The Memory Thief

by Don Donaldson

  It was about ten yards to the woods, which was a shade too far, for just as she hit the path, Odessa came out the back door and saw her. He pulled the flashlight from his pocket and gave chase. He was a bit slow because, since Marti had hit him, each step was like another fist pounding at his wound. But there was no way he was going to let that stop him.

  Hearing him on the porch, Marti believed he’d probably seen her. She couldn’t run as fast as she was able because the path was only vaguely apparent before her as a negative image, an absence of trees rather than a tangible presence. But she found she could follow it with surprising accuracy, so that even with the hindrance of the dark, she managed to maintain the lead she’d had going in.

  The path followed a circuitous route through the trees, giving her an occasional glimpse of the beam from Odessa’s flashlight, but largely preventing them from seeing each other. Marti knew she couldn’t just count on physically outlasting Odessa in a footrace. A root that might catch her shoe, a turn missed, and he could be on her. She needed a plan.

  At exactly that moment, she ran smack into a tree, and everything went black.

  Chapter 30

  MARTI REGAINED her senses just as she hit the ground. Her first perception was of a sharp pain in her forehead where the bark from the big persimmon she’d run into had scraped her skin. If she’d been wearing her glasses, her injuries might have been worse. For a moment she was disoriented, unaware of where she was. But then, the sound of a twig cracking as Odessa stepped on it, mere yards away, brought everything back.

  It was too late to get up and run. So she rolled to the side of the path, hoping she wouldn’t be blocked by some sapling growing nearby. Her first 180-degree turn put her face into a wet, leafy plant that smelled as though a dog had just urinated on it. Still unimpeded, she kept rolling . . . onto her back . . . then again onto her face . . . onto her back . . .

  And that’s as far as she got, because she was finally stopped by the sapling she’d been worried about. She couldn’t be more than a few feet off the path, and she had no idea whether she’d be visible when Odessa got there. All she could do was wait and hope.

  She could hear Odessa breathing hard as he rounded the last curve visually separating them. Then she could see the beam of his flashlight, which to her horror he was raking into the woods on each side of the path as he came toward her.

  As Odessa turned his light to her side of the path, she lost sight of a portion of the beam. It was then she realized she was lying under the trunk of a large wind-toppled tree. Maybe he wouldn’t see her and would just go on past.

  ODESSA DIDN’T get much exercise in the hospital, certainly none that prepared him for this, and he was winded. But he was still the fox and she was the quail. He’d heard the quail from time to time as he pursued her, but he hadn’t actually seen her. Now, he realized, he didn’t hear her any more either. So he stopped running to catch his breath and listen more carefully.

  MARTI COULD see Odessa’s legs up to his knees. She was physically in good shape, so she wasn’t advertising her presence by labored breathing, but if he decided to lean down and look under the tree just to check it out, there would be nothing she could do. She thought about a preemptive strike . . . try to knock him down . . . and . . .

  What?

  What would she do then that she couldn’t have done with more favorable odds back in the cottage? Still, wouldn’t it be better to do something before he discovered her and had all the advantage?

  ODESSA STOOD, unmoving . . . listening . . .

  Damn it. Other than his own breathing, there wasn’t another sound in the woods. Had she gotten that far ahead of him? She didn’t have a flashlight, so it didn’t seem likely she could have moved fast enough to be out of earshot. And if she’d left the path, she’d have made a lot of noise. No. She was nearby and she was hiding.

  “I know you’re here,” he said aloud. “Trying to hide from me, which means you must be afraid. And you know what . . . that’s the right reaction, it really is, because when I find you, you’ll wish you’d never come to Gibson, that you’d never heard of me. But I’ll always have fond memories of you, of the last time I saw you.”

  As Odessa spoke, he worked the woods with his light. “Of course you won’t look very much like you do now.”

  Just to the left of the path ahead, the beam of his flashlight picked out a rotten ten-foot-tall stump of a tree that looked as though it might be hollow on the side facing away from the path, an excellent place for a frightened quail to hide.

  Playing the light down the path so the rotten stump was illuminated only in the periphery of its beam, he moved forward, his breathing now heavier as he anticipated an end to the chase.

  UNDER THE tree where Marti was hiding, the needle on her stress gauge dropped only a fraction of a point. Sure, he’d moved away from her tree, but that didn’t mean he was leaving.

  ODESSA SILENTLY edged past the fungus-mottled stump and paused. He took three quick steps to the stump, then brought his knife hand around in a looping arc toward the side facing away from him, which if the quail was there, would surely impale her.

  But his knife merely punctured a decaying inch-thick wall of Shumard oak, before punching through into the crumbling central cavity.

  No quail.

  So where was she?

  He directed his light down the path and saw another likely hiding place . . . a massive century-old poplar, blown partially over so that many of its huge roots had lifted up out of the ground, forming a dozen places Segerson might have crawled into. Eagerly, he moved forward to see if that’s where she was.

  WITH ODESSA now about fifteen yards away and hidden from view by the persimmon Marti had run into, she rolled from under the tree hiding her, got to her feet, and headed back toward her cottage, where she could claim her car keys and get the hell out of there.

  She reached the cottage a few minutes later and entered through the back door, which was standing wide open. Inside, she went directly to the small table by the door, where she always unloaded her keys when she got home.

  They weren’t there.

  Where the hell were they?

  Fighting to control the panic that threatened to consume her, she searched the floor thinking they might have fallen from the table when she was scuffling with Odessa. Not finding them near the table, she widened her search until she had scoured every inch of the living room’s well-worn pine floorboards and its two small area rugs.

  No keys.

  Maybe she hadn’t left them on the table.

  She went off on a mission, looking in every conceivable place she might have put them. But it was activity destined to produce only frustration. Finally, she had to admit she wouldn’t be leaving by car.

  The phone . . . 911 . . . At least she could call for help.

  She went to the cottage phone and yanked the receiver off the hook. Her fingers had two of the three numbers entered before she realized there had been no dial tone before she hit the first button. She pulled on the cord and found it severed cleanly from the part still in the jack, obviously cut by Odessa before he followed her into the woods.

  Her cell phone . . .

  He’d knocked it from her hand and it had flown . . .

  She turned and scanned the floor for it.

  There . . .

  She hurried over and picked it up, only to find it smashed and no longer functional.

  She now seemed to have only one choice: get to the highway on foot and flag down a car. Before leaving she went into the kitchen and yanked open the drawer where she kept the steak knives. Compared to the monster Odessa was carrying, a steak knife wasn’t much protection, but it was all she had.

  It would be a lot easier running along the dirt drive to the highway than it had been careening through the woods, but Marti still felt that
a flashlight would be useful. The one she’d used in the tunnel at the hospital was locked in her car, but Clay had provided tenants of the cottage with a rechargeable model in the outlet by the back door. She hadn’t had a chance to grab it earlier when she’d been running for her life, but a little less pressured now, she pulled it from the outlet and took it along as she went back outside.

  On the porch, she paused and looked at the path into the woods, afraid that Odessa might have given up and returned to the cottage to see if she was there. But all was dark and quiet.

  The side yard opposite the woods was an open patch of grass easily navigated by moonlight, so as she leaped from the porch and set out around the cottage on a dead run, she kept the flashlight off.

  Reaching the dirt road, she thought about veering up into the woods to keep from being so obvious, but chose instead to stay on the road, where she could run full tilt without worrying about hidden roots and uneven terrain.

  It felt good to run unimpeded, and with every step that left Odessa farther behind, she felt freer and safer. She had no idea how he had gotten out, but this would prove to any doubters he could, and if he did it tonight, he could have done it when the girl was killed in Blake. So once she got to a phone, and Odessa was in custody, she’d show the cops Quinn’s mobile lab, then take them to his office and get those discs. And that would be the end of both of them.

  After she’d run about twenty yards, she came to the small rise blocking Clay’s house from view. She lost a little steam going up the hill, but was encouraged by the knowledge that on the other side, from the bottom of the hill, the terrain was flat all the way to the highway. So as she topped the rise, she felt her confidence surge to an even higher level.

  But then she saw something that made her jolt to a stop.

  Someone was walking toward her.

  Clay . . . back from the fire.

  She started running toward him, but then saw a flash of something in the moonlight . . .

  A knife . . .

  Chapter 31

  ODESSA MUST have taken the leg of the path in the woods she’d never followed, and he’d come out ahead of her. They faced each other for a brief moment in the moonlight, like a pair of cowboys in a western showdown. Marti had the steak knife from the kitchen, but now it seemed even punier than when she’d picked it up.

  She looked to her left . . . toward the trail through the field to the creek. There were several places along the route where she could hide, and at the creek there were even more, where the bank had eroded away from the roots of some huge trees. But could she get a big enough lead on him so he wouldn’t see where she went?

  She looked back at him . . .

  From what she’d seen in her short time at Gibson, it didn’t seem like he got much exercise. He was probably already winded from his trek through the woods. Believing that in a footrace she could beat him like a rug, she bolted for the trail.

  ODESSA GROANED when he saw her start to run, for his side ached and he could barely get his breath. Now he was going to have to chase that bitch in the open. Then, he remembered . . . Grinning, he ignored Marti and set off as fast as he could back to her cottage.

  AS MARTI’S legs settled into a powerful pumping rhythm, she thought about the old childhood warning against running with a knife. Good advice if you weren’t being chased by a psychopath. She hurtled along the trail at full speed for about eighty yards before she turned to see how close Odessa was.

  What she saw made her brain howl.

  The headlights of a car, just fishtailing into view . . . that’s where her car keys were . . . Odessa had taken them. And he was coming now with the gas pedal to the floorboard.

  She had reached the triple fork in the trail. The closest place to hide was the old barn to the left. She veered that way and began to chew up real estate at a pace she hadn’t thought possible.

  For a few seconds, she was out of the car’s headlights. What would she do when she reached the barn? Then she remembered something she’d seen there on one of her walks. With that she would at least have a chance.

  She had nearly reached the barn when Odessa came sliding from the main trail onto the one she’d taken, igniting the trail with the car’s headlights. She’d once met an Olympic-caliber sprinter who had told her you never look back because it causes you to lose time. Even knowing that, she couldn’t help taking a quick glance to judge how long it would be before he reached her.

  He was still about forty yards away, but he was really pushing it. She was about to veer off the trail and get to the barn when she had another idea. If this one worked he’d never be a problem to anyone again. But it was a real long shot.

  Deciding to go for a final solution, Marti ignored the barn and kept running.

  In a few seconds she could hear the car’s engine behind her, closing fast, its lights burning into her, but also showing her the way ahead, allowing her to make her decision at just the right time.

  BEHIND THE wheel of the car, Odessa was a happy man. In just a few seconds he’d have her . . . and the fun could begin . . . although this was actually fun, too.

  He was now just a few feet away.

  Suddenly, the quail veered to the left, off the trail and into some heavy weeds. Odessa hit the brakes, but before the car could even begin to stop, it hurtled off a railroad tie that marked the end of the trail. Just in front of the tie was a hole in the ground where the many warning signs Clay had posted over the years had inevitably been carried off by the local kids.

  The car flew through the air and rejoined the earth with a dull whump, the abrupt stop throwing Odessa forward, driving his chest against the steering wheel. By the time he’d recovered from the shock of what had happened, and the pain in his chest had receded to where he could think about something else, the car had sunk up to the wheel tops in the bog quicksand Marti had lured him into.

  AS MARTI left the trail, she stumbled on a half-buried brick and sprawled onto her face, flattening the weeds in front of her. Realizing as she got to her feet that she’d lost her knife, she flicked on the flashlight still in her hand and went on a rampage looking for it.

  NOT YET understanding where he was, Odessa threw the car door open, grabbed his knife and flashlight from the seat beside him, and leaped out. When he hit, his feet disappeared up to his ankles in quicksand.

  MARTI HAD now flattened the weeds in a big circle, but still had not found her knife. She was dimly aware that Odessa had opened the car door, but had heard nothing for the last few seconds to indicate he was coming after her.

  She stood for a moment and listened hard to see if she was missing something. But no . . . the silence continued.

  A part of her told her to forget the knife and run like hell to put as much distance between her and Odessa as she could. But she’d waited so long for revenge, the thought that she finally had him snared kept her from leaving. If her plan had succeeded, and it appeared that it had, he was about to die. And that was something she just had to watch.

  Practically holding her breath, she left the weeds, walked out onto the trail, and played her flashlight into the bog, where she could see the dim shape of the car and . . .

  Yes . . .

  Odessa too, struggling to lift his feet from the muck holding him captive.

  She played her flashlight into his face to see his expression as he tried to lift his feet free of the restraining quicksand only to discover that the attempt made him sink deeper into it.

  “I’m afraid you’re trapped,” Marti said, her heart beating high in her chest like church bells celebrating the end of a long and draining war.

  Beside Odessa, the car had sunk up to the floorboards, and quicksand was edging through the open door.

  Odessa held up his knife hand to shield his eyes from Marti’s flashlight and he retaliated with his own light. “You p
lanned this?”

  “No,” she said sarcastically. “It was all just a big accident.”

  “So you’ve decided to be my judge and jury.”

  “The real ones do a lousy job.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We met once before, eighteen years ago at a beach in California, outside the house where you murdered my sister.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “It’s one of the memories Quinn took from you.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “I’m sure I will.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  He was now buried in quicksand up to his knees. In the car, it had just about covered the seats.

  “Oh, now I see,” Odessa said, disappointing Marti by the lack of fear in his voice. “You took the job at Gibson just to get to me.”

  “You’ve been on my mind every day for nearly two decades,” Marti said through clenched teeth.

  “So what was the plan? Were you going to kill me?”

  “I thought about it.”

  “So you didn’t have the nerve?”

  “I’m not like you. I’m human.”

  “So what’s this . . . aren’t you killing me now?”

  “You did this to yourself.”

  “That’s a distortion of the truth and you know it. If you’re so honorable, help me now.”

  Marti let out a guttural laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I promise not to hurt you.”

  “You must think I’m stupid.”

  “Okay, I would hurt you. Like I did your sister. I’ll bet she pled for her life when I did it. I like it when they whimper and ask me to spare them. It’s so naive and cute.”

  “Keep running your mouth. Pretty soon it’ll be filled with the sludge you’re standing in. Think what that’ll be like . . . After your nose goes under, you’ll hold your breath for as long as you can . . . until your chest is on fire for lack of oxygen, your brain will scream for air . . .”