The Memory Thief

by Don Donaldson

  The choice wasn’t difficult.

  MARTI HOISTED herself over the pointed tips of the fence and dropped to the grass behind Quinn’s house. Half expecting to suddenly hear a siren and be blinded by a spotlight, she quickly got her balance and sprinted for a large bronze statue of a wood nymph that faced the house over a bed of some kind of plant with lush red flowers.

  From behind the statue, she scanned the back of the house, looking for any sign of life, but she saw no movement. The only light was one over a door that opened onto a columned walkway to the garage.

  Taking a deep breath, Marti darted from behind the statue, took a direct route to the house, and flattened her back against the cobblestone wall.

  Still no sirens or additional lights.

  She ducked below a bank of oval windows and scuttled to the columned walkway, which was shielded from the road out front by the angled wing of the house. Protected from view by anyone passing the house by car, she moved confidently to the end of the walkway and tried the door to the garage. It was, of course, locked.

  She played her flashlight through one of the mullioned glass panes and tried to see inside, but the angle was so poor she didn’t learn anything.

  If you didn’t count trespassing, she hadn’t done anything illegal so far. But that was about to change. Lacking the skill of Harry Evensky with his paper clips, she turned her flashlight around and drove the handle through one of the panes in the door.

  The sound of breaking glass was much louder than she’d anticipated, but once again it didn’t kick off any alarm . . . at least not one she could hear. Aware that a control panel at some security service, or even at the sheriff’s office, might that very minute be signaling the breakage, she figured she might have only a few minutes before someone arrived to see what was going on.

  She cleared away the sharp edges of the broken pane, reached inside, and opened the door.

  She flicked on the light switch by the entrance, but still couldn’t see anything because the main part of the garage was around a corner. When she was beyond that obstruction, her hopes were destroyed, for the garage, big enough to hold two cars and the other vehicle she hoped to find, was empty.

  How can that be? Everything about the idea that had brought her there fit together . . . It was insane, of course, but at the same time it explained almost everything. So where was the proof?

  Was she wrong about Quinn?

  Had she concocted this wild hypothesis simply because she disliked him so much? Whatever the explanation, she had accomplished nothing by coming here. And she now needed to get back to her car.

  She was on the columned walkway, heading away from the garage, when something that had been subconsciously troubling her made her stop and turn around. The rear of the garage extended into the backyard a considerable distance beyond the walkway, but . . .

  She returned to the door she’d damaged, went inside, and again turned on the garage lights—which also controlled a light in the admitting alcove.

  The left end of the alcove was no more than six feet away.

  She went back into the main part of the garage and took a good look at the back wall. It was obvious that it was generally in line with the same wall of the alcove, which meant . . .

  This was all taking too long, but with her curiosity now aroused, she was willing to risk being caught to explore the idea now demanding her attention.

  She went outside, left the walkway, and checked the back wall of the garage, where she saw no windows or doors. There were two windows on the far side of the garage, but both were placed well toward the front. So she was right . . .

  There was a hidden room in the rear of the garage.

  Chapter 23

  MARTI RETURNED to the garage and studied the back wall, which was lined with pegboard. Hanging on the boards were all the usual garden tools one would need to keep up the grounds, and all looked well used.

  She walked down the wall looking for places where the joints between the pegboard occurred at the same place as those in the baseboard.

  There . . .

  She knelt and played her flashlight over the joined baseboards at a raking angle. They were so cleverly done that casual inspection would not have revealed it, but the overlap was not sealed with paint. Farther on, she found another spot like the first. And beyond that, another.

  So how was the hidden door opened?

  Thinking that one of the hanging tools might actually be a switch of some kind, she went back to the left end of the wall and worked her way down, adjusting each tool on its hanger. But even after she’d manipulated every implement on the boards, she still hadn’t found the way in.

  By now, she was so invested in what she was doing, she didn’t even think about how much time was elapsing.

  There was a workbench on the wall that separated the main part of the garage from the entry alcove. Starting at the right end of the bench, she ran her fingers lightly along the underside of the top. When she reached the opposite end, she felt an obstruction: a metal housing capped with a button.

  She pressed the button and the garage was filled with the sound of activated levers and pistons. The garage wall parted in the center exactly at one of the suspect joints, and a section on each side that ended at the other joints she’d identified swung open.

  Inside was a tan rec vehicle.

  Marti entered the hidden room. Before trying the door to the vehicle’s living area, she looked at the bench along the right wall. From the circuit boards, soldering equipment, and spools of wire littering the bench it was obvious this was an electronics lab, exactly what she’d expected to find.

  The door to the rec vehicle wasn’t locked. She climbed the metal steps and went inside, where she found that the interior had been completely gutted and reworked. The result looked like a CIA listening post, with a big, comfortable chair bolted to the floor in front of an instrument panel containing stacked power supplies on each side of two tiers of oscilloscope monitors. Below the panel was a stainless-steel work surface, where Quinn probably took notes.

  In the rear, there was a partition with a door in it. Curious as to what lay beyond, Marti turned the knob and opened the door. Inside was a small space with a shower on one side and a small chest of drawers under a mirror on the other. In the top two drawers she found some large bath towels; in the bottom, a box of rubber gloves and another of surgical shoe covers.

  Faced with clear evidence that the wild idea she’d followed to come here had hit the mark, she began to feel ill.

  How could a man with Quinn’s standing in the scientific and medical community be capable of what he’d done? She’d believed from the moment she’d met him that he was rude and arrogant. But she had no idea someone who’d achieved what he had could be so depraved. She’d never accepted genius and insanity as different sides of the same coin, but this changed all that. She was now a convert.

  “I’M CONVINCED the maximum depth we’ll ever be able to record from with noninvasive techniques is three to four millimeters,” John Casey said. “It’s all a function of electrode quality, and I’d have to say, we’ve got the best in the world.”

  “What do you think about that, Oren?” Jackson Hunter asked.

  Oren Quinn detested braggarts, and Casey was among the worst.

  Best in the world . . .

  Quinn had electrodes fifteen times better than that, but he’d told no one. He didn’t know why he came to these mixers; he didn’t like them and he didn’t like most of the people there. He attended meetings like this only because he felt that, as the leader in the field, he was obligated to keep everybody else on the right path.

  “John, you’re underestimating human ingenuity,” Quinn said. “Four millimeters is not only achievable, it’s surpassable.”

  “Where’s your evidence?” Casey sneered.
>
  “Ask the question tomorrow during the panel discussion, and I’ll show you.”

  Quinn had brought some of his old five-millimeter data to show if his hand was forced. Unlike most scientists, he didn’t feel the need to run to a microphone every time he made a little discovery. To his mind, the true scientist was driven by the need to know, not a desire to strut. In his case, he published just enough of his work to maintain his credibility and allow him to show the misguided in the field the correct path. That was his chosen philanthropy. The books and the patents were done just for the money, so his research wouldn’t be dependent on the lower life forms staffing NIH study sections.

  All he really cared about was understanding the human brain. It mattered not if anyone else shared in his knowledge. It was enough that he knew. And he must know all. It was what he was born to do.

  Quinn was spared further inane conversation with the two men by the sound of his cell phone. He excused himself and stepped aside to answer the call.

  But this was no ordinary call, because it came from the automated dialer he’d installed in the hidden room where he kept his mobile EEG lab. The dialer was linked to a set of cameras that relayed photos to his phone of anyone who entered the room without inactivating the call mechanism.

  And who was in those photos?

  Marti Segerson.

  Quinn rarely cursed. But seeing Marti caught in the camera’s lens as she reached for the door of his mobile lab, he muttered, “Damn that woman.” And he actually moaned when he saw her open the door to the shower room, his reaction attracting curious stares from the two men he’d been talking to.

  He harbored no illusions about the seriousness of what he’d just seen. If Segerson was in his garage, she’d probably figured out everything. And no one would understand what had motivated him. That could mean his life was over.

  But Oren Quinn was not a man who jumped to conclusions, nor was he a quitter. Put yourself in her place, he thought. What would you do next?

  I’d gather as much evidence as I could so no one would doubt my story.

  But was she that careful?

  He didn’t know, but he was certainly going to find out before he accepted the loss of all he’d worked for.

  If I were her, and I hadn’t been there already, I’d find a way to get into my research office, Quinn thought, wishing he’d been more careful about what he kept there.

  Hoping it wasn’t too late, he punched the number for Gibson’s security office into his phone and waited for an answer.

  TOMMY JOYNER’S grandfather had been a cop in Jackson, his father retired as a lieutenant from the Memphis force, and his older brother was a sergeant in Nashville. So it was natural that Tommy would seek employment in the same profession. But an abnormality in his retinas, that had caused them to detach numerous times, had so damaged his eyesight, he couldn’t pass the physical for any real police force. As a result he’d had to settle for security work.

  Tommy’s daddy had told him it wasn’t important what a man did in life as long as he performed to the best of his ability. So Tommy was as diligent and loyal an employee as Gibson had. But he still sometimes made bad decisions, such as leaving the security cell phone in the office with the TV on when he went to the john, so he didn’t hear Quinn’s call.

  QUINN LET the phone ring ten times before giving up in anger. He shoved his phone back in his jacket pocket, then scanned the crowd, looking for Carl Hatch, the symposium organizer. At six foot six, Hatch was easy to spot, and Quinn found him in just a few seconds. Consumed with dread, Quinn threaded his way through the throng to Hatch’s side.

  “Carl, I’m sorry to do this to you, but I’ve got an emergency at home and I have to leave.”

  Hatch’s face showed his disappointment at losing Quinn on tomorrow’s panel. “I understand. You go and don’t worry about us, we’ll do fine. Hope everything works out.”

  So the hell do I, Quinn thought, practically running from the room.

  Chapter 24

  MARTI BELIEVED that her discovery of the mobile EEG lab was solid evidence Quinn and Odessa were both involved in the Blake murder. But her experience, in which even her eyewitness identification of Odessa as her sister’s killer had not persuaded the Los Angeles DA to prosecute him, made her want more proof, especially since she still didn’t understand why Odessa came back to the hospital after the murder.

  So where should she look now?

  The office in Quinn’s research lab seemed the most likely place. If the door to the lab had contained a glass panel, she’d have just gone back to the hospital and broken it as she had the garage door. But the lab door was solid oak. There was no way she could force her way in through it. Fortunately, she had an answer for that.

  MARTI KNOCKED gently on the sleeping room in the dorm wing of Two East B.

  “Who’s there?” a voice inside said.

  “Dr. Segerson.”

  The door swung open, and Harry Evensky looked out at her with a pleased expression. “Did you figure out what to do next?”

  “Is anyone else in there?”

  “No. The guy who won’t talk is in the john . . . Don’t ask what he’s doin’, you don’t want to know. My other roommate, Chick, is under dorm lockdown.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  “I don’t know what happened, he just lost it at dinner . . . knocked over a cart and started screamin’ at the cooks. And the food ain’t that bad. You gonna talk to him?”

  “Tomorrow. Right now, we’ve got more important things to do. May I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  The old man stepped back, and Marti went inside then turned and said, “Better shut the door.”

  Evensky did as she asked.

  Marti reached in her pocket, got the two paper clips she’d picked up in her office before coming to the ward, and held them out to the old man. “How’d you like to put these to use for a good cause?”

  “You got a lock you want picked?”

  “Dr. Quinn’s research lab on the fourth floor.”

  “Dr. Qui—Why do you want in there?”

  Marti had thought about what she’d tell Evensky if he asked that question, and she’d decided to be truthful with him . . . to a point. “I think he let Odessa out of solitary the night you saw him.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I’m not sure. That’s why I want to get in his office and look around.”

  “Seems to me I could get in big trouble for this.”

  “If everything works out as I hope, Quinn will soon be in a position where he won’t be able to do anything to you.”

  “Suppose it don’t work out?”

  “I’ll try to take all the blame, but some certainly might spill onto you.”

  “You know what?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t really care.”

  Marti got Evensky out of the ward by telling Olivia Barr she was taking him to her office for the second half of a timed memory test they’d begun earlier that day.

  Marti hadn’t wanted to take her flashlight onto the ward, so she’d left it in her office. They picked it up when they crossed over to the west wing through the administrative area. Two minutes later, as they were about to step from the landing of the old staircase onto the floor where Quinn had his lab, Marti stopped moving and spoke to the old man. “You wait here and I’ll make sure no one’s there.”

  Halfway to Quinn’s door, Marti looked behind her.

  There was Evensky standing right out in the open. She motioned for him to get back.

  Reaching the lab, she tried the door, then knocked.

  No answer.

  She knocked again and waited a reasonable amount of time before taking a few steps toward where the old man waited. “It’s o
kay, come on . . .”

  He didn’t reappear.

  Thinking the old man might have run out on her, she hurried back to where she’d left him, and there he was.

  “I said, ‘Come on.’”

  “Sorry, sometimes my hearin’ ain’t too good.”

  They walked back to the lab together and Marti said, “Okay, show me how it’s done.”

  Evensky looked at her with a furrowed brow. “I didn’t know I was gonna have to pick the lock on this old gal.”

  “You can’t do it?”

  “Not with paper clips. I need somethin’ more substantial . . . like a couple pieces of a coat hanger about six inches long.”

  There were some coat hangers in Marti’s office, but she had no idea how she was going to cut one into pieces. Then she remembered the bolt cutter she’d left in the basement.

  “I’ll need a few minutes to get what you want. In the meantime, come back to the stairs with me and wait out of sight on the vacant floor above this one.”

  WHATEVER TOMMY Joyner had eaten that had caused him such intestinal discomfort wasn’t about to loosen its grip, and Tommy was beginning to think if he lost any more fluid down the toilet, he’d soon start to shrivel up. In the security office, where the phone had been quiet for nearly three minutes, it began to ring again.

  TONGUE PROTRUDING slightly from the corner of his mouth as he worked, Harry Evensky knelt in front of the door to Quinn’s lab, clicking two pieces of coat hanger around inside the old lock. Marti glanced again down the hall toward the steps, worried that at any moment someone might come into the area and see them. Looking back at the old man and the sweat pearling on his forehead, she began to doubt he’d be able to do the job. But suddenly there was a click from inside the lock mechanism.

  Evensky stood up and opened the door with a flourish. “Had you worried, didn’t I?”

  “Not for a minute,” Marti said.

  The only windows in the lab were on the left, facing some lawn and the woods bordering the creek Evensky had followed the night he’d appeared in Marti’s bedroom. Having no idea what the night security man’s routine was, it seemed possible he might be taking a tour of the grounds and would notice if they turned on the lab’s lights. So she left them off. Worried that the guard might even see her flashlight, she went to the windows and made sure all the blinds were closed.