Chapter 4
The National Parks SBI department had a good working relationship with the tribal police department.
Chay had been in touch with lead investigator Jacob Colton since the beginning.
The information he’d gotten from Ava meant there it was time to check in again.
Since he was already in Dark Canyon, he reached out to Jacob and asked to stop by.
Jacob was broad shouldered and over six feet tall. He had blue eyes and medium brown hair and his face was similar to Ava’s. The special agent was in the office, working more leads in the investigation with his team. Chay hadn’t met many of them in person.
“Chay Benally, good to see you. I see my aunt has been busy,” Jacob said with a laugh. Chay had caught him up on what he’d heard via Ava.
“Yeah. Thought I’d stop by and get the official rundown,” Chay said, taking a cup of coffee from Jacob.
“Sure, have a seat. It’s hard to get much out of Fern. We do know that she was taken in Oso by two men in a dark van, but she has been hazy on her descriptions. I’m hoping to get in to speak with her again, but she’ll only talk to me if Ava or Ryan is with her.”
“Fair enough. She’s scared and only trusts the two of them. He rescued her and Ava’s the only one she can talk to,” Chay said.
He remembered how he’d been after his mom had left and he had to go to school.
Seemed like he hadn’t spoken to anyone for the first three months unless his grandmother was in the room.
The fear that had silenced him had been strong.
There was nothing stronger than the fear of being abandoned.
Something he knew. Feeling like you had no one in the world to rely on was harrowing.
“Yeah, I get it. We were curious if Gracie was Fern’s, but she ruled that out. The DNA brought back a match for Annie Ross…she was in the system for a few arrests.”
“Was she from Oso?” Chay asked.
“No. She was from Wilson. She shared an apartment with Lori Stevens and Camille Lancaster. Camille disappeared and the other women filed a missing-persons report, but nothing came of it until Annie started digging around.
“She learned that Camille was taken by two men in a dark van. I read the report. I have a call into the Wilson Police Department, but haven’t heard back from them.”
“That doesn’t really mean much, does it?” Chay asked. It was hard to link the two women unless they had a match on the van.
“Well, I did a little more digging, and both Camille Lancaster and Fern Hensley have no family. They were in the foster care system and aged out. I just think…it’s a connection,” Jacob said.
“Interesting,” Chay agreed. He pulled out his notepad and jotted down the information.
The foster care system was overworked, he knew that.
It was easy to think that everyone was an adult at eighteen years of age, but those kids had no backup network.
For himself he had his grandmother. He’d left home, sure, and ended up in Salt Lake, but she talked to him once a week.
“I’ll look further into the women and see if I can find out more,” Chay said.
They spoke a little more about the investigation before Chay left the station.
With Ava pushing him hard to think of adopting Gracie, he was reluctant to try to speak to Fern via Ava again, but he’d never been a man to back down.
He knew in his heart that he didn’t have it in him to be a father. Little Gracie deserved two reliable parents. He’d done okay with his grandmother, but as a kid he’d been very aware that it was just the two of them. He had friends and cousins, but it wasn’t the same as having two parents.
Pulling into the hospital parking lot, he texted Ava to see if she’d come with him to talk to Fern.
Ava: I’m on my way to see her for our session. I’ll ask her if she’ll speak to you after. It would be an hour. Okay?
Chay: Sure. I’ll grab a coffee and wait.
Ava sent back a thumbs-up.
He thought about how sassy she’d been pushing him to adopt Gracie. Her passion was something he admired about her. Instead of going into the hospital he called his grandmother.
“Grandson.”
He smiled. She always called him that when she was with her friends and couldn’t really talk.
“Grandmother. You going to be free later?”
“Sure am. Want to come by for dinner?”
“Yes.”
“See you then,” she said, hanging up the phone.
Sitting in his truck, the afternoon sunlight was brighter in winter than summer. He watched the people coming and going. Some of them easier to read than others. They all had their stories and worries. Things that drove them to be here for whomever they were visiting.
He added his. Fern had given her hazy memories, but now that he had learned of the connection he wanted to see if she had more details on the dark van.
The men…he felt pushing her for a more concise description wasn’t going to work.
He could only guess, but he thought those men would be a source of fear for her.
His phone pinged, and he looked down to see that Fern had agreed to talk to him after her session as long as Ava was in the room. He sent back a thumbs-up and then went into the hospital to the cafeteria and got some lunch.
Using his smartphone he remotely logged into the database that held all missing persons. Camille had been twenty-two and Fern was twenty-five. Using their age range, he narrowed down the list. It was larger than he wished it was.
There was more than a handful of Navajo women on there as well. He downloaded the list to his desktop remotely. He would go through it when he got back to his office. There had to be more of a connection than just age. His neck tingled and he looked around the cafeteria.
Since it was after lunch, it wasn’t that busy. He didn’t notice anyone looking at him. Shrugging, he finished his lunch and went to meet Ava and Fern.
Ava was trying cognitive behavioral therapy today with Fern. It was clear to her that Fern wasn’t ready to delve into the past, but she’d expressed the fact that she’d been keeping her mind foggy so she wouldn’t have to.
She was on pretty intense pain meds, which helped her to disassociate.
Once Fern had come out of the coma, she had refused to take any further pain meds.
She’d been unconscious when Ryan found her, possibly from smoke inhalation.
Ava understood that Fern was a recovering alcoholic and feared being drugged again.
But Ava knew that wouldn’t last for long.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Truth?”
“Always.”
“Better. My leg will heal. Not sure it will ever be one hundred percent. I was worried about having to do a lot of physical therapy and maybe never walking properly again,” Fern said.
“That would mean a big lifestyle change, wouldn’t it?” Ava asked her.
Fern shrugged.
“Do you miss your daily life?” Ava asked.
Fern looked down at her bed and started to make little triangles out of the blanket, pulling it up until she had a neat row of them. The fidgeting was concise and the other woman was using the pattern to soothe herself.
“So, no.” Ava said.
“I mean, I don’t know really. It was just the same thing day in and day out…then everything changed and now I feel… I’m back here and everyone keeps telling me I’m safe. But I don’t feel it. I’m a solitary woman.
“Then I had a new routine, wake up, have those thugs who kidnapped me would come in and try to feed me and drug me again. That was the cycle of my life. I was just dazed and confused and the days blended together. When I woke up and they were there…I was scared, Ava. Why wouldn’t I be scared?
They were my captors and I hated them. Even if I still can’t remember their faces. ”
Ava wanted to hug the other woman, but as a professional she couldn’t.
“Because they were keeping you alive. You knew that for you to survive, they had to come and feed you. You were bound and left alone in a dangerous situation. Your fear was perfectly natural. It’s okay that you hoped they’d come back. ”
Fern chewed her lower lip and looked away. “I didn’t exactly want that, either.”
“Makes sense. You wanted to be back home.”
“I did. But now that I’m here…I feel odd. Like I’ve changed but the rest of the world hasn’t. I don’t want to tell anyone because then…well, you’re nice and everything, but I really don’t want to have to do this for the rest of my life.”
Ava smiled gently at the younger woman. “I get that. We all have trauma, and our brains and body deal with it in different ways. Right now, your strongest routine and ‘life’ memory is the cabin. Given how traumatic your rescue was, that is going to take time to fade in your mind.”
Fern nodded. “So what do I do?”
Ava wasn’t sure what would work for Fern; they’d only had a handful of sessions, so it was going to take time to get to know her better. Plus she was still recovering from everything that happened to her.
“Tell me about your day here,” Ava invited. Wanting the other woman to have something to focus on.
“Well, Nurse Cassidy comes in really early,” Fern said.
“What does she look like and do when she comes in?” Ava asked, leading her through her day.
“She has blue eyes and reddish-blond hair. It’s really pretty. She doesn’t wear makeup or anything, but I can tell she takes time with her hair. There is always the smell of strawberries around her, and she smiles when she says good morning. She takes my vitals and then checks my IV.”
“Does she chat with you?”
“Yes. Tells me how good I’m doing. Asks what I had for dinner the night before and how Andy treated me overnight.”
“Who’s Andy?”
“He’s my night nurse. He’s totally by the book. He’s really quiet at night when he comes in. I freaked out the first night.”
“That’s to be expected. You woke up and there was a stranger in your room,” Ava reassured her.
“Andy felt really bad and started to bring one of the junior nurses with him. She came in first, checked on me. It was nice. I mean, he didn’t have to do that.”
“But he did,” Fern said.