Memory of Murder

face down on the table and pushed it away from her. “I know who you think it is,” she said bitterly. And then, to Alan, “She thinks I’m crazy. But I’m not. That man-the man in that picture-is the man who killed my husband. And me.”

“Tried to kill you, Mama,” Lindsey said, as she settled into a more comfortable position on the patio pavers.

“Whatever.” Susan waved that off as if it were a detail of no importance. “He shot me, Detective. I saw his face, as clearly as I see yours.” Then she hesitated, looking less sure. “Except…it was dark. I think. Yes-I’m certain it was dark-nighttime. But there was light on his face. I saw that face. And then he shot me. And-” She broke off, her face contorted with fear.

“Tell me what you remember,” Alan prompted, keeping his voice low so it wouldn’t jar her precarious emotional state. He put his hand over hers, quieting their restless movement. “It’s all right…you’re safe here.”

Watching the way those forbidding features seemed to soften when he spoke to her mother, Lindsey felt a peculiar fluttering sensation inside her chest. How gentle he is. So patient with her.

But, she reminded herself, he probably had plenty of practice in dealing with emotionally traumatized people. Just part of his job. A skill he’s perfected. His game face. Her eyes burned, and she tore them away from him and focused instead on a pot filled with blue and yellow pansies.

Her mother glanced down at her with tear-filled eyes, then raised them once more to Alan. “I wish I could remember more. I try, but…just that. He shot me, and then…darkness. Cold. I remember being cold, and alone, and floating.” She looked up, face alight with triumph. “Yes! I remember floating. Cold, dark, alone…and floating. I think…I must have died. Don’t you think so, Detective? Isn’t that what death feels like?”

Her eyes searched the detective’s austere features as if he must know the answer to that question, to one of humankind’s greatest mysteries, and Lindsey fought back a sob. Tears were streaming down her mother’s cheeks unchecked, as if she wasn’t even aware she was crying. Lindsey’s fingers wanted desperately to wipe the tears away. Her arms ached to gather her mother close and rock her like the child she was slowly but surely becoming. She forced herself to stay silent, to sit hunched and still at her mother’s feet.

“What do you remember about the time before you were shot?” Alan asked.

“I used to dream…” Her mother’s voice was musical, with no trace of the tears, and for a moment it seemed she must not have heard the softly spoken question. “I had dreams…nightmares…that’s what Richard said they were. ‘Just a bad dream, Susie, go back to sleep.’ That’s what he’d say, and so I did. And then…” She jerked upright. “One day, I realized it wasn’t a dream. I was remembering. Only…it was like I was remembering a different life.” Her eyes were wide and bewildered. “A life that wasn’t mine. I had a different name, a husband-oh, I can see his face so clearly. But I can’t remember his name. Or mine. I can’t remember my name.” And now at last a sob came, shaking her slender body like a buffeting wind.

Lindsey drew her legs up, wrapped her arms around them and rested her forehead on her knees. And she heard Alan’s gentle voice ask: “Who is Jimmy?”

And there was a gasp, quickly smothered, and laughter mixed with weeping. “Oh, yes, I remember him. I had a baby-no, he was older, but a child. A little boy. That was his name-Jimmy. His hair was dark, like mine, but he had such sweet curls. And his eyes were blue, like his father’s.”

Lindsey jerked her head up at that-she couldn’t help it-but her mother’s eyes were still riveted on Alan Cameron, as she rocked herself back and forth, as if in the grip of unbearable agony.

“What happened to them, do you know?” She asked it in a voice that was half sob, half whisper. “What happened to my husband…my Jimmy? Did they die, too? It must have been so long ago…but I feel it-” she touched her chest with a doubled fist “-it hurts so much. It hurts…as if it happened yesterday.”

Alan shook his head slowly, but before he could reply, Susan reached out to him, covered his hands with hers, then gripped them tightly. “Can you find them for me? Find out what happened to them? Please…I know I’m losing my mind. In a year…maybe two…I probably won’t even care. Before that happens, I just want to know. I want to know I’m not crazy.”

Chapter 3

The plans had been made long before. The boat, the darkness, the weights to take the bodies down. Everything went according to plan. Like clockwork.

Excerpt from the confession of Alexi K.

FBI Files, Restricted Access,

Declassified 2010

“So…what do you think? Is she crazy?”

Lindsey’s voice, speaking aloud the words that had been playing over and over in his own mind, jerked Alan back to the here and now. “What?” he asked, surprised to find they were nearly back to where they’d parked their cars.

She repeated it, her voice hardened by what he knew was only her attempt to mask an excess of emotion.

“She seems lucid,” he said, knowing it sounded flat, uncaring-a shrug in words. But he had his own ways of masking what was going on inside.

“She was having a very good day.” Lindsey’s lips tightened as she pressed the remote control in her hand. The Mercedes gave a welcoming chirp. She looked at him, squinting as the sun, already low in the west this early in November, struck her full in the face. And caught the look of skepticism he’d been careless enough to let show. “What? Do you think she’s faking? Look, I assure you,” she said, rushing on before he could reply, “she’s been evaluated by doctors-the best. We’ve gotten second opinions, and thirds. They’ve done tests.” She paused to draw a strengthening breath. “All agree she is in the early to middle stages of Alzheimer’s.”

The pain in her sun-washed face was hard to look at. But strangely, it was also hard to tear his eyes away. Recognizing that the pull the woman had on him was in danger of becoming a problem, he sucked in a chestful of willpower along with air. “I’m sure she is. Sadly. But maybe just not as far along as she’s letting you think she is.”

Lindsey paused in the process of digging in her purse for a pair of sunglasses to squint at him again. “So, you think there might be something to her story?”

“I think she remembers something terrible that happened to somebody. The question is who? And when? And where?”

She didn’t reply, being preoccupied with rearranging things in the cavernous depths of her purse. She pulled out the photograph of her father and was about to tuck it under her arm to get it out of her way. He held out his hand and said, “Can I see that?”

She glanced at him and handed over the framed photo without comment. He stared at it while she located her sunglasses and put them on, and knew without being able to see them that her eyes had gone wary again and were watching him from behind the dark lenses. There was tension in her body, and she clutched her purse like a shield- or a weapon-the way she had when she’d first come to his office that morning.

Richard Merrill didn’t look like anybody’s idea of a stone-cold killer-but then, in Alan’s experience, the stoniest, coldest killers seldom did. Merrill looked exactly like what he was-a successful banker and family man, now retired to the comforts of suburbia. King of the backyard barbecue. The photo Lindsey had chosen with which to confront her mother was a candid shot rather than a formal portrait, taken at some family outing, probably, a head-and- shoulders shot with blue sky and ocean as a backdrop. Alan’s impression was of a man who had been athletic in his youth and, while not yet running to fat, had thickened in the natural way men do as they get older. In the photo, his face was lifted to the sun and his thinning but still adequate salt-and-pepper hair was disarranged by a breeze from the ocean. He looked, Alan thought, like a happy man. A man completely content with his life. His eyes, smile- creased at the corners-

He looked up at Lindsey and tapped the photograph. “Your father’s eyes are dark.”

“Brown. Yes.”