Memory of Murder

Chapter 12

I thought it would be safer to have her close to me. Then, I told myself, if her memory ever did return, I would be able to deal with her. The years went by and I dared to hope the day of reckoning would never come.

Excerpt from the confession of Alexi K.

FBI Files, Restricted Access,

Declassified 2010

Alan was standing on the steps of Lindsey’s townhouse, scowling at the top of a distant palm tree, the cell phone pressed hard against his ear. “I’m at Lindsey’s place,” he told Carl. “She’s not here, and neither is her car.”

“What’re you thinking? She might have gone to confront Merrill herself? Would she do that, knowing what we know?”

“I don’t know,” Alan said, his voice reflecting the darkness of his thoughts. “She might just have driven over to Mission Bay to take her run. Or…she might have decided to take matters into her own hands. I couldn’t tell you. What’s the surveillance on Merrill saying?”

“They haven’t reported any movement, so I’m assuming he’s staying put.”

Alan let out an exasperated breath. “Yeah, but is he alone? What’s the matter with those guys? Have to have everything spelled out?” He swore under his breath, making his way down the driveway in long strides to his car. “Find out, Carl. I want to know if Merrill’s had any visitors.”

“Gotcha,” Carl said. “You heading over there?”

“On my way.” He was already in his car. The engine fired and he drove through the gate and turned into the street with tires squealing.

“First, I should tell you that my name-the one I was given at birth-is Alexi Kovalenko. I was born in Kiev, which is the capital city of Ukraine.”

This isn’t happening, Lindsey thought. She fought desperately not to throw up. The words seemed to come at her in a fierce wind. She felt cold…almost paralyzed. And at the same time endangered…pursued. Like a nightmare in which she was chased endlessly while struggling to run on limbs weighed down with thick, deep mud. She prayed it was a nightmare, and that she would wake up and it would be over and quickly forgotten.

Though she tried not to, she must have made some sound because he-the stranger she’d called Dad for forty years-held up a hand asking, begging her to let him continue.

“Please…please listen. I am not a monster. What I did, I did for what I thought were very good reasons at the time…” He closed his eyes and put a hand over them-she saw this through a blur of tears-and after a moment, when she hadn’t spoken or fled, he heaved in a careful breath and went on.

“At that time, of course, Ukraine was part of the U.S.S.R., and it was the era of Stalin. My father was a faithful member of the Party, so our family lived fairly well. Then came the war. Because of his connections, my father was able to have my mother and me sent away, to the east, to safety, so we escaped the terrible starvation and fighting that ravaged Ukraine for so many years. My father was killed during the battle for Kiev. Because he died a hero, my mother and I were well taken care of. After the war, when I was still a young boy, I was taken from my mother and sent to live in a different-very different-kind of village. I was told I had been selected for a special mission, a very rare opportunity to serve my country.

“Lindsey,” he said, as she sat struggling to breathe…struggling to weep silently and not scream in anguished denial, “you are too young to remember how it was then, at the height of the Cold War. People on both sides lived in constant fear of nuclear holocaust, and the knowledge that there were thousands of warheads pointed at our cities and that anything-even a stupid mistake-could trigger annihilation. Both sides, understanding that knowledge was power, employed vast networks of spies and agents working to provide information as to what the other side was planning, what their capabilities were-well, I guess you’ve seen enough movies and read enough spy thrillers, that perhaps you have some idea-even if a romanticized one-what it was like.”

He paused and looked at her as if waiting for her confirmation. No longer crying, she only stared back at him in numb silence, and after a moment he went on.

“Anyway-this ‘village’ where I was now to live was, in fact, a top secret project in this war for information. It had been constructed as an exact replica of a small town in the American Midwest, although it was located somewhere in the vast interior of the Soviet Union. There I lived and went to school-as an American boy. I learned to speak American English perfectly, without the slightest trace of an accent. In school I studied American history and government and literature. I ate American food, played American games, watched American movies, read American books. I became…American-but only on the outside. In my heart I remained a loyal Soviet citizen, completely dedicated to my country’s cause.

“By the mid-1950s, when I was nearly twenty, I had completed my training and was considered ready to fulfill my mission. I, along with others who had completed the program-I have no idea how many of us there were-was smuggled into the United States, where I slipped seamlessly into American life. I had been provided with a background, all necessary documents. All I had to do was wait to be contacted and told what my mission was to be. In the meantime, I went to school, got a job, dated-but didn’t marry. That would have made it too hard to keep my secret, I thought. And the years went by.

“Then, in the late summer of 1969, I received the orders I had been waiting for.”

He paused for a long time, and Lindsey could feel him looking at her. When she didn’t raise her eyes from her hands, clasped tightly together on the tabletop, once again he drew a breath and went on.

“I was to go to Baltimore, where I was to…eliminate-”

“Eliminate-you mean kill, don’t you?”

He glanced at her, startled, perhaps, that she had finally spoken. “Yes-kill…two people. I was told these people were traitors to their country. Agents who had turned, gone over to the enemy.”

“Traitors!” Her cry was one of pain, of outrage. “What are you talking about? He was a schoolteacher! She was a housewife-a mother. They weren’t spies!”

A spasm of emotion twisted his face, before he lifted a hand to cover it. What the emotion was she didn’t know or care-she had no desire to understand him, just then. “Yes…yes,” he said in a ragged voice, “I know. But by the time I found that out, you see…it was already too late.”

“You’re not gonna like this,” Carl said. His voice came through on Alan’s Bluetooth, with too much background noise.

“Tell me,” Alan said, eyes fixed grimly on the traffic ahead.

“The guys sitting on Merrill just informed me he has a visitor-arrived about forty-five minutes ago.”

Alan swore. “And they’re just telling us this now?”

“Guess they were told to report on Merrill’s movements, so that’s what they did. Anyway, from the description, sure sounds like Lindsey. Who else would it be?” There was a long, empty pause, while Alan fought back all sorts of emotions, none of them familiar to him, the most prominent of which was fear. Then Carl said, “What do you want me to do? Should I tell ’em to go in?”

“No. God, no. The last thing we want to do is provoke a hostage situation. No…just tell ’em to sit tight. I’m on my way.”

His car was equipped with emergency lights and siren, which he didn’t use often. He switched them both on now.

“I had no way of knowing,” Richard-or Alexi-said. “Sometime between when I was told where to find my targets, and my arrival in Baltimore, they fled. And another young couple-innocents-moved into their apartment. How was I to know? They were the same approximate age…fit the general description…”

“They had a child!”

He hesitated, then seemed to steel himself. “That was unfortunate, but I didn’t consider it important. After all, I’d been raised in a culture in which the bonds of family, even between parents and children, were considered less important than duty…loyalty to country. I had lived in America long enough to know the boy would be taken care of, perhaps even grow up stronger because of it. No, he wasn’t a consideration to me at all.” He waved a hand, then sat for a long moment gazing across the barrancas, disappearing now in the purple haze of sunset.

“Most of the rest…I think you probably already know. Everything was in place-the boat, the weights to take the bodies down…”

The bodies…my parents. Lindsey sat still, crying quietly. She felt empty.

“Everything went like clockwork. I waited…took them when they were away from home, and there were no witnesses. They seemed more bewildered than afraid…”

The words went on and on, falling on her ears like raindrops on windowpanes…she heard them, but they couldn’t reach her.

I can’t let them reach me. It would be unbearable, too terrible to imagine…to feel what it must have been like for them. To be taken, to know at last that they were going to die, and not to know why.

Oh, how she wished she could stop the words. Wished she could press Pause, then Rewind…go back to the day before she’d walked into the San Diego Police Department headquarters, back to before she’d met a homicide detective named Alan Cameron.

“When I saw the newspapers…when I knew she’d somehow survived, I went to the hospital. I went there to kill her, not only because she could identify me, but because it was my mission. I was a soldier, and I had to finish the task I had been ordered to do. But when she didn’t know me at all…and I found out she was pregnant…” He lifted his hands, held them out in a gesture of entreaty. “What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t justify killing a child. And then…I found out-my ‘control,’ the voice I only knew from the telephone, told me-I had made a terrible mistake and that she-they-weren’t the people I was supposed to kill. So I ran. I cut my ties to my country, my duty. I took her away with me, and I prayed her memory would never come back. I grew to love her, and you, her child. You became my child. And for forty years I have tried to atone for what I did. I don’t ask you to forgive me, Lindsey, only maybe to-”

“Forgive you?” Her voice was a whisper; she felt as though all the air had been sucked from her lungs. She recoiled from him, closing her eyes tightly, trying to shut out the images he’d imprinted on her brain.

So, she didn’t see him go. Only heard the soft sigh of an exhalation, like a surrender.

“Okay, sweetheart,” he said quietly, and it was her dad’s voice again. “I understand.”

She sat hunched in her chair with one arm pressed across her stomach, the other hand over her mouth, holding back howls of anguish, and listened to the patio door slide open. Listened to footsteps crossing the tile kitchen floor. Heard the door to his office open…then close.

She didn’t know what made her rise, cold with nameless fear, and dash into the house. Or how long it was after that-seconds…minutes-when she heard the gunshot.

Alan was pulling onto Merrill’s street. He’d just reported his position and ETA to his partner when he heard Carl’s radio, the sound coming through clearly on the hands-free cell phone transmission:

“Shots fired! Shots fired!”

Carl swore. “Did you-”

“I heard.” Alan dropped the phone onto the seat and stepped on the gas.

He’d never been crazy about the so-called “adrenaline rush”-not like some thrill junkies he knew-but he was glad to have it kick in now. Knew it was what made him able to function as a police officer while on another level, one completely separate from the trained cop, he was just an ordinary man and more terrified than he’d ever been before in his life. Fear knotted his belly and hollowed his chest, but his hands were steady on the wheel as he aimed the car into the driveway of Richard Merrill’s house, and screeched it to a halt. They were steady as he drew his weapon from its holster. He got out of the car and his voice was firm and clear as he shouted at the two uniforms who were dashing up the street toward him.

“How many shots?”

“Just heard the one,”

“Take the front-I’m going in the back.”

He sprinted through the open garage, and he could hear the two officers pounding on the front door, shouting, “Police-open up!”

Then he was in the backyard, on the patio where such a short time ago he’d stood chatting with Richard Merrill while Chelsea played in the pool nearby. Now he crossed the open area in a half crouch, his weapon in a two-handed grip, every muscle, every nerve on full alert.

“Lindsey!” he yelled, and got no answer. “Richard Merrill-this is the police! Put down your weapon and come out of the house-now!”

He paused, frozen, but heard no sound. Cold to his core, he approached the open sliding glass door. There was no sound, no movement from within. From the other side of the house he could hear a thump and a crash as the front door was forced open, and he heard one of the uniforms yell again: “Police-put down your weapon!”

Alan crossed the dark kitchen and from a position beside the door, peered around it and down the hallway. Partway down, he saw light pouring from an open doorway. Merrill’s study, if he remembered correctly. From the other direction he saw movement-the uniformed officers, advancing with guns drawn. He waved them back with a quick, emphatic motion.

“Lindsey?” he shouted again. “Lindsey, are you there? Are you all right?”

He heard nothing. The fear inside him grew…became a monster that threatened to overwhelm him. He fought it down. Breathed deeply…in…out. And then, on legs he no longer felt, he moved slowly, steadily toward that open doorway. Moving in a nightmare, feeling nothing else but dread, he flattened himself against the wall, his weapon pointing at the ceiling. Lindsey…he prayed silently, and looked around the door frame, into the room.

And this time he said it aloud, on a rush of anguished breath. “Oh, God…Lindsey…”

She was sitting on the floor, where Richard Merrill lay sprawled on the patterned rug beside his desk. Merrill’s head was in her lap. There was blood on the rug and on her hands and her clothes, even a smear on her cheek where she’d wiped it. A manila envelope lay on the desktop. A small handgun, a revolver-looked like a.38 caliber-lay on the rug near the body. For that’s what it clearly was.

Hearing Alan’s voice, she lifted her eyes to stare at him, her beautiful eyes glittering like jewels in her marble-white face. And she spoke in a voice that was clogged with tears but strong and fierce nonetheless.

“He would never have hurt me,” she said.

It was later, Alan didn’t know exactly how much. He’d become so engrossed in the typewritten document he’d been reading that he’d lost track of time.

He was leaning against the fender of his car, reading by the light of the floodlamps that had been set up in the street in front of the Merrill house. Crime scene tape surrounded the house and blocked off access to the street except to residents and authorized personnel. On the other side of the tape, neighbors still stood around in small clusters, some talking quietly with each other, others just standing…watching. There wasn’t much to see. Inside the house, a forensics team had been going about its business, and would be doing so for quite some time, probably. The medical examiner had come and gone, taking with him the zipper-bagged body of Richard Merrill.

Or more accurately, Alan thought, staring down at the document in his hands, Alexi Kovalenko.

Carl Taketa was coming down the driveway toward him. Alan straightened and picked up the transparent evidence bag that lay on the hood of his car. Inside the bag was a manila envelope that still bore along its edges traces of the masking tape that had once presumably held it stuck securely to the bottom of Richard Merrill’s middle desk drawer.

“Here you go,” Carl said, and handed him a single sheet of paper, similar to the ones Alan held in his hands. “The CSI guys were cool about it-turned their backs and pretended they didn’t see me using the copy machine.”

“Thanks,” Alan said. He put the sheet of paper with the others. The last page. He slid the entire document into the manila envelope, closed it, then closed and sealed the evidence bag. He put the bag back on the hood of the car and looked up at Carl. “You got the-”

“Right here.” Carl took a folded sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket and gave it to Alan. Alan took it and put it in his own pocket.

Alan nodded toward the place where an ambulance was parked next to the curb a little farther down the street. He could see Lindsey sitting in the open back of the ambulance, talking to a paramedic, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to her since Carl and the lab and medical crews had arrived, having removed himself from the investigation due to his own personal involvement in the case.

“How is she?” he asked Carl now, keeping his tone carefully impersonal.

Carl, understanding, did the same. “She’s okay. Negative for gun shot residue-looks like a pretty straightforward case of suicide. They’ve been treating her for shock.” He paused, let out a breath. “Small wonder.”

Alan picked up the evidence bag. “You get a chance to read this?”

Carl shook his head. “Just the first part. Wish I could have read more of it. I have an idea once the Feebs take custody of this case, that’s the last anybody’s going to see of that document for a while.” He paused, then added, “Helluva thing, huh?

“Yeah,” Alan said.

“Wonder why he did it-writing everything down like that. You know?”

“He did it for her,” Alan said heavily. “He hoped she’d never have to read it. But if it ever came out-the truth-he wanted her to understand.”

“How many others do you suppose there are-people like Merrill? My God-back in the fifties and sixties, there was all this paranoia about ‘spies among us’-wild tales, I always thought. Now, turns out it was true.” He shook his head again, in a kind of wonderment. “Didn’t anybody ever think about what happened to all those spies when the country and the cause they worked for suddenly ceased to exist?”

Alan snorted softly. “Well, I guess we know what happened to one of ’em.”

Carl stared at the house, where the people responsible for sorting out tragedies and assigning blame and responsibility for them were still going about their business. “What were they supposed to do? Pack up and go home?” He looked back at Alan. “Except…home wasn’t there anymore. It’s here.”

Alan didn’t say anything, and they stood together in the night, under the floodlights, gazing at the activity all around them. Then Carl said without turning, “They’re probably about done with her. Why don’t you take her home?”

Alan looked at his partner. He felt tired, suddenly, more tired than he’d ever felt in his life, that he could remember. And at the same time, oddly wired, as if there was a low-voltage current running just under his skin.

Carl took the evidence bag with the manila envelope from Alan’s hand. “Go on,” he said. “I got this covered. No need for you to stick around tonight.”

Alan watched him walk back up the driveway toward the house. After a moment he took the folded piece of paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, read what was written there, then folded it again and put it back in his pocket. Then he straightened up and walked down the driveway, down the sidewalk to where Lindsey was.

Alan unlocked her door for her, then stepped in and took a quick look around before standing aside to let her go in ahead of him. He always did that. Force of habit, Lindsey thought; he probably wasn’t even aware he was doing it.

She walked slowly across the tiled entry and stepped into her living room, which always before had given her a sense of warmth and welcome. Now the room seemed only vaguely familiar to her, like a room in a house she’d maybe visited once or twice. Feeling desperately weary, she turned to look at Alan, who had closed the door behind him and dropped the key onto the table in the entry, and stood now, watching her, hands in his trouser pockets.

“You’re not going to leave me alone, are you?” she asked, smiling a little.

“Not unless you want me to,” he said gravely.

She snorted, and after a moment said, “Well, I’m not about to beg.”

“You don’t have to beg,” he said. “Obviously. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, you’re here-or rather…there. Which is fine, if that’s where you want to be, because like I said, I’m not going to-” As she was rattling on he was moving toward her, and before she could finish he’d gathered her into his arms, and her world once again became a warm and safe place.

He smelled so good…so clean. After a while she expelled a sigh against his shirtfront and murmured, “You must think me terribly needy.”

“I don’t.”

“Hmm…right.” She pushed away from him and looked down at the jacket someone-one of the EMTs, maybe-had given her to put on over her blood-stained clothes. It was way too big and covered the worst of it, even on her pants. She’d washed her hands after they’d tested her for gunshot residue, but she still felt sticky. And the smell…She touched her nose with the back of her hand and gazed around at nothing as she fought back a wave of nausea. “Um…can I get you anything? Some coffee?”

“You don’t need to wait on me,” he said.

She knew, without looking at him, that his eyes would have the softness that had first appealed to her when he’d spoken so gently to her mother. But it wasn’t the kind of softness she wanted now.

“Yes,” she snapped, “I do.” While she talked she was moving again, just…moving, barely knowing where. Then she was in the kitchen, closing the curtains across the glass patio doors, opening cupboards, closing them again.

She felt his hands on her arms, turning her. He pulled out one of the stools beside the counter and sat on it, then drew her onto his lap.

“I need to do…something,” she said.

“Yes, you do,” he said, “but there are better things.”

“Like what? Oh-I guess I should take a shower,” she said, answering her own question.

“That’s one,” Alan said, nodding.

“I knew it-I stink.”

“You don’t.”

“Liar.” She’d stiffened, and was trying to get off his lap, but he only settled her more closely against him, one hand coming to guide her head firmly into the curve of his neck and shoulder.

“You don’t stink,” he said, “but if you did, I wouldn’t care.”

She went still, and for a long time lay against him listening to the sound of his heartbeat and the words he’d spoken. They seemed to rumble around in her head like some sort of distant and continuous thunder. Finally, she lifted her head so she could look at his face, and said, “Wow. That’s…wow.”

She touched his cheek…laid her hand along the side of his face, feeling the prickle of his beard against her palm. His eyes gazed steadily back at her. She stroked her thumb across his lips, and they parted slightly. A shiver ran through her, and, to her wonderment, through him, too.

“I thought you said this was a bad idea,” she whispered.

His lips curved in a wry smile. “It’s growing on me.”

Laughter…pleasure…two things she’d thought she’d never experience again…bubbled deep inside her. She stirred a little and said with a tiny hiccup of laughter, “That’s not all that’s growing.”

A chuckle shook his chest. “I know. What can I say?” He kissed her forehead and drew her head back down onto his shoulder. Then he said huskily, “But this isn’t about sex. I can just hold you all night long, if that’s what you want.”

She slipped off his lap and turned to look at him. “I would be very disappointed if you did that,” she said gravely.

He unfolded himself and rose slowly from the stool. “Why is that?”

“What do you mean, Why? Because I would very much like you to make love to me. But like I said, I won’t b-”

He took her face between his hands and kissed her, stopping the words in her mouth.

He’d kissed her before, but this was different. She knew it…felt it. She felt weak and shaky inside, and gripped his wrists and held on to them for support. When he lifted his head at last, she stood for a long moment with her eyes closed, then whispered, “But first…a shower.”

“I’ve got no problem with that,” he said, smiling.

Later, lying naked and spent beside him, Lindsey said, “I wouldn’t-I don’t-blame you. Or hold it against you. But I do blame myself. You were right about that.”

His hand didn’t stop stroking her back. “Why?”

“He asked me to forgive him, but I was in such shock…I couldn’t look at him. I shrank from him, Alan. And that’s when he…when he…”

“For what it’s worth, I believe he did the only thing he could.”

She rose up and stared at him, and he touched her cheek and then went on. “He’d lost everything, love. Everything that mattered. You…your mother. The rest didn’t mean much.”

She closed her eyes and swallowed, then said thickly, “He was wrong, you know. He hadn’t lost me. I think I would have forgiven him. I have forgiven him. Maybe that’s crazy, but no matter what he did, he was my dad. He loved me. Nothing can ever change that.”

“No,” Alan said. “Not crazy.”

She lay quietly in his arms for a while, then raised herself again on one elbow to look down at him. “I want you to know,” she said, in a voice that shook only a little, “that this isn’t all about needing you to help me make it through the night.”

“No? What is it, then?” Was he daring her? His smile seemed…tender.

Steeling herself one last time, she took a deep breath, and stepped out of the shadows and into the light. And felt more naked…exposed…vulnerable than any time before in her life.

“It’s about me loving you,” she said solemnly, “and offering you sex so that you will stay with me and grow to love me back.”

His smile widened briefly, then vanished, to be replaced by an expression more appropriate for a priest hearing someone’s most sacred secrets. He cleared his throat. “Uh…not that I don’t appreciate the sex-am pretty happy about it, in fact-but it’s not necessary in order for me to stay with you. Or love you back.”

She looked at him for a long time. Then, whispering, “For real?”

“Yeah,” he said in a raspy voice. “For real.”

“What changed your mind?”

“About loving you? Nothing. I started doing that quite a while ago. But about giving us a chance…well, you did for starters.” His smile flickered. “I didn’t much like being called a coward. But what really did it, was…well, just a minute.”

He shifted her and sat up. She watched him, her head propped on her hand, as he walked naked across the room to where he’d left his clothes, hung over the back of a chair.

He took something from the pocket of his shirt-a folded piece of paper. He came back, sat on the edge of the bed and handed the paper to her. His eyes seemed uncommonly bright. Tears? she thought. No. Impossible. This is Alan. Tough, hardened, homicide cop. It can’t be tears.

“This is the last page of Alexi Kovalenko’s confession-I had Carl make me a copy.” His voice was rough; he paused to clear his throat. “I think he meant it for you. I guess you could say they’re his last words.”

Lindsey looked at him in wonderment, half in fear. Then she took the paper from him, unfolded it, and through a shimmer of her own tears, read what was written there:

I could never understand why she survived.

Of course, I did not believe in God, then.

Later, I came to believe He had given both of us a second chance.

She looked up at him, smiled radiantly and whispered, “Yes. Oh, yes.”