Devil’s in the Details (31 page)

I laughed, nodding, "You're right. It's probably nothing. I’ll just ask her about it when it feels right. I kind of want to live in this little bubble of happiness, muffins and amazing good morning kisses from Victoria for as long as I can." I let Stacy link her hand into my elbow to guide me towards the elevator when the doors opened. The smile faded from my face the second I saw Detective Jennifer Scarlett step out and look directly in my eyes. She forced on a smile as she walked towards me, "Excuse me, Ms. Ivers. I was looking for you. I was wondering if I could have a moment or two of your time?"

Stacy gave me a look, one that asked if I needed her to shove the detective back into the elevator with a hearty boot to the ass. I shook my head and patted her hand, looking back at the mousy woman. "I only have a moment."

Detective Scarlett looked at Stacy then back to me, "Is there somewhere private I can speak to you?"

I frowned, "Is this about my incident? That was almost a year ago, and nothing has changed on my end. Obviously your police department never found any evidence to link me to anything other than being the victim of a senseless attack." I gripped tighter to Stacy's hand on my arm, "So whatever you need to say, say it, privacy is not needed on my behalf."

Detective Scarlett sighed hard, irritated, "I understand Ms. Ivers. You were cleared of any suspicion a while ago, but I actually came here to talk to you about the woman who helped you that night." She removed a small notebook from her interior blazer pocket, opening it up to a page, "A Victoria Bancroft?" She looked up at me and caught the way my jaw clenched at the sound of Victoria's name, "Do you happen to know her or maybe had any contact with her in the last year? I’m trying to find her and question her about that night. Some new evidence has popped up on this now cold homicide case of the men who attacked you."

I heard Stacy whisper, "What the fuck?" She then looked at me, "I can call Nick and Jay up here, they'll remove this cold fish bitch in a heartbeat."

Shaking my head, I moved away from Stacy's hand, "It's okay." I dug a twenty out of my back pocket and handed it to her, "Go get the coffee and meet me back here in ten minutes." I stared right in Detective Scarlett's eyes, "This will only take a minute." I motioned to the file room to the left of the detective, "We can talk in there, but again, I don't think I can help you with much it’s been a year since my attack."

Detective Scarlett nodded, closing the notebook and waiting to follow me to the room, "I appreciate whatever you can offer, Ms. Ivers." As we both entered the file room, I shut the door and closed my eyes. My gut starting to swirl at the idea of having to go over that horrible night was bothersome enough. Combine that with having to tread lightly with this detective and whatever questions she had about Victoria was going to be very difficult. Especially now that I had the start of a sinking feeling that there was something Victoria was either hiding from me, or avoiding telling me about her past.

Chapter 10

"Would you then say that you and Ms. Bancroft are friends?" Detective Scarlett was staring at me as she sat at the small desk we used to stack released patient files. I stood against the far wall, doing my best to be the farthest away I could from the mousy, yet intense looking woman.

I folded my arms across my chest, trying very hard not to lash out at this woman. "We are acquaintances." It was the half-truth. A couple of days ago Victoria and I were truly just acquaintances on the verge of being less than that. I waved my hand at the notebook she had been scribbling in, "Read over your notes. I met Ms. Bancroft shortly after my incident to say thank you for her help. We became friendly and like everything else in life, things faded away without constant attention. The only people I keep as friends are my coworkers and family. Even then, I have little time for them." I raised my eyes at the detective, "And I'm running out of time for these questions."

Detective Scarlett smirked, "I understand, I just need five more minutes." She made another few swirls and curls with her pen before she leaned back in the chair, "How did you find Ms. Bancroft?"

I rolled my eyes, "Through luck and a thing called the internet. You can find anyone on the internet if you look hard enough."

The detective nodded, "And how exactly did you go about it? I recall that you couldn't remember many details about the woman who brought you in to the hospital. How did you manage to get an image of Ms. Bancroft that allowed you to find her?" She tilted her head in a way that told me she was baiting me.

I pushed off the shelves, sighing hard. "I bribed the one security guard to get me a screen shot from when I was brought in. The rest Google did for me, but it was fruitless. It only led me to Ms. Bancroft's teaching position at the Naval Academy, which you already know. I don't even really know more than that about the woman." I moved closer to the detective, "Now, answer a few of my questions. Why are you bringing this case back into my life? I've moved on, I've healed and I am doing my damnedest to forget that night."

She closed her notebook slowly, standing up as she tucked it back into her blazer pocket, "The case went ice cold after we cleared you and found the one intern who was there with you on that platform. Both of you stating that the only other person on the metro station that night was a tall lean man sitting on a bench away from the show. The case was closed on your end, but the death of your attackers still hangs open."

She folded her arms over her chest, "But a year later, I finally get my warrant request approved for security footage of the metro station and of the hospital approved. Only to find out that all of that footage has been mysteriously destroyed and or recorded over. So, I went back over the evidence collection and happened to find a plethora of DNA evidence recovered from the bodies. A thousand plus people go through that station a day, so you can imagine how much DNA was soaked into the blood stains on the floor and on the bloody clothing of those men." She turned to head out the door, "But one hair strand stood out. It had been buried into a plastic bag with a handful of others. The evidence tech clearly didn’t care that night, but when I noticed that one stood out from the rest. A blonde one in a mix of brown and black hairs, I ran it."

Scarlett smiled tightly, "Led me to a Victoria Bancroft. A woman I am having a hell of a time tracking down. No address on the books over the last five years, just one that leads me back to the Naval Academy and then disappears into the red tape of government nonsense." She shrugged, "It got me thinking. Military woman, military training, an impressive history of service for her country. Things I found on the internet just by running her name." The detective gave me a raised eyebrow and a shitty look I wanted to slap off her face. "I thought maybe she could help me piece together the injuries those men received. Tell me if it was done by a trained hand or hands fueled by adrenaline."

The way she implicated Victoria, told me she knew that I knew more than I was telling her, but she wasn't going to push. A good detective always knew if they pushed too hard, too fast, they would lose their leads quickly and never get them back.

She pulled the door open, "I’m sorry to bother you, Ms. Ivers. I'm just trying to chase leads to close the only case I still have hanging over my head as unsolved." She took one step out of the door, before digging in her back pocket for a business card. "If you do happen to see Ms. Bancroft or know how to get a hold of her, tell her I would like to talk to her." She set the card on the edge of the desk and tapped on it, "Thank you for your time, Ms. Ivers."

I stared at the white square, my mind working a thousand different angles at once. There were too many strange things happening at once that gave my gut feeling everything it wanted to start forcing me to ask questions I wasn't sure I wanted the answers to.

Rushing to the edge of the desk, I snatched up the business card, ripped it into two and headed back out on to the floor. Dropping the pieces of card-stock into the biohazard bin right outside the door.

If Detective Scarlett wanted to find Victoria, she would have to do it without my help. Victoria had saved my life that night, and I wasn't going to let what we had become and what we had started over the last few days, be interrupted by an eager detective wanting to close up a case. A homicide case of four pieces of shit that got exactly what they deserved.

I made my way back to the nurse’s station, trying to picture Victoria being capable of creating the injuries I had seen in those crime scene pictures. Each time I tried to place her there, I couldn't imagine Victoria doing it. She was far too gentle, quiet, reserved and a bit too OCD to get blood on her hands let alone on her clothes. She almost had a panic attack the other night when I spilled melted butter on her faded, and torn Navy shirt I slept in. Rushing me to the kitchen to run warm water and soap on it before the grease set in.

I blew out an irritated laugh as I saw Stacy who was giving me the, "Tell me everything." eyes she always did. I shook my head, "It was nothing. The detective is trying to earn her stripes. I guess my attack last year is the one thing holding her back." Scooping up the coffee Stacy had sitting waiting for me, I took a large drink. I dug out my phone to text Victoria, but stopped when I saw I had a message from her.

-Leaving now. Flight leaves in an hour. I’ll call you when I land and will be thinking about you the whole flight. I hope you enjoy lunch and tell Stacy I said hi. Is it too early to say I miss you already?-

I sent a quick reply back.
-It's not too early, because I feel the same way. Hurry home.-

Dropping the phone in my pocket, I sighed heavily. I would tell Victoria about the detective's visit when she got home, then maybe lead into the other questions I had about her medals and her name at the bottom of the web page Stacy and I stumbled across. But, for right now, I saw no reason to start corrupting the happiness no matter how much my gut wanted me to.

"Hello nurse Ivers?" Stacy was waving her hand in front of my face, "You keep zoning out on me like that and I’ll leave you to change out the colostomy bag in room two instead of passing it off on to one of the medical students." She grinned as I groaned.

"Not room two. Old man Thatcher constantly forgets to open up the exhaust valve. I literally smelled like shit for a week after the last time I changed it. My shoes, my hair, everything." I picked up the last half charts we had, and followed Stacy to the end of the hall to start the next set of rounds.

At least for a few hours, my mind would be distracted by work and not meddling about in the idle thoughts of what I had seen on the internet and what Detective Scarlett had placed there. I knew in a few hours into this double shift and the rush hit, I would be so tired I would forget what my own face looked like. Let alone the crazy hypothesis of what happened to me, followed by a stupid game of guess who in regards to who Victoria Bancroft was.

In my eyes, all of it was pointless. It happened a year ago, a lot had changed in this last year and I didn't want to look back. I wanted to look forward.

Even if my gut told me not to.

~Twelve hours later – Outside of Dublin, Ireland~

"Sorry we have to do this in the car, professor, but the old lady is being paranoid and wants to make sure out conversations are kept between the two of us." Dani sighed lightly through the earbud. "You have the package with you?"