Deep Hurt - Eva Hudson Page 0,60

before answering. “You can’t just stop them dead. Otherwise you might suffer severe mood swings, maybe even suicidal thoughts.”

Ingrid thought about Tommy. If Kyle Foster were that volatile, it wasn’t surprising he’d lashed out at his eight-year-old son. “I don’t think the police found any drugs in the hotel room.”

“Maybe Foster keeps some with him all the time.”

“But if he has stopped taking them… does that mean Tommy is at risk?”

“Foster might not even have any withdrawal symptoms. But it could affect his stability, his judgement.” McKittrick yawned.

“I really did wake you up.” Ingrid glanced at her watch.

“Nothing shameful about getting to bed early on a school night.”

“Sorry to disturb you.”

“It’s OK. Try not to make a habit of it, will you. Do keep me posted, though.”

“We’re not making much progress.”

“I don’t mean with the bloody case. I want to know what’s happening with you and my detective constable. What kind of spell have you put on him?”

“I genuinely do not know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh yeah, right.”

“Look—I’ve got to go. Pleasant dreams.” Ingrid hung up before McKittrick had a chance to protest. As she sat staring at the phone, she wondered if she should tell Gurley about her discovery. She quickly decided it was something that could wait until the morning.

She put the phone on the nightstand and started to get ready for bed. In the bathroom she was pleasantly surprised to discover toothpaste, soap and shampoo. The US Air Force knew how to treat their guests.

While Ingrid cleaned her teeth, hoping to let her mind drift, she started to think about the mp3 attachments Mike Stiller had sent her. She’d managed to keep any thought of them buried all day, but now she was on her own, with nothing else to distract her, their presence on her phone was harder to ignore.

She thought about the phone sitting innocently on the nightstand. Now she’d started to consider the content of Mike’s email, she knew it would be impossible for her to get to sleep until she’d at least listened to one of the interviews.

She quickly finished up in the bathroom, changed into her tee shirt, turned off all the lights except the one on the nightstand and picked up her phone. Mike’s email was easy to find—it was the only one in her private mail account flagged as both urgent and important. She stared long and hard at the mp3 attachments before summoning the courage to open one of them. When she did, the recording started playing automatically. She hit the pause button, not quite ready for what she might hear.

She grabbed a bottle of water from the nightstand, slowly drank a third of it, then hit ‘play’.

The first voice she heard was a man’s. He had a thick Kentucky accent. He introduced himself, a colleague, and the interviewee for the purposes of the recording. The sound quality wasn’t good. There was a low background hum and the voices sounded distant. As Ingrid strained to make out the words, she jotted down a few notes. The start of the interview merely covered the basics: name, date and place of birth and date of abduction. The twenty-eight-year-old woman, Karla Anderson, then quickly went on to describe the basement where she’d been held captive, unprompted by the two agents. She seemed anxious to convey just how bad her living conditions had been for the last fifteen years.

It took Ingrid a little while to notice she had started to cry. It wasn’t until tears had actually started to dribble around her jaw and down her neck that the dampness registered. She found a Kleenex in her purse and dabbed her eyes. She wasn’t sure whether she was crying in sympathy for the woman’s plight or if she’d been imagining Megan Avery in the same house, forced into the same deprivation and depravity.

When the interview moved on to the other women and girls being held, Anderson had nothing to say at all. “First I knew I wasn’t there on my own was when I was taken to the hospital in the same ambulance as another girl. Soon as I laid eyes on her I knew she’d been through the same things I had. The pain in her eyes, you know? I could see it plain as day.”

“You thought you were alone in the property with your abductor?” a female agent asked.

“He was the only person I spoke to in fifteen years.”

“Did you see him?”

“He didn’t wear a mask, if that’s what you mean.”

“Can