Memory of Murder

Chapter 4

The man…was very protective of her. He tried always to put his body between his wife and my gun. As if flesh could stop bullets.

Excerpt from the confession of Alexi K.

FBI Files, Restricted Access,

Declassified 2010

“I don’t understand,” Lindsey said. She felt sick. “What do you mean, she didn’t exist? How is that possible?”

“Not literally, of course, just according to public record.”

“But, I told you, there was a fire-”

“And that could explain it,” Alan said, cutting her off. But it was plain to her that it didn’t explain it, not to his satisfaction.

Anger filled her, although she didn’t know quite where to direct it; she’d asked for this herself, after all. “What about my dad?” she asked, keeping her voice under tight control. “I know there’s stuff about him. I’ve seen it.”

“Oh, sure there is. Birth certificate says he was born in a little town somewhere in Nebraska.”

She nodded, fidgety now with a nervous excitement she couldn’t account for. “Yes-that’s where he grew up. He played high school sports-mostly football, I think. He was even student body president, prom king-the whole thing. I’ve seen his yearbook,” she added with an emphasis that bordered on belligerent.

“Yeah, the only problem with that is,” Alan said, reaching to turn on the ignition, “the Nebraska town where Richard Merrill supposedly did all those things was wiped off the map by a tornado in the nineteen-fifties.”

He didn’t look at her, and in the dashboard light his profile appeared grim, even menacing. She told herself it was only the way the shadows played across his rather sharp features, but she was shaking again, hugging herself inside the warm-up jacket to try to make herself stop it. “So?”

He swept her with a glance as he backed out of the parking space. “So, there’s no way to verify any of it, except maybe to try to track down some of the town’s former residents and see if any of them remember Richard Merrill and his family. I’m thinking there’s a pretty slim chance of that, after more than half a century.”

“I don’t believe this,” Lindsey muttered, staring out at the palm trees and pricey ocean-view houses slipping past the car window. It was beginning to seem to her like a bad dream. Her mother’s delusions, the Alzheimer’s-that had been hard to take. But this didn’t even seem real. “Look-I know my dad didn’t do this thing-whatever it is my mother thinks he did. He’s just not-he couldn’t have. You’d have to know him. If you did, then maybe you’d understand-he did…not…do…this.”

He nodded. “I am going to need to talk to him.” He heard the sharp intake of breath and glanced over at her. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes. Just…please not yet. Okay? Not…yet.”

He swore silently to himself. Wished he wasn’t driving. Wished for better light. Wanted-needed to see her face, to see if the fear he was hearing in her voice was reflected there, too. Was it just the fear of a daddy’s girl afraid of hurting or disappointing the parent she adored, or something else? Being a cop, he knew he was programmed by experience to expect the darkest. The ugliest. The worst.

“Why not?” he asked gently.

She exhaled again, slowly this time. “It’s just that…I haven’t told him about…um, that I’ve talked to the police about this. And I don’t want to, not until I have something I can tell him, some kind of explanation for my mother’s dreams, some reason for the way she’s been behaving. I don’t want him to think I-” She stopped there and half turned in her seat to look at him. “Do you understand?”

Alan put one hand over his mouth and shook his head. But he knew better than to press her; she already felt bad enough, he could tell. She was a people-pleaser by nature. Even without looking directly at her he could feel her eyes on his face, begging him to understand. He did, of course-probably better than she knew.

“Oh-this is my street. Left here…” And her voice sounded diffident, as if she knew she’d disappointed him and was unsure where she stood with him now.

The turn took him into the entry driveway of a gated town-house complex-although the low picket fence appeared to be more for decoration than security. Lindsey pulled a key attached to a chain around her neck out of the front of her tank top. Also on the chain was a small remote control. She aimed it at the gate, which promptly swung inward to admit them. He drove through into a park-like area landscaped with eucalyptus and other evergreen shrubs and trees he couldn’t identify in the dark. The buildings, lit by sidewalk lamps and sconces mounted on the walls, were two-story and modern in style, with stuccoed chimneys and fake-wood shingle roofs made of something no doubt impervious to fire.

He gave a low whistle of appreciation. “Ocean view. Must be nice.”

She seemed to take that as a criticism of some kind, and replied with an edge of defensiveness, “I bought it after my divorce. I had no husband, no children, nobody to please but myself. Since I love the ocean, why not live close to it?” She threw him a look and a wry smile. “My dad helped me finance it, naturally. And of course this was before the big real estate boom. Right now, after the crash, I figure it’s probably worth fairly close to what I originally paid for it. That’s mine right there. You can pull into the driveway, if you-” She gave a sharp gasp, having just noticed, as Alan had, that the driveway in question was already occupied by a light-colored luxury sedan.

She uttered a sibilant swear word that both surprised and delighted him. Up to that point, she’d seemed almost too “good,” in the moralistic sense, to be true, little Miss Goody Two-shoes determined to be on her best behavior, minding all her p’s and q’s. That one word banished the illusion and made her more real to him, meaning the opposite of fake, not fantasy. Or, he thought, maybe human was the better word. Less reserved. More…touchable.

“It’s my dad,” she whispered, throwing him a look that was close to panic. “Quick-drive on! Drive on!”

“I think it’s too late,” Alan said. He was watching a man coming down the driveway, dressed in khakis, hands in the pockets of his unzipped windbreaker. He’d halted when he saw Alan’s car slow at the foot of the driveway; now he pulled a hand from a pocket to shade his eyes from the headlights, then broke into a smile. “I think he’s made you.”

As far as Alan was concerned, the chance meeting couldn’t have been better. Save him some time and trouble, it seemed to him. Obviously, Lindsey wasn’t of the same mind. The face she turned to him wore an expression of dread.

“What am I going to do? How am I going to explain this? How do I explain you?”

Part of him was getting tired of having to tiptoe around Daddy-dear in this investigation; as far as Alan was concerned, the guy was a possible suspect in a very old possible homicide, and the sooner he was able to get a fix on the man, the better. But there was another part of him-small, but developing an alarmingly loud voice-that seemed to want to protect this woman from pain and anguish if he possibly could.

The man in the driveway-Richard Merrill-had given them a friendly wave and was now standing with hands once more shoved into the pockets of his windbreaker, obviously waiting for them-or his daughter, at least-to get out of the car. Alan pulled past the driveway and parked, then produced a big smile and a friendly wave back.

“Follow my lead,” he said to Lindsey from behind the smile, without moving his lips. He put his hand on her shoulder and felt her flinch nervously at his touch. “Don’t freak out. I’m just going to kiss you.”

Her face jerked toward him. He saw her eyes widen, glistening in the light from the sidewalk lamps. He heard her sip in a breath as he leaned across the center console, and then her lips were warm and soft against his. He was prepared for that. What he wasn’t prepared for was the thump inside his chest, and the power surge that went zinging through all the nerves and muscles in his body.

It took all the willpower he had not to slide his hand along her shoulder and up under her hair, then hold her head still and press into the kiss until she got over the shock of it and began to kiss him back. Instead, he pulled away just far enough to whisper, “You okay with this?”

She nodded-just barely. He could feel her body trembling under his hand. He could feel his own heart pounding as he murmured, “You get where I’m going?”

This time she managed a firmer nod, along with a shaky laugh.

“Okay, then.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze, then turned and opened the car door. He got out, calling a friendly, “Hello there!” to Richard Merrill.

He made his way around to the passenger side, where Lindsey was in the process of exiting the vehicle. As soon as she’d cleared the door and shut it behind her, he reached out and put his arm around her. “Busted,” he said to her with wry good humor, as he pulled her in close to his side. “Looks like I’m finally going to get to meet your dad.”

Lindsey angled a look at him, then gave an uneasy-sounding laugh. “Uh, Dad…this is Alan Cameron. Alan, meet Richard Merrill-my dad.”

Alan stepped forward, bringing Lindsey with him. Since she was snuggled in next to his body, he could feel she was still trembling-or vibrating with tension-as he leaned and held out his hand. Smiling with teeth showing, he said, “It’s good to finally meet you, sir. Lindsey’s told me so much about you.”

Richard Merrill shook his hand but his smile was more cautious than friendly, and his voice was not warm. “I wish I could say the same. Lindsey?”

“Dad, I’m sorry, I was going to tell you, I just…” She looked at Alan again, clearly unsure where she was supposed to go now. He gazed back at her, smiling reassuringly. “Uh…the thing is, you see…”

“The thing is, Mr. Merrill,” he said, taking the reins from her again, “I’m a police detective.”

“Really.” Merrill did a little startled pullback, which didn’t mean all that much to Alan; he got that sort of reaction a lot.

“Quite frankly,” Alan went on, “Linz didn’t know how you’d feel about your daughter dating a cop.”

Merrill rubbed at the back of his neck. “Quite frankly, I’m not sure how I feel about that, myself. How long have you two been…uh, dating?”

Alan and Lindsey both started to speak, then stopped and looked at each other. Alan said, “I don’t know…what has it been? About a month?”

“More like two,” she said, getting into the game enough to give him a playful nudge. Although laying it on a little heavy, he thought.

He grinned at her. “Seems a lot shorter.” The glint in her eyes…was it a trick of the light, or could it possibly be laughter? He found himself holding his breath to contain the urge to laugh with her, laugh with sheer delight and the same sense of discovery he’d felt when he’d heard her swear out loud.

“How did you meet my daughter, Detective?”

Merrill’s voice startled him; for a moment the world had seemed to include only two people.

Lindsey laughed. “Dad, what is this? What am I, sixteen?”

“No, honey, it’s okay. Mr. Merrill, I’d want to know, if it was my daughter. Here’s the story. I went to her office looking to get a better deal on my car insurance. Someone I know on the job had recommended her to me. Wound up insuring my car and my house, and we’ve been seeing each other ever since.” He hugged Lindsey even closer to his side, and couldn’t help but notice she didn’t seem to mind. And that the trembling had diminished. Maybe she was getting over the strangeness of him, beginning to relax a little bit? The idea of that pleased him a lot more than it should have.

Merrill appeared to relax a little, as well. “Well, as long as Lindsey’s happy, I’m glad to meet you, Alan-and I’m Richard, by the way.” He paused. “Detective, you said? What kind?”

“Homicide.”

“Really?” He did that little rearing back, startle thing again. “Well, at least it’s not drugs or vice. Or gangs. Speaking of which-terrible thing that happened this past weekend, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” Alan said, “it was.”

Merrill appeared to be about to ask another question, but Lindsey interrupted. “What are you doing here, Dad? Not that I’m not glad to see you.”

He pointed an accusing finger at his daughter. “Now, I tried to call you. I did. You weren’t answering your cell phone.”

“Dad, you know I don’t take it when I go running.”

Merrill looked at Alan and raised both hands in a gesture of paternal helplessness. “What am I gonna do with her? You’re a cop, tell her how nuts she is to go out alone like that without a cell phone!”

“Dad, it’s not like I’m out in the wilderness. Where I run it’s on a busy street with houses on the other side, people all over the place, jogging, walking their dogs, playing with their kids. It’s perfectly safe. And,” she added in a wry aside to Alan, loud enough for her father to hear, “I’m forty years old, for Pete’s sake.”

“And you’re never going to be too old for your dad to worry about you-don’t you forget that.” Merrill gave Alan a narrow look. “You have children, son?”

“Yes sir, I do,” Alan said. “A daughter-she’s almost ten.”

“Ah. Then you know-or if you don’t now, you will.” He took a set of keys out of his pocket and peeped open his car door locks, then turned back to them. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by since I couldn’t get you on the phone. Wanted to see if you feel like coming over on the weekend.”

He smiled, but now Alan thought it seemed forced…awkward. And it struck him suddenly, with a flash of unwanted sympathy, what it must be like for a man married for more than forty years, suddenly finding himself without his wife. It was pretty obvious to him the man was lonely.

“You know, thought I might warm up the old barbecue, invite some of the neighbors, be like old times. Before your mother…” He cleared his throat, then threw Alan a fierce look. “I suppose she’s told you-”

“Yes,” Alan said. “I’m sorry. Must be tough.” What else could he say?

Lindsey had opened her mouth to reply, but before she could, Richard Merrill said to Alan, “You’re included in the invitation, of course.”

Her head snapped toward Alan and her eyes widened, the look she gave him saying plainly, Oh, no! What now?

He was asking himself that same question. The invitation was a golden opportunity, the perfect chance for him to learn more about the elusive Merrills, but the timing couldn’t have been worse. He said in a murmur meant only for Lindsey, “I have Chelsea that weekend.”

Naturally, Merrill overheard. “Chelsea? That would be your daughter?”

“Yes, sir. I was supposed to have her last weekend, but after all hell broke loose in the ’hood, I had to cancel. I can’t disappoint her again.”

“No, no-by all means, bring her along. I have a pool, some of the neighbors have kids, grandkids. She’ll be more than welcome. She’ll have fun. So, what do you say? Can I count on the three of you?”

Lindsey popped open her mouth and threw Alan that Help-me-out-and-don’t-you-dare-say-yes! look again.

“Sure,” he said. “We’d love to come. We’ll be there.”

He heard a little gasp, then a bright and artificially cheery, “O-kay! So, Dad, I guess that’s, um… So, we’ll see you next what, Saturday? What time?” He could hear a note of desperation in her voice, and feel those ripples of tension cascading through her body again.

Interesting.

Merrill shrugged and divided a look between the two of them. “Around two? It gets dark so early this time of year.”

“Two’s fine with me,” Alan said.

“Two it is,” Lindsey almost sang, and Alan snugged her a little closer still.

Then he had to let go of her momentarily as her father stepped forward to give her a hug and a kiss on the forehead. “That’s great-just great. See you Saturday, then. Good to meet you, Alan.” He clapped Alan on his upper arm, got into his car and backed out of the driveway.

Alan and Lindsey waved, then stood together and silently watched the big sedan roll through the automatic gate that had opened to let it pass, pause, taillights winking, then turn right and move off down the street. It was only then, with the quiet of the empty driveway and spotlighted landscaping shadows settling in around them, that he realized his arm was encircling her again. That somehow, for some reason, she’d moved right back into the curve of his body, into the place she’d vacated to accept her father’s farewell hug. He wondered if she’d done it without thinking, because it felt natural and right, the way it had felt so natural and right to him he hadn’t given it a thought, either.

They broke apart at what seemed like the same moment-impossible to tell who did it first.

Lindsey gave a little laugh, sounding half relieved, half embarrassed. “Boy, you do that well.”

“What?”

“Lie.”

That stopped him for a moment, making him do his own little mental rearing back, the word an unexpected jolt to his self-image. He lied on a daily basis, of course, dealing with suspects and witnesses alike, and never gave it a thought. Went with the territory. He did and said what was necessary to get the job done, and it wasn’t always one hundred percent gospel truth. He sure didn’t think it made him any less of a good guy.

His chuckle was self-deprecating. “Think he bought it?”

She hugged herself, rubbing her upper arms inside the sleeves of the warm-up jacket, although the evening wasn’t that chilly. “Why wouldn’t he? I’m forty years old-I’m sure the notion that I might bring a man home with me occasionally isn’t that shocking.” Her voice sounded clipped, almost angry.

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Bring men home with you…occasionally?”

She gave a little start, in a way that reminded him of her father. “What earthly business is that of yours?”

He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, if we’re supposed to be, uh, dating, I just figured I ought to know what I’m getting into.”

The fact that she was being teased sank in, and she made a small sound, a snort, and gave him a sideways glaring look to go with it. After a moment, she pulled off the sweatband and raked her fingers through her hair, then suddenly held her head between her hands and let go of an exasperated breath. “But, why did you say we’d go to the barbecue? You realize, we’re going to have to keep up the charade of us being a couple all afternoon. And what about your daughter? What’s she going to think?”

“About what?”

“Well, me, obviously. The fact that we’re supposedly uh, dating…”

“She’s ten, Lindsey. Who I happen to be dating is no concern of hers.”

“Oh,” she said, arching her eyebrows at him, “so are you dating someone?” Before he could answer, she gave an elaborate shrug and added, “I just figured, you know, since we’re supposed to be dating, I ought to know what I’m getting into.”

He grinned to show his appreciation of the small gotcha, and she grinned back. And it occurred to him, as it did each time he was with her, that he was enjoying himself entirely too much, given the nature of their relationship.

He coughed and folded his arms and planted his feet, adopting a classic cop stance to remind himself again what that relationship was. “Look, it’s the perfect opportunity dumped right in my lap. You bet I’m going to take it. I need to talk to your father, you don’t want me to talk to him-not like a cop, and I understand that. So, this is my chance to talk to him without arousing his suspicions. Casual conversation-you know. I’m in a relationship with his daughter, what could be more natural than to want to know more about her family? I’m sure he’s going to want to know all about me, so, I tell him about growing up in Philly, and I ask him where he grew up. It’s tit for tat.” He smiled at her, not with amusement. “Plus, it’s a great opportunity for you to show me those high school yearbooks you were telling me about.”

She gazed at him, not saying anything, eyes fringed in darkness, reflecting the light. Then she nodded and murmured, “Okay, you’re right. Of course.” He could hear the faint plink of her swallow.

“Meanwhile, I’ll keep looking, see if I come up with anything. Are you going to be seeing your mother this week?”

“Of course. I go almost every day after work.”

“Okay, then you keep trying to get her to remember things about her dreams. Let me know immediately if you get anything. Anything-no matter how small or insignificant it might seem to you. Call me.”

She nodded, then gave a small laugh. “So, I guess the snow thing wasn’t much help, was it?”

“Don’t say that.” His voice had gone low and husky, entirely without his permission. “You never know.”

And then, because just saying good-night to her and walking away didn’t seem like enough, he reached out and brushed the bridge of her nose with his thumb.

He heard a soft intake of breath, and that moment in the car, when he’d leaned over and kissed her as part of a charade, came thundering back into his consciousness. A stampede of images, emotions, sensations, things he hadn’t had time then to process, hurtled through his mind and for a few seconds, trampled out reason. He was left with a churned-up mess of sensory impressions-soft lips and warm, damp skin and the scent of a clean woman’s sweat, and the hint-just the hint-of what it would be like to have those mingling, merging, melding with his own amid the thumping, pulsing rhythms of joined bodies and dueling heartbeats.

He shook his head, shaking off the images and a hint of dizziness. “So,” he said in a voice still raspy with the residue of the stampede, “I’ll call you. And see you on Saturday.” He left her standing there, walked to his car, got in and managed to get his car turned around and heading back through the automatic gate without clipping a shrub or running over the curb.

Entirely too much, he told himself as he bumped a right turn into the street. Considering the nature of our relationship.

Lindsey stood on a wooden deck that looked out across barrancas lush with tropical vegetation to the haze where the continent ended and the Pacific Ocean began. Laughter and bits of conversation drifted up from below, from the people gathered on the flagstone patio that surrounded the free-form swimming pool, and it occurred to her that this exact same scene had been played out in this exact same place how many dozens of times? Hundreds?

Her dad, wearing an apron her mom had bought for him during a trip to Las Vegas, the one printed to look like a tuxedo, stood next to the huge stainless steel gas grill, holding a barbecue fork in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. He was chatting with the next-door neighbors, Barbara and Evan Norwood. Lindsey had known the Norwoods forever, had babysat their kids. Mrs. Norwood had taught her piano lessons, until, mercifully, it had become obvious to all concerned that Lindsey possessed no musical talent whatsoever.

The view, the images, the people, the smells-so little had changed. Okay, no more smell of charcoal briquettes and lighter fluid since the acquisition of the fancy gas grill, and where the portable soccer net had once straddled the place where the pool deck met lawn, a tall patio heater now stood. On the deck itself, the litter of plastic pool toys had been replaced by the large pots of flowers Mom had planted last spring.

That was my life, my childhood-soccer and swimming and babysitting and piano lessons, and Dad cooking dinner on the grill. I know I was lucky to have such a happy childhood. And I know I’m not a child any longer, but what’s wrong with staying close to your parents as you get older? Isn’t that the way families should be?

Should be.

But no family is perfect. Is it? And if that’s true, and mine seemed to be perfect, how can that be real? What if it was all just…an illusion?

As if he’d heard her thoughts, felt her doubts, her father looked up just then and waved the beer bottle, then blew her a kiss.

She drew a shaky breath and blew him one back. That, at least, she knew was real. That her father loved her she had never doubted.

About her mother, she wasn’t so sure.

Mom…did you love me? Why was there always that distance between us? You never let me get really close to you. Now I wonder…was it because there has always been another child, the little boy of your dreams-Jimmy-standing between us?

She’d been aware, growing up, of the reserve that sometimes seemed like coldness on her mother’s part, but it hadn’t seemed all that important then. Maybe because her dad had always been there to make up for any lack of affection, and to explain her mom’s coldness in a way that had made her understand and forgive.

Now, my mother is leaving me forever, for real. And the last thing she ever does for me is to make me doubt the one thing I’ve always known I could count on-my dad.

A wave of resentment swept over her, but it receded quickly and when it did, it left behind the feeling she had so often these days. That awful stomach-churning feeling of a child abandoned, lost and alone.

How can I know who to trust now?

She realized, then, that she hadn’t been truthful with herself or with Alan when she’d told him she wasn’t doing this for herself. She did need to know. Or she doubted she would ever be able to believe or trust in anything again.

Down below on the patio, people were stirring, rearranging, the chatter of conversation rising with expectation and punctuated with jovial cries of greeting. Guests were arriving, the newcomers emerging through the open garage doors onto the patio, and her dad was moving to meet them, sweeping them with him into the center of the cluster of friends and neighbors already present.

Lindsey’s heart gave a peculiar kick when she saw Alan come into view. It was the first time she’d seen him dressed like this-in casual clothes, jeans and light blue short-sleeved polo shirt, a navy blue windbreaker hooked on one finger and slung carelessly over one shoulder, his dark hair hidden by a Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap. But her mind insisted on flashing back to the last time she’d seen him, when he’d still been wearing his dress shirt and tie, and she felt again the smooth cotton fabric against her skin where he’d held her so closely, and smelled the scent of laundry detergent mixed with the other unknown things that made up his own particular scent. And his lips, when he’d kissed her, so unexpectedly gentle, his breath smelling faintly of coffee and peppermints. Those things-his hand so warm on the back of my neck-had been coming into her mind all week, and she wished to God they would stop.

Because of that, she told herself the hitch in her breathing and the quickening of her pulse wasn’t for him, but for the child beside him, the little girl clinging to his arm with both hands in the shy, awkward way of ten-year-old girls meeting hordes of strangers. Chelsea Cameron was slender and tall, like her father, and wore jeans and a pink and brown windbreaker and her long dark hair was pulled up in a ponytail. Lindsey held her breath, waiting for the pang, the sense of recognition and of longing. But it had been years since she stopped seeing her baby, her precious Isabella, everywhere she went, and after a moment she relaxed and let the breath go slowly.

It was the right thing to do. I know it was. I don’t regret it.

But now her mind insisted on taking her back to that time, making her remember the pain, the anger and betrayal she’d felt when her mother had taken Trent’s side. Both had been furious with her for refusing to try again to get pregnant.

“Now that they know you have trouble carrying to term, they’ll know what to do. They can prevent it! Don’t do anything permanent, Lindsey, you don’t know what medical science will come up with. They’ve made such advances, they’re saving even tiny preemies now.”

Oh, yes, Mom had had all the arguments but Lindsey had been adamant. “How can you possibly understand?” she remembered telling her mother. “You’ve never lost a child-you don’t know what it feels like!”

The rift between them had been at its widest then, but eventually, to give her mother credit, when it came to the final separation, Susan had reluctantly accepted her decision and supported Lindsey through the trauma of the divorce. And later, no longer so self-involved and wrapped up in her own pain, Lindsey had come to realize how hard it must have been for her mother to accept the reality that she would never have grandchildren. They’d actually grown closer, it seemed, for a while.

You’ve never lost a child, you don’t know what it feels like!

Now, the memory of those words seared her soul. Oh, God, what if it was true, the story about the little boy named Jimmy? Eyes closed, she tried to see her mother’s face, the way it had been back then, tried to remember if there had been something there, some glimmer of the painful memories that were to come.

The sound of her name being called shivered the image of her mother’s face like a fresh breeze across the mirrored surface of a pond. Down below on the patio, her dad was waving, calling to her. She nodded and waved back, and Alan looked up and waved, too. He spoke to Chelsea, who looked up shyly from her place close by her father’s side, but didn’t wave.

Here goes, Lindsey thought. She took a deep breath, pasted on a smile, and turned and went back in the house and down the stairs to join them. Her stomach was a roiling mass of butterflies, and now the only thought in her mind was: I wonder if he’ll kiss me this time.