Chapter 6 - Emily’s Voice
The ambulance bay at St. Jude’s Memorial was an island of sterile, fluorescent glare amid the howling storm.
They rolled Emily through the automatic double doors on a gurney, two EMTs bagging warm saline into her veins while a third monitored her pulse. I walked beside the gurney, my fingers locked into Emily’s right hand. Her fingers were taped where the skin had split, but she wouldn't let go of me.
"Core temp is ninety-three point two," the female paramedic called out as the ER team swarmed the gurney in Trauma Bay 4. "Severe exposure, soft-tissue trauma to the wrists, contusions across the ribs and cervical area consistent with manual restraint."
A young doctor with tired eyes and a surgical cap looked at me. "Are you the mother?"
"I am," I said. "Her name is Emily Vance. She is twenty-nine. She has no drug allergies. Her blood type is O-negative. She has been held in an unheated brick cistern for approximately ninety-six hours without food and minimal water."
The doctor nodded once, recognizing the clinical precision in my voice. "You need to step outside, ma'am. We need to strip these wet clothes and get the warming blankets on her."
"I am not leaving this room," I said. My voice was not loud, but it had the density of lead. "I will stand behind that curtain. But I will not leave her sight."
Emily turned her head on the plastic pillow, her eyes bloodshot, pupils sluggish. "Mom... don't go."
"I’m right here, Em," I whispered, stepping behind the blue curtain line where the nurse indicated. "I'm not going anywhere."
While the doctors worked—cutting away the sodden flannel, taping IV lines, running the warming blankets that hummed like vacuum cleaners—I stood with my back against the tiled wall, my surveyor's notebook open on my knee.
*22:42.* Victim admitted to ER. Physical injuries noted: ligature mark around neck, five-eighths of an inch wide, consistent with zip-tie or braided cable. Defensive wounds on both forearms. Bruising on left ribs—three distinct oblong hematomas, consistent with blunt-force trauma from a boot.
A tall figure appeared at the curtain opening. Thomas Miller had stripped off his wet barn coat. His white shirt was rumpled, the tie loosened at his throat, his badge pinned to his belt. He carried an evidence envelope made of thick, brown kraft paper.
Inside the clear plastic window of the envelope, resting against the brown paper, was the sterling silver chain. And hanging from it, the diamond solitaire.
"He tried to swallow it in the back of the cruiser," Miller said quietly, leaning his head close to mine so Emily wouldn't hear. "Cranston caught him by the jaw before it cleared his teeth. We charged him with evidence tampering on top of the kidnapping."
"And Patricia?" I asked.
"She’s in an interrogation room at the substation," Miller said, a thin, grim smile touching the corners of his mouth. "She demanded her lawyer three times. But when we found the second will in her designer tote bag, she stopped talking entirely."
"A second will?"
Miller nodded. "Drawn up six days ago. Purporting to bear Emily’s signature, witnessed by an associate at Daniel's firm who just happened to be forty thousand dollars in debt to a sports-betting book in Atlantic City. Everything—the house, Emily’s trust fund from her father, the four-hundred-thousand-dollar life insurance policy—was signed over to a family trust managed exclusively by Daniel and Patricia."
I looked through the gap in the curtain. Emily was breathing more steadily now. The blue tint had faded from her lips, replaced by the pale, flushed pink of returning circulation.
"She called me on Tuesday," I whispered. "She said, 'Mom, can I come home if things get worse?'"
"Why didn't she leave then, Margaret?" Miller asked softly.
May you like
"Because she thought she could fix him," I said, the words tasting like gall in my throat. "Good women always think they can fix broken men with patience and love. They don't realize that some men aren't broken, Thomas. They are simply built to consume."
***
