Greening paid the check, and they hit the road in his car. She noticed him giving her sideways glances.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Your face. That bruise. You didn’t pick that up last night, did you?”
She couldn’t have done a very good cover-up job. “I got that at work. I was disarming a thief, and he clipped me.”
“Disarming?”
She told him about the incident with the iPhone thief.
Greening shook his head. “How did you go from a PhD candidate to a mall cop?”
“After what happened, I couldn’t go back to school. I needed to do something different, but I didn’t have any other qualifications. Mall security was all I could get.”
He frowned. “I think you’re selling yourself short. You have a degree. I’m sure you could get something that pays better and is safer.”
Her degree in environmental sciences gave her options, but none she wanted. “I could get something else, but I like mall security.”
He smirked at her.
“Really, I do. I don’t want to do a normal job. What the Tally Man did to me changed me. I can’t do some nine-to-five gig. I have to do something that makes a difference, and I do that at the mall. I stop bag snatchers, pickpockets, shoplifters, and vandals. I help lost kids find their parents and pick people up when they fall down. I make the world a little better.”
His smirk changed into a genuine smile. “You sound like a cop.”
She said nothing.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No. Dr. Jarocki says I should consider becoming a cop.”
“Well, if you’re serious about making a difference and helping people, give it serious consideration. It’s a good career, far better than mall-security work.”
“Do you really want someone with my baggage being a cop?”
“If by baggage, you mean someone who can empathize with a victim and is willing to do right by them—then absolutely.”
Yeah, right, she thought. She studied him, looking for a sign of sarcasm and saw none. His faith in her surprised her.
They were approaching the on-ramp for US 395, the highway she’d been found on. He pulled over before reaching it.
“OK, I’m going to take you out to the spot where you were found. I know things are sketchy on what you remember, so we’ll pace ourselves. If anything looks familiar or there’s anything you want to see again, you tell me. We can take this as fast or as slow as you need. OK?”
The thought of doing this made her break out in a cold sweat, but she nodded.
They joined the highway, driving way under the speed limit. He drove with his light bar flashing so as not to piss off the other road users.
He told her what he’d read in the police report. It was surreal to listen to him relay events that had happened to her, that she had no memories of. She wanted to have a spark of inspiration, but nothing came.
He asked her to go over events as she remembered them, and he quizzed her on every detail. She slipped from reality back to that night. She didn’t see the road. She saw herself, Holli, and the Tally Man. It was the same hazy and incomplete movie she’d played in her mind again and again. It was hard to watch, but for the first time, she wanted to see it all. Suddenly, he slowed the car.
“What’s going on?”
“We’re here.” He stopped the car. “This is exactly where the sheriffs found you.”
The revelation slammed into Zo?. Her reaction was immediate and ugly. She broke out in goose bumps, and the strength drained from her body. She struggled to unlatch the door and had to throw her weight behind it to fling it open.
Greening missed the change in her and strode over to a spot off the edge of the asphalt. He consulted the contents of a file folder before gesturing to the ground with both hands. “You ran off the road here, with your car pointing in this direction,” he said, gesturing south.
She tottered over to Greening on unsteady legs. It was all too real for her, and her bravado shriveled. She had come here for the truth and to help catch a killer. Now she just wanted to run and hide.
Greening flipped open the file folder again. Reports were clipped to the right-hand side, while eight-by-ten photographs were pinned to the other. He tapped the one on the top of the pile. It showed her Beetle buried nose deep in the ditch, with a uniformed cop standing in the background, a look of disapproval on his face.
Memories of that night came back to her, but only in jump cuts: red-and-blue lights filling her vision, then a blinding light in her face. Silhouettes against the light. The creak of the car door opening. Someone saying, “Miss, miss, are you—? Christ, she’s naked.” Someone else saying, “This bitch is blitzed.” Her screaming and striking out at hands touching her. Men shouting, yelling at her to calm down. Her saying a single word—Holli—again and again. Then nothing.
“You OK?” Greening asked.
Zo? wiped a hand over her face. “Yes. Fine.”
The cop looked doubtful.