Airtight Case Read online

  She examined her bruised and swollen face in the restroom mirror. It was still a stranger’s face. The adrenaline running through her veins, causing her heart to pump like a jackhammer, did nothing to clear out the fog in her brain. “I need help,” she whispered to the stranger in the mirror.

  She turned on the faucet and splashed cool water on her face. Think, she told herself. How can I find help when I can’t tell my enemies from my friends? If I just had a place to stay for a few days—until my memory returns.

  That’s it. Find a safe place. Where? Where can I go? A person with no money and no memory has no credibility. If I show up someplace looking like this, people will call the police and I’ll be back in the same predicament. She combed her fingers through her hair to make it look less disheveled.

  Think, think, think. She hammered the sides of the porcelain sink with the same ferocity her heart hammered in her chest. Stop, be still, and think. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she smiled into the mirror, trying on faces that looked confident. She heard the door to the restroom opening. They were looking for her. Why didn’t she think of that?

  She ducked inside a stall. A woman and a little boy walked past. It wasn’t the men. But the damage was done. Her heart was racing again. Her ears rang from the rush of adrenaline. She stayed in the stall, breathing slowly, until some measure of calm returned. She wondered if she could stay here—dodging the custodian—and sleeping . . . where?

  She left the stall and went to the door, where she stood for several moments, summoning the courage to open it. She pulled the door toward her just enough to see, and peeped out into the hallway. Neither Mark Smith nor the skinny cigarette-smoking man was there. Only a woman walking toward the bathroom. She might be one of them. Don’t panic. She’s probably a patient. No, she’s not carrying a purse. Perhaps she works here. Good, she thought. Her brain was working—not well, but maybe it was coming around.

  She walked past the woman and smiled, almost leaning into the wall with relief when the woman didn’t reach out and grab her. She walked to the front of the building, stopping in the lobby to read the index. It was a doctors’ building, but there was nothing here to help her, only pediatrics, ear-nose-and-throat, gynecology, and urology. She didn’t have any of those problems.

  Outside again, the sun was bright on her face, traffic moved back and forth, people came and went. She understood what it all meant, but it was as if it were the first time she had ever seen it. She put on the confident face she had practiced and walked with purpose down the sidewalk in the direction of the business district looking for sanctuary.

  She passed people, glancing at each face, hoping for one she recognized, praying with every encounter that they weren’t enemies. Sometimes they nodded back at her. Mostly, they showed alarm at her stitched and bruised face, but all were aliens. Or, she was the alien with nothing that made her a part of them—no shared history, no remembered events, none of the cement that holds a people together. She was adrift, detached from the world, looking at all of them through a glass barrier.

  The business district was a parallel row of buildings on each side of a main two-lane street. There was a shoe store, a clothing store, a drugstore, a department store, a hardware store. She stopped in front of the hardware store and stared at the window display: tools, shovels, hoes, rakes. They leaned against a bale of hay and looked like weapons. The shovel was pointed.

  Couldn’t shave with that.

  Why had that odd thought popped into her head? It didn’t even make sense. You don’t shave with a shovel, you shave with a razor. She shivered and left the window, heading for the department store.

  She walked up the steps and in through shiny glass doors. A cool breeze hit her face, smelling like good perfume. She stopped to think, pretending to examine a blouse hanging on a rack. She had to do something about her appearance—couldn’t go around looking like a vagrant. If she found someone to ask for help it would be best to look more like she didn’t need it.

  She had to have a name. People always ask for a name. The men were hunting for Lisa Christian. She would make up another one. Linda. Linda Chambers. That was as good a name as any. And a story—she needed a story.

  Linda Chambers walked into the cosmetic department where two women were working the counter. One was fiftyish, and one looked barely out of her teens. She chose the younger one to approach.

  “Can I help you?” asked the woman whose name tag read Tiffany. Tiffany cringed at the sight of her face. “Wow, that looks like it hurts.”

  “It’s mainly sore now. I had a car accident. I want to look at some makeup samples, something that will kind of cover the bruises.”

  Tiffany smiled. “We have some heavy pancake makeup.”

  “I don’t necessarily need to hide the bruises, just make them less noticeable and me more presentable.” She stepped back and looked across the store, craning her neck.

  “Looking for someone?” Tiffany asked.

  “My boyfriend. I lost my purse in the accident and I can’t buy anything until he gets here. I think I lost him when we passed the hardware store. He’ll find me. Anyway, do you have some samples I can try?”

  Tiffany showed her several colors of foundation and helped her pick out a shade that went with her skin.

  “Can I try it?”

  “Sure. Just let me know when you’re ready.” Tiffany went to help another customer.

  “Thanks.”

  She quickly applied a thin coat of foundation over her face, smoothing out her skin. She used samples of lipstick and mascara, lightly touching up her lips and lashes. The bruises still showed through, but the effect of the makeup was to make her look less homeless, more credible.

  “How did it do?” asked Tiffany, returning.

  “I think this color is fine. What do you think?”

  Tiffany agreed.

  “I’ll be back. I’m going to look at the shoes while my boyfriend catches up.” She left the counter, wondering if she had fooled Tiffany. Probably not, but at least she looked a little better.

  She passed by the shoe department, heading for the exit. In a mirror she saw the man who called himself Mark Smith, her fiancé. She ducked behind a rack of hats. Did they know she came in here, or were they just looking everywhere for her? Why here? Were they using the same logic she was? Maybe one of those faces she passed on the street told him she came in here. Have you seen a woman with a battered face? She stood out. Don’t panic. Her gaze darted around the store. At the end of the aisle, she saw the skinny man enter the door she had been about to exit.

  She moved farther behind the rack, wishing she had a disguise. She could put her hair up, but she didn’t have a bobby pin to her name. She pretended to try on a wide-brimmed straw hat. Maybe she could disguise herself just while she was in the store.

  Mark’s eyes were scanning every woman in the store. The skinny man was about to walk past her. She was stuck. If she tried to leave, they would see her. All she could do now was to keep them in sight and try to hide as they came her way. Surely, they wouldn’t try to abduct her in a crowded store.

  Why not? She was the one who had lost her mind.

  Chapter 3

  Footsteps Of A Man

  FROM HER HIDING place behind the racks of hats she watched Mark Smith systematically survey the people in the store, looking for her. He caught the eye of the clerk, Tiffany, who had helped her at the cosmetic counter. She chewed on her lower lip as Tiffany approached Mark. She watched Tiffany speak, Mark nod, Tiffany wave her hand in a broad gesture. She didn’t have to hear their conversation to understand that Tiffany was telling him that she had been in the cosmetics department making up her face and was now somewhere in the store . . . waiting for him.

  She wanted to fold herself over and pretend she was invisible. She wanted to be unconscious so she would stop feeling the panic that rose from her stomach and stung her throat. She wanted to know what to do. Was there anyone in the faces of strangers
around her who would help her?

  She snatched the hat off her head, suddenly realizing that she was the only person wearing one. It was then, perhaps attracted by the sudden movement, that Mark’s eyes shifted in her direction. He must have recognized her even through the rack of hats, because he started in her direction.

  She bolted into the aisle behind the racks of hats and almost ran into the skinny man. To her good fortune, he was looking the other way, searching down an adjoining aisle. She turned sharply on the ball of her foot, a move that oddly carried with it a faint familiarity, and walked quickly across the room to doors painted with the words “Employees Only.”

  “Can I help you?” An older woman in glasses, carrying a sheaf of papers, stopped and looked at her, frowning.

  She stared at the woman a moment, trying to find that calm face she had practiced.

  “I’m supposed to see someone,” she stammered.

  “For what purpose?”

  “A job.”

  “You need to go upstairs . . . are you all right?”

  “I feel faint. Nervous, I suppose. Is there anywhere I can sit down?”

  “Not here. You need . . .”

  “Is that a door to the outside?” She pointed to a door at the end of the hall.

  “Yes, to an alley, but you can’t . . .”

  “If I could just go outside before I throw up.” That convinced the woman to allow her to go down the hall and out the alleyway door.

  She ran down the alley and out to a sidewalk. She turned and hurried into the drugstore where she stopped behind a display of greeting cards.

  The two men came out of the alley and looked up and down the street. The skinny one took off walking briskly up the street away from her. Mark came pushing through the front door of the drugstore, looking straight ahead down the aisle. She didn’t move.

  He headed toward the rear. Maybe he thought she had gone out the back, the way she did in the department store. She waited for him to reach the back of the store, dashed for the front door, ran across the street in front of a car and darted into an alley, chased by an angry blast of a car horn.

  If there was just someplace she could go that would be safe. Somewhere she could sit down and rest, someplace where they wouldn’t look. The other end of the alley opened onto a street lined by a row of white houses with wide porches, newly painted and converted to offices. She stood against the back wall of a brick building, reading the signs on the other side of the street, searching for some clue or place of refuge, or sanctuary . . . something.

  The fog in her brain was getting worse instead of better. She closed her eyes a moment, then opened them again. She looked back to one of the houses. It was divided into two businesses: an attorney on one side and a detective on the other. Maybe they could help.

  She crossed the street and stood in front of the offices, trying to make herself go in. Which one? The detective, she decided. He could find out who she really was. No, the attorney. He could protect her. She looked behind her for Mark or his accomplice.

  A man with long, straight black hair and skin the color of sienna was getting out of a new midnight blue pickup truck less than fifty yards away. He was looking at her and she saw recognition, alarm perhaps, in his face. He started toward her.

  She turned and ran as fast as she could down the driveway beside the house, across a narrow street, across a field, into thick woods, stopping only when she tripped over a root and fell to the ground. She crawled to her knees and scooted for cover, her back against a big tree.

  She laid her head on her arms and cried. When her tears stopped, she raised her head and wiped her eyes with her fingertips. The black smear of mascara on her hands told her that her attempt to look normal and sane had gone for nothing. Now she probably looked like a mad woman.

  She was in a pine and hardwood forest. It smelled clean. Maybe this was a safe place. She stood, leaning against the huge tree, and peered into the thick woods. At first they were inviting, but the invitation invoked a rising horror within her that moved upon her like a dark smothering shadow. There was a terrible secret in those woods. Her heart beat so fast she thought it would come out of her chest. She couldn’t get her breath. She was suffocating. She sank to the ground, paralyzed with fear, her throat too clenched even to cry.

  She didn’t know how long she stayed crouched on the ground. She didn’t even know if she had passed out and come to. She didn’t know anything but overwhelming fear covering her like some wicked hand reaching into her mind. But she managed to rise to her feet again and forced herself to breathe normally.

  The doctor said her memory would return in a few days. It had been how many—two, three, already? Her memory might return tomorrow. She could stay in the woods until then. But something was in the woods. Something was also out in the streets.

  Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t, an inner voice said. Why? another voice whispered. What could there be in the woods worse than the men chasing you?

  Who was the third man? A friend of Mark’s? Friend or foe?

  And why had she been so afraid of Mark? Because he said he was her fiancé, someone she was supposed to marry, yet she was repelled by him. But he did have a picture of the two of them. She had looked happy.

  But it wasn’t really you, her inner voice said. You knew that.

  She looked at her hands. Her fingers were long and slender, longer than those of the woman whose arm was threaded through Mark’s in the picture. And the woman in the picture was shorter than Mark.

  It might have been my face, but it wasn’t my body. He isn’t my fiancé. Then, who is he?

  She wiped her face again with her hands and ran her fingers through her hair. The sun would be setting in an hour or two.

  I’ve really no choice but to make a place in the woods to spend the night.

  She walked deeper into the thick of the woods and began to look for a place to build a shelter. She found it both strange and comforting that she knew how. In a small thicket of scrub trees she bent half a dozen saplings in a circle toward one another and wove their tops together to form a dome shape. She interwove broken limbs and laid leafy branches on the outside of the dome until it was covered in a protective matted layer.

  She sat in the shelter on a soft pile of moss, her arms around knees tucked under her chin. Night came, slowly at first, like a circling bird, then descended quickly, and it was dark. Through the opening of her makeshift structure, she could see the moon like a bright shiny silver dollar peeking through the trees. It was going to be a cool night, maybe too cool. She wasn’t dressed for the mountain outdoors at night.

  She didn’t move, and hardly thought—what would she think about with the empty pockets of her mind? Instead, she listened. Owls, tree frogs—not crickets—she knew the difference. Wind in the trees. Good sounds . . . frightening sounds.

  What . . . what . . . what was on the edge of her brain trying to get in? Why would sounds be frightening and comforting at the same time?

  Don’t force it, the doctors had told her. But what did they know? Nothing, if they were going to sign her out to an impostor.

  She breathed slowly so that the sound of her own breath wouldn’t resound in her ears, so her heart would slow, so she could listen.

  A twig broke. Deer? Soft crunching in the forest litter.

  Not deer, too loud for deer.

  Footsteps. Man. Her heart pounded, filling her ears with the reverberation of her pumping blood.

  Listen. Not steady footsteps. Starting . . . stopping . . . searching.

  She felt silently around her on the ground for a stick, a weapon. Why hadn’t she thought beforehand to find a weapon?

  “Lindsay!”

  A man’s voice with a strange subtle accent . . . not foreign. Familiar. Who was Lindsay? A dog? Someone lost? She was lost. Who was Lindsay? Lisa, Linda, Lindsay. Coincidence?

  “Lindsay! It’s me, John. I know you don’t remember . . .”

  The voi
ce had the soothing, subtle modulations of an Indian voice—another mysterious thing she knew. Through the opening in her shelter, she saw a distant shaft of light . . . bobbing, sweeping.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  How do I know? An old riddle forced its way into her head. Something half-remembered. What was it, exactly?

  There are two tribes, the Blackfoot who always tell the truth, and the Whitefoot who always lie, but you cannot tell which is which. You meet one from each tribe at a fork in the road. You need directions. How do you ask the right question to get you where you want to go? What is the answer? Which road is not the right road? No, that’s not it. No time to reason it out, the man is coming closer.

  “Lindsay, can you hear me? Are you in the woods somewhere?”

  She stayed very still, wondering what to do. Take a chance that he’s a friend? What if he’s not? What if he’s that terrible thing in the woods?

  The light swept across her shelter.

  “Lindsay!”

  The man calling himself John rushed toward her. She grasped her hand around a dried twig, a sorry excuse for a weapon.

  “Oh, Jesus, Lindsay.”

  “Don’t come any closer,” she said quietly.

  He squatted at the entrance and shone the light in the interior, but not on her face.

  “It’s all right.” He shone the light on himself.

  She watched his face for a moment before her gaze swept over his faded blue jeans and black shirt. He wore beaded bracelets on his wrists. He shifted, revealing an oval beaded belt buckle.

  “Lindsay. It’s me, John. I won’t hurt you.”

  “I was trying to decide if you’re the lying Whitefoot or the truthful Blackfoot."

  He laughed gently. “Right now, I’m a very relieved Cherokee.”