The Survivors

by Robert Palmer

  “She saw you? What did she do?”

  “Waved at me, sort of. I—”

  Scottie wheeled around. “Did you hear that?”

  I nodded. It was a solid click, like a door latching shut. “You’re sure nobody lives here?” I whispered.

  “Of course. There’s no electricity. And what do they do, sleep on the floor?”

  “All right, don’t get mad.”

  We both held still. At first we heard nothing. Then, right below us, there was a thud and a grunt of pain. In the dark, someone had walked into the open drawer of the hutch.

  Scottie was rocking as he stood. His eyes were wide and frightened. “Calm down.” I took his arm. “We’ll just—”

  He jerked free and bolted for the hallway. By the time I was after him, I could hear running footsteps downstairs.

  Scottie made straight for the open window in Alan’s room. I got there a few strides behind. As he stepped out, he lost his balance. I reached to grab him and got his shirt collar. His weight was too much. He pulled me through the window.

  We tumbled, scrabbling at the wet shingles and the gutter at the lip. Then we were airborne.

  SEVENTEEN

  I landed on my side, and the air slammed out of my lungs. Scottie hit, rolled, and came to his feet like a cat. He was halfway to the car before he realized I wasn’t with him.

  “Come on,” he hissed.

  I got to my knees, gasping. He sprinted back and half-dragged me across the yard.

  He still had my keys, so he punched the unlock button and pointed for me to get in the passenger’s side. I didn’t argue. I was breathing by then, but every time I inhaled a painful crackle shot through my ribs.

  He turned the key and the engine ground and ground but didn’t catch. I looked back at the house. There was a faint glow of light moving upstairs. It disappeared for a few moments before reappearing downstairs.

  Scottie punched the steering wheel. “Damn it, start!”

  I took two slow breaths and was able to talk. “Nobody’s going to kill us for breaking into an empty house.”

  He gave me a frantic look. “What if it’s the cops?”

  “I doubt it. Take your foot off the gas. OK, try again.”

  He cranked the key, and the engine started. Someone moved out from behind the house. In the darkness it was only a shadow. Instead of coming our way, the figure ran at an angle across the yard, behind us.

  Scottie got the car in gear, then let the clutch out so fast it almost stalled. Another engine fired up behind us as we lurched over the first hill.

  From the house, it was a mile and a half to Ridge Road. The lane dipped and rolled through a series of bends. Scottie kept it in first gear, and we cruised through the turns. Then he remembered second and third, and suddenly we were going sixty.

  “Slow down!” I grabbed his shoulder.

  Ahead was a dead left turn. There was a small barn past the corner. Scottie kept his speed up, and we flew straight off the road. The car bottomed hard and pitched into a deep dip where it shuddered to a stop. We both looked back and saw the roof of the other car as it took the corner and continued on. I could only tell it was small and sleek—definitely not a police car.

  Scottie had never turned on his headlights, so everything was dark. He opened his door, and the overhead lamp flicked on. His face was pale, but he was grinning. “Great, huh?”

  “Until we try to get out of here,” I said.

  “We just back up the track.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

  He’d driven straight onto a tractor path. It looked easily passable. “Yeah, that is pretty great.” Then I heard a hiss.

  I got out to check it. The front tire on my side was half flat and losing air fast. “Well, almost great,” I called to him.

  I wouldn’t let him help change the tire, so he sat in the weeds, criticizing everything I did. “Have you ever done this before?” I asked. He’d just laughed when the tire iron slipped and I scraped my knuckles on the hard dirt.

  “No, but I read the owner’s manual for my landlady’s car once.”

  “That makes you an expert?”

  “Apparently more than you.”

  Ten minutes later, I was finished. The pain in my side had subsided, as long as I didn’t bend or laugh. We got back on the road, and this time I did the driving.

  “Who do you think that was in the other car?” he asked.

  “Maybe a neighbor has a key. They drove by, saw our car parked there and decided to check things out.” I’d also thought about the Acura I’d seen the night before in Palisades. It could have been the same car. I figured Scottie was already stirred up enough, so he didn’t need to hear about that.

  We reached Ridge Road, and there wasn’t another car in sight. “Have you had dinner yet?” I said.

  “Not really.”

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “No.”

  “Let’s see if Bunny & Bud’s is still open.”

  B&B was a diner my parents took us to only when it was so late nothing else was open. It was at the south end of Mt. Airy. From a distance, it looked about the same as it always had, a low pile of dark bricks. Getting closer, I could see it had been subdivided. One side was a roadhouse (adults only). The other side was now the B&B Gourmet Grille. The “gourmet” part was priceless, given the grimy sign over the door that said, “Mondays: All You Can Eat Wings Buffet.”

  As I parked, Scottie started picking at his hands. “Do you think we should go in?”

  “Why not?”

  He was looking at three hard-faced men leaning against a pickup truck nearby. “Maybe we’ll get beaten up.”

  “Tell you what. If a fight breaks out, run.”

  He frowned. “What else would I do?”

  “Of course. Silly of me to think otherwise.”

  Inside, the place wasn’t half bad. That late, there were only a few patrons, most lounging over drinks. We picked a booth on the far wall. Our server yawned as we gave her our order—two burgers and two iced teas. Scottie asked for a beer, but I vetoed that. I wanted him relaxed so we could have a talk. I didn’t want a beer-induced tantrum.

  Partly, I’d made this trip to satisfy my own curiosity. I also wanted to understand why, after so many years, Scottie had become obsessed with the shootings. The death of his mother had a lot to do with it, but there was more, a card he wasn’t showing me. The best way in was to get him to talk about the old days.

  “Your parents brought us here on your birthday once,” I said. “We had milkshakes.”

  “Yeah. You called me a twerp, and I dumped mine all over you.”

  “My hair smelled like strawberry for a week.”

  “My mom wouldn’t buy me another one,” he said sadly.

  “We got thrown out of here, Scottie.”

  “We could have gone to the Dairy Queen or something.” He kept the sad look, but he was using it to hide a grin.

  “Twerp,” I said. Though it hurt like hell, I laughed with him.

  The server arrived with our food. I gave Scottie time for his rituals: squaring his plate and silverware, straightening the salt and pepper shakers and the ketchup bottle.

  “I don’t remember much about those days,” I said. “Only a few things here and there. You seem to remember everything.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Have you been back here recently?”

  “Not in a long time.”

  “I didn’t remember climbing through Alan’s window until you started up that tree. And that tractor path—you knew right where it was.”

  He shrugged irritably. “I just know things, that’s all.”

  “OK,” I said. I took a drink of iced tea. “If you want to leave it that way, I understand. But you knew what game we were playing that night, before hide-and-seek. Life, you said, right?”

  He stared at his hamburger. He wanted to eat, but in his world that meant no talking.

  “You even remembered Alan slamming
the board closed. That’s amazing. You’ve always known all that?”

  He pushed his plate away, giving in. “I told you I hadn’t seen a therapist . . . you know, somebody like you. That wasn’t completely true.” The salt and pepper shakers weren’t quite perfect so he nudged one a millimeter. “I went to somebody for help with my memory.”

  “Who was it?” I said.

  “Evelyn Rubin. She—”

  “From Baltimore?”

  “Right. You know her?”

  “Only by reputation.” I was trying to keep my face neutral. “She uses hypnosis, doesn’t she?”

  “She doesn’t do that stuff anymore.” He kept his eyes on his food; his hands flittered over the table.

  “Let’s eat,” I said. “You can tell me about her when we’re through.”

  He pulled his plate back to the perfect spot. By the time he reached for his fork, he’d relaxed again.

  I picked slowly at my food. Evelyn Rubin—that wasn’t the answer I’d expected, but it explained a lot. She had been one of the first psychologists to believe in repressed memory, that recollections of childhood abuse are often blocked and can be brought back through hypnosis. I only knew about her because one of my professors had used her as a case study in how not to treat patients. About twenty years ago, she was a big deal. She testified in criminal abuse trials, made a splash on the psychology lecture circuit. Then some of her patients turned on her, saying she’d planted memories that didn’t exist. One of them made a secret videotape of a session with her. Rubin was sly about it, but she was clearly manipulating him, building a story in his mind of childhood rape, layer after layer. The tape was a minor sensation when it got out in public, and she almost lost her license. Rubin wormed her way out of it by admitting her methods may have been heavy-handed, but she was only after the truth.

  Among psychologists, repressed memory has pretty much passed on as a misguided fad. That doesn’t mean people like Rubin have disappeared. They still need to make a living, and somebody like Scottie—a trauma victim with lots of lingering issues—was a perfect target.

  Scottie had eaten steadily and was nearly finished. I took a few bites from my plate. “So how did you find Rubin?” I said.

  “My mother always figured if I remembered more about what happened to me, it would make it easier for me to cope. She got to be a fanatic about it. I refused to see anyone until after she died. Then, I don’t know, it seemed like something I should do. I ran an Internet search on blocked memory, and Rubin’s name came up at the top of the list.”

  “Sure it did.”

  Scottie didn’t like the way I said that, and he shot me a look. I held up my hand to placate him. “She doesn’t use hypnosis anymore?”

  “No, it’s this new thing—EMDR. It’s really amazing. Two sessions was all I had. I could remember things perfectly, like I was living it all over again.”

  Eye movement therapy. More hocus-pocus. Or maybe not. It wasn’t my field, so I wasn’t up on the newest literature. I did know that the American Psychological Association had rated EMDR “probably effective.” Then again, doctors in the Middle Ages thought leeches were probably effective, too.

  “Memory is tricky,” I said. “We forget all kinds of things, lose the threads. Our minds want a picture that makes sense in spite of the missing pieces, so we stick in extra details.” I looked at my plate so he wouldn’t take what I said as a challenge. “Like the color of Ron’s shirt or him sneezing in the closet.”

  “Dr. Rubin said a lot of people don’t trust what she does. That’s why I didn’t tell you about it.”

  “It’s not a matter of trusting, Scottie. It’s . . . some things are too far in the past to be seen clearly again.”

  “It’s not my imagination. Dr. Rubin told me I was the best she’d ever seen.”

  “Maybe you’re the best at having your mind fill in the blanks. A little of that is fine. Too much of it and anybody can get confused, start believing things that aren’t real.”

  “No!” He thumped the table so hard the silverware bounced. The other diners looked over at us. “It’s not that way at all. I know—”

  His expression suddenly settled. “You want to see how much I remember? You had a bandage on your hand that night. Here.” He pointed at the first knuckle on my ring finger. “It looked like it hurt, red and sore. I was going to ask you what happened, but I never got a chance.”

  He saw the change in my face and sat back. I had my hands on the table, but in my mind I could see them pressed against the window in my parents’ room. My mother had just looked at me for the last time. On my finger was a big Band-Aid she’d put on that afternoon after washing the cut I’d gotten from the barbed wire fence at the back of our property. It had bled and bled, and she told me if it didn’t stop, we’d have to go to the hospital. If only we’d done that . . .

  Scottie was staring at me. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  When I didn’t say anything, he folded his arms, and his expression turned smug. “You barely touched your dinner.”

  “I’m not very hungry.” I stood up, much too quickly because I felt lightheaded. I could still see that image: the window, my mother outside. I needed to get that out of my head. “I’ll pay the bill, and we can get the hell out of here.”

  EIGHTEEN

  We headed back to the District, past the turnoff to the old house and then Lois McGuin’s place. When we reached the interstate, Scottie clicked on the radio. He scanned the dial and finally tuned to gospel music. “Thinking about the day it happened bothers you a lot, doesn’t it?” he said.

  “Mostly I’m OK with it, but there are times when I remember some detail and it knocks me sideways.”

  “For a couple of seconds there, you looked sick enough to fall over.”

  “Not sick, but lost. It’s like I’ve got this map in my head, with all my reference points on it. Sometimes I lose track of where I am and how I got there. It’s worst when I think about her last few seconds, when she had the gun and I was watching.”

  We were passing another car, and he turned to stare at the driver. “Do you think your mother knew it was me in the closet with your brothers?”

  “I don’t know. She recognized me when she was outside and looked up at the bedroom window. She patted the air—like this.” I showed him. “When we played hide-and-seek together, she did that to tell me to hide and be quiet.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Strange thing. Did you see any blood on her?”

  “No.” This conversation was getting too morbid. “That music is awful. Can you find something else?”

  “Hallelujah!” He waved his hands. “You don’t like ‘Build My Mansion Next Door to Jesus’?” He ran the dial up and down and settled on reggae. The beat was heavy, and he rocked along.

  I said, “I’ve looked through most of the papers in your backpack. Half of it is too recent to have come from that writer who died. You’ve been doing a lot of research on your own.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Lois McGuin said my parents were having financial troubles. That’s why she thought my mother was stealing from Braeder. Did you find anything like that?”

  “Financial stuff?” he said. “Only your parents’ bank account and credit card records. They didn’t have much money, that’s for sure.”

  “You’ve never seen anything from my father’s business?”

  “The consulting he did? I never looked into that.” He tapped the backpack. “You’re starting to wonder too, aren’t you? It’s contagious—looking back, trying to fit it together.”

  “I’ve got a few questions, that’s all.”

  He gave me a grin. “Right, just a few.” He turned up the radio. “I love this song!” He did a seated dance to Ziggy Marley.

  We rolled onto the beltway, where the traffic was still heavy. I said, “You get to sleep in your own bed tonight. Do you want me to take you straight home or back to my place first to pick up your bicycle?”

  He s
topped shimmying. “Do you think I could stay with you tonight?”

  “Sure, if you want.”

  “Mrs. Rogansky gets angry with me if I come in after ten o’clock.”

  “OK, my couch it is—or a chair on the balcony.”

  “The couch will be fine. I’m used to the place now. Then tomorrow I’ve got to go home early, get into some fresh clothes, and go to work.”

  “Sounds like you’ll be getting back to normal,” I said.

  He shrugged thoughtfully. “Whatever normal is.”

  We left the beltway at Connecticut Avenue. The streets were almost empty, and the lights were timed so we didn’t stop until Nebraska Avenue.

  He turned to look at me. “You said when you were at the window in the bedroom, your mother saw you.” He patted the air the way I’d shown him. “If she motioned for you to hide—who from?”

  The light changed. I kept my eyes ahead as I hit the gas. “There’s only one answer to that, Scottie.”

  “From her, you mean?” He thought about that. “That’s too weird,” he said.

  Somewhere in the last couple of miles, Scottie fell asleep. “Hey,” I said after I parked behind my building. “Sleepyhead—wake up.”

  He jolted upright and scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Whoa, what a dream. Your secretary had me tied up, and there was a tiger looking in the window at us.”

  “You know, you could have made Sigmund Freud cry with joy.”

  “Freud was full of bull.”

  “So they say.”

  Inside, he went straight to the sofa and stretched out. I thought he might doze off, so I took the first shift in the bathroom. When I came out, he was sitting on the floor. He’d pulled some of my college books off the shelves and had them open around him.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Checking out Freud. Did you know he was terrified of ferns? Anyway, I don’t think he was so stupid after all.”

  I got him a blanket and pillow. When I came back to the living room, he was busy with his tablet computer. Without looking up, he said, “You’re some kind of neat freak like me.”