The Memory Thief

by Don Donaldson

  She then led Evensky to Quinn’s office door. “Time for you to go back to work, Harry.”

  The old man looked up at her. “You called me ‘Harry’ . . . like we were friends. That was nice. Can I call you by your first name?”

  “Only when we’re alone.”

  “Perfect. It’ll be like another secret we have together. It’s Marti, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I like it.”

  “Now get us in this office.”

  “Sure thing, Marti.” And he did, using his paper clips so effectively it took only a few seconds, explaining his speed on this lock with two words, “Cheap goods.”

  Because Quinn’s office had no windows, Marti felt comfortable in turning on the lights. To keep an eye on the lab door to the hallway, she left the office door open. She then went to Quinn’s desk and tried the drawers, only to find them locked as well. “Harry, can you open these?”

  Harry looked at her as if to say, “Is there any doubt in your mind?”

  “Sorry, will you please open this desk.”

  And he did, with almost no effort. While Marti started going through the drawers’ contents, Harry tried to open a big walnut armoire against the left wall. But this, too, needed his lock-picking skills.

  Marti found nothing of interest in the first drawer she examined, nor the second. She was just pulling out the third when Harry said, “Hey, look at this.”

  Joining him at the armoire, where both its doors were now standing open, he showed her a DVD case. “This has your name on it.”

  She took the case and looked at the label on the spine. Marti Segerson . . . He wasn’t joking.

  There was a DVD player and a TV on a stand to the right of the desk. Marti carried the DVD to the stand, turned everything on and slipped the disc into the player. Picking up the DVD remote control from beside the TV, she hit PLAY.

  DOWN IN the security office, Tommy Joyner felt as if he could finally pull up his pants and rejoin the rest of the world. As he opened the bathroom door, the ring of the phone sent him scrambling to reach it.

  “Security.”

  “This is Oren Quinn. Where the hell have you been?”

  “I was . . .”

  “Never mind. I have reason to believe someone will try to break into my research office tonight. She may be up there right now.”

  “Don’t you worry, Dr. Quinn. I’m on my way.”

  Chapter 25

  THE DVD Marti had put in Quinn’s player ran for a few seconds with no picture, then an image abruptly appeared. And it made Marti gasp, for it was a film of her last boyfriend showing him from the lower ribs up, on his back, in bed, breathing hard. At the bottom of the frame, two feminine hands could be seen splayed across his chest. Clearly this was a sex film with the camera being held by someone just behind the woman straddling him.

  “Jesus, would you look at that,” Harry murmured.

  Marti was so shocked, she had no reply. How could Quinn have obtained such a film? Had this guy been a porno actor before he went to medical school? But he looked the same as when she’d last seen him. Surely he wasn’t doing porno films and a surgical residency at the same time. And why was her name on the thing?

  Then the camera turned to a new angle. As it rotated, she saw the wall behind the bed, then a chair with clothes thrown over it, the edge of a dresser, the dresser mirror . . .

  Oh, my God . . .

  In the reflection from the mirror, Marti saw that the woman on top of her boyfriend was her. And there was no cameraman.

  While her mind tried in vain to comprehend what she was watching, the scene abruptly ended, and for a few seconds there was just darkness on the screen. Then, the sensation of movement . . . someone falling . . . struggling . . . a door opening . . . but more darkness beyond. More movement . . . turning . . . advancing . . .

  Suddenly there was light and she saw on the screen . . . Harry Evensky . . .

  In her bedroom.

  “That’s me,” Harry said. “I didn’t know you had a camera in your house that night.”

  “I didn’t,” Marti murmured.

  The screen went dark.

  Stunned, Marti stood in front of the TV, too numb to move . . . too confused to think.

  The disc continued playing, but there were no more images on it.

  Noting that she wasn’t reacting, Harry took the control from her and pressed fast forward.

  After a few seconds he turned it off. “Doesn’t seem to be any more on there.” He turned to Marti. “I’m sorry for seein’ you . . . in your birthday suit, but what was that?”

  Marti was so deep in thought she didn’t reply. She was thinking about the first day she and Quinn had met at the scientific meeting in D.C., and his wild idea about theoretically being able to make memory movies. Except he wasn’t talking about something that some day might be . . . he’d already perfected it . . . and had used it on her.

  She had been drugged the day of the mind-reading test. And while she was unconscious he had raped her mind.

  The enormity of this conclusion made her want to reject it. Memory movies . . . it wasn’t possible . . . couldn’t be done. But as difficult as it was to accept such a crazy explanation, she couldn’t discard it, because it was the only thing that would account for what she’d just seen.

  With her resistance to the concept of memory movies shattered, her mind began to fit that reality into other things she’d learned since arriving at Gibson. The experiment Nadine had shown her where long-term memories of mice once again became as fragile as short-term memories when those memories were tapped into . . .

  Tapped into . . .

  By the animal remembering or . . . electrical stimulation . . . Nadine didn’t say that but . . .

  That’s why she had no memory of Harry coming to her room—the act of stimulating and recording a memory must erase it.

  Must erase it . . .

  She turned to the armoire where Harry had found the disc, and she saw others, a long row of them, arranged alphabetically by the names on the spines. She began scanning the names in reverse alphabetical order.

  There . . .

  Vernon Odessa.

  Hands shaking in anticipation of what she was about to see, Marti took Odessa’s disc from the shelf and slid it out of its case. She carried it to the player, removed her disc, and put Odessa’s in.

  Harry handed her the controls. Did she really want to do this?

  No . . . and yes.

  Her finger pressed PLAY and the machine began running.

  Darkness . . . darkness . . . then the dim image of her sister struggling in bed. Mercifully, there was no sound so she couldn’t hear Lee’s voice as she tried to buck Odessa off her and remove his hand from her throat. Then a blur appeared in the upper right of the screen . . . Odessa’s hammer coming down.

  Unable to take any more, Marti shut it off.

  Extremely shaken at seeing Lee’s murder through Odessa’s eyes, Marti was still capable of constructive thought.

  This was why Odessa had passed the brain fingerprint test. Quinn had Odessa’s memory of Lee on tape, and because of that, Odessa no longer possessed it. And Molly Norman . . . she must have known Quinn let Odessa out of seclusion the night of the Blake murder. To keep her quiet, Quinn had erased all her memories, giving her total amnesia.

  Suddenly hearing the sound of a key in the lab door, Marti darted for the light switch and flicked it off. Just as she eased the office door shut, and Harry closed the armoire, she saw a security guard come into the lab.

  “Could you tell who it is?” Harry whispered.

  “Security,” Marti whispered back.

  “Did he see you?”

  “Don’t think so “

  “What do we do
now?”

  Marti had been so focused on Quinn’s desk and the films, she hadn’t really paid much attention to the layout of the office. But from her earlier visit the day Quinn coerced her into taking the mind-reading test, she thought there was a side door behind her next to some filing cabinets.

  She played her flashlight in that direction and saw what she was looking for. “We get out of here . . . over there.”

  Harry reached the door first and found it locked. “Boy, this guy doesn’t leave anything open,” he whispered.

  IN THE lab, Tommy Joyner had turned on the lights and was checking to make sure no one was crouching behind any of the equipment or cabinetry. Satisfied that the lab was secure, he headed for Quinn’s office.

  HARRY MADE short work of the lock in front of him, and he and Marti slipped into the adjacent room just as Joyner opened the office door. Once again Marti didn’t believe they were seen. But they still might be trapped. If they were caught, the guard would likely call Quinn and tell him what was going on. That would be disastrous, for then he’d know she was on to him, and she wasn’t convinced she had enough evidence yet to persuade anyone else to accept what would sound like an unbelievable story.

  She played her flashlight around the room and saw a lot of electronic equipment and a big dental chair in the center of the room. This could be where Quinn made his memory movies. But was there a way out? Moving her flashlight to the left, she found a door that must lead back into the lab.

  Too risky.

  They’d have to cross the entire lab to get to the hall. She shifted her light to the wall straight ahead, where she saw some standing cabinets, a stack of power supplies . . . and another door.

  With Marti holding the light for Harry, he picked that lock, too, and once again they escaped just as Joyner came in from the opposite side.

  They were now in the room where Marti had been drugged the day of the mind-reading test. She could see now how easy it had been for Quinn and Nadine to move her from there into the chair next door so they could roam through her brain.

  The door that led to the last room in the series was unlocked, so this time they evaded detection by a safer margin. But even as they moved on, Marti knew they were about to run out of real estate. And she was right, for this time there was just a blank wall where all the other means of escape had been.

  And what was worse . . .

  She played her light onto the wall where every other room had a door to the lab.

  Cabinets. Nothing but cabinets.

  Angry at not being smarter, she whipped her light around and raked the back wall with it. Because her view was obscured by some white coats on a hook, she almost didn’t see the doorknob. When she did, her hopes rose.

  Harry saw it too and beat her to the spot. So he was the first to discover he needed to work his magic again. He wasn’t quite as fast this time, and he was still working when they heard Joyner mistakenly key the unlocked door from the next room.

  Joyner came in just as Harry opened the back door. But the security guard’s line of sight to the rear of the room was blocked by the door he’d just opened, allowing Marti and Harry to get out unseen. Nor did he hear them, because Marti had the foresight to ease the door shut behind them.

  Marti and Harry found themselves in the back hallway, which led to the stairwell each ward used to reach the cafeteria. This meant they could now either go down the rear stairs or circle around past the entrance to Quinn’s lab and escape the front way.

  It wasn’t an easy choice. If they chose the back route and the security guard came out the way they just had, he’d hear them on the creaky old stairs and might give chase. On the other hand, if they picked the alternate route and he left the lab the way he came in, they’d run right into him.

  “Over here,” Marti said, pulling Harry toward the mesh door that guarded the back stairs.

  IN THE room they’d just left, Joyner walked to the rear door and tried the knob to see if this one was unlocked too. Finding it secured, he used his key one more time.

  AT THE last second, the alternate route suddenly seemed a better choice to Marti. She grabbed Harry and pulled him to the left. “No, this way.”

  The corridor leading to the front stairs was only a few steps away and they were around the corner and out of sight by the time Joyner leaned his head into the hall for a quick look.

  Tommy’s retinal problem didn’t affect his ears. Thinking he heard the sound of soft footfalls from somewhere close by, he came into the hallway and started walking toward the intersecting corridor, where Marti and Harry were still in plain sight.

  Just as Tommy was about to turn the corner, his phone rang.

  “This is Quinn. What have you found?”

  Tommy was so intimidated by Quinn, he froze where he stood like a bird dog on point. “Everything is fine, sir. No problems here.”

  “I want you to spend the rest of your shift in my lab with my office door open so you can see if anyone’s in there,” Quinn said. “Do not enter my office again unless you do so to apprehend a trespasser. Have I made myself clear?”

  “Absolutely, sir. You can count on me.”

  “That better be true.”

  DOWN THE hall, Marti and Harry turned the next corner and were no longer visible from the rear corridor.

  QUINN WAS in a short line for the Delta ticket counter at the Atlanta airport. As he folded his cell phone and put it back in his pocket, the person at the head of the line stepped up to the agent, leaving him two back.

  With all that was at stake it was hard waiting his turn, especially since the flight he wanted to catch was leaving in just ten minutes.

  Standing there, each second that passed was another knife in his chances of getting on the plane. Then, after an eternity, he was next . . .

  But the old woman ahead of him engaged the agent in some interminable conversation, making him want to rush the counter and throw her aside. Quinn’s money and influence alone would have made him impatient at being held up by a commoner. But his long career, in which he had never met a mind equal to his, had shown him he was also a superior intellect. So why should anyone be helped before him?

  Having reached the end of his tolerance, he picked up his bag and charged toward the counter. But before he had to insist on being served, the old woman turned and headed for the concourse.

  “One seat on flight eighty-two thirty-three, first class,” he said, slapping his credit card on the counter.

  The agent’s eyes dropped to his keyboard and his fingers began flying over it. “They’re about to leave. But I’ll call and let them know you’re coming. You’ll have to hurry. You’re lucky the gate is close and the airport isn’t very busy tonight.”

  A few seconds later, as Quinn hurried toward the security check point, clutching his boarding pass, he certainly didn’t feel lucky.

  VERNON ODESSA ran his finger lightly along the blade of the case knife he’d been sharpening for hours.

  Good. It should do the job nicely.

  He thought about the first two people who’d be tasting its bite. He wasn’t happy about the very first one, but the second would be a pleasure. The problem was he didn’t know when that would be. Soon, he thought, but like most of his life, it was a decision that was out of his hands. And it would come, he was sure, without warning. So he had to be prepared.

  He went to his bed and pulled the sheet off the mattress at one end. Hospital policy didn’t allow locks on the sleeping room doors, so it was possible one of the orderlies or nurses might just barge in at any moment. Working fast, with his back to the door, he used the knife to cut two long, narrow strips from the fabric. He then tucked the damaged sheet back in place. Sitting on the side of the bed opposite the door, he pulled up one leg of his pants and tied the strips snugly around his calf about two inches apart. H
e then carefully slid the knife behind the strips, tugged his pant leg down, and tried walking.

  Not bad . . . not bad at all.

  Chapter 26

  MARTI TOOK Harry Evensky back to the ward, then she went to her car and drove home, confused about her next move. Her discovery in Quinn’s office of the film, proving he’d been in her brain and had erased her memory of Harry’s visit the night he escaped, was only circumstantial evidence he was also responsible for Molly Norman’s amnesia.

  Circumstantial but convincing. At least to her.

  The film of her own memories was probably sufficient evidence to charge Quinn with something . . . assault, maybe, but that was so minor compared to what she believed he’d done. And even if she did want to proceed with some kind of lesser charge against him, she hadn’t been smart enough to take the disc with her when the security guard had interrupted.

  As she turned onto the dirt road leading to her cottage, she saw that she was losing focus. Quinn was not her primary concern. He was important only as a conduit to Odessa. The film of Lee’s murder was the evidence she wanted. And if Quinn had that, he might also have one of the Blake killing. Maybe on the same disc with Lee.

  Idiot.

  She hit the brakes.

  That’s the one she should have taken.

  She sat for a moment with her headlights lighting up the road ahead, considering turning around and going back to the hospital. But she quickly realized it was too soon. That guard might still be in the lab, or close by. Better to wait a few hours and let the situation cool down. Other than her own impatience, there was no hurry. Quinn wouldn’t even be back until day after tomorrow.

  Just stay calm.