Memory of Murder

Chapter 7

The woman talked a lot. She told me about her child, a little boy, how much she loved him, and how much he needed her. I knew what she was trying to do. She was trying to make me see her as a human being, a mother with a child. Hoping to soften my heart, I think. But I had a job to do. You must understand-they were not human beings to me. Simply objects to be disposed of.

The man, though…the man was very quiet. He barely spoke, but his silence didn’t reassure me. I could hear determination in that silence.

Excerpt from the confession of Alexi K.

FBI Files, Restricted Access,

Declassified 2010

“I thought you’d be home,” Lindsey said with a nervous laugh. “We, uh…”

“You know Ev and I always play golf on Mondays.” Her father’s lips were tight, his eyes narrowed with suspicion, and there was a coldness in them she’d never seen there before. “So, where is Alan?” His eyes darted to one side, aimed past her at the door she’d just come through.

Choosing to ignore the question, Lindsey shifted slightly, trying to block his path, saying brightly, “Oh-gosh, Daddy, I forgot about your golf date. Wait-that’s right-this is Monday, isn’t it? But don’t you usually have lunch together?” And oh, it felt so wrong. So awful. “Is everything okay? Is Ev-”

“Everything’s fine. Ev’s fine-just had an appointment with his chiropractor. Took a rain check on lunch. Alan inside? I’d like to say hello to him, since he’s here.” He threw her a crooked smile as he reached past her to open the door, but she couldn’t help but notice the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

She squeezed back against the door frame as he brushed past her, then followed him into the kitchen, breathless, her heart pounding in her belly, fear squeezing her insides. “Dad-wait-please let me explain…”

He paused a moment to look at her, and the hurt in his face felt worse than a slap. “Honey, you’re a grown woman. Why do you feel you need to explain?”

She opened her mouth to reply-with what, she didn’t know-but he was moving past her again, striding purposefully through the kitchen and into the hallway. All she could do was follow, while her heart seemed bent on pummeling its way out of her chest.

In the hallway she nearly slammed into her father, who had stopped dead in the middle of it. Looking past him, she saw Alan standing at the top of the stairs. He was shirtless, and drying his dripping wet hair with a towel.

Air gusted from her lungs. She managed to gasp out, “This isn’t what it looks like, Dad.” She felt an absurd impulse to giggle.

He turned his head to look at her, his expression quizzical. “Honey, like I said, you’re a grown woman. The only thing I can’t quite understand, is why here? Don’t the two of you have your own places?”

Now she did laugh. A nervous and guilty titter that almost eclipsed Alan’s, “Oh-good to see you, sir. Just stopped by-”

“To pick up the dollhouse,” She finished, then stopped, fingertips pressed to her lips.

Where had that come from? She had no idea. She was shocked, shaking inside, and at the same time felt absurdly pleased with herself-quite exhilarated. Realizing the two men were both staring at her in what appeared to be uncomprehending silence, she rushed on.

“Daddy, I didn’t want you to know I was giving away your dollhouse. I didn’t want you to think… I’m sorry, Daddy, I know you made it for me, and I love it, but it’s just been sitting there.” When had she become such a good liar? And yet, it was perfect, so perfect she wondered if the idea had been there in her subconscious all along. “And Chelsea enjoyed it so, and I just thought…”

“No, no, no-honey, it’s perfectly all right.” Her dad’s voice sounded relieved, and his arms were around her, gathering her into his familiar embrace. She buried her face in his shoulder and breathed in the familiar smells of Bay Rum and Tide detergent and the faintest hint of the single beer he’d probably enjoyed with Evan Norwood in lieu of lunch. “I made that dollhouse for you, honey, it’s yours to do with as you please. And although I’d always hoped I’d live to see my grandkids enjoy it, if you want to give it to a little girl who will love it and play with it the way you used to, that’s okay with me.”

Lindsey lifted her head from his shoulder. Through a tear shimmer she could see Alan at the top of the stairs, absently mopping water droplets from his chest and staring down at her with a bemused look on his face. She drew a breath and sniffed. “Daddy, are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” He gave her a little shake as he moved her to arm’s length and said severely, “And you should know that about your dad. Now, you go and gather up all the little pieces, and I’ll give Alan a hand carrying that monster down the stairs.”

She nodded, only half paying attention. Now that the crisis appeared to have passed and disaster averted, she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the spectacle of Alan, naked to the waist. She couldn’t help but notice he was pretty impressive, even for Southern California, land of compulsive joggers and workout addicts.

“Hope it was okay, my borrowing your bathroom.” Alan’s voice, speaking to her father as he climbed toward him up the stairs, brought her to her senses. She closed her mouth and cleared her throat self-consciously as he went on, “I’ve been at a crime scene all morning. You know…didn’t feel good about touching anything until I’d washed up a bit.”

He smiled crookedly, and Lindsey watched her father clap him on the shoulder and say warmly, “Son, that’s quite all right. You’re welcome here anytime.”

“Just give me a minute to get my shirt on. I sure do appreciate this. Chelsea is going to go nuts when she sees that dollhouse. It’s awfully kind of you and Lindsey-not to mention generous…”

The voices trailed off as the two men disappeared into the upstairs hallway, and Lindsey was left, as she seemed to be so often these days, with a childish urge to cry. She was turning into an emotional wreck, she thought, always feeling like a little girl, sick to her stomach at the thought of disappointing her daddy. Something about having her belief in her parents shaken, she supposed. Particularly a parent who had always been the rock she’d depended on, the pillar of strength, security and stability in her life.

“Oh, grow up, Lindsey,” she muttered to herself as she almost ran up the stairs in her dad’s wake. When she reached the top she could hear the two men talking farther down, somewhere in the vicinity of the bathroom. From the sound of things, it appeared Alan was showing Dad his weapon.

Perfect-bonding over guns. Guy stuff.

Anger came almost as a relief. She made a disgusted sound and stormed into her old room, where she blew off steam gathering up the dolls and accessories that went with the dollhouse and packing them into a beach bag she found in her old closet. She didn’t even look at the two men when they came in to pick up the unwieldy dollhouse, laughing together and conversing in monosyllables the way men do when they’re involved in a task requiring joint effort. But she was seething. She wanted to scream at Alan: How dare you “bond” with my dad! How can you pretend to be his friend when you suspect him of being some kind of monster? A murderer? Liar!

But she kept her face averted so they wouldn’t see the anger.

She went down the stairs ahead of the house movers. By the time they had the dollhouse wrestled into the back of Alan’s SUV, she had herself under control and was able to give her dad his usual goodbye kiss on the cheek. He hugged her and shook Alan’s hand, then waved them off and went back in the house.

Watching him go, Lindsey thought he looked older, suddenly. Old and…unbearably lonely.

Alan opened the driver’s side door of his SUV and took out his jacket, gave it a shake before shrugging into it and adjusting it over the holstered weapon at his hip. Once more fully clad, he looked at Lindsey and said quietly, “You don’t have to do this. I can take the dollhouse to your place-I guess you can leave it there, can’t you?”

She shook her head. Her chest felt tight, and her voice showed it. “I want Chelsea to have it. It’s time somebody played with it. It deserves to be played with.”

He ran a hand through his hair and blew out a breath with a little gust of laughter. “Well, I’m sure it will be. And I have to say, it was a brilliant idea. I’m impressed.”

“It was a lot better than yours,” she said hotly. “What was that business with the towel? No shirt? Please.”

At least he had the grace to look a tiny bit embarrassed. “Yeah, well…it was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment.”

She snorted. “You know, you do seem to have a certain lack of imagination in these circumstances. How come all of your ‘spur of the moment’ ideas seem to involve sex?”

He burst out laughing, and said with an unexpectedly endearing shrug, “Hey, I’m a guy, what can I say?”

And somehow she discovered that her anger had evaporated, and now she couldn’t help but smile. For a long moment she just looked at him, and he looked back at her. Words they’d both spoken-guy…towel…no shirt…brilliant…sex-now seemed to echo back at her, filling her mind with the accompanying images, and she had no doubt whatsoever that the same montage was playing in his mind. His eyes…she remembered wishing they’d look at her with warmth, the way they’d looked at her mother. But this-this wasn’t warmth, this was heat. And it made her feel breathless. Like opening the door of a roaring furnace.

She wondered if she might have made a sound-an involuntary gasp, perhaps-because Alan gave a slight start and said abruptly, “Better be going. I’ll start looking into cold cases, now that we have an idea where to start. I’ll let you know if I find anything that looks promising.”

He was about to get into his car. She said, through stiff lips, “Better kiss me goodbye. Dad’s probably watching.”

He nodded-grimly, as if faced with an unpleasant task. She stepped closer, steeling herself. He reached out and hooked his hand around the back of her neck, pulled her to him and kissed her, roughly and hard.

She felt the firm and vibrant shape of his mouth, the faint rasp of his half-day’s beard, the strength of his hand on her neck, but before any of that could fully register in her consciousness, he took his mouth away from hers, exhaled sharply and wrapped both arms around her and pulled her close. He held her that way, as if they’d both just come through a terrifying moment together, and she felt his heart thumping against her chest and realized her arms had gone around him, and that she didn’t want to let him go. He held her for a long time, and it seemed to her he didn’t want to let her go, either.

But he did. He drew back with a soft laugh of apology, and a breathy, “Well…”

She drew back, too, and managed to laugh, a little. “Um…” she said, and then, “yeah.”

“So…okay, then. I’ll call you.” He got in his car, closed the door, started up the motor and drove away.

Unsteadily, she walked to her car, paused to wave at the house, knowing that behind those silent windows her dad would be watching. She got in, started up the motor, and drove away, following the route back to her office on autopilot, while somewhere in the back of her mind a voice, like a little yippy dog, was barking, Wait! Wait! What just happened? Are you just going to ignore it? Hey!

In firm and determined voice, she answered herself: I can’t think about this now. I…will…not…think…about it.

The Homicide Unit was enjoying a relatively calm period, in the wake of the flare-up of gang violence the previous week. Alan spent Monday afternoon following up leads in a couple of open cases and trying not to think about the very large dollhouse sitting in the back of his SUV. And having considerably better luck with that than not thinking about the woman who’d put it there. And particularly about what had happened right after they’d put it there.

So, what, exactly, did happen? You kissed her-big deal. You’ve kissed her before, a couple of times-so what? It was part of the cover story. Part of the job.

Yeah, true…but it wasn’t even the kissing that bothered him so much, as what had happened after that. Kissing her had been necessary, maybe, for their cover, but not the holding. He didn’t even know where it had come from, that sudden need to hold her. And then, to find it so hard to let her go…and hours later to still be feeling the shape of her in his arms, her warm body melting into his, her heart thumping against his ribs, her hair sleek and soft on his cheek. To find it so hard to stop thinking about how good it had felt, and how sweet she smelled…

He told himself it was only his libido talking, that it had just been too long since he’d enjoyed the company of a warm and willing woman. Except that, when he thought about calling up one of several ladies he knew would be more than happy to fill his need for female companionship, no strings attached, he found the idea somewhat less than appealing. Not worth the effort.

With the leads on his open homicides exhausted, he got himself a prepackaged ham and cheese sub and some fairly decent coffee from the cafeteria and went back to his desk. Day shift was just signing off, so he spent some time waving off several invitations to join the usual crowd at the usual after-shift watering hole before settling down to his search. He started looking in the Chicago area, figuring that was where Richard Merrill had supposedly gone to college following the demise of his alleged hometown, so it was as good a haystack to start with as any other. He found a couple of cold homicides involving male gunshot victims of roughly the right age range whose bodies had been found in bodies of water-one river, one Lake Michigan-that might bear further investigation. He’d also discovered that records from the 1960s weren’t that easy to access. He shut down his computer somewhere around ten o’clock, talked himself out of calling Lindsey to tell her what he’d found-or hadn’t found-and went home to bed.

On Tuesday, Alan’s partner, Carl Taketa, returned from a two-week leave of absence, during which he and his long-time girlfriend, Alicia Alvarez from the Crime Prevention and Education department, had made a brief stop at city hall to tie the knot-without advance notice to anyone in homicide, except the captain, of course. After which they’d hopped a plane to Cancún for their honeymoon. Having spent a mostly sleepless night trying not to think about Lindsey Merrill naked and sharing his bed, Alan was pretty sour on the subject of weddings, honeymoons and happily-ever-afters in general. He gave Carl about five minutes to enjoy the good-natured ribbing, congratulations and back-slappings from other members of the unit before hustling him off to a shooting at a convenience store out in the North Park district.

“Hear you had some excitement while I was gone,” Carl said as they were en route to the scene.

Alan was driving-at a sedate pace, since the victim, a would-be robber, wasn’t going anywhere, and the shooter, the elderly Vietnamese owner of the convenience store, was reportedly sitting quietly in the company of uniformed officers and it didn’t seem likely he’d be going anywhere, either.

“Yeah,” he said, and for a moment had to think what excitement his partner was referring to. “A bit.”

He could feel Taketa looking at him. After a moment, Carl shifted awkwardly and said, “Sorry about not telling you. About getting married, you know? It was the way Alicia wanted it. Not a lot of fuss. You know if we’d had the big deal, you’d have been my best man.”

“No, no, that’s okay, I understand.” To be truthful, Alan hadn’t even thought about that aspect of his partner’s elopement, and in retrospect could only feel profound relief he’d managed to escape the whole best man, bachelor party, reception-toast thing. He threw him a glance and then added dryly, “I’d just like to know how you managed to keep it a secret, the way news travels in the house.”

“I’m kind of surprised about that myself.” Again, Alan felt the man’s eyes on him, and after a moment Taketa said, “Speaking of news, word is you caught yourself a cold case.”

Alan snorted. “Possible cold case. You been talking to the captain?”

Carl grinned. “He mighta mentioned it. So, this woman who brought you the story. She’s hot, right?” Hot? The term took Alan by surprise. He tried now to think if it suited Lindsey Merrill, and decided, to his own puzzlement, that it didn’t, no more than “babe” and “hon” did. Not that she wasn’t attractive-of course she was. Her body-fit and trim, but soft and round where it needed to be-certainly qualified as “hot,” though the way she carried herself was in no way overtly sexy. Except for those Hollywood eyes, her features were unremarkable, but when he thought about how her mouth had felt against his…well. Best not think about that just now. Although…she did have nice skin… Her hair? That, too, although attractively cut and styled, wasn’t exactly the kind of mane poets rhapsodized about.

No, taken as a whole, Lindsey had too much class-or something-to be thought of as “hot.” In fact, the woman seemed to defy his every attempt to label or categorize her. That, in itself, was suggestive of something, although he couldn’t define that, either.

Unable to come up with a reply to Carl’s question, he settled for, “Okay, tell me how that’s relevant.”

“Hah. Woman comes to you, tells you her mother-who has Alzheimer’s, mind you-now believes her husband killed her real husband and tried to kill her. But she doesn’t know when or where this happened. And you take on the case. Way I see it, the woman has to be a hottie.”

Alan muttered a frustrated and sibilant obscenity under his breath.

“Okay, tell me you’d have paid any attention to the woman’s story if she’d been old or ugly.”

Alan snorted again but didn’t bother to reply.

“Hey,” Carl said with a shrug as he turned in his seat to face front again, “doesn’t matter. I’m your partner, you know I’ll help any way I can. We get this shooting wrapped up, run it all by me. Maybe we can come up with something.”

Alan shot him a look. He felt genuinely grateful, and was thinking how glad he was to have Carl back riding shotgun again. But it wasn’t the kind of thing he was inclined to voice out loud, so he didn’t.

After a long pause, Carl said, “Speaking of hotties, you given any thought to…you know. Getting back on the horse?”

Jolted, Alan flashed Carl another look and tried to make light of it. “So, what is this, you take the plunge, now you want to pull everybody into the pool along with you? Misery loves company, is that it?”

“More like happiness does.” Carl sounded dead serious. “No, I mean it, man. There’s no better way to live than a good marriage.”

“And no worse way than a bad one,” Alan said dryly. “Been there…done that.”

Carl shrugged. “So, you’ve learned a thing or two, you’ll get it right next time.”

“You know the odds are against that, right? For cops, especially? You and Alicia-at least she’s on the job, too, so she knows what she’s getting into.”

“True, that helps, sure it does. But it’s not a requirement. There are others…”

His voice trailed off, and Alan didn’t bother to fill in the blanks. They both knew from personal experience the truth of the statistics involving marriages among members of law enforcement.

After a moment, though, Carl said, “So, the hottie-what does she do?”

Alan let out an exasperated breath. Taketa was a bulldog once he got his teeth into something, so there wasn’t much hope of getting him off the subject. “Sells insurance,” he said shortly. “Has her own agency.”

Carl was nodding. “Good…good. Financially independent is always good. Has a life of her own-means she probably wouldn’t be emotionally dependent on you, the way your ex was.”

“Once again…irrelevant.” Alan made sure his tone was firm…unequivocal-not that it would make any difference to Carl. “No way I’m pursuing this, the woman is part of an ongoing investigation.”

“True,” Carl said, nodding, “but after?”

Alan gave the windshield a wry and humorless grin. “Yeah, I’m sure she’s going to feel all warm and fuzzy towards the cop who put her beloved daddy away for murder.”

After a thoughtful silence, Carl said, “You really feel that’s the way it’s gonna go down?”

It was Alan’s turn to shrug. “Gut feeling, that’s all I’ve got. And I mean, all. There’s something off about this guy, Merrill, but I can’t put my finger on it. And, I’ve got nothing to go on except the memories of an Alzheimer’s patient about something that supposedly happened over forty years ago, God only knows where. What does that make me-crazy, right?”

He could hear the grin in his partner’s reply. “Told you-it’s hormones, that’s all. Can’t be denied.” There was a pause, and then: “Does she know about Chelsea?”

“Who?” Alan said, although he knew very well who.

“The hottie.”

Resigned, he said noncommittally, “She’s met her.”

“And?”

Alan exhaled and muttered glumly, “She gave her a dollhouse. Her dollhouse.”

Carl let out a hoot of laughter, just as they pulled up in front of the convenience store. Then, as Alan rolled the sedan to a stop, they both sat for a moment in silence, gazing at the small Asian gentleman sitting slumped and lost-looking in the open doorway of a patrol car.

Carl sighed. “Please tell me we aren’t going to have to arrest this poor guy for defending his business against some scumbag that tried to rob him?”

Alan looked at him and opened his car door. “We just follow the facts,” he said.

“I think we’re going at this all wrong,” Carl said. He leaned his chair back, propped one foot on Alan’s desktop and laced his fingers together behind his head-for a moment, until Alan gave him a look. Then he quickly shoved himself upright and leaned forward. “I mean, we’ve been looking at it from the perspective of a homicide case.”

“Which, if we assume Susan Merrill’s memories are accurate, it is,” Alan said with a half-stifled yawn. “Taking her recollections as facts-which is already a stretch-we have a couple, husband and wife, probably in their mid-to-late twenties. Both shot, most likely on board a boat of some kind. Problem is, we don’t know where, what kind of boat, what body of water. Could have been just about anything, anywhere.”

It was late Friday evening, long past the time when a newly married man should have been home with his bride, but Alicia was enjoying a night out with her mom and sister-dinner and a chick movie, Carl had told him-so Alan’s conscience was clear. Alan had spent most of Thursday and Friday in court, testifying, and this was the first chance he’d had to get together with his partner and brainstorm the Merrill case-if he could call it that.

He picked up his mug, drained the last mouthful of cold coffee and made a face as he set the mug back down. “Truth is, I don’t know where to start. Rather-I did start, with the Chicago area, which is where Merrill supposedly went to college. Where do I go from here-that’s the question.”

“Uh-uh.” Carl was shaking his head. “That’s what I mean. You’ve been looking at this like a homicide case. But this woman-Susan Merrill-she survived.”

“Her husband didn’t. If what she says is true.”

“Yeah-if. That’s speculation. But we know for sure Susan survived something. Right? You’ve gotta figure her memories are real, or we wouldn’t even be talking about it. So, she gets shot-or injured in some way-didn’t you say she’s got a scar on the side of her head?”

“According to her daughter.”

“Okay, so, say she’s shot, the bullet grazes her, she goes into the water. She remembers floating, right?”

“Right…” Alan said, frowning. He was getting a prickly sensation under his skin, because he was beginning to see what his partner was getting at. He sat up straighter.

“Seems to me,” Carl went on, “it would have taken some kind of miracle for this woman, gunshot wound to the head, in the water-”

“At night,” Alan interjected.

Carl nodded agreement. “To have somehow survived. For one thing, that water couldn’t have been too cold, or hypothermia would have finished her for sure. Which lets out the Great Lakes, and probably the North Atlantic coast, and for sure the whole Pacific coast, which is cold as a-”

“Which leaves the Gulf of Mexico or the Southeast coast.” Alan shook his head irritably. “But the snowsuit-”

“Forget the snowsuit. All that means is the woman lived somewhere cold when her kid was little. Doesn’t mean that’s where the crime took place.”

“Okay,” Alan said. He took a breath and let it out. “Okay.” He was tingling all over, now. He swiveled toward his computer screen. “So, somebody must have picked this woman up-fishing boat, maybe. Somebody’s yacht. Point is, whoever found her, it would have been a pretty big deal…”

“Newsworthy,” Carl said, grinning. “Film at eleven.” He spun his chair around and pulled out his keyboard. “What year did you say this was?”

Two days later. Early Sunday afternoon. Alan and Carl sat hunched in front of their respective computer monitors, staring at the image on both screens.

“So,” Carl said, “what do you think? Is it her, or not?”

For a moment Alan didn’t answer. The image-a small, murky, black-and-white newspaper photo of a woman’s face-reminded him too acutely of the digital photos of homicide victims they often snapped at the crime scene and then thrust in front of potential suspects or witnesses along with the words, “Do you know this woman?” The face was puffy, the eyes half-open, and a bandage obscured the left side of her head, including part of her face. It could be anybody, he thought.

“I dunno,” he muttered. “Maybe.” He switched back to the article from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, dated the fifth of September, 1969. It hadn’t made the front page; Ho Chi Minh had died a few days previously, and William Calley had just been charged in the My Lai Massacre, so the woman rescued from the Chesapeake Bay by two blue crab fishermen only made page two. The photo bore the inevitable caption: Do You Know This Woman? The article alongside the photo was headlined MYSTERY WOMAN PULLED FROM BAY IN MIRACLE RESCUE.

An unidentified woman, believed to be in her late twenties or early thirties, was found barely alive and floating in the Chesapeake Bay early Wednesday afternoon, rescued by two sharp-eyed fishermen, Ed and Patrick Paulsen. The brothers from Reedville, Virginia, were heading home after a day of fishing for blue crab when they spotted the woman, who was partially tangled in some floating debris. It is believed the debris, probably washed into the Bay by last week’s heavy rains, remnants of Hurricane Camille, may have helped save the woman’s life.

“It was just a miracle we even seen her,” said Ed Paulsen. “We thought first it was just a pile of reeds and driftwood and stuff. Then I seen something move.”

The Paulsen brothers are being hailed as heroes today, but according to Patrick, “I guess we was just in the right place at the right time.”

The woman, who is suffering from a head injury as well as exposure, was taken to a hospital in Richmond where she is reported to be in serious but stable condition. Anyone with information regarding this woman is urged to contact authorities immediately.