“I appreciate your looking. Come and sit down now, breakfast is ready.”
If there was something Dix considered himself good at, it was breakfast. The house smelled of fried bacon, eggs over easy, brown sugar on oatmeal, and blueberry muffins.
By ten o’clock, the boys were off with their sleds slung over their shoulders to Breaker’s Hill, where most of Maestro’s teenagers would be congregated along with some of the hardier parents. Dix finished shoveling the driveway and drove to the hospital. On the way, he checked in with his deputies, who, thankfully, had nothing dire to report, no six-car pileups or downed electrical wires.
Nor had anyone found an abandoned car. Nor were there any local missing persons reported. And not a single woman of her description had registered at any B-and-B or motel in the immediate area. Dix supposed he’d expected her to be registered at Bud Bailey’s Bed & Breakfast, where most people stayed if they visited Maestro. Someone had obviously hit her. Had they left her unconscious in his woods, or had she managed somehow to get away from them, and then collapsed in the woods? All he needed was her car. Could the people who whacked her over the head have driven it off? Hidden it somewhere?
Maybe she’d come here for a specific reason, a reason someone didn’t like. Or maybe that someone had moved her a good distance away from where she’d been brought down.
The main roads were already plowed and the light snow falling wasn’t going to be much of a problem. The forecast was for more snow, though, becoming heavy in the late afternoon.
Emory called to check in.
Dix said, “Someone’s got to have seen her, sold her gas, supplies, something.”
“Maybe she’s here with someone.”
“If that were the case, they surely would have called us when she went missing.”
Emory sighed. “Maybe her old man is the one who tried to off her.”
“She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring,” Dix said.
“I don’t either, Sheriff, and I’m so married Marty can finish my sentences.”
“It’s odd, but she didn’t seem married to me.”
Emory wondered what that meant, but he let it go.
Dix found Dr. Crocker, more rumpled than he’d been the night before, a stethoscope nearly falling off his neck, at the nurses’ station on the second floor.
“You ever go home last night, Doc?”
“Nah, I haven’t left the hospital for six weeks now. Just kidding, Sheriff. Now, our girl is trying really hard not to show it, but she’s scared—understandable since she had a pretty rough night of it and still can’t remember who she is or how she came to be in your woods. The head wound’s okay. Since it’s the weekend, most of the toxicology screen won’t be ready until sometime Monday.”
Dix asked Dr. Crocker a few more questions, then he found room 214. It was a double room, but she was the only occupant. She was sitting up, staring at muted cartoons on the TV. There was a white strip of keri tape over her temple, nothing more. She wasn’t moving.
When she saw him, she said, “Do you use meters?”
“What? Meters? Well, no, I think in feet and inches, like most Americans. Why meters?”
“It popped into my head a little while ago. I realized I know all about meters and centimeters, how to convert back and forth. I don’t sound like I’m from Europe, do I?”
“Nope, you’re American to the bone. I’d say Washington, Maryland, around there.”
“Maybe I’m a math teacher and I teach the metric system.”
“Could be. Sounds to me like you’re nearly ready to remember everything, but don’t push it, okay? Just relax. How’s your head feel?”
“Hurts, but I can handle it.”
Odd, but it seemed to him she could handle about anything. He pulled a small black plastic kit from his jacket pocket, opened it, and spread out the paraphernalia on the bedside table.
She watched him a moment, said, “You’re going to take my fingerprints?”
“Yes, that’s right. This is my portable kit since you’re not up to going to the station to scan them in. It could be you had a job that required fingerprints.”
“Could I be in NCIC?” The instant the words were out of her mouth, she froze.
“NCIC—you know what that means?”
He could tell she was trying really hard, and he raised his hand. “No, let it go. I’m sending your fingerprints electronically to IAFIS. That’s the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. If you’re one of the forty million folks in the civil fingerprint file, we should hear back within twenty-four hours.”