Her Daughter's Cry: An absolutely gripping crime thriller Read online

  Her Daughter's Cry

  An absolutely gripping crime thriller

  M.M. Chouinard

  Books by M.M. Chouinard

  DETECTIVE JO FOURNIER NOVELS

  1. The Dancing Girls

  2. Taken to the Grave

  3. Her Daughter’s Cry

  Available in Audio

  DETECTIVE JO FOURNIER NOVELS

  1. The Dancing Girls (Available in the UK and the US)

  2. Taken to the Grave (Available in the UK and the US)

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part II

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Part III

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Part IV

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  The Dancing Girls

  M.M. Chouinard’s Email Sign-Up

  Books by M.M. Chouinard

  A Letter from M.M. Chouinard

  Taken to the Grave

  Acknowledgements

  For Bobby

  Part I

  Saturday, April 6th – Tuesday, April 16th

  Chapter One

  The woman stumbled through the woods, face burned from the sun, feet aching with fatigue. She forced herself to keep moving forward as she fought to keep sight of the paved road, but after hours with no sunglasses, she could barely manage hurried glimpses through narrowed eyes. The trees in front of her blended into a wavering green-brown image. She coughed, and her throat seized. How long had it been since she’d veered from the river to follow the road? Two hours? Three? If she didn’t get water again soon, she’d pass out.

  Something brown and white danced back and forth in front of her.

  She shielded her eyes and forced them open against the pain. The lines took form—some sort of building? Adrenaline coursed through her and sped her steps. She rubbed her eyes and peered out again. Two buildings on either side of the road. Maybe more. Maybe a town?

  She hobbled as quickly as she could. When she couldn’t avoid it any longer, she stepped out onto the road. A red-lettered sign topped a quaint country storefront—Treasures From My Attic.

  She pushed through the door, the cheerful tinkling of the bell at instant odds with the darkness that engulfed her. Her panic spiked as she froze, struggling to see. But within seconds, the black turned to dark gray, then lighter gray. After hours in sunlight, her eyes just needed to adjust.

  Movement pulled her attention. The outline of a man rushed toward her, knocking over his chair in his hurry. She turned, ready to run.

  “Oh my God!” he cried. “What happened to you? Are you okay?”

  She could make out his face now, and his shocked expression. He was staring at her torso.

  Because her blue-and-white-checked shirt and jeans were caked with dirt and blood.

  “What happened?” he asked again.

  Her eyes raked his face. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter Two

  An hour and a half later, Detectives Josette Fournier and Bob Arnett pulled into the lot of Sacred Heart Hospital’s emergency room in Larkville. The cool air had a biting breeze that, despite a spate of mild weather and daffodils peeping up in front of the red-brick-and-glass hospital, reminded Jo spring hadn’t fully sprung. Even though she’d moved from New Orleans to Massachusetts when she was a young teen, she still fell prey to the first deceptive signs of warmth in a way no truly native New Englander ever would.

  As they crossed the tarmac toward the sliding doors, Jo’s gait stiffened.

  Arnett shook his head. “You and hospitals.”

  “What? I’m not bad.”

  “Like hell. You hide it well, but you go two shades paler and walk like you’re made out of sticks and rubber bands.”

  She scrunched up her face and pulled her head back. “What does that even mean?”

  He laughed and gestured up and down her frame. “You know you do. Look at yourself.”

  He was right. Ever since she’d had to accompany her father through his second bout of chemotherapy, hospitals had become synonymous with fear and desperation for her. She took a deep breath and tried to shake off the memories.

  But he’d glimpsed her face. “How’s your father doing?”

  “Better. They think they’ve eradicated it, so he’s in remission.”

  “You don’t sound happy about it.”

  “Of course I’m happy about it. I just wish he’d let them remove his prostate.”

  “Ah, well. Anytime you’re talking about surgery in that particular location, the subject gets a little sensitive.”

  She shook her head, and strode past the rows of yellow plastic chairs to the annoyed blonde triage nurse behind the counter. “I’m Detective Josette Fournier from Oakhurst County SPDU, and this is Detective Bob Arnett. You have a Jane Doe we need to see?”

  The nurse’s annoyance deepened. “One minute.”

  She slid the frosted glass window back into place, and disappeared for several minutes. Without warning, the door next to the window buzzed like a giant angry mecha-wasp. Arnett pulled the handle and they stepped through.

  The nurse pointed back and to the right. “Room three. The officers said you’d need to talk to her privately. Lucky for you we’re slow today so we had a room to spare.”

  Jo nodded her thanks. “We appreciate it. We’ll be as fast as possible.”

  The nurse gave one short nod, expression slightly mollified.

  Jo tried to ignore the antiseptic smell as they followed the beige-and-white hall to the target room. They opened the door and waved out the two uniformed officers, a medium-height brunette in her early thirties, and a tall man with a spray of salt at his temples and just the hint of a starter paunch. Jo glanced at Arnett and hid her smile—in ten years the pair would be Fournier-and-Arnett body doubles. Over the twenty-odd years of their partnership, Arnett’s hair had flipped to more gray than black, and he’d put on about thirty pounds when he quit smoking, although he’d lost ten of that when his marriage nearly ended. While Jo’s stylist kept her own gray permanently covered, she surely had other signs of her own transformation—a reality she quickly blocked herself from dwelling on by leading the introductions.

  “So what exactly happened?” she asked when she finished.

  The brunette officer, whose badge read Gonsalves, answered. “Woman walked into an antique store over in Taltingham, clothes covered in blood, with leaves and sticks in her hair, scrapes and bruises and sunburn, with no idea who she is. She nearly gave the guy who owns the shop a heart attack. He called the paramedics and they examined her and brought her here.”

  “No ID on her?” Arnett asked.

  “Nope. No wallet, no phone, nothing. Just the clothes on her back, and barely the shoes on her feet. They’re some sort of slippers, not real shoes, and they’re so shredded they’re nearly falling off. Looks like she walked a fair distance before stumbling into that shop.”

  “You said they found her in Taltingham?” Jo asked. “Why didn’t they take her to Suffolk General?”

  “There was a five-car pile-up right before the call, so they had their hands full. Since her life wasn’t in immediate danger, they brought her to the next closest hospital. Since nobody in Taltingham knew who she was anyway, now she’s our problem.”

&nb
sp; A doctor appeared around the corner and hurried over to them, several strands of auburn hair trailing her severe bun. She addressed Arnett. “I’m Doctor Brodie. The nurse told me you’d arrived.”

  Jo answered her, and introduced them. “Can you update us on our Jane Doe?”

  Doctor Brodie glanced at her, then physically turned toward Arnett. “She has a concussion, but no laceration, so it can’t be responsible for all the blood on her. No other significant injuries.”

  Jo sighed internally. She’d met far too many women like this before. Successful, professional women, who, whether consciously or not, assumed Arnett was the one in charge. It was bad enough when men treated her that way, but when women did it, especially women who’d certainly battled far too much of their own gender discrimination, it just plain pissed her off. “Did you do a rape kit?”

  “There was no reason to.” The doctor turned a withering glare on her.

  Jo kept her face neutral. “Of course there’s reason to. She wasn’t able to tell you what happened, which means she doesn’t know, and you don’t know. We need to recover any potential evidence as soon as possible.”

  The doctor’s cheeks tinged slightly red. “We’ll do it now.”

  “Swab inside and out, trim the fingernails, all of it,” Jo said.

  The glare turned to daggers. “I know how to collect a rape kit.”

  “That’ll help. Blood samples?” Jo said.

  The doctor’s sharp intake of breath was satisfying, as was Gonsalves’ muffled laugh. Arnett shot her a questioning glance, which she ignored. Yes, she was being bitchy, and no, it wasn’t like her. Especially on the job.

  “Already sent off for bloodwork,” Doctor Brodie said.

  “And the extras? For our lab?”

  The doctor’s tinge turned to a full flush—she’d been caught in a second mistake. Would she own up to it, or try to BS her way through?

  “No need. We’re doing a full screen on her,” she said.

  Jo held her eyes. “Right. Except the woman is covered in blood that Officer Gonsalves assures me you said couldn’t have come from her wounds. So my lab will need to compare the blood on her clothes against the blood in her veins.”

  “I can do a typing right here.”

  Jo had reached her limit—the doctor’s ego was so big she was doubling down on her bullshit, even if it meant playing intentionally ignorant. “We both know that tells us next to nothing. Even if the blood types match up, we won’t be able to say for certain the blood is hers. And since we have no way of identifying her, we’ll need to submit her DNA into the system to see if she matches any missing cases.”

  “I’m not a mind reader, Detective. I’ll have the nurse take another sample as soon as possible.”

  Arnett shifted, eyebrows up. Jo stopped herself from asking the doctor if this was her first day in the ER, and chastised herself for even having the thought. What on God’s green earth was wrong with her today?

  She took a breath and forced herself to smile. She’d made her point, over-made it in fact, and she needed as much information as she could get. “Thank you. Can you tell what caused the injury?”

  Relieved to be on solid ground again, the doctor’s flush abated. “My guess is she was in a car accident while not wearing a seat belt, and was thrown from the vehicle. Which is why a rape kit really is a waste of time and money.”

  Jo fought to stay civil. “We’ll search for any crashes that match up. This type of memory loss, is that common with her type of head injury?”

  “It happens. I’ve called in a neurology consult, he should be here shortly. He’ll be able to tell you more once he examines her.”

  “Great, thank you.” Jo pointedly turned her side to Brodie, and spoke to Gonsalves. “Can you make sure all the evidence makes it back to Marzillo at SPDU headquarters?”

  Gonsalves smiled. “Sure thing.”

  Arnett grabbed the doorknob. “Ready to go talk to her?”

  Jo nodded and he opened the door, then waved her through.

  Chapter Three

  The woman’s head shot up as they stepped through the door. She was small, probably no more than five foot five, and the hospital gown made her look smaller. She wore no jewelry other than two rings, a simple gold wedding band, and a faceted figure-eight turquoise ring on her right hand. The pale, sunburned skin dramatized her dark brown hair and highlighted the beginning web of middle-aged crow’s feet around her eyes. Confusion and fear filled her wide brown eyes, reminding Jo of a trapped fox.

  Jo pulled a plastic chair next to the bed. By unspoken agreement, Arnett followed suit, but stayed a foot farther back. “You’ve had quite a day,” Jo said.

  “I’m sorry if we know each other, I’m having problems remembering.” Her eyes flicked between them, and to the door behind them.

  “No, don’t worry.” She introduced herself and Arnett. “We’re here to help figure out what happened to you. The doctor says you don’t even remember who you are?”

  Tears filled her eyes. “No.”

  Jo leaned in and slowed the pace of her voice. “Don’t worry, we’re going to get this all figured out as soon as possible. In the meantime, what would you like us to call you?”

  A cloud passed over her face, deepening the anxiety there. “They’ve been calling me Jane Doe. They use that for dead bodies, don’t they?”

  “Yes, exactly. It’s a horrible name for someone who’s alive and going to be well soon. So what would you like to be called until you remember your real name?”

  “One of the nurses’ names is Zoë, that’s really pretty. Can we use that?” She searched Jo’s face.

  “Zoë it is,” Jo said. “Now I’d like you to think back as best you can. What’s the first thing you remember?”

  The door to the room swung open, and a tall, black-haired, brown-eyed doctor strode in. His eyes swung to each of them, then settled on Zoë with an accompanying thousand-watt smile. “You must be my new patient. I’m Doctor Soltero, and I’m a neurologist. I hear tell you have a big lump on your head and you’re not remembering much?”

  Zoë sat up, cheeks flushed slightly, and absentmindedly ran her fingers over her hair. Jo hid a smile. She couldn’t blame the woman. Dr. Soltero’s square-jawed good looks must have charmed more than a few patients in their time, even those in far worse shape.

  “Yes, that’s right.” Zoë wrung the hands clasped in her lap.

  Dr. Soltero nodded. “And you are Detectives Fournier and Arnett?”

  “Our reputations precede us,” Jo said.

  “Yours does, anyway. Quite a bulldog, I hear.” He raised one eyebrow at Jo, a smile playing at his lips.

  She refused to be embarrassed. “We just decided Zoë would be an excellent temporary name, and were asking Zoë if she can remember anything about how she got here.”

  “In that case, hello, Zoë.” He stepped around the bed and examined her as he asked questions about how she felt, and checked the extent of her memory loss. “We find ourselves back at the detectives’ question. What’s the first thing you do remember?”