Long Time Gone by J. A. Jance Read Free Book Online

the inscription in the book.
    “What happens then?”
    “She comes to the door. The camera can’t hear what the man’s saying, but it can see that he’s angry. He’s yelling at her.”
    “And then?”
    At that point, Sister Mary Katherine dissolved into frantic tears. “I can’t,” she said. “I don’t want to see anymore. Don’t make me watch. Please.”
    Dismayed and relieved, I listened as Fred MacKinzie walked Sister Mary Katherine away from the edge of Bonnie Jean Dunleavy’s cliff of remembrance. He had been so close. I was frustrated that he hadn’t gone ahead, but the exhaustion and strain on Mary Katherine’s face when she emerged from the trance told me Fred had done the right thing. He’d managed to come up with a few nuggets of information. In situations like this, something is better than nothing.
    “How are you feeling?” he asked Sister Mary Katherine.
    “Okay,” she said. “But tired, very tired. Did you learn anything?”
    “Maybe,” he said. “Do you remember someone named Mimi?”
    “Not right off the bat. You think my nightmare may have something to do with a person named Mimi?”
    Fred nodded.
    “Did I mention her last name?”
    “No.”
    Suddenly Mary Katherine’s face brightened. “Wait a minute. Now I do remember. There was a Mimi in my life. She gave me a book once—as a Christmas gift when I was just a little girl. I still have it.”
    “Where is it?”
    “On Whidbey. Why?”
    “Let’s take a look at it. Maybe there’ll be a clue in it that will tell us where it came from.”
    “Are we going to look at the tape now? Maybe if we look at it, it’ll trigger some additional memory for me.”
    “No,” Fred said. “Not right now. The memories you’re recalling under hypnosis seem to be totally devoid of contamination from the present. I think it’s best to keep it that way. If you remember spontaneously, then that’s another thing. It may mean that you’re coming to terms with your hidden nightmare without the need of another hypnotic trance, but seeing the tape of our session might precipitate your remembering something before your mind is ready to process it. Does that make sense?”
    Mary Katherine nodded. I had to agree, but not for the same reason. If the little girl had been an eyewitness to a murder, it was important to keep those memories separate from her present reality until we had mined them for all possible details.
    “What do we do next?”
    “We should schedule another session for next week,” Fred said. “We need to give you time in between. Can you come back then?”
    “If we’re going to get to the bottom of this, I suppose I’ll have to,” Sister Mary Katherine said. “What day works best for you?”
    Not interested in the appointment-making process, I punched “rewind” and prepared to watch the tape again. Before I could, however, the phone rang.
    “Mr. Beaumont?”
    I recognized the distinctive drawl that belonged to Jerome Grimes, Belltown Terrace’s most recent doorman.
    “It’s me, Jerome. What can I do for you?”
    “I got a guy down here by the name of Ron Peters. He’s wondering if it’s all right for him to come up and see you.”
    Belltown Terrace seems to run through doormen and resident managers with disturbing regularity. Had Jerome been a long-term employee, he might have remembered a time when Ron, his wife, Amy, and their three kids had all called Belltown Terrace home. I keep trying to tell the condo board that we need to pay our staff better so they’ll stay on longer. So far that idea has gone over with all the grace of a pregnant pole-vaulter.
    It takes a while for the building’s elevators to climb twenty-five stories from the lobby to my penthouse condo. I wouldn’t be living here or driving a Porsche if it hadn’t been for Anne Corley. That’s what makes it so tough. Her brief appearance in my life left me far better off financially and way worse off emotionally. I guess you could say Anne was, and