Collision Course: A Romantic Thriller Read online

  Ruben pursed his lips and, in his best nasally Boston accent, imitated their boss: “Gentlemen, excuse my French, but it’s time to shit or get off the pot.”

  Albuquerque Metro Police Detectives Leroy Salazar and Ricky Chisolm wanted the neurologist to give them a little more to go on, not this gobbledygook about firing neurons and repressed fears.

  Could the girl have killed somebody—yes or no? That’s all they cared about.

  Dr. Margaret Fuentes continued her lecture from a chair in the waiting room. “Based on the brain swelling and her extreme anxiety and fear, I’m inclined to think her confusion is legitimate.”

  Salazar chewed the life out of his gum.

  “These things are temporary,” the doctor added. “And the bizarre crime she described is probably nothing more than the story line of a recent TV crime show.”

  Ricky Chisolm was confused. “You’re saying she could remember a Law & Order rerun but not her own name?”

  “That’s exactly right.” The doctor looked down to read her vibrating beeper and sighed impatiently. “Anyway, the MRI shows brain changes from the concussion. See, the brain works like a computer. Neurons are either on or off. Information is transferred by a continuous firing of these neurons, and when this cycle gets interrupted by injury, memory itself can be distorted.”

  She paused to gauge the level of understanding on the detectives’ faces.

  “Memory is a very mysterious thing, right? No one quite understands how what we see, taste, smell, hear or touch becomes a memory or how that memory is stored or recalled.”

  “So everything’s jumbled between her ears?” Salazar asked.

  “Well, it’s fairly common for patients with brain trauma to have some disruption in their ability to access and interpret memories. It can manifest across the spectrum, from slight to severe, but it almost always comes back in time.”

  “How much time?” Chisolm asked impatiently.

  “Days. A week at the most,” Dr. Fuentes said. “I’ve already done a Social Services referral, and they’ll work with her on that.”

  Salazar snapped his gum. Chisolm grunted.

  “We can only keep her until she’s medically stable, another couple days at most,” the doctor said. “She’s indigent at this point, so Social Services will place her in a shelter for the time being.”

  “I’d like to place her in the lockup,” Chisolm said.

  The doctor laughed. “I hardly think you have enough evidence for that, detective.” Her beeper went off again.

  Chisolm frowned. “Look, Doc. We get crazies every day that confess to everything from cloud seeding to assassinating Abe Lincoln. But this girl is different—we’ve got a feeling she’s hiding something.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  The detectives shared a quick glance. “Well, she paid cash

  for a top-line motorcycle and used a false ID to get a temporary tag. Then she immediately wrecked the bike but medics found no ID on her. And, oh, she had wads of five-hundred-dollar bills crammed in her bra and when she woke up she was hysterical about murdering someone but—whoops!—she couldn’t remember who she was or where she came from. So you can see how we might be a bit suspicious.”

  The doctor stood up from the chair and the detectives followed her lead. “By all means, go look for a crime that fits her story. But what I’m saying is that her version of reality, however gory its details, may not be the whole truth. I suggest you give the situation time to sort itself out.”

  The detectives gave the doctor their cards and thanked her for her time. Then Chisolm turned to his partner.

  “So, Leroy… seen any shows where a chick with a sword does a slice-n-dice on somebody’s throat?

  Salazar shrugged and popped his gum. “Not lately. But then again, I only watch Wheel of Fortune.”

  She stared as a thin stream of red liquid ran down her body and swirled into the shower stall drain. She thought at first it was blood. More blood? But soon realized it was coming from her hair.

  Why in the world did she dye her hair?

  She tried her best to scrub her scalp one-handed. The cast on her right arm was wrapped to the elbow in plastic and the nurse had told her not to get it wet.

  Had she ever worn a cast before?

  She sat upon a shower stool and let the warm spray beat down upon her shoulders and back. She stared through a veil of water and felt the nothingness, felt the raw fear, and wondered for the hundredth time how she could have killed someone.

  “Are you all right, honey?”

  The nurse outside the bathroom door was very kind, but the young woman just wanted to be alone for a few minutes.

  “Fine. Thank you,” she managed in a thin voice.

  “Tell me when you’re ready to come out and I’ll help you. I’m waiting right here, all right?” The nurse walked away.

  She grabbed a handful of clean, wet hair and stared at it. It was the color of sand. She examined her left hand and arm. They were long and lean. She pressed a palm to her round breasts and flat stomach and then along her legs and feet.

  The defined muscles of the thighs and calves didn’t surprise her, really, just intrigued her. She stretched the left leg out in front of her and poked at the quadriceps muscle just above the knee. Quadriceps–she knew the word for that. Why? How could she know that and not her own name?

  She stared at her feet and toes and had the oddest sense that they didn’t look right to her. Something was missing. What?

  If this was her body, then why didn’t she know it? Oh God, why didn’t she know herself?

  The nurse heard the sobs begin again and entered the bathroom, pulling the shower curtain aside and turning off the water. She wrapped a towel around the young woman’s shoulders and helped her to her feet.

  The nurse towel-dried her hair and body and pulled away the wet plastic from the cast. She eased her into a hospital gown and walked her to the mirror to comb out her hair.

  The young woman stared blankly into the glass and watched the nurse tug at the long snarls. In the florescent light she studied the reflection. There was a straight nose and light-blue eyes that slanted at the rise of the cheeks. The skin looked ghostly pale and the mouth maybe a little too wide. Out of curiosity, she opened the lips and looked at the teeth. She stuck out the tongue.

  “Honey, your hair is going to dry into a beautiful blond color! Why did you put all that temporary red stuff on it?” The nurse circled around to comb out the other side.

  Her hair grew out from the crown to just past her shoulders, thick and straight. She stood with her shoulders back and noticed how small she seemed in the baggy hospital gown.

  The tears started again. They’d been pouring down her cheeks all day, coming from the black place inside her full of questions and dread.

  The nurse patted her on the shoulder and smiled encouragingly. “Your only job is to rest and heal. We’ll get this all sorted out in a couple more days, you’ll see.”

  She nodded in the mirror.

  “Do you know how you wear your hair? Do you part it on the side or down the middle?” The nurse waited for an answer that didn’t come.

  “Then I’ll just leave it parted a little to the side, okay? We’ll change it later if you want.”

  The woman watched the nurse arrange her hair, revealing a sharp little widow’s peak just off center at the hairline. She had a widow’s peak?

  She felt herself being led into her room.

  “Oh! You scared me!” The nurse pressed a hand to her heart as Ruben spun around from his post at the window.

  When he turned, the young woman watched his face come into view. He had such a bright smile. He was holding a bouquet of flowers.

  “Hi. I’m Ruben Jaramillo.”

  Her eyes widened and she continued to stare at him. The voice seemed familiar to her somehow. Was she supposed to remember this man? Was this man someone she knew well? Someone she was supposed to love?

  Her body b
egan to shake. The nurse guided her to the bed and tucked her under the covers.

  “Ruby. You get ten minutes, and only because you’re my cousin’s kid. I told the detectives I’d keep an eye on her, so I’m going out on a limb here, all right?”

  “Sure. Thanks.” Ruben hadn’t moved from the window. He held the flowers stiffly in front of him.

  The nurse tapped her lightly on the shoulder. “I’m right outside if you need me, honey.” On her way out the door, she flashed ten fingers in the air as a reminder to Ruben. He nodded.

  They stared at each other. The woman’s eyes were as light as Ruben’s were dark. She frowned and he smiled.

  “Am I supposed to know you?” she asked. It was an accusation.

  Ruben couldn’t get over the hair. Without all that red stuff she looked normal, not that women this beautiful were normal. Without the black leather, she looked impossibly soft. He blinked, trying to remember what she’d just asked him.

  “Know me? Uh, not really.” He put one foot in front of the other and walked toward her bed.

  “These are for you,” he said, handing her the flowers. “I’m the guy you crashed into.” Then he handed her his business card. “My name is Ruben Jaramillo.”

  “You already told me that.” She glanced down at the arrangement of white daisies, pink mums and delicate baby’s breath and smiled a little. Then she looked at the business card.

  “A reporter?” Her eyes grew huge with fear.

  “Whoa!” Ruben sat down in the chair at the bedside. “Wait. I’m not here for a story, really. I just wanted you to know who I am, that’s all, and that you can ask me for anything you might need.”

  She continued to stare at him, unsure and afraid.

  “I feel awful about what happened,” he added.

  She looked again at the card and shook her head. “Can you pronounce your last name again?”

  Ruben smiled gently, and the woman felt herself drawn to his handsome face. She had no reason to trust this man, so why did she smile in return?

  “Har-ah-mee-yo. Not so hard.”

  “Har-ah-mee-yo.”

  “You got it.”

  As she turned to place the card and flowers on the bedside table, Ruben was struck by the grace of her movements. He thought of a young tree in the wind.

  She stared at him blankly.

  “So you’re not from New Mexico?”

  She blinked. “I’m not?”

  “You didn’t know how to pronounce my name, which is basically the Albuquerque version of ‘Smith.’” Ruben tried to keep his eyes on her cast instead of the pale beauty of her face. “Are you in any pain?”

  “A little.” She admired his dark eyes and his fine mouth.

  “My friends call me Ruby.”

  She held his gaze for a long moment before she let her head fall back against the pillow. Ruben’s breath caught. He saw vulnerability in her eyes and control in her movements. It was such an odd combination.

  “I don’t know what my friends call me,” she said, her eyes still locked with his. “I don’t even know if I have friends.”

  “I’m sure you do.” Ruben tried to place her accent – the touch of money and breeding, definitely, but where? The Midwest? Los Angeles? New York?

  “The police officers call me Jane Doe. Or just ‘Miss’.”

  All of a sudden it dawned on Ruben that he didn’t know what to do with his hands – because the truth was he wanted to touch her like he did yesterday, stroke the soft down on her forearm, the tapered, pale hand. What was wrong with him?

  “In a couple days you’ll remember your name, right?” he managed. “But in the meantime, what would you like everyone to call you?”

  She laughed at that, and the full, throaty sound surprised them both.

  “You want me to make up a name?” she asked.

  The laughter had instantly transformed her face from stark beauty to radiance, and Ruben momentarily forgot how to speak. “Uh, sure, why not? What would you like to be called? Miss Doe seems pretty lame.”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  She straightened up again, and Ruben watched the quick strength of her arm and the way the damp strands of hair swung fell past her shoulders.

  “And I don’t think I’m a Jane.”

  “Highly doubtful.” Ruben wondered how many minutes he had left with her, who she was, what she was doing here, and why the hell she was riding that motorcycle like an insane person.

  The woman’s eyes began to scan the hospital room.

  “Baxter-Travenol,” she mumbled, reading the label on an empty intravenous saline bag. “Baxter sounds like a dog’s name, so I’ll pass on that one.” Her gaze wandered over medical gadgets. “Abbott. Property of University of New Mexico Hospital. Dart. Toshiba.” Her eyes kept moving.

  “This is a very strange way to pick a name,” Ruben observed.

  She looked at him and frowned. “The whole situation is very strange.” Her eyes scanned the room again. “Zia Linen Service.”

  “How about just ‘Crash?’” Ruben suggested.

  “How about ‘Zia’?”

  Ruben scowled. “Zia?” His eyes went to the linen hamper that featured New Mexico’s omnipresent symbol of the sun. “Do you know what that is?”

  She nodded. “Yes. It’s a linen service.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and laughed a little. “The Zia is a traditional Pueblo Indian symbol and the official state insignia. It’s been commercialized, obviously.”

  She watched him while he talked and couldn’t take her eyes from his well-made mouth, his lips the color of rosewood.

  “What’s it mean?”

  “It represents friendship among New Mexico’s different cultures – the Indians, the Anglos and the Hispanics.”

  She nodded, obviously pleased.

  “You sure you want your name to be Zia?”

  “If Zia means friendship, why not?”

  “Why not?” he echoed. “Well then, it’s nice to meet you, Zia.” He held out his hand and she immediately slipped hers inside his grasp.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Har-a-mee-yo.” She allowed her hand to remain in his for an extra moment, alive in the warmth of his touch. For just an instant, she felt real.

  Ruben asked if he could visit again tomorrow, and his heart jumped when she smiled and said yes.

  Chapter 3

  Wednesday, March 15

  So what if he didn’t get home until eleven last night? The alarm mercilessly went off at three-thirty the next morning anyway.

  Ruben stumbled the ten steps to the tiny bathroom and reached in to start the shower. He knew the water would be good and hot in about five minutes—or not—depending on the mood of the water heater, the alignment of the planets, or the configuration of sunspots. His place had its moods. Most of them bad.

  He started the coffeepot and threw some more wood in the kitchen’s wood stove. The middle of the night in March was not a naturally warm and inviting time in north central New Mexico.

  Ruben picked up the portable phone and made the first call of the day.

  “Morning. What’s the word, Bob?”

  “Hey, Ruby. Always a pleasure.”

  He could hear the police dispatcher rifle through papers and click the keys on a computer terminal.

  “We had a fire in the thirty-two hundred block of Juan Tabo Boulevard. No fatalities. Elderly victim was admitted at University with smoke inhalation. Stove pipe malfunction.”

  “Okay. What else?” Ruben eyed his own ancient stove with apprehension, and followed the pipe up to where it disappeared into the low, unevenly timbered ceiling of this hundred-year-old adobe.

  “We had a one A.M. domestic with shots fired in Barelas, seven hundred block of Fourth Street Southwest. Narcotics case. Female with gunshot wound taken to University.”

  “Okay. Who was the officer on that?” Ruben poured himself a cup of coffee and splashed in a little milk before he took a sip.

&nbs
p; “Kimble.”

  “Good.” That would make life easy – he’d dated Officer Gayle Kimble a couple years back, and she always agreed to go down on record for him, among other things. He grinned to himself. “Anything else?”

  “Couple minor drug busts. Couple MVAs without serious injury. Break-ins.”

  “Nothing huge?”

  “Nothing huge.”

  “Talk to you tomorrow, big guy.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Ruben hung up the phone and retraced the ten steps from the kitchen to the bathroom. Reliably, his first human contact most days was Bob the dispatcher. His voice had been part of Ruben’s workday routine for six years, yet he didn’t know a thing about the man. He didn’t know his last name, where he lived, or what he looked like.

  It was one thing not to know other people, he thought, peeling off his sweatshirt and thermal underwear bottoms, but what would it feel like not to know yourself? What would it be like to not know your name or how you fit in the world? It must be awful for that woman.

  He took a big step up into the shower. The construction methods used in this house left much to be desired, and the raised bathtub was one of its structural oddities – something about making room for the plumbing underneath the tub, the previous owners said. What did he know about it? He just thanked God the water was hot today.

  Ruben’s one-bedroom home had many other peculiar features. In addition to no central heating, the house featured wildly mismatched windows, lopsided walls, sloping floors, and a leaking roof.

  But the price was right when he bought it four years ago. And the setting was priceless.

  Ruben’s little house sat toward the back of a small Corrales ranch owned by a local real estate agent. His half-acre lot featured a fenced-in side yard, a storage shed and a fabulous paved courtyard shaded by two huge pear trees, all walled off by an eight-foot high coyote-proof fence.

  In the daylight, he could look out from his kitchen or bedroom windows and admire the changing colors of the jagged Sandia Mountains to the east. The house was just a short distance from the walking trail along the arroyo and a fifteen-minute drive to downtown Albuquerque.