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She couldn’t think of anything to say, so she wisely said nothing.
“Why didn’t you call your husband?” Grange asked.
“Until this morning, I was drifting in and out of consciousness.”
“But you had intervals of lucidity.”
“I wouldn’t call it lucidity. I was awake, but my thoughts were hazy.”
“Too hazy for you to make one phone call?”
“It crossed my mind, of course. But fleetingly. In the abstract. I didn’t act on it because my phone was out of reach, and I didn’t have the wherewithal to ask for it, or to get up and retrieve it.”
“He had your ID. He knew who you were, where you lived. But he never offered to make a call for you?”
“Maybe he did and I don’t remember. But again, I—”
“You have hundreds of numbers programmed into your phone,” Grange said, pressing now. “A couple of taps on the screen, and he could have notified someone that you were still alive.”
She lowered her gaze. For the longest time, neither of them said anything, but she could feel their stares boring into the crown of her bowed head.
Knight was the one to break the tense silence. “You’re not being quite up front with us, are you, Dr. Charbonneau?”
“I’ve told you what I know.”
“Well, what you’ve told me and Grange bothers us.”
She raised her head and looked at him. “Why? I’m back. I’m fine. Isn’t that all that matters?”
“Well, it would be. Except we’ve got an individual who interests us. He passed up a sizeable reward and dodged being thanked for his hospitality. We’re thinking there was a reason he ducked the media and wanted to remain anonymous, that maybe he wasn’t such a Good Samaritan.
“We think maybe your concussion wasn’t caused by you falling, and that possibly he didn’t find you on the trail, but that he assaulted you on the trail, banged you on the head, and then, for reasons only he knows, he chickened out on killing you.”
The rock.
You weren’t supposed to see that. I knew seeing it would upset you.
Chapter 23
When she didn’t speak, Knight leaned forward and propped his forearms on his thighs, inspiring her confidence. “Emory—can I call you Emory? You need to tell us if this man, uh, compromised you in any way.”
You sorry yet?
“No, he didn’t.”
“I understand it might be too painful for you to talk about it to us,” Knight said. “If that’s the case, we can get a female officer to come over and take your statement. But we need to know if a crime was committed. No matter what he threatened to do if you reported it, you—”
“Sergeant Knight.” She held up her hand. “I must stop you there. I was not his victim.”
“We’ve had whack jobs hide up in these mountains before, you know. Good territory to get lost in. Remember the guy who bombed the Olympics in Atlanta?”
“The man in the cabin was perfectly sane.”
“See any porno lying around? Videos, magazines?”
“No.”
“Women-grabbers often—”
