She took the folder from him, creasing the file back on itself to examine the photo. She oriented herself so that she stood in sync with the image.
“Remember anything?”
She shook her head. “Not really.”
“The wreck shows that you were coming from the Mammoth Lakes direction and heading toward Bishop. That’s the reverse of your trip. You were doubling back on yourself. Can you explain?”
She shook her head again.
“Did you want to get back to Bishop for some reason?”
“I think I was just driving to get away. The destination wasn’t important. Sorry, I wish I knew.”
Greening sighed. “That’s OK. Let’s look at it this way. You were heading south. Does that trigger anything?”
“I was so doped up that, for all I know, I could have been driving around in circles before I wiped out here. All I remember was getting in the car, driving, and praying he didn’t follow me.”
He nodded. Zo? felt Greening willing her to remember. She’d done the same herself, but had long ago given up on having sheer will step up to the plate. The lost memories would either come back or remain erased for all time.
“I believe the place you were taken is somewhere off this stretch of road. Considering the condition you were in, fear and adrenaline would have overcome some of the effects of the Rohypnol, but not all of them. You wouldn’t have driven far before ending up in this ditch. I’m guessing ten miles at most in either direction. When you factor in the time you left Bishop, how long it would have taken him to drive you out here and get down to business—”
She winced at his use of the word business—a faceless euphemism for torture and murder.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s OK.”
“I just want to say that we’re close. Really close. Do you want to see if we can find this place together?” he asked with a smile.
“Yes, but the sheriffs did that. They checked out properties in the area and found nothing that matched.”
“You couldn’t tell them anything the last time. They based their search on where you ended up. They didn’t know where you’d come from and where you were going. They had nothing to focus on. We do now. Everything that happened to you, happened to you between Bishop and the road to Mammoth Lakes. So I’ll ask you again, do you want to see if we can find this place together?”
“I do.”
He turned back to his car.
She remained on the shoulder, staring down the barrel of the road disappearing to the south. It narrowed to a point in the distance, the mountains and hills on both sides moving to swallow it up. This would have been her view that night. She wanted it to be familiar, to spark a memory or shine a spotlight on a feature of a featureless road. The road remained just a road, but it didn’t change the fact that everything that had happened, had happened here.
“Zo?? You OK?”
She turned. “Yeah. I think we should go in this direction first.”
His expression turned hopeful. “South it is.”
They followed the road south, pulling off at every exit and exploring every side road until it dead-ended. They reached the end of the road—Bishop—without finding anything that matched her diluted memories.
Greening drove to the Smokehouse and stopped the car in their lot.
“I don’t think they’ll be too keen on having us for lunch.”
“Most definitely.” He was smiling, but his grin quickly fell away. “OK, I want to do things differently on the return sweep. I’m going to talk you through that night, and I want you to fill in the blanks.”
She felt the hairs on the back of her neck bristle. “You know how to make me happy.”
“I will be trying to push your buttons. I’m not going to apologize for it, because I think it’s important and I think you know that too.”
“As long as you’re willing to pay for my therapy sessions afterwards.”
“This is therapy. You should be paying me.”
His smile was back. It was such a simple thing, but it gave her confidence. He gave her confidence. Doing this alone scared her, and she knew she might buckle if it got too painful. With Greening here, there was someone to protect her and push her forward.
“OK, let’s get this show on the road,” he said. “Where did you park that night?”
“I don’t know.”
Greening drove the car slowly through the lot. “You’d been kicked out of the Smokehouse. You and Holli walked back to your car. Were you alone? Did someone stop you or ask you for a ride? Was someone waiting by your car?”
A flashbulb flared in the recesses of her mind. Her and Holli arm in arm, in the dark, laughing. Then the image faded back into the shadows.
“Did anyone follow you? The roofie would have been in your system and working at this point. You would have been feeling drunker than you should have. Tired. Dazed.”
Greening rejoined the road and headed north.