Cold Cold Heart (2 page)

January

Hennepin County Medical Center

Minneapolis, Minnesota

She woke screaming.
Screaming and screaming and screaming. Loud, long, terrible screams that tore up her throat from the depths of her soul.

She didn't know why she was screaming. There was no emotion attached to it, not pain, not fear. She seemed completely detached from the noise coming out of her.

She had no awareness of her body. It was as if the essence of her being had taken up residence inside an empty shell. She couldn't feel. She couldn't move. She couldn't see. She didn't know if her eyes were open or closed or gone.

She could hear the commotion of people rushing around her. She didn't know who they were. She didn't know where she was or why she was there. The people were shouting. She couldn't really understand what they were saying. Only one frantic voice penetrated as it shouted:
Dana! Dana! Dana!

The word meant nothing to her. It was just a sound.

Like the screams coming from her own throat, these words were just sounds. She continued to scream and scream and scream.

Then a sinuous sensation of warmth spread through her, and the screaming stopped, and she ceased to be aware of anything at all.

*   *   *

“I
KNOW THIS WAS
upsetting for you, Mommy.”

Lynda Mercer was still shaken and shocked by the sound of her daughter's screams, screams that had come from Dana's unconscious body lying perfectly still on the bed.

Dr. Rutten motioned for her to take one of the two seats in front of his desk. He took the other, choosing not to put a professional distance between them.

In his midfifties, Rutten was Dutch, fit, and bald, with large, kind, liquid brown eyes. It was his habit to be close when he spoke to the anxious parents and spouses of patients, to reach out and touch with a large, reassuring hand. While the tactic could have seemed a phony, contrived intimacy, his kindness was genuine and very much appreciated. He was a rock for his patients and their families. He took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

“After all the years I've spent studying the human brain, and with all the technology we've developed to help us in our study of the human brain, the one thing I can tell you with certainty is that there is no certainty with a brain injury,” he said.

“We can define the specific type of injury Dana has sustained. Based on our experience, we can attempt to predict some of the effects the injury might produce, some of the changes we might see in her personality, in her memory, in possible physical impairments. But there are no hard-and-fast rules about how her brain will react to the trauma.”

“She was screaming and screaming,” Lynda murmured, her trembling voice barely more than a whisper. “Was she in pain? Was she having a nightmare? All the machines were going crazy.”

She could still hear her daughter's screams. She could still hear the shrill beeping and shrieking of the alarms on the monitors. Dana's heart rate had gone from a normal rhythm to a pounding pace. They had recently taken her off the ventilator, and she gulped air like a fish out of water.

“The screaming is extremely disconcerting to hear, but not an uncommon occurrence for people with brain injuries at this stage of their recovery as they begin to climb their way out of their unconscious state,” Rutten assured her. “Sometimes they moan or cry hysterically. Sometimes they scream.

“Why does this happen? We believe this is caused by a misfiring of signals within the midbrain as it tries to cope and reroute itself. Neurons are firing, but the impulses are landing in strange places. Also, there can be heightened fight-or-flight responses caused by external or internal stressors, resulting in panic or combativeness.”

“People scream when they're in pain,” Lynda murmured.

Regardless of the neurologist's explanation, she couldn't escape the idea that her daughter was locked in a deep, unending nightmare, reliving the things a monster had done to her. Not just the skull fracture that had led to brain surgery to remove bone fragments, but also facial fractures, broken fingers, broken ribs, a fractured kneecap. Contusions and abrasions colored her body and her face. The killer the press called Doc Holiday had literally carved into her flesh with a knife.

Imagined scenes from the nightmare flashed through Lynda's mind like clips from a horror movie. Ligature marks burned into Dana's wrists and ankles indicated she had been tied down. She had been tortured. She had been raped.

“We immediately upped the amount of pain medication Dana is receiving,” Rutten said. “Just in case some of that was the result of pain, but that may not be the case at all.”

“I shouldn't have left her,” Lynda whispered, a wave of mother's guilt washing over her.

She had left Dana's room for just a moment, needing to stretch her legs. Just a walk to the end of the hall, to the family lounge to get a cup of coffee. As she walked back, the first scream split the air and pierced her heart.

She had dropped the coffee and run to the room, flinging herself into the melee of scurrying hospital staff. She had shouted her daughter's name over and over—
Dana! Dana! Dana!
—until someone had taken hold of her shoulders from behind and pulled her out of the way.

Dr. Rutten squeezed her hand again, pulling her out of the memory to focus once more on him. The corners of his mouth curved subtly in the gentlest smile of understanding and commiseration.

“I'm a father myself. I have two daughters. I know how it tears at a parent's heart to think their child is suffering.”

“She suffered so much already,” she said. “All the things that animal did to her . . .”

Dr. Rutten frowned. “If it gives you any comfort, she probably won't have any memory of what happened to her.”

“I hope not,” Lynda said. If there were a God, Dana would remember nothing of her ordeal. But then, if there were a God, none of this should have happened at all.

“Will it happen again?” she asked. “The screaming?”

“It might. Or it might not. She could drift in and out like this for a long time, or she may become fully conscious tomorrow. She has been saying words these last few days. She's been responsive to vocal commands. These are positive signs, but every brain is different.

“The kinds of injuries Dana sustained can mean she may have difficulty organizing her thoughts or performing routine tasks. She may become impulsive, have trouble controlling her emotions or empathizing with other people. She may have difficulty speaking, or she may speak perfectly but not always be able to grab the right words from her brain.

“Damage to the temporal lobe of the brain may affect her memory, but how much? I can't tell you. She may have no memory of
what happened to her. She may have no memory of the last ten years. She may not recognize her friends. She may not recognize herself. You may not recognize her,” he said, unable to hide his sadness at a truth he had seen again and again.

“She's my daughter,” Lynda said, offended. “She's my child. Of course I'll recognize her.”

“Physically, yes, but she will never be exactly the girl you've known all her life,” he said gently. “One thing I know is true in every case: The person you love will be changed from this, and that will be the hardest thing of all to accept.

“In a way, the daughter you had is gone. Even though she may look the same, she will behave differently, look at the world differently. But she is still your daughter, and you will still love her.

“You will have ahead of you a long and difficult road,” he said. “But you will go down it together.”

“But she'll get better,” Lynda said, as if phrasing it as a statement instead of a question would make it so.

Dr. Rutten sighed. “We can't know how much. Every case is its own journey. This journey will be like driving at night. You can only see as far as the headlights reach, but you can make it the whole way nevertheless.

“You have to stay strong, Mommy,” he said, giving her hand another squeeze. “You have to stay focused on what's positive.”

Lynda almost laughed at the absurdity of his statement. “Positive,” she said, staring at the floor.

The doctor hooked a knuckle under her chin and raised her head so she had to look him in the eye. “She shouldn't be alive. She survived a killer who had murdered who knows how many young women. She survived a car crash that could have killed her. She survived her injuries. She survived brain surgery. She's fighting her way back to consciousness.

“She should be dead and she's not. She's going to wake up. She's going to live. That's a lot more than I get to tell many parents.”

*   *   *

T
HE W
EIGHT OF HIS
words pressed down on Lynda as she wandered the halls of the hospital. She needed to find a way to be positive. Dana would need that from her when she finally rejoined the world and they began her journey to recovery. But it was all uncharted territory, and thinking about the enormity of it was daunting.

She felt so tired and so alone, dealing with all of this in a strange, cold city where she knew no one. Her husband planned to come from Indiana on Fridays and go back Sunday nights. But even if Roger came to Minneapolis on the weekends, there was a part of Lynda that felt like he wasn't fully in this with her. Dana was her daughter, not Roger's. While Dana and Roger had always gotten along, they weren't close in the way Dana had been with her father before his death when Dana was fourteen.

Dana's coworkers from the television station came by but were allowed only short visits. The doctor wanted Dana to rest most of the time, to keep stimulation to a minimum to allow her brain time to heal. Her producer and mentor, Roxanne Volkman, brought a box of items from Dana's apartment so she could have some familiar things in her room—a perfume she loved, her iPod, a soft blue throw from her sofa, a couple of photographs.

Dana had been working at the station for only nine months. But even in that short time she had made a positive impression, the producer had told Lynda. Everyone appreciated Dana's sunny smile and go-getter attitude, but none of them knew her well enough to be much more than acquaintances.

The lead detectives assigned to Dana's case had come by to check on her progress. They would eventually want to speak to her, to find out if she could shed any light on the case. Even though the perpetrator was dead, there were still many questions left unanswered. Had Dana heard anything, seen anything, that might implicate the killer in other cases? According to Dr. Rutten, they would probably never find out.

The female detective—Liska—was a mother too. She brought Starbucks and cookies and lists of support groups for victims of crime and their families. They talked about the stresses and the joys of raising children. She asked Lynda what Dana had been like as a little girl, as a teenager. Lynda suspected that line of questioning was just a way to get her mind off the difficult present with stories of happier times.

The male detective—Kovac—didn't have as much to say. He was older, gruffer, and had probably seen more terrible things in his career than Lynda would ever want to imagine. There was a world-weariness about him, a certain sadness in his eyes when he looked at Dana. And there was an awkward kindness in him that Lynda found endearing.

In the aftermath of the crime there had been some public criticism of the police for not finding Dana or the killer sooner. Lynda didn't engage in it.

The local and national media had been all over the case as soon as it was known that Dana was missing. It was a sensational story: the pretty fledgling on-air television newscaster abducted by a serial killer. It was an even bigger story when she was found alive—if barely—and her captor was found dead. As far as anyone knew, she was his only living victim. They all believed she would have an incredible story to tell when she finally came to. They hadn't considered that she might not remember any of it. Lynda hoped she wouldn't.

Finally making her way back to Dana's room, she had no idea of the time of day or how many hours had passed since the screaming incident. As she went into the room she was surprised to see that the world beyond the window was already growing dim, as night seeped across the frigid Minnesota landscape. Darkness came early here this time of year. The pale, distant sun was gone by late afternoon.

The screens of the machines monitoring Dana's vital signs glowed in the dimly lit room, chirping and beeping to themselves. She appeared to be sleeping peacefully.

Lynda stood beside the bed, watching her daughter's chest rise and fall slowly. Her face was unrecognizable, swollen and misshapen, with centipede lines of stitches. Her head was bald beneath swathed gauze and the helmet that protected her in the event of a fall. Her right eye was covered with a thick gauze patch. The orbital bone and cheekbone had been shattered. The left eye was swollen nearly shut, and the black and blue seeped down into her cheek like a spreading stain.

Dana had always been a pretty girl. As a child she had been a pixie with blond pigtails and big royal-blue eyes full of wonder. She had grown into a lovely young woman with a heart-shaped face and delicate features loved by the camera. Her personality had accompanied her looks perfectly: sweet and optimistic, open and friendly. She had always been inquisitive, always wanting to dig to the bottom of every story, to research the details of anything new and unfamiliar.

Her curiosity had helped to shape her goals and had eventually led her to her career. Armed with a degree in communications, she had worked her way into broadcast news. She had only recently landed her first big job in front of the camera as a newscaster on the early-morning show of a small, independent Minneapolis station. She had been so excited to have the job, not caring at all that she had to leave her apartment at three
A.M.
to go on the air at four.