The going is slow but I employ the strategy that has served me well the entire night—one foot in front of the other. My eyes are trained straight in front of me. I have to get up and over this ridge and I’m counting each excruciating step. I estimate that I have about five hundred steps to go. I feel a familiar presence limping at my side. Stitch. I start to cry with relief. I know we can make it together.
It would have been a circuitous journey, our tracks a jumbled mess but still Stitch found me. Two hundred seventy-seven, two hundred seventy-eight steps. Over halfway there. I try not to think about the blood dripping from Stitch’s mouth. What’s going to come next? Will there be enough evidence to prove that Dr. Huntley killed Gwen? Will there be enough of a paper trail to prove why he murdered her?
My wet hair has stiffened in the frozen air and my face has gone numb. Sharp knives pierce my feet with each step and though the pain brings tears to my eyes, I’m grateful. It means that the blood is circulating through them and I may have avoided frostbite. I hope the same holds true for the tips of my ears and my fingers.
The early-morning sky is just beginning to brighten. Ethereal seams of pink and tangerine peek between the trees. I follow the curve of the river and when it straightens ahead of me I see an ambulance, fire truck and three police cars with headlights ablaze in front of my still-darkened house. Three hundred ninety eight steps, three hundred ninety-nine, four hundred steps. Dark figures move purposefully in and out of the cabin but no one seems to notice me staggering toward them. I want to call out but my throat feels raw, my tongue too heavy. “Stekej,” I manage to say. Speak. Stitch’s mouth opens and I lay a hand on his throat and feel the strong, sure vibration of his bark beneath my fingers.
Heads turn and then a half a dozen people start running in our direction. Evan Okada reaches me first and immediately removes his coat and wraps it around my shoulders. I lose sight of Stitch and search desperately for him in the crowd.
“Stitch,” I say through swollen lips. I can’t understand what Evan’s trying to tell me, but he gets jostled aside and I feel myself being lifted and gently laid down onto a stretcher. Warm blankets cover me and I moan at their weight pressing against my ribs. They are trying to load me into the back of the ambulance. “No,” I say, my earlier panic has returned.
I try to sit up, but firm hands keep me pinned to my spot. Mouths are moving but no one is looking directly at me. I have no idea what is being said. Hot tears of frustration seep from the corner of my eyes and roll down my temples. I spy Evan and I reach out for him, nearly tumbling from the stretcher to get his attention. He comes to my side, takes my hand and squeezes it. He speaks to the emergency workers and then disappears again. Why won’t anyone listen to me? I’m lifted into the back of the ambulance and then suddenly Stitch is there. I struggle to sit up, and the EMTs don’t bother to fight me.
Stitch goes right for my tears and licks them away. I rub one hand along his face. Huntley’s blood still clings to his fur and he’s panting heavily.
“Thank you,” I say to Evan, who is standing in the doorway, watching. He raises one hand, smiles and then steps away. “Can he come with me?” I ask the EMT. “I’m deaf. He’s my service dog.”
“Of course,” she says, looking straight at me. “There’s someone else here to see you too.” She moves aside so I can see.
It’s Jake. He has the exact same look on his face that he did twenty-five years ago when he crashed his dad’s car, sending both him and Andrew to the emergency room. He showed up at our back door two days later, wearing his arm in a sling and an expression of shame and regret.
He climbs into the ambulance and squats down next to me so I can see his face. “Earhart,” he signs, his chin trembling with emotion. “I should have called you back right away. I’m sorry.” I want to reach up and touch his face. I want to kiss away his apologies.
Instead, I speak. “Stitch saved my life.”
“Yeah, and so did Evan Okada.” Jake runs a hand down Stitch’s back. “Evan looked out his window and saw the screen and the tracks and called the police.”
“Dr. Huntley?” I ask, not sure if I want to know the answer.
“Dead,” he says, holding my gaze. “Stitch took him down.”
I feel my stomach churn. Now that I’m safe I’m questioning what I did. Can one word result in murder? I wonder. “I told—” I begin but Jake interrupts me.
“You did what you had to do.”
“We really need to get going now,” the EMT says. “The dog is staying I take it?” she asks. “What about this guy?” She nods her head at Jake.
Jake looks at me, awaiting my answer. I reach for his hand. It’s warm and strong and I never want to let it go.
“Zustan,” I say in Czech. Stay.
26
The afternoon May sunshine is hot on my neck as I paddle my kayak through the still-chilly water of Five Mines. In front of me sits Nora. Two tight braids snake out from beneath her baseball cap and flop over the straps of her bright pink life jacket. She’s given up on paddling and instead lets her fingers graze the surface of the water. I don’t mind. I could watch her all day.
Up ahead of me in a second kayak are Evan and Stitch. Stitch gladly ditched me for Evan but at least he glances back at me once in a while to make sure Nora and I haven’t lagged too far behind.
It’s taken months for the police and the medical experts to piece together what Gwen had already started to figure out—the enormous scope of Dr. Huntley’s crimes. From interviews with those who surrounded Gwen and through the medical records that Dr. Huntley tried so hard to conceal and falsify, a disturbing trail of evidence had emerged: aggressive and unnecessary treatments, deliberate misdiagnoses, all for financial gain. And it was a profitable scheme. After painstakingly reviewing files and insurance forms, it looked like Huntley had made millions of dollars and counting through his fraud.
Jake surmises that Gwen figured it out and came to Dr. Huntley’s office to confront him with what she had learned, and he killed her. He knocked her down momentarily stunning her. When she came to Huntley was on top of her, strangling her. They think with IV tubing from an IV starter kit, much like the one I used to help Rachel Nava when she collapsed at the center.
According to Jake’s theory, Dr. Huntley tried to force Gwen to reveal who else she had told about what he was doing. When she wouldn’t or couldn’t tell him, he pulled the tubing tight again until she suffocated to death.
David wasn’t completely innocent in all of this. He knew about Huntley’s questionable diagnosis and treatment of Jo Ellen Beadle. But turned a blind eye.
According to David, Huntley showed up at his house asking to borrow his boat for a day of fishing out on Five Mines. David readily agreed.
Huntley took the boat out onto Five Mines and dropped her body into the water, hoping that her body would eventually make it to the Gulf of Mexico. He didn’t count on Gwen getting tangled up in the brambles and he sure as hell didn’t count on me finding her. David became suspicious when he discovered that Gwen was dead and Huntley returned the boat to him smelling of bleach. He didn’t quite get it all cleaned up, though. Forensics found Gwen’s hair and miniscule drops of her blood in the boat and in Huntley’s office at the clinic.
David figured it out and Huntley kept David quiet by threatening him with Nora’s and my safety. This was why he ended up offering me the job. He wanted someone close to David nearby as another leverage point—a threat to hold over David to ensure his silence. This was why David was so opposed to me working for Dr. Huntley. I guess I should be flattered.
Both David and Huntley underestimated me, though. They expected that I would simply enter patient data into the computer system and not look too closely at the files or ask any questions. They were wrong. Huntley was diagnosing healthy people with cancer and pumping them full of chemo and ra
diation for the insurance money. He was overtreating the sick ones and giving false hope to terminal patients—telling them that he could save them if they just trusted him. He administered treatments that would in no way lengthen their lives and in most cases were unbearably painful and destroyed their quality of life. Somewhere along the line, Dr. Huntley decided to act in direct opposition to his Hippocratic oath—especially the section that reads, “Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death.”
How did he get away with it for so long? That’s the question everyone is asking. But the thing is when you are sick or think you are sick, you trust your caregivers, your nurses and doctors. You have to.
David was charged as an accessory after the fact and goes to trial next month. His medical license has been suspended pending the outcome of the trial. To his credit, David still allows me to see Nora and has even set the wheels in motion for Nora to legally live with me if he is convicted and is sentenced to prison time.
I’m hopeful that Nora’s biological mother won’t come out of the woodwork and cause yet another upheaval in Nora’s life. It’s been five months and she hasn’t shown up yet. I pray she never does but if she appears on my doorstep one day, she better be ready for the fight of her life.
The police found a copy of my house key on Huntley’s body and are sure it was Huntley who broke into my house and set out the bottle of wine on my countertop. They think that he was also planning to use it to get into my house the night he tried to kill me. He hadn’t counted on me changing the locks. I think back to the day he was in the file room, checking on how I was doing. He could have grabbed my keys without me knowing, had a copy made and returned my keys without me being any the wiser. Not David like I first thought. Huntley lured me to the school to pick up Nora and then called the police saying that a woman driving a Jeep was driving erratically. He’s also the one who planted the alcohol in my desk. At first, according to David, Huntley just wanted to scare David through scaring me, but then the news reports alluded to the fact that I might have actually seen a boat fleeing from the scene. That must have put Huntley on high alert. Then when I started digging and trying to figure out what happened to Rachel Nava and Jo Ellen Beadle he was trying to make sure that everyone thought I was a drunk and not to be taken seriously. He underestimated me.
There’s no reason to believe that Dr. Huntley had anything to do with my hit-and-run accident. That’s one case that’s still unsolved and I’m resigned to the fact that I probably will never learn who was driving the car that killed Stacey and left me deaf.
I’ve got another job. Working for my neighbor Evan in his outfitter business. I lead groups down the river on paddleboards and in kayaks. Of course Stitch is right there with me. I haven’t given up on nursing but I’m still trying to figure out how I can be deaf and a nurse. I know it’s possible. I’ll make it happen.
In the meantime, I’m working on fixing up my cabin, but progress is slow and every little project takes longer than it should. Right now we’re working on the addition, which will include a bedroom just for Nora and a new bathroom decked out with a state-of-the-art shower and a claw-foot tub.
I’ve been nervous about going out on the river all alone with Nora, but Evan’s been great. Just having an extra set of ears and eyes makes me feel better for the time being. Slowly, Five Mines is becoming my safe haven again.
Evan starts paddling faster, which means he’s challenging me to a race to see who can get to the dock first. “Hold on,” I tell Nora, and she clutches the sides of the kayak. I can’t hear her, but she tilts her face up to the sky and I know she’s letting out a war cry for Evan and Stitch to watch out, here we come.
It’s not even close. Evan beats us by two hundred feet and he and Stitch are already up on the dock to greet us. Evan is looking at his watch and yawning. I slap the water, a wave crashing over them and sending Stitch scurrying. They’re not the only ones there to greet us. Jake is too. He’s walking down from the cabin, dressed in his detective’s uniform: dress pants, dress shoes, button-down shirt and tie. He reaches his hand out to help Nora out of the kayak first. She gives him a quick squeeze and then she and Stitch are off and running.
He extends his hand out to me but I ignore it and climb from the kayak on my own accord. Jake just shakes his head. Evan tells us that he’ll take care of the kayaks and that I owe him a beer because he won the race.
Jake throws an arm around my shoulder, and I slide an arm around his waist. We move as if one as we head back up toward the house where Stitch and Nora are waiting.
Jake stops midstep and turns to face me. He kisses me on the lips and runs his hands up and down my arms, causing me to shiver. I lean into him and close my eyes. He traces the familiar letters over and over on my back with his finger until they feel almost engraved into my skin. I love you.
I could stand this way forever. Not a sight, not a sound. Just Jake. But I open my eyes and kiss him back, grab his hand and we head up to the house together.
* * * * *
Author’s Note
Not a Sound could be the most personal book that I’ve written to date. The serious issues of cancer and health care and the profound deafness of the main character are topics near and dear to my heart.
Having had family members and friends, including my son, battle cancer, I have nothing but the utmost respect and regard for the doctors, surgeons and nurses who treat patients. We put our trust and faith in the expertise of skilled professionals, and thankfully my son received top-notch care. For this we are eternally grateful. I believe this stellar standard of care to be true for most families.
Writing Not a Sound from the point of view of a profoundly deaf character has been a daunting and challenging endeavor. In researching the novel I learned that there are many resources available to aid the deaf in communication: interpreters, technology, sign language, service animals and more. Amelia, like many who are faced with hearing loss, has a variety of aids to utilize. Based on the circumstances and the personality that I created for Amelia, a woman with her own challenges and demons, as well as for the benefit of keeping the swift pace of the novel, the resources I opted to have Amelia use were limited to only a few of the many possibilities. As someone who is hearing impaired myself, I am grateful to know that many resources are available when and if I’m in need.
I hope I was able to do Amelia justice.
Acknowledgments
As always, I have so many people to thank for helping me bring this story to life. Much gratitude goes to the early readers who offered suggestions and encouragement. Thank you to Julie Spahn, who shared her expertise and background with me in working with those who are deaf and hard of hearing. Her insights and advice were priceless. Thanks also to Anna Gudenkauf, Kristina Gruber, Amy Doud and Ann Schober, who got an early peek and provided priceless feedback. Extraspecial thanks goes to Jane Augspurger for her countless readings of the manuscript and the many phone calls fielded to talk through scenarios and strategies. Immeasurable thanks to Laurie Schmid—I am beyond grateful for the gifts of your time and wisdom.
Many thanks to Mark Dalsing for all things law enforcement, and to Dr. Tami Gudenkauf, Dr. Milton Schmida and Rose Schulz for being available at a moment’s notice for medical and health care questions.
Words can’t express how grateful I am for the faith and confidence that my publisher, Park Row Books, has in me. I am thrilled to be a part of this amazing family. Thank you to Erika Imranyi, my insightful, gifted editor. I thoroughly enjoy our brainstorming sessions and so appreciate your ideas and spot-on suggestions. I can’t wait to see where our next projects take us. Thanks also to Margaret Marbury, Emer Flounders, Natalie Hallak, Gina Macedo and all the talented folks at Park Row.
Special acknowledgment goes to my wonderful agent and friend, Marianne Merola. Thank you for being there for me and always believing in m
e—I couldn’t do this without you. To Henry Thayer, Lina Granada and all the folks at Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents, Inc., thank you for the behind-the-scenes support.
The idea for this novel was born during a birthday celebration and a paddle-boarding excursion down the Galena River with Cathie Kloft, Jennifer Peterson, Rose Schulz, Sandy Hoerner and Laura Trimble. Thank you for the inspiration and the fun!
Thank you to reader Tara Mitchell for supplying the perfect name for who could be the most endearing hero in the novel—Stitch.
I’m so blessed to have a family who supports and encourages me: my treasured parents, Milton and Patricia Schmida, and my siblings, Greg, Jane, Milt, Molly and Patrick—best sibs in the world. And of course much thanks to my husband, Scott, and my children, Alex, Annie and Grace Gudenkauf—love always.
Keep reading for an excerpt from MISSING PIECES by Heather Gudenkauf.
“Masterful... Intelligent... Thought-provoking.”
—Sandra Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author
Did you love Not A Sound? Don’t miss these powerful and emotionally searing ripped-from-the-headlines stories from New York Times bestselling author Heather Gudenkauf:
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“Thrilling.... [Little Mercies], with its driving pace, will appeal to fans of Lisa Scottoline and Jodi Picoult.”
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Available now!
Missing Pieces
by Heather Gudenkauf
1
Present Day
The call, like many of its kind, had come in the early hours of the morning, waking Jack and Sarah from a dead sleep. Jack’s hand had snaked from beneath the covers, fumbling for the phone. He grunted a sleepy hello, listened for a moment, then sat up suddenly alert.