“I’d like to show you something.” Opening a file Neri had brought into the room after ducking out for a minute, he retrieved something. “Do you know what this is?”
I frowned. “X-ray.”
“More specifically, it’s an X-ray of your left tibia.”
“From after my car accident?”
“No, this was taken while you were a minor.” He pointed to a section on the image. “This evidences a major fracture that would’ve put you in a cast for months.”
Heaviness in my leg. Dragging it around like it wasn’t attached to me.
“Why do you have my client’s medical records?” Justina Cheung interrupted, her voice crisp and calm. “This is a major breach of privacy.”
“We had a warrant, Ms. Cheung.” He pushed across a piece of paper.
After scanning it, Justina said, “I fail to see the relevance of a childhood injury to the current situation.”
“Please get your client to check the date of the X-ray and the attached medical report.”
I had to blink twice to clear the fog enough to focus. And then, nothing made sense.
This X-ray had been done ten years ago . . . the day after my mother’s disappearance. Five o’clock in the morning. The medical jargon boiled down to a single glaring fact—that my father had brought me into the emergency department with a broken leg as well as “multiple scrapes and abrasions.”
“No,” I murmured. “This isn’t right. I got stitches the night before my mother vanished. Hurt myself at a party.”
“You did,” Regan confirmed, retrieving another medical report from his file. “But you returned to the ER the next night with your father—and with far more severe injuries.” Dishwater-blue eyes held mine. “Can you explain this second set of injuries?”
“Aarav, you don’t have to say a word,” Justina advised. “The detective is fishing.”
It was good advice, but where did we go if I walked out? They’d focus on me to the exclusion of all others, go down one blind alley after another.
I rubbed my face with both hands, then decided to hell with it. Looking Regan straight in the face, I said, “I have no memory of the incident.” Except for the heaviness in my leg, a strange sense of déjà vu.
Neri spoke for the first time, a forced humor to her tone. “This is going to take a long time if you refuse to cooperate—there are images online of you as a sixteen-year-old in a leg cast.”
Justina Cheung caught my eye, the warning in her gaze clear: Keep your mouth shut and admit nothing.
I considered my options. If I confessed that my brain wasn’t working as it should, they’d begin to doubt everything I’d ever said—including the scream I’d heard that night, the scream that had haunted me for so long that it was imprinted on every cell in my body. But if I didn’t cop to it, they’d label me a liar and ignore what I had to say anyway.
Fucked either way. Might as well not get arrested and pull the investigation sideways.
Retrieving my phone, I brought up Dr. Binchy’s number. “Here.” I flipped the phone so they could see his details. “Go talk to the neurosurgeon currently in charge of my brain.”
The two cops exchanged a quick look; they hadn’t known about the neurological damage. Guess patient confidentiality counted for something.
“You’re saying you have a brain injury?” Pure disbelief in Neri’s voice.
“I’m saying I was in a car crash and got whacked on the head.”
“Will you give Dr. Binchy permission to talk to us?” Regan asked before Neri could reply.
“He gave me an after-hours number in case of emergency. I’ll try texting that to see if he’s willing to interrupt his weekend—otherwise, you’ll have to wait till Monday morning.”
I sent the text:
Hey Doc. About to get arrested. You free to talk to cops and tell them I’m not lying about the memory issues?
Dr. Binchy called back seconds later.
Justina made a show of asking for private time with her client before Regan and Neri left to take the call. I figured that meant she was making it clear the recording devices better be turned off.
Not having much to say because I didn’t know what the fuck was going on, I pulled over the documents from my former injury.
Justina leaned in close to murmur, “Regan’s a cunning bastard.” Her breath was soft and smelled of mint. “He probably left that on purpose to try and unsettle you.”
“Noted.”
In the end, there wasn’t much to the medical report—I’d been diagnosed with a broken tibia, had it set, then been sent