Jane Doe

Chapter 1

Something was wrong.

But what?

For a while, she just lay still and tried to figure out what.

Gradually, her senses filled in a picture of sorts, although an incomplete one. Her senses didn’t seem to be all working.

She lay on her stomach. She felt the ground beneath her chest and belly, and the dirt under her knees and thighs. She heard a rumbling noise, but couldn’t identify it because it was too faint and far away, coming across as not much more than a hum. She could smell the sweet, strong scent of flowers.

Dirt. Grass. Twigs.

She was somewhere outside.

But where?

She raised her head, tried to look around.

She couldn’t see anything.

Her eyes were closed, and something covered them. Something that prevented her from opening them.

Okay, she thought. What else is wrong?

Her lungs.

Her lungs were burning. She could barely breathe. She was in pain, quite a bit of pain, centered in her chest and spreading out from there to her belly and down her arms.

Ignoring the pain as much as she could, and further ignoring the burning in her lungs, she took a deep breath through her nose because she couldn’t seem to open her mouth.

That was something else wrong, too.

She couldn’t open her mouth. She was in pain. Breathing was difficult. Her arms were behind her back. She couldn’t seem to move them.

What’s happening to me? she thought.

Her hands were behind her, wrists touching. She could feel something around her wrists, tight, constricting.

Rope.

Her arms were bound, and she had – tape? yes, tape – covering her eyes and mouth.

Shit.

She was bound and gagged and blindfolded and, as far as she could tell, alone in the middle of nowhere.

She screamed at the realization, or rather, tried to. All she could manage was, Mmmmmf!

She let her scream trail off.

Fighting down a growing sense of panic, she tugged at the rope around her wrists, trying to pull her hands loose. Her breathing was rapid now, and shallow.

She had no idea how long she tugged at and struggled with her bonds, but finally she stopped, spent. The rope was as tight as ever.

Get a grip, she thought. You can’t panic. You’ve got to stay calm.

She took a couple of deep breaths, then brought her legs up to her chest. She arched her back, then tried to slip her hands under her butt.

Gasping with the effort, tugging and pulling at the rope around her wrists, she slowly, carefully, slid her bound hands past her feet.

Her hands were at least now in front of her, even if they were still bound.

She stood. She felt a little unsteady, but she managed to stay upright, although she swayed a little. She was trembling from the exertion. Her breathing was loud.

She reached up to her eyes. She probed with her fingers and felt something cold, rubbery and slightly bumpy covering them. Tracing the surface, she found the tape’s edge and slipped her fingers beneath, working with her fingernails until she threw it aside.

Then she did the same with the tape that covered her mouth. Inside her mouth was a piece of cloth. She had felt it without feeling it all along. She pushed it part of the way out of her mouth with her tongue, then gripped it with her fingers and pulled it the rest of the way out. She threw it onto the ground.

She cringed at a sudden vision. She was fighting, struggling, kicking with her legs, trying but unable to scream, feeling her lungs burning, feeling a point of pain – a blade, she knew on some instinctive level – sink into her chest. She could do absolutely nothing to stop it from happening. She couldn’t even see it happening. Her mind was growing numb. She was dying.

Then, suddenly, the vision, feeling, memory, flashback, whatever, was gone, leaving her shaking. It had seemed so vivid.

She took several more deep breaths, then looked down at her hands. Brown rope encircled both her wrists. She flexed her fingers. She watched them move, though she couldn’t feel as she did.

Her hands were covered in blood.

She was naked, and her chest and stomach were streaked with bright red blood.

She gasped at the sight. Oh, my God, she said.

She looked around and quickly established that she was alone here.

Here was a clearing in the middle of some woods. Trees, covered in thick green leaves, surrounded her on all sides. Hard dirt covered in twigs and leaves was underfoot.

The day was chilly, and the sun didn’t appear to be shining.

A ghostly gray mist shrouded the trees. It closed everything in, making the woods seem claustrophobic.

She looked around, trying to find anything that might tell her where she was. There was nothing except foliage.

She could still hear the rumbling sound. It stopped, started, stopped, started.

She listened to the sound for a while before figuring out what it was.

The sound of traffic.

Help wasn’t that far away.

The traffic sounds came from slightly to her left as she stood in the clearing. She turned, started walking in that direction.

She had no idea how far away the road was, but she knew that whether it was five hundred yards away or five hundred miles, it was her best hope for rescue. She walked carefully, stepping around fallen branches, testing any areas that didn’t look solid enough to support her weight before stepping on them. She wasn’t sure why she was doing this, except she was still rather rattled after waking up in these woods, bound, naked and bleeding.

The road, it turned out, wasn’t even a mile away, but the thickness of the woods and the fog, her nervousness, and even her injuries all combined to make her progress slow.

The forest terminated by five yards of gravel shoulder. The road itself was a two-lane blacktop with a white dividing line splitting it down the center.

To her right, as she stood on the shoulder, the road dropped gently, disappearing into the distance, swallowed up by the trees.

To her left, the road rose up a slight grade and then crested a hill.

She started walking, looking around as she went. She was crying from fear, pain, and loneliness. She hadn’t seen another person since she had woken up in the woods. For all she knew, she was the only person in the world.

The road was empty. The day was warmer now. She still couldn’t see the sun for the overcast skies. The asphalt under her bare feet was rough but warm.

She just wanted help, wanted to see a human face, wanted to talk to someone, wanted someone to tell her how she had got here, what had happened to her.

Even to tell her where here was.

She had no idea how long she walked before she heard the sound of an engine. She had reached the top of the hill. Up ahead, perhaps five hundred yards away, the road curved to the left and then disappeared. She stopped, listened. The car was coming toward her, from around the curve.

She stepped out into the road, waving her hands in the air. Hey, she called. Please help me.

She could see the car now. Only it wasn’t a car, but a pickup truck, old, battered. Once it might have been white, but it was covered in rust now.

The truck rolled to a stop in front of her and the side window rolled down.

The people in the pickup were an older couple. Both had white hair and the patient look of people who had fought to make a living from the stubborn soil all their lives. The woman sat in the passenger seat; the man drove.

Please help me, the girl said.

The woman’s eyes were wide with alarm. She and her husband examined the girl’s face, having already taken in her bound wrists and the blood that covered her.

Please help me, she said again. Her voice sounded unfamiliar. It was raspy, hoarse, as if coming from the end of a long tunnel. Or even like it belonged to someone else. I’m hurt. Oh, God, I think I’m hurt bad.

Shock, fear and stress caught up to her then. She was dimly aware that the woman was getting out of the truck. Her rather small world went black, and she pitched forward, into the woman’s arms.

Chapter 2

When she next woke up, she was in a clean white bed in a clean white room. She wasn’t awake for very long before a nurse came, then a doctor.1

Her next visitors were a man and a woman. The man was about six feet tall and about forty years old. The woman was about 5'6", and about thirty years old. She had brown hair that could be red in the right light. She had a lean, athletic body.

The man was dressed in a brown and khaki uniform with a black leather belt. The woman wore jeans and a light sweater. She didn’t have a jacket on. She had some sort of pistol in a shoulder holster under her left arm.

The woman picked up a chair that sat against the wall. She set it down next to the the bed, then sat down in it.

I spoke to the doctor, the woman said. He said you’ll be fine.

The girl nodded. He was here. He told me that.

I’m Sheriff’s Detective Susan Kimball. This is Deputy Sheriff Kenneth Johnson.

The girl watched as Detective Kimball pulled a notebook out of her purse, then dug out a pen and clicked it open. Now, Kimball said, I have to ask you some questions if you don’t mind. This may be difficult, but the more you tell us, the better our chances are of catching whoever did this to you.

The girl in the hospital bed nodded.

Okay, Detective Kimball said. Let’s start with the basics. What’s your name?

She thought for a few seconds. Nothing came; not who she was, not where she was from, not how she had come to be where she was. Finally, she shook her head and said, I can’t remember. I don’t know.

* * * * *

The next morning, in the Saint Paul headquarters of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, Special Agent James Anderson stepped into the office of his new boss, Senior Special Agent Anton Kemp.

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was the State of Minnesota’s investigation bureau. It handled detective work for the state, did training, kept records, and ran the state’s crime lab. It aided local police and sheriff’s departments when they had a case that strained their resources. It also provided a SWAT team to support local law-enforcement, as well as back up its agents.

Kemp closed the door behind them, then said, Have a seat.

Anderson sat in front of Kemp’s desk as Kemp walked over and sat behind it.

First, I just wanted to say welcome to my team. I think you’ll find this assignment to be a nice change from your old one.

I’m looking forward to it, Anderson said with a nod. The day before, he had finished his last day at his old detail, the BCA’s Cold Case Unit, having been transferred away at his own request. I had a good run there, but it was time to move on. My only regret is that I would have liked to solve the Rachel Sumner case before I left.

Rachel Sumner was a college student, majoring in Medicine at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Five years ago, on a beautiful spring night shortly before the start of summer break, she walked out of a college bar following an argument with her boyfriend and disappeared off the face of the Earth. She hadn’t gone home, she hadn’t gone anywhere she was known to go, she hadn’t been in contact with any of her family or friends. No one had seen her alive since then.

Kemp nodded. We’d all like to solve that one.

He was right. Every special agent on the BCA, as well as every County Sheriff’s Detective and city police detective in the state, wanted to solve the case. The Rachel Sumner case was one of those cases that remained as a sore spot in the agency, a high-profile case that never quite went away, only lay dormant for a time before the media brought it out again for another story.

Anderson shook his head. You don’t know the half of it. I worked the case five years ago, when it first broke; I was on the Minneapolis Police, and I worked it again while I was on the CCU.

Of course.

I did some work on the Sumner case while I was there. I mostly did interviews. I wasn’t the lead investigator on the case – he’s still with the Minneapolis PD – but I helped out. Everyone did. It’s so frustrating. The largest police department in Minnesota, with some of the best detectives in the state and a modern crime lab, and we couldn’t do shit.

Did you find any leads with the CCU?

Anderson shook his head. No. No leads either times I worked on it. I only hope Ray Walsh has better luck than I did.

Ray Walsh was the special agent who had taken Anderson’s place on the Cold Case Unit. It was a lateral transfer, as Walsh had held the job Anderson was in now.

Anyway, Kemp said, I have a case for you. Something to start you off in my team. He handed a manila folder decorated with the BCA’s logo to Anderson, who took it, opened it, and looked through it.

Valhalla, he said after several seconds of reading. Where’s that?

South-east part of the state. Not too far from the Wisconsin border. I’ll admit it; I had to look it up, too. I’ve lived in Minnesota my whole life, and I never heard of the place.

After several more seconds of reading, Anderson said, This doesn’t sound like the kind of case the BCA usually handles. We don’t investigate sex crimes as a rule.

That’s what I thought at first, too. Keep reading.

Anderson did so. After another minute or so, he said, Okay, I see it. Kidnapping, false restraint, and attempted murder.

Exactly.

Woke up in the woods, hands tied, mouth taped, naked, bleeding. Managed to get to the road and get help. She flagged down a pickup truck.

That’s about it.

Who is she? I don’t see where the report says anything about her identity.

So far, she’s a Jane Doe, Kemp said. He took off his wire-rimmed glasses, polished them with a handkerchief he took out of his back pocket, then put them back on. He folded up the handkerchief and returned it to his pocket as he spoke. "She had no