Cold Cold Heart Read Free

question would make it so.
    Dr. Rutten sighed. “We can’t know how much. Every case is its own journey. This journey will be like driving at night. You can only see as far as the headlights reach, but you can make it the whole way nevertheless.
    â€œYou have to stay strong, Mommy,” he said, giving her hand another squeeze. “You have to stay focused on what’s positive.”
    Lynda almost laughed at the absurdity of his statement. “Positive,” she said, staring at the floor.
    The doctor hooked a knuckle under her chin and raised her head so she had to look him in the eye. “She shouldn’t be alive. She survived a killer who had murdered who knows how many young women. She survived a car crash that could have killed her. She survived her injuries. She survived brain surgery. She’s fighting her way back to consciousness.
    â€œShe should be dead and she’s not. She’s going to wake up. She’s going to live. That’s a lot more than I get to tell many parents.”
    *   *   *
    T HE W EIGHT OF HIS words pressed down on Lynda as she wandered the halls of the hospital. She needed to find a way to be positive. Dana would need that from her when she finally rejoined the world and they began her journey to recovery. But it was all uncharted territory, and thinking about the enormity of it was daunting.
    She felt so tired and so alone, dealing with all of this in a strange, cold city where she knew no one. Her husband planned to come from Indiana on Fridays and go back Sunday nights. But even if Roger came to Minneapolis on the weekends, there was a part of Lynda that felt like he wasn’t fully in this with her. Dana was her daughter, not Roger’s. While Dana and Roger had always gotten along, they weren’t close in the way Dana had been with her father before his death when Dana was fourteen.
    Dana’s coworkers from the television station came by but were allowed only short visits. The doctor wanted Dana to rest most of the time, to keep stimulation to a minimum to allow her brain time to heal. Her producer and mentor, Roxanne Volkman, brought a box of items from Dana’s apartment so she could have some familiar things in her room—a perfume she loved, her iPod, a soft blue throw from her sofa, a couple of photographs.
    Dana had been working at the station for only nine months. But even in that short time she had made a positive impression, the producer had told Lynda. Everyone appreciated Dana’s sunny smile and go-getter attitude, but none of them knew her well enough to be much more than acquaintances.
    The lead detectives assigned to Dana’s case had come by to check on her progress. They would eventually want to speak to her, to find out if she could shed any light on the case. Even though the perpetrator was dead, there were still many questions left unanswered. Had Dana heard anything, seen anything, that might implicate the killer in other cases? According to Dr. Rutten, they would probably never find out.
    The female detective—Liska—was a mother too. She brought Starbucks and cookies and lists of support groups for victims of crime and their families. They talked about the stresses and the joys of raising children. She asked Lynda what Dana had been like as a little girl, as a teenager. Lynda suspected that line of questioning was just a way to get her mind off the difficult present with stories of happier times.
    The male detective—Kovac—didn’t have as much to say. He was older, gruffer, and had probably seen more terrible things in his career than Lynda would ever want to imagine. There was a world-weariness about him, a certain sadness in his eyes when he looked at Dana. And there was an awkward kindness in him that Lynda found endearing.
    In the aftermath of the crime there had been some public criticism of the police for not finding Dana or the killer sooner. Lynda didn’t engage