she didn’t have any proof besides the bloodied scrap of paper. But what had transpired while the girl was there, and how had she wound up unconscious along the side of the road?

  Kate shaded her eyes with her hand and gazed around the area, trying to glean some inspiration from her surroundings. The girl could have fallen, she supposed. On some rocks maybe? Or from a tree? She discarded those notions almost as quickly as they came. This was hardly a likely spot for someone to choose for a solo hike. And climbing a tree didn’t strike Kate as something a young woman would do. Besides, she recalled, the girl’s hands hadn’t been covered with scrapes as they surely would have been if she’d been involved in some tree-climbing mishap. No, this was something more. Kate felt sure of it.

  No car had been found near the spot where the girl had been discovered, Kate reminded herself. How had the girl wound up at Ash Grove Campground? It didn’t seem logical that she would have arrived on foot, since the campground was relatively isolated from the rest of the town.

  Maybe she hadn’t been alone, Kate reasoned. Another person might have been there as well, perhaps someone who had brought a vehicle there and then driven away later. If that was the case, had that person inflicted those dreadful injuries? A cold chill slithered up Kate’s spine as she pondered the possibility.

  She tucked her car keys into the pocket of her slacks, and hesitated only a moment before pocketing her cell phone as well. Then she started across the parking lot with measured steps. If her supposition was correct, what must the girl have been feeling? Did she know the person involved, or was it an act of indiscriminate violence resulting from a chance meeting?

  No. Kate rejected the thought the moment it entered her mind. The campground was a place one wouldn’t just happen across accidentally, hardly a likely spot for an unplanned encounter.

  It was someone the girl knew, then. She nodded as the imagined scene took shape in her mind. A boyfriend, perhaps? A husband? Domestic violence was a tragic but very real possibility.

  Kate thought of the pale, bruised face lying against the pillow in the hospital bed. Anger surged through her when she considered the idea that the girl might have been beaten. How could anyone do something like that to another human being?

  A sudden thought stopped Kate in her tracks. The scenario she had built up might account for the girl’s injuries, but it didn’t explain why the note had been thrown away in the restroom...or why the girl had it in the first place.

  “What happened here, Lord?” Kate murmured as she started walking again. “Did someone hurt that poor girl here and then abandon her out on the roadside?”

  Or maybe she managed to escape, Kate reasoned. Maybe she got away and staggered down the road until that other driver spotted her and called for help. She found the notion oddly encouraging. At least that way, the girl would have had a partial victory over her assailant.

  She shook herself free of her theorizing. Speculation had its place, but it couldn’t tell her anything for certain. What she needed was tangible evidence, not just scenes conjured from her own imagination.

  With a renewed sense of purpose, Kate quickened her pace toward the restroom. Traces of whatever happened might have been scrubbed away, but looking at the scene again just might remind her of something she hadn’t noticed earlier.

  As Kate approached the door, panic swept over her like a rising tide. She took a moment to steady her breathing, then yanked the restroom door open.

  No wild-eyed figure flew out to assault her; no shadowy form lurked beyond the doorway. Shaking her head at her own foolishness, Kate reached for the chunk of granite that she had used the previous Saturday and put it to use as a doorstop again.

  Kate stepped inside and scanned the room intently. She tried to ignore the freshly scrubbed walls, the sparkling porcelain, and the faint scent of pine cleanser, and focused on remembering the scene as it had been two days before. She searched her memory for some telltale sign that would take her one step closer to solving the mystery of the injured girl’s identity.

  Nothing leaped out at her as a viable clue. Feeling downcast, Kate wondered why she’d thought that returning to the scene might help. There was nothing to see, nothing at all. Anything helpful that might have been there had already been washed away.

  By her own hand.

  Kate walked over to the sink where she had seen the bloodstains disappearing down the drain and stood there as if expecting the enameled surface to tell her something. From the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of movement in the mirror above the sink.

  Kate’s head jerked up and her heart started hammering. A figure had just darted past the open door. Who was out there?

  Chapter Six

  An icy chill gripped Kate’s heart and spread all the way down to her toes. She started to move toward the door, but her legs refused to cooperate.

  While her feet remained frozen in place, her mind raced. Had someone followed her to the campground? Perhaps that accounted for the sense of oppression that had hung over her ever since she’d arrived.

  Her breath came in quick, shallow gasps. And if that was the case, it meant the person had been lurking out of sight all the time, waiting for Kate to put herself in a place from which there would be no escape. A place exactly like the one she found herself in now.

  Kate tried to swallow, but her throat had suddenly gone dry. If someone came after her here, it would do no good to cry out for help. No one would hear her screams in such an isolated place.

  But there was Someone who could hear her, no matter where she was. Gratitude overwhelmed her at the thought of his presence. Lord, I need your help! I don’t know who’s out there or what they want. Please protect me. Show me what to do.

  It took every ounce of courage she possessed to force her legs to move. Taking care not to make the slightest sound, Kate advanced step-by-step toward the wide open door.

  Which way had the figure moved? She tried to remember the impression she’d formed in the brief instant the image had skittered across her field of vision. The direction of the movement would put whoever was out there to the right of the doorway.


  Kate adjusted her direction accordingly so that the wall would block her approach. If she couldn’t see whoever lurked outside, he—or she—couldn’t see her. She hoped.

  When she reached the front wall, she flattened herself against the concrete and slid along it toward the doorway. Inches away from the exposed entrance, Kate paused and pressed tight against the wall, feeling the rough surface of the concrete bite into her fingertips.

  Ever so cautiously, she eased her head forward so she could peer around the door frame. Dreading what she might see, Kate scanned the surrounding area, straining her eyes for any hint of movement.

  A flicker of motion caught her eye. Kate sucked in her breath and froze, staring in that direction. She stood that way for several long, agonizing minutes, every muscle in her body tensed, while she weighed her chances of being able to make it to her car if she made a sudden dash from her hiding place.

  Another flicker of movement stirred behind one of the larger pine trees. Kate stood poised for flight, ready to bolt toward the parking lot. At least the stalker was still some distance away. If only she could see clearly enough to tell whether he was looking her way before she made her dash for freedom!

  Kate caught a glimpse of brown. A sleeve perhaps? She focused every bit of her attention on the spot. Not a sleeve. It was...an ear?

  The object wiggled again, and a white-tailed doe stepped out from behind the pine tree and came into full view. The graceful animal took two dainty steps forward, then lowered her head to graze on the grass on the far side of the trail leading to the restroom.

  Kate clutched the door frame to hold herself upright as her knees threatened to give way. Then she let out a peal of laughter. The doe lifted her head, as if aware she was being watched. Her ears twitched again as she went on the alert. Then she leaped into action and bounded away. Seconds later, she was lost to sight in the dense woods.

  Thank you, Lord. Oh, thank you! Kate felt giddy with relief. She sent another searching glance around the area, then stepped outside. Surely the deer wouldn’t have come so close to the building if anyone else was lurking nearby.