The night sky hung heavy, fat, bloated clouds waiting for some internal alarm to dump their snow, and no more of this penny-ante stuff. “Brewster!”
More yelps cut the night silence, not so distant now. Had Brewster trapped an opossum?
The snow was coming down a bit heavier now, but the trees were thick, shielding them. “Brewster!”
Brewster was barking madly at a dark hump on the forest floor, something that wasn’t moving, something that looked human.
Dix grabbed up his dog, stuffed him inside his jacket, and zipped it up. “Calm down, Brewster, and don’t pee on my shirt.” He looked down at a person lying in front of him, unconscious or dead. Dix fell to his knees and turned the person over. It was a woman, her face covered with blood. He pulled off his gloves, scooped up some snow, and lightly rubbed it over her face. The blood came off easily. He saw a gash on the side of her head, bleeding sluggishly. He touched his fingertips to the pulse at her throat. It was slow and steady. Good. He leaned into her face. “Hey, can you hear me? You need to wake up.”
Her lashes fluttered.
“That’s it. Open your eyes, you can do it.”
She didn’t open her eyes but she moaned low in her throat. Dix methodically felt her arms, her legs, her torso, and nothing felt broken. Not that that meant anything. He pulled his gloves back on. Brewster poked his head out the top of Dix’s jacket. Dix carefully lifted the woman in his arms. She was tall, lanky and heavy enough. He was afraid to carry her over his shoulder because she might be injured internally, so he cradled her in his arms.
As he walked out of the woods, the clouds let loose and the wind came to vicious life and blew blinding snow in his face. By the time Dix got back to his house, it was snowing so hard he could barely make out his porch light.
He stomped the snow off his boots and got himself, Brewster, and the woman quietly into the house.
“Okay, Brewster, you hit the floor and I’ll get her onto the sofa.” She wasn’t particularly wet so he spread two afghans over her, unlaced her boots, and pulled them off her feet. She was wearing thick wool socks, which were still nice and dry.
He pulled his cell out of his pocket and dialed nine-one-one. His dispatcher, Amalee Witten, answered. “
Yo, Sheriff, what’s up?”
“I found an injured woman in the woods by my house. I need the paramedics as fast as you can get them out here, Amalee.”
Amalee was fifty-two years old and weighed 211 pounds, but when it was urgent, she could move out faster than Rob when it was his turn to clean the bathroom. “Hold tight, Sheriff.”
“Hey, Dad, is she going to be all right?”
“I don’t know, Rob, I can’t get her to wake up. Go make some hot tea. Let’s see if we can get it down her.”
Not five minutes later, his son came into the living room cradling a cup of tea between his palms. “It isn’t too hot so she won’t scald her mouth.”
“Good.” Dix lifted her, pressed the edge of the cup to her bottom lip. “Come on, smell that Lipton’s, best tea in captivity. Rob made it just right so you can open up and take a big gulp. It’ll warm your insides.”
To his surprise, her mouth opened and she sipped it. She opened her eyes, looked at him, and drank more tea.
“Are you in pain?”
She slowly shook her head. Her voice came out thin as thread. “Only my head.” She tried to raise her hand, but Dix held it down.
“You’ve got a cut on the left side, above your temple. I’m going to leave it for the paramedics to do it right.”
Brewster jumped onto the sofa and hunkered down next to her. “This is Brewster and he found you in the woods just before the snow started coming down hard.”
“Brewster,” she said, reaching out her hand to his little face, “thank you.”
“I’m Dixon Noble, sheriff of Maestro. The guy who made the tea is my son Rob. Can you tell me your name?”
“I’m…” She nuzzled her chin against Brewster, who was licking her. “This is very strange,” she said after a moment, turning back to look up at him. “Do you know, I really don’t have a clue.”
Dix stood slowly. She looked suddenly scared and the last thing he wanted was for her to freak out. He said calmly, “Whatever else happened to you, you got a big whack against your head. Maybe that could account for you not remembering. The doctor can tell us what’s going on. I’m sure it’s temporary, so try not to worry, okay? Let me check the pockets of your jacket for ID.” He heard the ambulance sirens in the distance. “You don’t seem to have anything at all in your pockets. Did you have a purse or a wallet with you, do you remember?”
He saw her eyes were dilated and that concerned him. “Don’t worry about it. Maybe you’ve got something in your jeans pockets. They can check at the hospital. I don’t want to move you around. Tomorrow I’ll check the woods for a purse.”
“This is nuts,” she said, and he saw her wiggling beneath the afghans. She was obviously searching her jeans herself. Then she lifted her hand and checked the jacket herself. “I can’t find anything. That doesn’t make any sense. Where’s my cell phone? Did I have a purse? No, that’s not likely. I never take a purse.
”
He waited patiently.
“Never.”
“But you know you had a cell phone?”
“Yes. Oh dear, I think so.” She started humming.
Rob said, “Why are you humming?”
“I don’t like to curse so I hum when I’m unhappy about something.”
“That’s cool,” said Rafe, who was standing behind the sofa, looking down at her.
“That’s my other son, Rafer. Okay, things are coming back. Don’t push it. There’s always an explanation for everything.”
“What you just said—that sounded really familiar, like I say that to people.”
The paramedics followed Rob into the living room. Ten minutes later, Dix and the woman were in the ambulance headed to Loudoun County Community Hospital, some twelve miles away. It was snowing really hard, so it took a good thirty minutes to get there. She was pale and her eyes looked glassy. He held her hand. She wasn’t wearing any rings, only a no-nonsense multifunctional black watch. The emergency room wasn’t a zoo yet, but everyone was preparing for the worst. Dix sat himself in the nearly empty waiting room after they had wheeled her away, and prepared to read his way through a National Geographic magazine dated 1997.
He heard her cry out. He rose automatically, took a step toward the curtained-off cubicle.
“Sheriff, we need to do some paperwork here.”
He did his best, but since he had no clue who she was or what her medical history was, there were mostly blank lines left on the forms after her name, Jane Doe.
Dix pulled out his cell and called Emory Cox for a status report. “This is weird, Sheriff, we’ve only had one call. It was a wrong number if you can believe that.”
“No, I don’t believe that. It was probably an abuse call, and chances are the wife will show up tomorrow with a broken nose and bruises everywhere. We’ll see.”
“So far everyone seems to be staying in tonight, not being stupid.”
“Let’s hope our luck holds up, Emory. I’m at the hospital. I do have something of a situation here.” He detailed to Emory how he’d found the woman, knowing of course that Amalee had probably already told half the people in town all about it. “I want you to send two of our disaster deputies—Claus and B.B. Claus can drive his four-wheeler out to my property. They need to find the woman’s car—No, I don’t know what kind of car she was driving because, as I said, she can’t seem to remember anything right now. I want you to check around the county for any reports of missing young women. If she can’t tell us who she is by tomorrow morning, we’ll run her fingerprints through IAFIS; maybe we’ll get lucky. Tomorrow, if necessary, you can take a photo of her, and we’ll send it out. Check all the local B-and-Bs, hotels, and motels within a fifteen-mile radius of Maestro. All I can say is that she’s in her mid-thirties, dark hair, light complexion, really green eyes. She’s on the lean side, a runner maybe. Her arms and legs felt strong when I checked her for broken bones. She’s tall, maybe five-foot-nine, -ten. Of course, the car would tell us everything we need to know. Her ID’s probably in there, or we can identify her from the plates, so emphasize to Claus and B.B. that the car’s the priority.”