Page 43 of Maverick Detective Dad
Again, that was a huge understatement. Behind him, Noah could hear Everly’s breath coming out in quick gusts, and he hoped she wasn’t on the verge of a panic attack.
“Who are you?” Noah came out and asked.
The woman sighed. “You know who I am. Helen Fleming, but I don’t use that name anymore. These days, I’m Helen Markham, and I live at 471 Pine Lane in Dallas. I’m fifty-one now and work in Pretty Petals, a downtown flower shop.”
“Keep an eye on her,” Grayson instructed, and he took out his phone. Probably to do a background check on that name and find out if anything she was telling them was the truth.
“We should talk,” she said while Grayson got to work. “I need to explain some things to you.” She paused, swallowed hard. “I need to tell you how sorry I am for letting you believe I was dead.”
Everly’s breath didn’t gust. It broke, and the burst of air that left her mouth wasn’t from humor. No. The reality of this was starting to sink in for her. For Noah, too. If this woman was truly Helen Fleming, then she’d let them live through hell for the past fourteen years.
“Is there some place we can sit down and talk?” the woman asked.
“Right here works,” Noah said, and he didn’t bother to tone down the snarl in his voice.
Even though this wasn’t an ideal location with the ER waiting room and doors to the parking lot just a few yards away, there was the possibility that anyone could come walking up at any moment. Still, he had no intentions of letting their visitor into the exam room where she’d be right next to Everly.
The woman sighed again and nodded as if that was the exact answer she’d expected. “I don’t know how much you know about what was going on with the night of the car crash,” she said.
“I know everything,” Everly snapped. The anger was now in her voice, too. “I remember everything. I’ve lived with this nightmare for nearly half of my life.”
Another nod, and the woman glanced up at the ceiling as if hoping for divine help before her gaze slowly lowered back to Everly. “If I’d stayed with my husband, he would have killed me. I say that with absolute certainty. He’d already beaten me badly enough to put me in the hospital twice. And that night he told me I was going to die, that he would bash in my head.”
Noah recalled reading Helen’s statement, then those of the neighbors who’d verified the abuse. He was sure help had been offered to her when she’d landed in the hospital those two times, but she hadn’t taken it. She’d gone back to her abusive husband. He knew that was often the case with battered spouses, and it ate away at him. However, at the moment the fact of what she’d done to escape ate at him even more.
“I was trying to get away from my husband,” she went on. “I was hurt, terrified and desperate. But I didn’t plan on the car crash,” she quickly added.
“What did you plan on?” Everly demanded.
The shock was wearing off, and the anger was starting to take over. Noah got that. He was riled to the bone, but he stopped Everly from moving past him so she could go closer to confront the woman.
“Helen Markham didn’t exist until fourteen years ago,” Grayson relayed to them.
She made a sound of agreement. “I had help getting away from Isaac and starting a new life.”
“I saw your body,” Everly argued. “Your blood was on the road.”
“Yes.” And that was all the woman said for several long moments. She seemed snared in those same horrible memories.
Maybe she was.
But Noah was certain her memories couldn’t have reached the level of horror that Everly’s and his had.
“The blood was real. I was hurt in the crash, but obviously my injuries weren’t fatal. My plan was to escape that night,” she went on. “I’d connected with a group who assisted people like me, and I was driving to meet one of them at a convenience store just off the interstate. I was on the phone with that person when the car crash happened, and she told me to pretend to be unconscious.”
The pretense had worked, but obviously that wouldn’t have been enough to pronounce her dead.
“According to the records from the ER, you died shortly after arriving at the hospital,” Noah pointed out.
She confirmed that with a nod. “The group I was working with arranged for a doctor to tell everyone that I hadn’t survived.”
Noah thought back to that time, to the doctor who would have done that. There’d been a lot of chaos, especially since Everly and he had been brought in for treatment, too. He recalled a young female doctor who’d been in Silver Creek on some kind of service program that provided specialists to small towns.
“Dr. Jones,” Noah threw out there.
“Smith,” the woman corrected. “She pronounced me dead, did the paperwork and then she and others in the group set me up with my new life in Dallas. And, no, I can’t give you the actual names of Dr. Smith or those who helped me because I never knew who they were.”
Noah knew there were groups out there like those. An underground network to get women and families out of violent situations, and he’d heard there were members who were doctors and such. However, he’d never heard of one of them faking a death to cover the victim’s tracks.
