Dead Memories (Carol Ann Baker Crime Book 2)

by Lissa Pelzer

  Two cars sat pulled up next to the door.

  ‘Who the hell are they?’ Bryan asked.

  ‘Looks like cops,’ Davis said.

  ‘Huh?’

  She pointed to the cars. ‘They’re half blocking the entrance. They could have parked anywhere, but they didn’t want to walk and they know no one’s going tell them to move.’

  He glanced at her sideways. ‘Did you do this? Did you call them?’

  ‘I did not.’

  He opened his door. ‘You should stay here. If there are already cops in there, I mean...’

  She could have argued the point, but weighed up the inconveniences. She didn’t want to have to explain herself, didn’t want Bryan mouthing off and saying she was a cop from Florida and didn’t want anyone calling Marquez.

  ‘Okey-dokey,’ she said.

  Davis watched him go inside and now her eyes skimmed the rooms. Somewhere in there, a girl slept who had attracted the attentions of the trucker who had picked up Carol Ann. Davis dragged her teeth against her bottom lip and felt the dry and peeling skin there. Tomorrow morning, she had to call Marquez to tell him everything she knew. It was a rabbit’s warren of facts, half-truths, and possibilities, but it all seemed to be pointing to something. The Trucker who picked up Carol Ann had come back to the place he’d last been seen with her. He’d tried to kill a waitress, and now he was out to get a girl who had been in an accident. There were too many variables for Davis to form a true impression, but one thought ran like a mouse in a maze around her head. What if the girl in there, J.K was Carol Ann?

  She hit the steering wheel with her open hand. But how could she be? She was grasping at straws because the most obvious answer was unthinkable. For the twentieth time in the last hour, Davis saw an image of Carol Ann’s twisted, broken body in a ditch by the side of the road. She fought back the feeling that she was responsible for this, but stupidly, reproach came again and again in waves.

  ‘Why didn’t you stop her? Why didn’t you let the Ohio cops pick her up in the car with Bobby?’

  She had failed to protect her. Something very bad had happened to Carol Ann.

  But now this, the same trucker was expected here. Davis was about to get out of the car when Bryan came back out of the front door. He came up to the driver’s side window and rested his elbow above her head.

  ‘You’re right,‘ he said. ‘The cops are here. So you can go. Head back to mine. I’ll get a ride home.’

  And he slapped the roof of the car like he was her boss and she was just a rookie.

  ‘Asshole,’ she said as she pulled away, but bore no more thought to his instructions.

  Instead, she drove out of the lot and down the street a way, looking for a place to park. She would walk back and find somewhere to stake out from.

  But as she looped the block, she realized it was all No Parking around here and there wasn’t anywhere to pull over either. So, she widened her perimeter until a high school football stadium loomed up ahead. That would do just fine. Davis put her foot down, but in the next second, her heart jumped. There behind the bleachers was a truck and she saw immediately, the night-time radiance of an expensively painted red Freightliner.

  She took her foot off the gas and slowed to a stop.

  It was time to take a closer look.

  Bryan

  He didn’t recognize the two guys leaning against the reception counter, but had to admit, they looked like cops.

  ‘Can I help you, gentleman?’

  They introduced themselves, flashed their identification wallets and said they were here to interview Janine.

  Tanner nodded in the direction of the hallway. ‘So, can we get her out?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you need to get her out for? Aren’t you here to stop someone else from getting in?’

  Caffey frowned, attractively so, barely creasing his brow. He must have practiced that look in front of the mirror. ‘We’ve come to talk to her,’ he said. ‘We need her help with our investigation in a murder case.’

  Bryan laughed. He waited for them to laugh too. Neither did. That rattled him. ‘Just a minute,’ he said, and went down the hall.

  The night attendant was standing outside Janine’s door. ‘Is this why you called back, you wanted to tell me, that the cops showed up?’

  The woman looked bewildered. ‘No, they just got here, after I’d called you.’

  Bryan went to the door and tapped gently. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Janine just told me she got her memory back!’

  Bryan flinched. He turned away. ‘Janine?’ he said into the wood. ‘Can I come in?’

  The door opened. Janine’s eyes darted around his face. He saw it straight away. Something had changed. She was about to talk when a voice came from down the corridor. Tanner and Caffey had let themselves through the swing doors.

  ‘You don’t mind if we’re here for any conversations, do you? Only it’s a sensitive matter.’

  Bryan stepped back. ‘You shouldn’t be in this corridor. It’s residential, vulnerable women and girls.’

  ‘Sir, we are law enforcement professionals,’ Tanner said.

  Bryan glanced back at Janine. Understandably, she seemed terrified and he could feel his own heart thumping underneath his ribs but he didn’t want to tell them to get lost. With some crazy out there, having a couple of cops around was a good thing.

  ‘We came out on the off chance Janine would be awake.’

  ‘There’s a staff lounge. You can wait there until the morning.’

  ‘Well, she’s awake now. I’m guessing we can proceed?’

  ‘I think not. We will need to talk to her doctor first,’ he said.

  Caffey blew a hurricane out over his bottom lip and some of the spittle landed on Bryan’s face.

  ‘Okay – okay. We went through this the first time. Look…’ He held his hand up towards Janine. She’s fine, right. We don’t want to interrogate her, only take her fingerprints.’

  Bryan shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, but I have just been informed, just this minute informed, that Janine has been experiencing some signs of recovery this evening. Her head injuries were acute and her amnesia symptoms very extensive. I have no idea what this means for her on-going recovery or how it should be handled because I’m not a doctor.’ He began to shake. He knew it must be visible. ‘But I am sure, first thing in the morning her doctor will want to run tests. I’m positive, she will consider an interview with the police to be highly unadvisable.’

  He must have said something right. The two detectives changed their expressions. Just like that, they softened up.

  ‘Is that so?’ Tanner said. ‘Well, that is good news and we wouldn’t want to interfere with her recovery in any way.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He looked to the other guy. ‘How about that lounge?’

  Then the door swung open and the third guy came in. This one wasn’t a cop. Bryan could tell right away. The plastic storage box in his hands looked uncomfortably heavy and he had the narrowest shoulders Bryan had ever seen on a man.

  Tanner did an impression of a windmill with his finger in the air. ’We’re going to come back tomorrow,’ he said.

  The guy shook his head but didn’t say anything. He just turned around and walked straight back out through the swing doors.

  ‘I’ll stay,’ Caffey said. ‘My partner will be back at around nine tomorrow.’ He patted the other guy on the back. ‘Get some sleep, buddy.’

  And now there was one.

  Bryan watched Caffey, he saw the way he looked at Janine and he didn’t like it.

  ‘You get back in your room, Janine. I’ll send Tricia in with you and I’ll be there in a minute.’

  The girl turned around and went back in and with no one interesting to stare at Caffey excused himself. Bryan waited until he had passed through the doors and then he knocked quietly and Janine opened the door again.

  He would never usually enter a resident’s room, but with a cop in t
he staff lounge, there was nowhere else private to go. He stood with his shoulders practically touching the door, trying to make it clear that he knew he was invading her space, but Janine didn’t seem to care.

  ‘So, she told you,’ she said.

  ‘You’re starting to remember things.’

  Janine shook her head. ‘No, not really starting to remember stuff. I remember pretty much everything.’ Now she clicked her fingers like she was about to do a magic trick. ‘It came to me just like that. I woke up in the middle of the night and a few seconds later…’ she clicked again. ‘Snap!’

  Bryan had to remind himself to take a breath. He believed her immediately. He recognized that a different girl stood before him to the one he had known, except he’d seen glimpses of her, this confidence and arrogance, like when she mentioned South Beach.

  Bryan smiled. He looked forward to hearing all her stories, to working out how her puzzle fitted together. ‘Well, that’s amazing, Janine. I am really, really happy for you.’

  ‘I mean there are still some vague patches,’ she said, her hands moved around freely. ‘But not many, and they feel so close to the surface, I know they are just waiting to spring out with a little help.’

  ‘That’s right. You’ve already worked so hard–’

  She cut him off. ‘So I was thinking. Maybe you could go down to the office and get my folder and we could look at the details in there, you know, all the scraps of paper relating to my life before and the plans I’d made for the future. I think if I could see that stuff–’

  ‘We can do all that tomorrow after you’ve talked to the doctor.’

  Janine laughed. ‘Why wait? Let’s do it now... Bryan, I just started getting my memory back, what if it’s a window of opportunity that closes back up in a few hours?’

  ‘Why would it close?’

  ‘I don’t know, but why has it opened? Couldn’t it just be a temporary thing.’

  The words ‘a moment of clarity’ came into his head, or was that just Alzheimer’s and alcoholics? He couldn’t take the chance. He was her caseworker. It was his duty to see her right. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Wait here.’

  Lilly

  A cop was sat reading at the table in the lounge. And when she peeked through the glass window at the side, he almost saw her. She sensed the first effort of his nose twisting in her direction before she pulled back out of sight. Bryan had said that he would stay the night and still be there in the morning.

  ‘Why does he need to stay?’

  ‘Because we were worried before, that someone might try to come and visit you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Bryan had looked apologetic and pathetic. ‘We just heard a story that’s all.’

  He didn’t want to tell her what he knew, but it didn’t matter, after a half an hour wait, he’d come back with all of the documents. She had the transcripts, the letters from the university and she had a thick brown folder full of printed-off photos from the place where Moon Face had lived.

  So, if that trucker came back to her window, she would be ready to go. She could tell him to go and cause a distraction and she would sneak out of the window if he’d cracked it and no one would know until morning.

  It wasn’t the perfect plan. The cops would still want to track her, Janine Kenny, down. But it would by her a little thinking time.

  Davis

  She put the back of her hand to the rig of the Freightliner. Warmth like the space on a couch recently vacated by a cat radiated out from the hood. She grabbed the side handle and carefully pulled herself up to the passenger side window. The rig was surprisingly clean and with the curtains to the crib open she could see a made bed.

  She lowered herself down and walked around the back to the semi-trailer. The trailer comprised of a frame with a buckled down tarpaulin over the top and around one corner, she noticed it hadn’t been fastened down correctly. A small person could have fitted through that gap and snuck inside. Davis reached instinctively for her weapon and when she didn’t find it, pulled down on her jacket instead.

  She listened. She didn’t think he was in there. Why would he hide in here instead of in his own rig? She lifted the corner slowly and looked inside. The covered trailer was half empty. At first, she couldn’t make it out. A few pools of light showed around the bottom were the eyelets had been punched into the tarpaulin. Then she saw the huge forms looming like dinosaurs inside the space. Ralph Adams was hauling some kind of structure. The truck was loaded, but the space inside was still hollow. You could put a body in the back, no problem. Hell, you could fit a car in there too if you had a bay to load it from.

  She backed away.

  Davis summed up her options. With those cops at the rehab unit, Adams wouldn’t be there. He might be watching the place, waiting for them to leave, but it was after midnight now, so eventually, he’d need to come back here to sleep. Either way, she needed to move her car.

  She got back in and drove out of the lot. She could park up someplace else and walk back and just wait for him. But the thought of sitting in a bush for up to six hours, with no coffee and nothing to read, wasn’t too appealing. It would be better to do a sweep.

  Davis drove slowly down the hill. She stopped at every sign and used the moments to scan the immediate area. She did a loop and came back and after twenty minutes wasn’t surprised to have found no sign of him. Then she passed the unit and glanced over the wall. A car containing two people pulled out and headed towards the highway, but the other cop’s car was still there. One of them was still inside. She stopped a moment to think it over and was fifty foot away on the other side of the street when she thought she saw something. The bushes had moved. Someone was in there. She was dead certain.

  Davis pulled up to the curb, got out and scurried across the street. She crouched down behind the low wall of the facility and slowly lifted her head. She watched the shadows of the bushes. They were so still that her staring seemed to make them move. And at first, there was silence and she thought she’d been hallucinating, but then the noise of movement began, of something or someone pulling through plant life.

  She stayed where she was and waited. If Adams came out right now, she would jump this wall and take him in. She didn’t carry metal cuffs, but she always had a couple of disposable riot cuffs in her car and right now they were ready threaded in her jacket pocket.

  She’d just have to get him down. And with the element of surprise, she could do that. Then she’d call Bryan to bring the cop out. Bryan would have to tell them Valerie’s story on the spot. Would she back them up when the time came? With her face as it was right now, would they even need her to? Davis didn’t like to be the kind of person who went back on their word, but Adams might have been the last person to ever see Carol Ann alive and Davis needed to know what had happened.

  There was a footstep on the gravel.

  Davis put her hand on the wall and got ready. She knew this was going to hurt. She couldn’t rely on her stomach muscles right now. But if she got him from behind, got her elbow between his shoulder blades, that should do it.

  Another noise sounded, a rasp and a click. Adams had lit a cigarette.

  ‘That’ll be the last hit you take for a while buddy...’ she muttered, and as the bush rustled again, Davis jumped. She leaped forward and crossed the short lawn, sprung the guy, catching him off guard and they both fell to the ground.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing!’ Bryan rasped from beneath her.

  Davis had her elbow in his neck. The smoke from his dropped cigarette wafted across her face and she squinted and shook her head.

  ‘Get off me!’

  Davis rolled away. But sprung up, still thinking Adams was somewhere around here.

  ‘I heard a noise.’ She knew her eyes were wide. Adrenaline still pumped across her internal organs. ‘What are you doing in the bushes?’

  Bryan got to his feet slowly, brushed bits of cut grass from his pants and retrieved his cigarette from the
ground. ‘Smoking. What does it look like?’

  ‘I thought you were the trucker,’ she hissed.

  ‘And I thought you were gone.’ He took a hit. ‘Look we’ve got it all in hand here. Go home, Susan.’ Bryan took another puff. ‘Go home.’

  Lilly

  She waited, one knee up on the desk. This was it. She was out of here, another chapter in her life complete.

  She had packed lightly, not that she had much these days, but she would, once she got to California. She’d have that bursary, get a job, get some money again and get some nice clothes.

  There was a sound outside her window and she pulled at the blinds. She caught a glimpse of Bryan smoking a cigarette and let the blind ping back into place. Why was he standing there, that dick wad! The trucker couldn’t come up this way if Bryan was standing right there.

  An hour had passed since he brought her the folder, placing it in her hands as if it were her high school graduation scroll, and she was desperate to leave. The crystal display on the digital clock showed 2.55am. Was the trucker even still out there or had he seen the cops show up and left? Either way, he wasn’t going to come back to the window while Bryan was standing there. Lilly slipped down off the desk.

  But he had to return for her, didn’t he? She had nothing else to hope for. Those cops out there had come to interview her, and to fingerprint her. She’d overheard that much. They had the pug gun. It had been on the news. But they didn’t know yet that she did it, or at least, they didn’t have enough evidence. If she could get out of here and run away, then they’d never get her fingerprints and maybe they would just let it go.

  Because why would they be here, unless Chad had ratted her out? Did they really believe him? Did they have any other evidence, which would make it worth them tracking her down?

  Lilly twisted up her face. She looked at the pads of her fingertips. She remembered how she had held the pug gun in her palm for two hours as she and the trucker left Ohio. Her fingerprints must be burnt into the gun handle out of sheer heat and force. She had to stop them getting her fingerprints.