in my arm.” She pointed to the crook of her left arm. “Here. At least I think it was him. I always had this feeling like there was someone else in the room there, but I never heard anyone. It was just a… feeling. It felt like him putting in the IV. I could tell by the callouses on his fingers—when he tied my hands in the container, I felt them. Anyway, that’s the last thing I remember. The next thing I know, I’m completely naked, wandering through the woods. It was freezing but not as cold as the day he took me, thank goodness. But the pain…” She set the cat down on the floor and it sauntered off, tail flicking. Bobbi pointed to the left side of her abdomen where her rib cage ended. “Here. It was excruciating. It got worse the more I walked. Any movement made it torture. There were these Frankenstein stitches and blood leaking out of it.”
Josie swallowed as Bobbi lifted her scrub shirt to reveal a large, gnarled, six-inch scar. Mettner blanched before going back to his note-taking. Bobbi put her shirt back down, but Josie couldn’t get the image from her head. Bobbi said, “It’s okay. I know it’s gruesome. When they found me and took me to the hospital, the doctors there said whoever did it had no idea what he was doing. They said I was lucky to be alive. I did get sepsis. Almost died. He sewed me up with actual thread.”
“What did he want? Why did he do it?” Josie asked.
“A rib,” Bobbie said. “He took my last rib. Broke it right off. I had to have surgery to repair the mess he made in there. They said it was a miracle he didn’t damage any internal organs or anything.”
Mettner said, “Can I use your bathroom?”
“Sure,” Bobbi said. “Upstairs, second door to the right.”
They watched him go. Bobbi said, “Men don’t take it all that well. Women seem to handle it okay.”
“Detective Mettner will be fine,” Josie said. “I’m so sorry this happened to you, Bobbi. I’m glad you survived. Tell me, can you remember any other details about this man? Did you ever do a composite sketch?”
“No, I’m sorry. Every time I saw him, he was wearing his ski mask. I only ever saw his eyes and part of his forehead.”
Josie had only seen his face for a few seconds. Not enough time for her to take in the kind of detail needed for an artist to create a sketch. She could definitely say that the red scar that Bobbie had seen ran from the center of his forehead, down the left side of his nose to the side of his mouth.
Bobbi went on, “The police thought he lived out where they found me. They checked out all these properties but never found a shipping container. They checked out lots of places near railroads but never found anything.”
“Why railroads? Because of the container? Or did you hear trains when you were in the container?”
“Not trains,” Bobbi said. “But I heard this ringing. Not like a bell, exactly, but sort of. It wasn’t all the time, only sometimes. It would happen a whole lot and then stop for days. It sounded like metal but not metal. I can’t explain it. The closest I could come was the sound that railroad workers make when they hammer in rail ties.”
Mettner returned to the room, taking his seat again with a muttered apology. Josie caught him up on what he’d missed, and his thumbs scrabbled across his phone screen, taking down notes. When he finished, he asked, “Did you ever hear any other noises while you were in the shipping container?”
Bobbi’s eyes drifted away from Josie and Mettner again, taking on a glassy look once more. “Birds,” she said. “Lots and lots of birds.”
Forty-Seven
Drool dripped from Frances’s mouth onto his already saturated bib. His body leaned to the side, one arm hanging down over his wheelchair. Zandra had turned him to face the living room wall again. She sat on the couch, flipping through a magazine and eating from a bowl of popcorn. She didn’t even acknowledge Alex. But Frances knew he was there.
“Ahhhmmaax,” he cried. “Ahhhmmmaax.”
Alex walked across the room and gripped the handles of the wheelchair. “Don’t,” Zandra said. “He’s enjoying the wall. Aren’t you, Frances? You like staring at nothing all day, don’t you? It’s entertaining, isn’t it?”
Frances made the sound he made when he began crying, which