The Memory Thief

by Don Donaldson

  She ducked behind a clump of grass, where she could hear the killer’s feet heavily on the steps from the deck. Had he seen her? She wasn’t sure.

  With her breath coming in short, ragged gasps, her face burning, and her heart a balloon bigger than her chest, she waited in a crouch for the killer to pass.

  Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain in her scalp, a prelude to being pulled to her feet and through the grass by her hair.

  The killer had her by his left hand. In the light from the parking area she saw a raised hammer in his other hand. The instant before the blow fell, she stared into a face streaked with her sister’s blood.

  Then, from far off, the sound of a siren.

  The killer threw her into the grass and ran for the road out front.

  Sensing Marti nearby, Odessa turned.

  She’d only been twelve when he’d last seen her, and the light had been behind her, so she had gotten the better look. Because of those two things, Marti had long been convinced that when they finally met, he would never recognize her. But now that the moment was here, she wasn’t so sure.

  But then Odessa said, “Who are you?”

  Looking into his eyes was like staring into the bowels of hell. She had waited so long for this, and now that it was here, she was suddenly trembling with rage. But it was all on the inside. Looking at her, there was no evidence of the storm raging through her, for she had learned to hide her hatred of Odessa from everyone around her. Professors, friends, relatives . . . none of them had any idea that every night before she climbed into bed, she held her sister’s picture in her hand and swore to her that one day Odessa would pay for what he’d done.

  “I asked who you were,” Odessa said. “Or don’t people like us deserve a response.”

  Now the next hurdle: the moment he would hear her name. Lee and her husband had been separated, but not divorced, when Odessa had killed her, so it was her married name that was in all the papers. In developing her plan for Odessa, Marti had believed that this circumstance would hide her relationship to Lee when she finally stood in front of him again. But just as she had sudden doubts a moment earlier about whether he’d recognize her face, she now became concerned about her name. If he’d been attentive, he could have picked up Lee’s maiden name from the few articles that identified her parents. Had he been that alert? Would he remember such a fact after so many years? Nothing to do now but say it.

  “I’m Dr. Segerson, the new staff psychiatrist assigned to this unit.”

  Odessa looked up at her, his brow corrugated, as though searching his mind for something.

  The seconds crept by.

  “Or don’t people like us deserve a response,” Marti said, going on the offensive to abort his hunt.

  “Sorry. I was just trying to remember . . . never mind.” He stood and offered his hand. “I’m Vernon Odessa.”

  Quelling her disgust at touching him, Marti willed her hand into his and let him shake it, aware that if he wished, he could break her neck before Bobby Ware could take three steps.

  “Our last shrink was a man,” Odessa said. “You’re a big improvement.” His gaze flicked up and behind her. “I see you’ve called out reinforcements.” He looked back into her eyes. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “Should I be?”

  “I’d never hurt you. At least not here. But on the outside . . . I couldn’t make any promises about that.”

  “I’m just getting acquainted with the hospital this morning. But after that’s done and I’ve had some time to read up on all the cases assigned to me, I’d like to talk to you further. Would that be all right?”

  “I’ll check my calendar and see if I’m free.”

  “Do that.”

  Marti turned and headed toward the nursing station, feeling Odessa watching her. Halfway there an old man with a three-day beard stubble and a profusion of visible nasal hairs approached her.

  “I’ve got a secret,” he said.

  Marti stopped walking. “Would you like to share it with me?”

  “Maybe. What’s tall and fair . . . you think it’s here, but it’s really there?”

  “So it’s a riddle.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m stumped. What’s the answer?”

  The old man raised a cautioning finger. “It’s not gonna be that easy. You have to solve it yourself.”

  Marti reached out and touched him on his bony shoulder. “I’ll work on it and see what I can come up with.”

  Back at the nursing station, Metz said, “Did he ask you his riddle?”

  “Does he do that a lot?”

  “Every damned day. Sometimes two or three times. He’s obsessed with it.”

  “I guess that’s why he’s here.”

  “Just started it out of the blue one day about six months ago. And now he wears me out with it. When you talk to him, see if you can get him to stop.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Harry Evensky.”

  “We should move on,” Trina said to Marti. “There’s a lot more to see.”

  Marti and Trina left through the hall entrance and headed back toward the mesh door. Though her better instincts told her to leave it alone, Marti found herself saying, “What do you think of the insanity defense for people like Odessa?”

  “It’s bullshit, if you’ll pardon my French,” Trina said. “And I don’t see how he pulled it off. He killed fifteen women, always at night, under cover of darkness. He never attacked anybody in daylight on a busy street. He waited until he thought he could get away with it. So you tell me how a jury could believe he didn’t know what he was doing was wrong, or that he couldn’t control himself. No, he didn’t murder all those women because he was insane . . . he just liked doing it. He shouldn’t be here, he should be on Death Row somewhere, or executed already.”

  Until now, Marti hadn’t been able to decide how she felt about Trina. But hearing how Trina’s views on Odessa mirrored her own, Marti felt she had found an ally. Not that she was ever going to need one. But it did make her feel less uncomfortable at being there.

  “But as long as he’s a threat, which he will always be,” Trina added, “better he’s here than on the street.”

  Over the next hour, they toured the rest of the main building and the grounds. Returning to Marti’s office, Trina showed Marti how to use the hospital’s e-mail system and access the Internet. Then Trina went off to her own duties, promising to come back at noon and take Marti to lunch in nearby Linville.

  The stacks of files that had been left in Marti’s office were arranged in two distinct groups, one at each end of her desk. Discovering that those on the left were for her female patients, she moved down to the male records. Just as Rosenblum had said, there were two kinds of files, some in metal binders, some in soft jackets, each type stacked by itself. Since everything was arranged in alphabetical order, she found Odessa’s records with no trouble.

  Having four times read the book that had been written about him, and possessing a briefcase full of newspaper clippings detailing his grisly career, she was already an Odessa expert. Even so, she spent the better part of the next hour reading every word in his files, looking for anything new.

  The thickest portion of his records by far was the oldest, dating back to the time he’d spent in the California mental hospital that had allowed him to escape and kill Lee eighteen years ago. The reason he was now in Gibson was not explained in his files, but from conversations Marti had had with a former employee of the California facility, she knew he’d been quietly contracted out to Gibson two years ago under a cost-cutting arrangement.

  Among the items in her personal dossier on Odessa was a physical description from the records of the Los Angeles Police Department in which every distinguishing mark on him was cat
aloged. But it did not mention the scar on his neck that she’d seen when standing behind him earlier that morning. Nor did she find any explanation of it in his files. So the LAPD had either missed it, or he’d been injured, probably in a fight, after being confined.

  It was interesting that, when he’d been at the California facility, he’d been a real problem, given to violent outbursts on practically a weekly basis, but as Trina had said, the only incident in his Gibson records was the one last September. Why had his behavior improved so much? And why would Gibson want a patient with his background? They couldn’t have known when they’d agreed to take him that he wouldn’t be the same problem patient he had been in California. Moreover, there was a note from Oren Quinn in the files prohibiting the staff from giving Odessa any type of neurotropic drug, meaning that even if Odessa had continued to be violent, controlling him chemically was not an option.

  Her musings on this were interrupted by a knock on the door.

  “It’s open.”

  “Hi,” Trina said. “Are you hungry?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am.”

  On their way to the parking lot, Marti said, “How long has Oren Quinn been here?”

  “Around two years.”

  “So he and Odessa arrived about the same time.”

  “I think Odessa came a month after Quinn. Why?”

  “No reason, just trying to get a feel for the flow and rhythm of the place.”

  They ate at a restaurant called The Fishin’ Hole, a big log cabin, where the interior walls were covered with dusty taxidermy specimens of items on the menu. Though Marti found the decor a little creepy, and was leery of Trina’s recommendation that she try the special, the catfish she ordered was excellent. By the time lunch was over, Marti liked Trina even more.

  With her review of Odessa’s file complete, Marti spent the rest of the day familiarizing herself with her other patients, learning as she did that many of them were layered with so many drugs they were little more than walking zombies. And that caused her to think again about Oren Quinn’s note that Odessa couldn’t be given any neurotropic drugs. Obviously, Quinn had no philosophical objection to controlling patient behavior that way. Why specifically exclude Odessa? Odd.

  IN SEARCHING the Internet for a place to stay while she worked out her plan for Odessa, Marti had found what appeared to be a wonderful situation: a fully furnished place at Blue Sky Farm, a thousand acres of undeveloped land containing a creek, several ten-acre lakes, and wooded walking trails. It sounded so intriguing she’d immediately contacted the Realtor and snapped it up. What she didn’t realize was that the land she’d be living on lay right next to Gibson, so at the end of her first workday, when she pulled onto the highway from the Gibson entrance, she drove only a hundred yards before turning onto the dirt road that led to her new, albeit temporary, home.

  She would have preferred to live a little farther from the hospital. But tonight she didn’t mind the short trip, because she had two important phone calls to make, and wanted to do it from home.

  The cottage she’d rented was about two hundred yards from the highway. This distance could have been a problem to navigate, but Clay Hulett, the caretaker and son of the land’s absentee owner, kept the road in perfect shape. As she drove deeper onto the property, she saw Clay washing his bronze pickup in front of his own cottage.

  Her medical training and obsession with Vernon Odessa had not left much room in Marti’s life for romance. The closest she’d come to a serious relationship had been last year with Josh Fellows, a surgery resident who’d finally given up on her because he’d detected there were other things in her life with a higher priority. And she’d let him go, because he was right. Romance could come later, after she’d settled her score with Lee’s murderer.

  But that didn’t mean she was immune to lanky cowboy good looks, so even though she needed to make those phone calls, when Clay waved at her, she stopped and rolled down her window.

  “Dr. Segerson, how was your first day?” he asked.

  “A little uncomfortable, like most first days . . . And call me Marti.”

  He combed the black hair from his forehead with his fingers. “I’ve never been on a first-name basis with a doctor before.”

  “Well, I’ve never lived on an unpaved road before.”

  He smiled, showing a set of teeth any cosmetic dentist in LA would love to take credit for. “Looks like your arrival has broadened both of us. Everything okay at the house? I checked it out thoroughly before you got here, but sometimes things still go wrong.”

  “Haven’t had any problems.”

  “Good. If you’re interested in taking a walk later—”

  Marti didn’t let him finish. “Please don’t think me rude, but I need to focus on my work at the hospital just now. I’m not really free to develop any romantic relationships.”

  “I was just going to tell you that I saw a pair of otters down by the creek yesterday evening and that you might want to go down there and take a look yourself.”

  Marti felt her face flush. “Oh, I see.”

  “The creek is on the other side of that big field.” He pointed down the road to the right, where the wooded area opposite his house gave way to an expanse of tall grasses and flowers. “The main trail to it is about forty yards from here, just on this side of the little knoll that keeps us from seeing your house. But just off your backyard, there’s a path that intersects the main trail, so you could go from there. When you reach the triple fork on the main trail, take the right leg. The creek is about three hundred yards from that point. If you want to see the otters, you’ll have to move quietly. I should mention that about eighty yards along the left trail of the fork, just beyond the old barn, there’s a quicksand bog. I try to keep a warning sign posted, but kids keep pulling it down. It was there yesterday when I went by, but today, who knows.”

  Marti’s face was still burning with embarrassment when she reached the little brick bungalow she’d rented. As she went inside, she thought she saw a large bee working the flowering jasmine on the trellis by the door, but then realized with a thrill it was a hummingbird, the first she’d ever seen.

  She’d been able to afford a few minutes talking to Clay Hulett because the calls she was about to make were both to numbers in California, where it was two hours earlier. She got out her cell phone and made the first one as soon as she was inside.

  She didn’t expect the call to be answered by its intended recipient, and it wasn’t. It took almost a minute for him to come on the line.

  “Hi, this is Marti Segerson. I saw Odessa today and talked to him. I’ve got good access, but it’ll be a few days before I can figure out how to do it. I just wanted to let you know we’re on track. But I don’t know how much advance notice I’ll be able to give you when the time comes . . . I’ll do the best I can. Don’t let me down. We may get only one chance.”

  Her second call went to the north end of the Golden State, but the content was almost identical to the first. After she hung up, she stood for a moment, reflecting on all she’d accomplished today. She then let her attention shift to the big picture window and the spectacular view it offered of a distant little lake across the vast field of grasses and yellow flowers Clay had mentioned. Over the weekend, she’d laid in a supply of groceries from the Linville Super Saver, so she didn’t need to have dinner out. After she’d eaten and cleaned up the little kitchen, she saw there was still enough daylight to visit those otters.

  As she followed the path from the backyard of her house into the fields, she thought about how close she was to the culmination of nearly two decades of work and planning. And for a brief instant, she saw what lay beyond, or more accurately, realized that when this was over, the Marti Segerson she’d become would have no purpose in life. Disturbed by this glimpse of the future, she put it out of her mind by reminding herse
lf that not only was there still a lot to do, the outcome remained uncertain.

  Either she made too much noise or the otters were somewhere else when she got to the creek. For whatever reason, she didn’t get to see them.

  It was a beautiful mild spring night with the most delicious sweet smell in the air, and later, when she was ready for bed, she opened the window and took several deep breaths. Standing there listening to the crickets, she was tempted to leave the window open. Then, shivering at the thought of being so vulnerable, she quickly shut and locked it. Just before turning off the lamp on the nightstand, she picked up the framed picture of her sister she always kept close to her.

  “Goodnight Lee. Sleep well. It won’t be long now.”

  AT 2:43 A.M., Marti woke with the sure knowledge she was not alone in her bedroom.

  Chapter 5

  MARTI WAS so frightened she could hardly breathe. What to do? Should she jump out of bed and scream, or pretend to still be asleep? For the moment, she chose the latter.

  She was lying on her side, facing the bedroom door, which in the dark room, seemed slightly ajar. She hadn’t actually seen anyone, merely sensed another presence. But he was there all right. And she knew exactly who it was. He had recognized her when they’d spoken earlier today and had figured out why she had come to Gibson. Somehow, Odessa had discovered where she was staying and had escaped just as he had the night he’d killed Lee.

  And now he was going to kill her.

  Her cell phone . . . she could call 911 . . . but where the hell was it? Then she remembered—it was on a chair in the living room, in her handbag. She’d pictured herself as the hunter, but she’d become the hunted, and now she’d screwed up royally.

  The injustice of the situation slowly began to nudge her fear into anger.

  No . . . it was not going to end this way.

  She’d get to the door and out of the house. Clay Hulett was only a hundred yards away. And she’d always been a fast runner . . . unless it was on sand.