Memory of Murder

Maybe, she thought, it’s his eyes. Hard, yes, but not cold. Penetrating…perceptive, too. And weary. They see a lot, those steely blue eyes. And, I think, have seen way too much of death and violence and ugliness already.

“You’re a long way from Philadelphia,” she said when they were outside, walking in the seventy-degree early November sunshine, a light breeze from the ocean lifting her hair away from her face. “What on earth brought you to San Diego?” And she knew she was only postponing what was coming, the questions he would inevitably ask.

For the moment, at least, he didn’t seem to mind. He gave an easygoing chuckle, but when she glanced at him she noticed the laughter didn’t reach as far as those eyes.

“The marines, actually.”

“Ah. You were stationed at Camp Pendleton?”

“Did some training there.” He said it dismissively, and she wondered what kind of training it might have been. He seemed hard enough, tough enough, to make some sort of Special Forces experience seem a reasonable assumption. Then he looked at her and smiled, and the tough-guy image wavered and softened. “Hard to beat the weather. Philly can get ugly in the wintertime.”

She smiled back at him, and they walked briskly for a block or so before she asked, “Still…it was your home. Do you miss it? Do you still have family there?”

He shook his head. “No-on both counts.” And his face had closed and hardened again, so she didn’t ask the follow-up questions that were buzzing around in her mind. Are you married? Do you have children? Siblings? Are your parents still alive?

It was none of her business. He was a police homicide detective with a gun on his hip, someone she never would have imagined she would find herself walking and talking with in the normal course of her uneventful life.

So hard to believe, even now, that this was happening.

To her-Lindsey Diana Merrill. Once, briefly, she’d been Lindsey Merrill-Hyde, but that had been another lifetime and seemed almost like a dream, now. She was Lindsey Merrill, only child of Richard and Susan Merrill, successful businesswoman, owner of her own insurance agency, competent, content, secure in who she was and where she belonged.

At least she had been, before her stable, secure world had shifted and trembled beneath her feet.

Her mother’s face flashed into her mind. Beloved face, with kind green-gold eyes creased at the corners with laughter, and a mouth that smiled more often than not. A face that was only a memory now, supplanted by one she barely recognized, a face with eyes bewildered and shimmering with tears, lips tight with suspicion and fear, lines all drawing downward, making her look…old. That image grew and distorted and became the face of Lindsey’s nightmares, and walking beside the ex-marine, ex-special forces homicide cop, she felt helpless and frightened and fragile.

A buddy of Alan’s had advised him, in the months following his divorce when he was contemplating getting back in the dating game, never to take a woman to a place where they’d have to eat something messy on the first date. He’d considered it fairly sensible advice, at the time. You’ll look like an idiot, he’d been told, and the woman will never forgive you. Among the foods mentioned as first-date no-no’s, he seemed to recall, had been spaghetti, tacos…and sushi.

Now, all these years later, he wasn’t sure whether he’d grown wiser, more confident, or whether his priorities had changed, but he was finding there was a lot to be learned about a woman from watching the way she handled sushi with a pair of chopsticks.

For one thing, he gathered right off the bat, this woman knew her sushi. She’d ordered with confidence and barely a glance at the menu, and prepped her chopsticks as if she’d been born to do it.

“You like the spicy stuff,” he commented, when the waiter had presented them with a bowl of edamame and pots of tea and then departed. “I’m afraid I have to stick with good old boring California rolls.”

She smiled as she popped open a pod and scooped the tender soybeans into her mouth, then licked her lips without even a hint of self-consciousness. “I’ve always liked things hot, even as a kid. My dad is a great cook. King of the backyard barbecue, famous for being heavy on the spices. I probably had most of my taste buds burned off by the time I was six.”

Helping himself to a handful of edamame pods, Alan realized he was watching her for the sheer enjoyment of it, and he knew it was time to remember why he’d invited her to lunch in the first place. Time to get down to business.

Her face lights up when she talks about her dad. Definitely daddy’s girl.

“Did you and your mom get along?” he asked, and wasn’t surprised when her gaze quickly dropped to her hands, busy with another edamame pod, so that the thick black lashes hid her eyes from him.

It was a moment before she said carefully, “I always sensed…I guess you would call it a kind of reserve in my mother. It’s hard to explain it, but I think I always felt there was a part of her she kept hidden away. A part I wasn’t allowed to touch-like the good china, you know? I always tried to be on my best behavior with her-which I think is not true of most kids. Most kids feel secure enough in their mother’s unconditional love, they aren’t afraid to be themselves, even at their worst.”

“But you weren’t?”

“No, I wasn’t.” The lashes flew upward and her eyes met his in what seemed almost like defiance. “But I do know she loved my father. And he adores her-that much I know. I grew up with them. And I’ve stayed close to them as an adult. I swear to you, my parents love-loved-” she choked a little on the word “-each other.”

An image flashed into his mind: Two old people with their arms around each other, faces peaceful as they lay together in bed, blood dried matted and brown in their sparse white hair and soaked into the pillowcases beneath…He pushed it back into the darker closet of his mind where he kept all such images, the ones marked Hazards Of The Job.

“When did that change?” He kept his voice gentle.

The tension went out of her shoulders and they seemed to droop under the burden of sadness she carried. A burden he thought had become such a habit for her she was barely aware of it now. After a moment, she took a deep breath and pushed the bowl of edamame away.

“When did the Alzheimer’s start, you mean?”

Alan poured himself some tea. “If that’s when the accusations began.”

“No, not the accusations-not then. She’d started showing the signs about two or three years ago. Probably, from what I know now about the disease, she’d been hiding them for quite a while. Until she couldn’t anymore. We were pretty sure it was Alzheimer’s, and once the doctors had ruled out everything else…” She shrugged and tried to smile, then gave it up as a lost cause. Fiddled with her teacup for a moment. “Then, about six months ago she started behaving strangely. I mean, really strangely, even for someone with Alzheimer’s.”

“In what way?”

“She was…furtive. You know, like a frightened animal. She wouldn’t sleep in the same room with Dad-the man she’d been married to for more than forty years. She acted terrified of him.” She paused to pour herself some tea, and he saw that her hands shook slightly.

“Poor Dad. He was distraught-as you can imagine. One night he called me because she’d run away. Snuck out in the middle of the night.” She threw him an anguished look, then picked up her cup and sipped the steaming liquid. It seemed to soothe her, and after a moment she gave a small, one-shoulder shrug. “He called the police, of course. They found her at the bus station. At the bus station! You know what that part of town is like-to even imagine my mother alone in a place like that, at night…” She set the cup down and crossed her arms on the tabletop. “So, I moved her in with me.” She smiled at him, and it was both wry and sad. “She’s my mom. I didn’t know what else to do. Dad was dead-set against it. But we both knew something had to be done. But…” She shrugged and once again reached for her teacup.

“Didn’t work out?” Alan prompted.

She shook her head. “She still didn’t feel safe. It was okay when I was there with her, but I have to go to work, you know? I’d come home and find her barricaded in the bathroom. Or crouched in a closet, crying.” She sipped and