Dead Memories (Carol Ann Baker Crime Book 2)

by Lissa Pelzer

  Lauren slowed.

  Except, it wasn’t over yet was it? She could still take her straight to the trucker, where surely Susan Davis still was, or she could by-pass them and go directly to the sheriff’s office.

  Could you imagine how astounded they would all be if she delivered Carol Ann Baker to them? Not only Carol Ann, but Janine too and she could tell them about the story she’d concocted. She could explain it all. Then, she would have some real recognition, because seriously, why was she jeopardizing her future, even doing this, if she was never going to get a real word of thanks?

  Lilly

  It had been five minutes since the second big bolt had come and gone and the rain had stopped but still, Lilly sat immobile and her skin continued to tingle. She had never known a storm pass so quickly. In her experience, there was always one last strike.

  ‘So, where’s the trucker?’ she asked Lauren, as they passed another group of lonely, single story houses on the road.

  And Lauren turned and smiled, or rather, smirked. It was definitely, almost a smirk.

  ‘Oh, he’s back there at the Rosewood turn.’ Lauren waved a hand behind her.

  And Lilly looked back in that direction, and it took her a second to put two and two together.

  ‘If he’s back there, why are we going this way?’

  Now Lauren’s voice came out sharply. ‘Because he’s a crazy who tried to kill my friend and was probably going to try the same thing on you, that’s why.’ And without taking a new breath, she ran through what he had done to her waitress friend and added on the end that she had just called the cops on him.

  Lilly sat back in the seat. Why hadn’t she told her this before they got in the car, and what the hell was she meant to do now? But not for the first time, Lauren seemed to read her mind.

  ‘But you’re still leaving town...if that’s what you want to know.’

  Something in her tone sounded off. Had she missed a beat while staring out of the window, wondering how to ask her if she could borrow $20 for food on the way over?

  ‘So who’s going to drive me?’

  Lauren shrugged. She meant herself, didn’t she?

  Lilly pulled at her seat belt. It wasn’t fair to drag Lauren into this, her mess. Lauren had helped her out already, more than Lauren could possibly know. She had colored her hair and dressed her up like a Janine doll. It had been more than three months since the accident, if Lauren hadn’t have done these things for her, she’d probably be in jail now with three inches of blonde roots.

  ‘You can’t drive me,’ Lilly said suddenly. ‘Seriously, Lauren. No. You could get in so much trouble.’

  The car slowed a fraction. ‘I’ll get in trouble?’ she asked. ‘But you said it was no big deal, that if they wanted to find you, they’d know where to look.’

  ‘Sure, but...’

  ‘You can’t drive me,’ she said again quietly. ‘You said you have a test on Thursday.’

  Lauren smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you, for being so thoughtful, but...’

  ‘Really, you shouldn’t even be driving in this car with me, right now.’

  Lauren tilted her head, but didn’t reply. She didn’t press the point that she was driving her. She didn’t confirm anything.

  Lilly clutched at the seat. She wanted to ask her what the plan was but somehow the words wouldn’t come out of her mouth and Lauren acted like she didn’t care to tell her.

  Now paranoia was kicking in.

  Was she taking her to the cops? Had Lauren worked out that she’d spun the story about Simon Snell from her stories? But no, why would she even have sneaked her out of the rehab unit if that was the case? Was she taking her to Davis? But how would she possibly know about Davis... But she did, didn’t she? She had mentioned her when they left the unit. And she said she wasn’t there. How did she know she wasn’t? She must know where Davis was.

  Then something clicked.

  Lauren knew she had made that story up. She knew because she had made it happen. Why else would she tell her all that stuff?

  A warm flush of gratitude swept through her chest and she reached for Lauren’s hand on the wheel. ‘Thank you!’ Lilly said.

  Lauren flinched. For a second, she seemed afraid and this confirmed Lilly’s still developing thoughts. Lauren had fed her those stories because she knew she had shot Simon Snell. And she knew she had, because somehow she knew who she was, what she was capable of. That’s why she had colored her hair, painted her nails...

  Lilly sat next to her friend with her mouth hanging slightly open. She knew who she really was and hadn’t confronted her or asked her to confirm it. Was Lauren trying to be polite?

  She shook her head. She knew from personal experiences how having to be polite could eat you up inside. And it ate Lauren up right now.

  She didn’t have an ounce of religion in her blood, but for that second, she hoped to God that she had read the situation right and wasn’t about to seriously fuck up her chances of getting out of here. Lilly took a deep breath.

  ‘...’

  ‘For goodness sake!’ Lauren screamed. ‘I know who you are! I know you’re Carol Ann Baker. Why the heck do you think you still can’t tell me that...after all...’

  ‘I was just about to!’ Lilly cried back.

  ‘Baloney!’ She slammed the steering wheel with both hands and turned to her and there was fire blazing in her eyes.

  ‘Baloney? Who the heck says baloney?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject!’

  ‘Baloney?’

  Lauren turned her face towards her, but now her anger was strained.

  ‘Okay. I’m sorry. But what did you expect, that I tell you who I am and what I’m accused of while I’m still shut up inside a mental hospital? Why would I do that? You might have just called the cops on me.’

  ‘Well, you could have told me now, in the car.’

  ‘I was honestly, just about to.’

  Lauren’s lower lip wobbled.

  ‘Okay – okay. Let me be straight with you.’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘I was just about to tell you who I was, but I never ever thought about telling you before just now. But you get why, don’t you? You know, Lauren, what I’ve done...That’s not the kind of thing you drop on people for no reason... It’s not like...’ The words faded as they came out of her mouth. ‘I don’t know...’

  And Lauren looked back at the road. Her eyed narrowed and a twitch ran across her cheek that made her look like she was smiling.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lilly said. ‘I would have told you, but I was scared. I didn’t realize until just now that you had helped me because you knew who I was.’

  ‘I did,’ Lauren said. ‘I knew you, as soon as I saw you.’

  And Lilly froze. It dawned on her. Lauren knew who she was before she’d known it herself. ‘Hang on.’ She lifted a finger. ‘You knew who I was while they were trying to convince me I was Janine Kenny! Oh my God! Do you know how that fucked me up? What if I’d never got my memory back. I should be pissed at you, Lauren!’

  Lauren pulled over next to the curb and turned to her.

  She was only joking, but maybe now wasn’t the time for jokes and Lauren raised her eyebrows.

  ‘You were scared to tell me what you had done. Now imagine having to tell someone else, they had done those things.’

  Lilly swallowed hard. ‘That’s a fair point.’

  ‘Okay. Are we okay?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Good. Because there’s someone you’re not okay with and we need to sort that out.’

  ‘Lauren...’ Lilly shook her head. She thought that was it, but it wasn’t. She was turning her over to Davis. Davis had got to her and convinced her it was for the best.

  ‘There’s someone I think you need to talk to... Someone who feels bad for everything that has happened to you, who knows that they played a part in your fate, who would like the opportunity to help you, and to apologize.’

&n
bsp; ‘No.’ Lilly went for her belt buckle. ‘No!’

  But Lauren had already pulled into a Dairy Queen and was going around back to where the dumpsters were. And as she stopped the car, her hand pressed down on Lilly’s buckle.

  ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘It’ll be okay. You can talk and drive.’

  ‘It won’t be okay. Seriously. You don’t understand.’

  ‘He knows you were only trying to defend him.’

  ‘Defend him?’ She racked her mind and it was Bobby’s face who appeared, and The Judge. No, she hadn’t been trying to defend him.

  ‘From Simon,’ Lauren said, as she opened her door.

  And now, Lilly looked out to see Chad Purcell taking the doorframe in his hand.

  She hovered an inch above her seat, trying to take everything in as quickly as possible.

  ‘Chad’s going to drive you out west. I would, I really would, but like you said. I’ve got a test on Thursday.’

  ‘What?’

  This guy who she barely knew, was going to drive her out west?

  ‘Wait.’

  But wasn’t that what she’d wanted from the start?

  Lilly looked at his hand, wrist and forearm clutching the frame, the slim muscles showing beneath the country-tan skin, and she saw his eyes, eyes which had seen her, really seen her, and Lilly grew apprehensive. He was driving her voluntarily, no scam involved. For real? This was new.

  ‘Have it back by next Friday,’ Lauren said to him. ‘No scratches, no tickets!’

  And Chad lowered himself into the driver’s seat and gave Lilly a smile, the type she didn’t remember having seen before, not on him, not on anyone. He stuck out his hand.

  ‘I’m Chad,’ he said. ‘I think we met, but I guess I forgot your name.’

  And she almost smiled back but managed to bring it in line. ‘Don’t be cute,’ she said. ‘If we’re going to do this, I need you to not be cute.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, turning away as his smile grew wider. ‘Let’s go... Let’s do this.’

  Davis

  Apparently, out here, getting struck by lightning wasn’t such a big deal. Neither was finding ex-wives and ex-husband together with two guns on the scene.

  ‘No one shot no one, right?’ the Sheriff had asked. ‘Looks like an Act of God, to me.’

  That was how Marquez had retold the story to her the next day, one leg up on the chair in her hospital bedroom, laughing so hard she thought he might explode.

  ‘You got lucky, Davis. In more ways than one.’

  She didn’t reply. She didn’t feel particularly lucky. Carol Ann was dead somewhere and Rane had never told her where her body lay. What was more, when she went home, she’d have to tell her girls a few things. There was no way around that.

  ‘I haven’t filled any reports about you being out here,’ Marquez said. ‘And as much as possible, professionally, I’d like to let this little event go untold.’

  ‘So would I,’ Davis muttered.

  ‘They’re not going to mention to his wife or the papers that his ex-wife was present when he died. They will, however, be shouting it out from the rooftops that he was previously known as Tom Cochrane, that there was a warrant out for his arrest for polygamy at one point, and the disappearance of three women... They will say also that an off duty, out of state officer was the first responder. They will name you, there’s no way around that, but your name isn’t too unique. No offense.’

  ‘None taken.’ Davis pressed a hand against the bed as she breathed in. ‘It’ll be good for the sheriff’s public relations, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yep. Luckily they got that anonymous call, just before.’ And Marquez winked. ‘Make it look like they were on the ball, knew he was around, so to speak.’

  Davis knew what he was suggesting, that she had done the right thing in the end, but she hadn’t made that call. And she knew there was only one person who possibly could have, the blonde girl. She just couldn’t work out why she had?

  ‘About that,’ she said, raising her hand. ‘Can you run a set of plates for me, belonging to a yellow Subaru?’

  ‘No,’ Marques said without pausing. ‘But do you believe in Karma?’

  ‘No,’ she replied in the same clipped tones.

  ‘Well, maybe you should. I come with a gift, in the form of good news on the Bobby Alvin case.’

  Davis pushed up against the bed. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I told you how he hired a good lawyer, right? That some money had mysteriously shown up for him?’

  Davis nodded.

  ‘Well, get this. His lawyer must be crazy because Alvin has only gone and pleaded guilty to the murder of Gary Madison, the agent they found in the trunk of his car – and for Judge Ramsey up at Sea Island!’

  Davis craned her neck. She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘Maybe not, but that’s what you said in the first place.’ He pointed a finger at her. ‘That he did it, that it wasn’t Carol Ann Baker.’

  ‘I did, but still...’ She searched Marquez’s face for signs that he was joking. ‘How could he, why would he? Does he know that we suspect that she has been killed?’

  ‘He doesn’t.’

  ‘So what is he doing? Do you think he want’s to protect her?’

  Marquez took his foot off the chair. ‘Can you hear yourself? He has confessed! That’s what you wanted. We may have lost Carol Ann Baker as a witness, but it doesn’t matter because Bobby Alvin is going to jail for the rest of his life.’

  ‘But how? But why?’ Davis began to cough and Marquez passed her the plastic water glass.

  ‘I know. I could hardly believe it either, but since he’s been in there, he started going to see the pastor. Maybe he saw the light.’ And his hand flinched as if he intended to cross himself.

  Still, Davis couldn’t work it out. Carol Ann had murdered Gary Madison and Judge Ramsey. She had told her, directly. Why would Bobby confess? He hadn’t found God. She couldn’t believe that. She leaned back on the pillow and closed her eyes.

  ‘Where does this leave us?’ she asked and Marquez started talking, but after the first few sentences, she didn’t hear anything more.

  Bryan

  Bryan took a sip of his new beer and scratched at his three-day-old beard. At the end of the bar, Jerrod and Aaron were getting beers off a trucker with the kind of wrinkles around his eyes that looked they needed treating with Preparation H.

  They would do well off their latest story of how they had spent the evening with a different trucker – you know the one – he tried to kill the waitress from here, and he was wanted for murdering three women in California from about 20 years ago.

  Most of these weren’t cold hard facts and if Valerie heard Jerrod and Aaron saying that about her, she would punch them, but it made for a good story. It got beers.

  Bryan stabbed at his fries and pushed them away. He had no appetite, and since the trucker story had come along, no one had any appetite for anything else. No one cared that Janine Kenny and Chad Purcell had skipped town two days before the inquest, that he had stolen a key fob and snuck her out under an umbrella. The inquest ruled the Snell case as death by misadventure and all they asked Bryan was if he had knowledge of Janine’s whereabouts. He told them he did. He had called the university, and Janine had enrolled. So they knew exactly where she was if they wanted to go and find her, not that they would. An ex-girlfriend of Simon’s came forward, she refreshed the department’s memory of the complaint she had filed once, stating that he had held a gun up to his head, with her hand wrapped around it. And when they concluded that there was residue on Simon’s hands – that about sealed the investigation up.

  And by the time conclusions were handed out to the reporters out front, there was only one channel covering it.

  A serial killer had been tracked down to their little town and been struck by a bolt from above. How about that?

  Bryan sighed. The local Baptist church was already claiming responsibility. People were pil
ing in to see the scorch mark on the rock that supposedly looked like a God-sized handprint. Some folks had lit candles there too.

  Sure, it was crazy, but what was crazier in Bryan’s eyes at least, was how he was sitting here next to the woman at the center of the story, and no one else here knew, because no one knew her name. Susan Davis was the out of town cop, her name had been in the paper, and she’d been there when it happened, had been moving in to make an arrest, obviously, when the forces of nature took over.

  Pretty impressive stuff.

  She tipped her head at him. ‘Thanks for coming out to keep me company on my last night,’ she said.

  Bryan lifted his bottle to hers. So they knew exactly where she was if they wanted to go and find her, not that they would. An ex-girlfriend of Simon’s came forward, she refreshed the department’s memory of the complaint she had filed once, stating that he had held a gun up to his head, with her hand wrapped around it. And when they concluded that there was residue on Simon’s hands – that about sealed the investigation up.

  And by the time conclusions were handed out to the reporters out front, there was only one channel covering it. A serial killer had been tracked down to their little town and been struck by a bolt from above. How about that? Bryan sighed. The local Baptist church was already claiming responsibility. People were already piling in to see the scorch mark on the rock that supposedly looked like a God-sized handprint. Some folks had lit candles there too.

  Sure, it was crazy, but what was crazier in Bryan’s eyes at least, was how he was sitting here next to the woman at the center of the story, and no one else here knew, because no one knew her name. Susan Davis was the out of town cop, her name had been in the paper, and she’d been there when it happened, had been moving in to make an arrest, obviously, when the forces of nature took over.

  Pretty impressive stuff.

  She tipped her head at him. ‘Thanks for coming out to keep me company on my last night,’ she said.