Page 55 of Marked By Shadows
“You know about my disappearance,” I snapped at him. “After I returned I had them for a few weeks, but they faded. Sometimes I still get anxiety attacks, but not full panic attacks like this. People don’t normally find people in the middle of the road on a dark stretch of woods. That freaked me out. Wouldn’t that freak you out? I remember my heart racing, blood pounding in my ears.” Something came at me and I’d run. Would he think I was crazy? Probably. I had no desire to be dragged to whatever nearby psych ward they had for evaluation.
“Mr. Richards, your heart rate is up now. Take a few deep breaths please.” The nurse interrupted. She was a kind African-American woman who gave Manning a hard face, but focused her attention on me after a few seconds. She patted my arm. “No need to send you into another panic attack. Breathe. Another attack will just make your head hurt more.”
“It’s mild?” I asked, vaguely remembering a doctor having stopped in briefly to tell me about my scan. I wasn’t sure the nausea was related to the minor headache, or the memory of whatever that shadow had been.
“Yes. You hit your head pretty hard, but it’s nothing terrible,” the nurse assured me. “Nothing some rest won’t cure. Doctor thinks your nausea is from the panic attack rather than the concussion.”
It struck me then how quickly the police had arrived. We’d been in the middle of nowhere, or so I’d thought. The GPS had us a good twenty or so minutes from the B&B. How had the police arrived so fast? “I ran into a car. Were we by another road?” I couldn’t recall seeing one.
“Nothing but service roads other than the one you were on,” Manning said. “Funny that you found that car in the middle of a panic attack.”
“Is Joe okay?” I asked. “I think it was Joe in the road. I vaguely remember seeing his face.”
“Do you have a reason you drove that way tonight, Mr. Richards?” Manning pressed.
“I was following the GPS on my phone. Avoiding going around on the big highways and coming back inward. The GPS said it was a fifteen-minute time savings.” I said, recalling how my phone had been plugged into the navigation system of the SUV. “I think you can pull up records like that, right? Tell where my phone has been. We did a bit of shopping, then dinner, then the route back. All mapped through my phone since I don’t know the area all that well. Only been here two or three times before.”
“We are pulling your records. And Mr. Caine’s.”
Did that mean he was keeping our phones? I hoped not. It would really suck to have to navigate the city without a phone. I knew people used to do it with printed maps, but didn’t think picking up a paper map while driving was the best of options. “Are you taking our phones?”
“We’ve already pulled the data from them. One of my guys will drop them off with you before you leave the hospital,” Manning said.
“That’s fast.”
“We have a great tech unit and your boyfriend has been very cooperative.” The way he said it made it sound like I wasn’t being cooperative.
“I’ve told you everything I know.”
Manning seemed to think about that for a minute. Finally he asked, “How many people are in your cosplay group?”
That was an odd question. “The one here? I don’t understand. The online group has a couple hundred thousand.”
“I mean the exclusive group. Those of you who do the meetups like this.”
Oh. “The number changes a little. People come and go. Those who came were the main group. Chad, MaryAnn, Julie, Nicole, Jonah, Byrony, Freya, and myself. Melissa, as I said is new to the group. There have been some others in the past. A few I’ve met, but none that I was ever close to. I’ve only been to five or so cosplay group specific meetups myself. Though if they are in a city nearby, I try to meet them for a meal. Sometimes we’d catch up at conventions, but we all used to travel a lot so it wouldn’t often be more than two or three of us at a time.” I tried to recall some names. Most of the group members were women. That was sort of the norm with cosplay. Not because men didn’t cosplay, but because they didn’t really ask for help and network to improve their skills. “There was a girl named Sarah for a while. She was Californian, I think.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“I met her like three years ago, but haven’t seen her in probably two years. She was into the sexy cosplay thing too.” I shrugged. “I had a bit of trouble happen in that time, so maybe I missed when she left.”
“Do you remember any of the others who have left the group?”
My head hurt. “Maybe? There was an Amanda, but she wasn’t in the group long. I recall a handful of names, but no one I really had time to talk to.”
“Do you remember why Amanda left?” Manning asked.
“No. I wasn’t close to her at all, and make it a point not to get into other people’s business.”
“Are you close to anyone in the group?”
“Freya,” I said. “She’s probably the only one I talk to outside group events.”
“How close are you to Miss Pedjic?”
“She helped me get my start as a professional cosplayer. I’ve known her for years.”
“But do you visit her outside of group events?” Manning prodded. “Or she visits you? Since you live in different states.”