Elsie heard him coming down the hall. At the sound of his determined tread, the muscles of her shoulders relaxed.
Ashlock appeared in the doorway of Mandy’s hospital room. The light dust of fingerprint powder clung to his dark pants.
He inclined his head toward the hospital bed where Mandy lay, her eyes closed. “Did you talk to her?”
“No. Well, yeah. Just a little.” Elsie rose from the chair she’d occupied while waiting, a vinyl recliner in seafoam green. When she joined Ashlock at the side of the bed, she whispered, “She’s in bad shape, poor thing. How did the PD get called in?”
“There was a noise complaint. Someone staying in the next cabin at the Rancho called the front desk, said he couldn’t hear his TV show for all the shouting and screaming from the room next door. The desk clerk checked it out, got close enough to hear it, too. Shouted into the room, said to knock it off. By the time he decided to call in the PD, the officer found the girl alone in there.” Looking down at the girl’s still figure in the hospital bed, he shook his head, frowning.
“I didn’t try to take her statement. Thought I’d leave that to you.”
He nodded. Stepping over to the bedside, he cleared his throat. “Mandy?”
When she didn’t respond, he said her name again, in a firm voice. “Mandy.”
Elsie whispered, “She’s been sleeping since they brought her up here from the ER. I’ve been keeping watch, kind of. It’s been over an hour since they assigned her to this room.”
He held a nylon portfolio in his hand. Unzipping it, he turned a pad of paper to a fresh page.
“Mandy, I’m Detective Ashlock.”
Still no response. Elsie said, “Ash, I think she’s out.”
“Oh I think she’s coming around. Aren’t you, Mandy?”
Her eyes opened; only a slit of white showed in her blackened eye. But her uninjured eye looked Ashlock up and down.
“What do you want?”
Elsie winced before she could mask it. Clearly, Mandy wasn’t happy to see Ashlock. The interview was off to a rocky start.
Ashlock picked up the other seat provided in the room, a small metal chair. He placed it near the bed and sat.
“I need to ask you some questions, Mandy. I’m with the Barton Police Department, and I need to know how you ended up here.”
“Why?” Mandy’s voice was flat.
Ashlock regarded her with a direct look. “So I can find the person who did this to you.”
The girl laughed, a hollow sound that turned into a cough. She leaned over the side of the bed and retched. Elsie jumped forward to grab the plastic wastebasket in the corner, but Mandy waved her away.
“Leave me alone. I’m okay.”
Elsie retreated, back to the green vinyl recliner. She posed awkwardly on the edge of the seat cushion as Ashlock attempted to continue the interview.
“Your first name is Mandy. Short for Amanda?”
The good eye blinked. “Sure.”
The pen hovered over Ashlock’s notepad. “The hospital staff doesn’t have your last name. What is it, Mandy?”
“Candy.”
Elsie did a double take but Ashlock remained unruffled.
“How do you spell that?”
“How do you think?”
“Tell me, please.”
“C-A-N-D-Y.”
“And that’s your last name.”
“Yeah.” Her voice had a distinct edge. “It is.”
“Do you have any identification? Driver’s license, student ID? Credit card?”
“Uh-uh.” After a beat she added, “I got nothing.”
“Where do you live?”
“I move around.”
“Age?”
“Eighteen. I told the nurse before. I’m eighteen.”
Ashlock glanced over at Elsie; their eyes met. She gave him a bare shrug of her shoulders, and he raised a brow. He turned back to the battered girl. In a calm voice, he continued.
“What were you doing at the Rancho last night?”
There was a long pause. “I had a date.”
“Date with who?”
“I don’t know.” Mandy sighed, a weary sound. “Some guy.”
“When did you arrive? At the hotel?”
“After dark. Not sure of the time. It was late.”
“What did you do once you got there?”
“Sat in the room. Watched TV. Waited for the guy to show. That’s all.”
“How did you check into the hotel? If you don’t have a driver’s license?”
She looked away from Ashlock, toward the window behind Elsie’s head. It gave Elsie a chance to study her. The girl’s face was wary.
Mandy said, “I guess he checked in first.”
“Can you describe the man you had a date with?”
“Not really.”
The pen in Ashlock’s hand stopped moving. “Why not?”
“I just can’t. Are we about done? I’m tired.”
Mandy rolled onto her side in the hospital bed, her back to Ashlock. They sat in silence for a moment. Elsie could hear the ding of monitors in a nearby room, and the muted sound of the hospital staff talking at the nurse’s station.
Elsie felt the tension mount. Mandy’s expression was closed, her jaw locked. Elsie edged toward her, sliding to the end of the vinyl seat. “Mandy?”
Ashlock said, “Pardon me, Elsie. Mandy, did he have dark hair?”
An angry whisper from the bed: “I. Don’t. Know.”
“Any distinguishing characteristics?”
She didn’t answer. Ashlock continued, unruffled. “Like a tattoo. A tattoo on his neck.”
Mandy’s good eye opened wide, and she sat up in bed, facing Ashlock. “What did you say?”
He reached into the portfolio and pulled out a document. He handed it to Mandy: a photocopy of a driver’s license. Elsie craned forward to see what it depicted.
The photocopy was fuzzy, so dark it was nearly indecipherable. She surmised the Rancho’s copier was probably on its last legs, like everything else on the property. The license photo showed an unsmiling man with dark hair, slicked back from his face. It appeared that his neck bore a tattoo; but Elsie couldn’t make it out, any more than she could distinguish the features of his face. The quality of the photocopied picture was too poor.
But a tattoo on a man’s neck: that wasn’t something Elsie saw every day. While tats were growing more common, even in small-town Missouri, they generally appeared on arms and legs.
The last neck tattoo she’d seen was on the modeling page she had found on Breeon’s office computer. But it had to be a coincidence. What were the odds of it being the same guy?
Ashlock said, “The witness at the Rancho Motel told me that this man checked into the room we found you in. His name is Tony. Tony Fontaine. Do you know Tony Fontaine?”
Mandy pushed the photocopy away from her, toward the edge of the bed. Shaking her head, she said, “No.”
In a gentle voice, Ashlock persisted. “Is Tony the guy you had a date with?”
“No.” She looked up and met Ashlock’s eye. “He’s not.”
“Then how’d you end up in Tony’s hotel room?”
Mandy lay back on the pillow and pulled the sheet up to her chin. Her breath was rapid; her chest heaved under the sheet.
“Did Tony hit you last night, Mandy? Did he beat you up?”
Leaning forward, Elsie silently urged the girl: tell us. Give us the information so we can go after him.
But Mandy pulled the sheet over her head.
“Go away.”