Point Blank

while, though.”
    “Yeah, check it out, that’s good.”
    “You said you found her in your woods.”
    “Yeah. Brewster did, actually.”
    “No ID?”
    “There could be a purse out there somewhere but she told me she never took a purse out—to do what, she didn’t remember. I’ll send my boys out to look tomorrow.”
    Dr. Crocker said, “She says she can’t remember who she is, how she was hurt, or how she ended up unconscious in your woods.”
    “Do you think she’s faking it?”
    Dr. Crocker shook his head. “No, I don’t. It could be what we call hysterical amnesia. Her memory loss relates to particular memories, and is sharply bounded. For example, she can tell me who the president is, she can talk about the pitiable state of the Redskins. Sometimes when people are badly hurt or terrorized, they need to forget for a while, to protect themselves. Hey, I hope she’s not an escapee from Dobb’s Women’s Prison.”
    “I hope not, too. Tell you what, I’ll give them a call, have them do a bed check. That was a joke, Doc.”
    “Maybe she was out camping, something like that.”
    “In this weather?”
    “Hey, maybe she’s from California. You know, Sheriff, if someone struck her on the head to rob her, they could have taken her ID.”
    Eyebrow up, Dix said, “Yeah, that occurred to me.”
    “So what are we going to do with her? If she does okay tonight, she can be out of here, medically, in the morning.”
    “I’ll have to think about that. Hope you stay bored tonight, Doc.”

CHAPTER 5
    “THANKS FOR THE lift, Penny,” Dix said to his thirty-year-old deputy, who knew how to box and was married to the local funeral home director, as she pulled into his driveway. “Hope you got a lot of hot coffee.”
    “Tommy wouldn’t let me out the front door unless I filled his super-giant-size thermos to the brim with the sludge he calls coffee. I’ll be fine, Sheriff.”
    Brewster and both boys were waiting for him and wanted every gory detail. It wasn’t until well after one in the morning that Dix, Brewster curled up against his back, finally got himself to sleep. The snow was back to a light powder the following morning, with about a new foot on the ground. Dix made breakfast while the boys shoveled the driveway and looked in the woods where he had found the woman. Brewster supervised, which meant he ran around them in circles until he was exhausted. Rob brought him back into the house and left him in the kitchen, next to the warm stove. “He nearly bought it in a deep patch of snow, Dad. I think he’s had enough. We didn’t find the lady’s wallet, or a purse, or anything. There’s too much snow.”
    “I appreciate your looking. Come and sit down now, breakfast is ready.”
    If there was something Dix considered himself good at, it was breakfast. The house smelled of fried bacon, eggs over easy, brown sugar on oatmeal, and blueberry muffins. By ten o’clock, the boys were off with their sleds slung over their shoulders to Breaker’s Hill, where most of Maestro’s teenagers would be congregated along with some of the hardier parents. Dix finished shoveling the driveway and drove to the hospital. On the way, he checked in with his deputies, who, thankfully, had nothing dire to report, no six-car pileups or downed electrical wires. Nor had anyone found an abandoned car. Nor were there any local missing persons reported. And not a single woman of her description had registered at any B-and-B or motel in the immediate area. Dix supposed he’d expected her to be registered at Bud Bailey’s Bed & Breakfast, where most people stayed if they visited Maestro. Someone had obviously hit her. Had they left her unconscious in his woods, or had she managed somehow to get away from them, and then collapsed in the woods? All he needed was her car. Could the people who whacked her over the head have driven it off? Hidden it somewhere?
    Maybe she’d come here for a specific reason, a reason someone didn’t like. Or maybe that someone had moved her a good distance away from where she’d been brought down. The main roads were already plowed and the light snow falling wasn’t going to be much of a problem. The forecast was for more snow, though, becoming heavy in the late afternoon. Emory called to check in.
    Dix said, “Someone’s got to have seen her, sold her gas, supplies, something.”
    “Maybe she’s here with someone.”
    “If that were the case, they surely would have called us when she