Only A Memory Away

by Madeline St. Claire

  “Ms. Thomas,” Rossini said quietly, “your uncle was murdered.” He continued over Karen’s cry, “We are as sure as we can be that Judd Maxwell shot him, and we need your help to find Maxwell and bring him to justice.”

  “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Karen buried her face in her hands. Her thoughts flew in all directions. She tried to hang on to rationality, to marshal the questions that would prove this all a terrible mistake. “Are you sure it’s my uncle? When did it happen? It couldn’t have been Judd—he was with me all night, right here.”

  Talmadge shot his partner a look that seemed to say The bastard. He cleared his throat “Another tenant of the building heard a shot just after five this morning. Mr. Thomas’s body was discovered in his office an hour ago. Think back, Ms. Thomas, are you sure Maxwell was here all night? Could you have been asleep and he slipped away?”

  Karen swallowed the tears that formed in her throat. She’d dozed off around two, with Judd beside her. She’d slept like a baby the remainder of the night, never waking even to use the bathroom.

  “Yes,” she admitted, “it’s possible. But that doesn’t mean it happened.”

  “Do you know where Maxwell is?”

  “No. I was asleep when you arrived.” They regarded her skeptically, and she was forced to add, “I, ah, didn’t see Judd this morning.”

  Rossini took up the questioning again. “Do you have any idea where he might go if he’s on the run?”

  Things were moving much too fast for her. This whole thing was impossible. Unreal. She still wasn’t sure she could trust these two. She held up her palms to silence them. “Please, could we slow down? You say someone shot my uncle.” How strange and horrible the words sounded. She had to steel herself to speak them. “But are you sure? He cleans his guns a lot, they’re his hobby. Are you…are you sure he wasn’t just—?”

  Rossini shook his head. “This was no accident, Ms. Thomas. There would have been powder burns on the body if he’d been holding the gun up close. Maxwell fired from across the room. They were clean, well-aimed shots to the head.”

  “Oh, no!” Karen clutched her stomach and bent double. She looked up to find Talmadge, beside her, holding a glass of water. She teetered on the edge of hysteria for long minutes, then began to pull herself back. When she dimly realized she’d made a mess of the sleeve of her robe, she got up and retrieved a box of tissues from the nightstand in her room. The sight of the rumpled sheets on the bed made her feel as though her whole insides were caving in.

  “Ms. Thomas,” Rossini said when she came back and curled herself into a ball on the couch. “I’m very sorry, and I understand your grief, but it’s important you think hard and try to give us any information that might be helpful. I know how attached you became to Mr. Maxwell, and it’s clear he deceived you through no fault of your own.”

  He got out his notebook and pen. “It was known around town that your uncle was looking into Marlene Hall’s death and checking into Mr. Maxwell’s background, and Maxwell probably heard about it.”

  “We saw my uncle yesterday.” Despite what they’d said, she was still sure Judd could not be the killer. If he was innocent, telling these men the truth wouldn’t hurt. She explained how she and Judd had run into Ed yesterday morning on the street. “Judd made an appointment to meet my uncle at his office yesterday afternoon, but as you know, he never made it.”

  “Did he reschedule the appointment?”

  “No. In the course of the evening, we forgot all about it.” Karen blushed.

  “Did your uncle call to find out why Judd missed the appointment?”

  “No…At least, I don’t think so.” With the detectives following, Karen got up and checked the answering machine on the kitchen phone. The message light was blinking. Her hand shook as she pressed the button.

  “Karen,” the deep voice of her uncle boomed out in the kitchen, “this is Uncle Ed. Your friend never showed this afternoon. Ask him if he can meet me in the office tomorrow morning. I’ll be there early, but…” There was a pause, then her uncle continued, “ask him to come between six and seven. After that I’ll be gone to breakfast. Bye, pumpkin.”

  The tape ended with a click and whirred into rewind.

  “Could Maxwell have heard this message?” Rossini asked.

  “I don’t know.” Karen had trouble understanding the question. “He, ah, he could have, I suppose. I mean, there’s no way to tell because the message stays on the tape until it’s erased.” A little voice warned her how incriminating this sounded. “I don’t think Judd had any reason to kill my uncle. You don’t have any evidence it was Judd, do you?”

  “I’m afraid we do, Ms. Thomas.” Rossini guided her to a dining chair. “Your uncle was using his computer when he was killed. It was still turned on when we arrived. He was beginning a case report that said he’d uncovered evidence linking Maxwell with the Marlene Hall murder. Maxwell arrived earlier than your uncle expected, probably saw what he was working on and decided to silence him right then.”

  Karen began to shake. “But if that happened, why would Judd leave the report on the computer? Wouldn’t he try to destroy the file or something?”

  “Perhaps he got flustered after the killing and simply ran, or didn’t know how to work the program. A screen saver was running, so maybe Maxwell didn’t see the report after all—perhaps your uncle made the mistake of hinting to Maxwell what he knew. But whatever transpired in your uncle’s office, there is no longer any doubt that Maxwell killed Marlene. You see, Ms, Hall’s next-door neighbor returned from a week-long backpacking trip in the mountains this morning and got the message to call our office. She witnessed a car matching the model and color of Maxwell’s arrive and park on the road below Marlene’s cottage the evening of the murder. We showed the neighbor a mug-shot lineup, and she has positively identified Judd Maxwell as the man she saw leave the car and walk up to Marlene’s house.”

  A MAN SAT in a car in the dirt lane behind Karen’s house, reflecting on the progress of his work with cool satisfaction.

  He’d followed the key players, the two plainclothes detectives, from the murder scene downtown, then waited almost an hour before driving past Karen’s house and doubling back to park several doors away in the alley. Getting so close was a calculated risk, but not a great one. The gawkers had grown predictably bored once the patrol cars left, and the neighbors had retreated back behind their fences where his own car would not be noticed. It was important he keep his hand on the pulse of things, to make sure his plan continued to proceed to the desired end.

  The man shifted in his seat and pounded one fist into the steering wheel. It enraged him that Maxwell had apparently eluded arrest. It had been an unpleasant shock to find his scapegoat’s car missing from the front of the house, where it had been parked just before five when he passed on his way to Thomas’s office. Dr. Small’s car and that of the detectives were the only vehicles parked on the street. He guessed Karen must be so distraught that the detectives had called in her doctor to sedate her.

  Karen! A picture of her dark red hair and fair skin filled his mind, producing a twitching in his groin. For all her pretended innocence, the man sensed she was attracted to him, the way many women he met secretly lusted after him. Karen had sorely tempted him with the unspoken invitation he read in her eyes, but she was too close to home for comfort. He’d learned that lesson well with the schemer Marlene.

  He’d had no real desire to hurt Karen; that was why he had left the note on her door for her to find yesterday, accusing Judd of murder. But she hadn’t taken the hint, had continued to harbor Judd in her home. By now she was sure to know too much to be allowed to live. There were too many people around the house at the moment, but he would have to return as soon as possible to dispatch her.

  The neighborhood was very quiet now beneath the gray morning sky; it was a good time to leave. He started the engine, cautiously drove past Karen’s yard and onto the paved street.

  Why did Maxwell hav
e to escape, damn him! Better that the police should find him and some redneck Granite jury put him away quickly. Then he could put the whole matter truly behind him, as he had done in the past when it was necessary. But from what he’d observed of Maxwell at a distance over the past few days, he was a clever one; he wouldn’t be easy to catch. Where had the slippery man run to?

  Then the answer occurred to him. Of course. He’d bet his reputation on it! The man grinned with evil satisfaction. How appropriate that his “perpetrator” should return to the scene of the crime. And there might be a way to turn Maxwell’s instincts to his own advantage, to seal Judd’s fate even more tightly.

  A cunning scenario quickly unfolded in his mind. At the light, he turned a hard right onto Main Street and gunned the engine, heading for Highway 18 and Marlene Hall’s cottage.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Judd took a quick glance at the map caught in his fist, then turned off the highway onto two-lane Hamblin Road, the street where Marlene Hall had lived.

  After vaulting the fence behind Karen’s house, he’d outrun the pursuing cops and lost them as he doubled back through an adjacent yard. Cautiously approaching the front of the house, he’d been surprised and grateful to find the sidewalk free of officers and his car unguarded. Apparently the local police weren’t practiced in apprehending suspected murderers.

  Using the local map stored in his glove compartment, he’d driven straight to Hamblin Road, staying close to the speed limit and watching for patrol cars, but the ride had been conveniently uneventful. Until now, as strange feelings came over him while he covered the last two miles to Marlene’s.

  Hamblin twisted and turned, gradually steepening. Like dozens of other roads in the county, it gave access to scattered log and wood-sided cabins that had originally been built as summer homes and hunting lodges, as well as newer and larger homes, some with steeply peaked roofs to shed the winter snow. There was nothing unusual here. Except that Judd had the eerie, déjà vu feeling he’d driven up this exact stretch of road, perhaps more than once, and passed these very houses. It was the closest he’d come since the accident to remembering anything meaningful from his past. The sensation electrified him before its clear implication filled him with dread.

  His neck began to prickle. He recognized it as a subconscious warning, and anxious as he was to go forward, he decided to heed it. He pulled off the road onto a dirt drive that wound into the forest. Stepping out of the car and looking about, he was almost sure he was within a mile of Marlene’s place.

  His vehicle safely hidden from sight, he took up a vantage point just off the road, where he waited to see if the police were following him, and tried to analyze the strange mixture of emotions within himself.

  The objective detachment he’d felt so strongly yesterday was gone this morning. But instead of feeling like himself again, like the pastless, but now familiar, man he’d been the past eight days, he felt different. It was almost as though he was morphing into someone else, a self he should know even more intimately than the amnesiac Judd, but to whom he felt a complete stranger. The sensation was disturbing, but he knew he couldn’t shrink back from remembering now. He must learn the truth about himself, at any cost. He put the hindering fears aside by thinking of the one thing that mattered most to him in this world: Karen.

  He regretted more than anything leaving her so suddenly, and he had to remind himself for the tenth time that there had been no other way. He pictured her abject grief when she learned about her uncle, and wished fiercely he’d been there to comfort her. But the sheriff’s men were sure to do a good job of protecting her—that was the one thought that comforted him. Rossini had made it clear he considered Karen a standout for the killer’s next victim, so he would be sure to post a guard around her. If she was in any danger from her uncle’s murderer, the deputies would keep the man at bay.

  Would Rossini and his sidekick succeed in convincing Karen that he, Judd, was the murderer? He thought not. Karen was so loyal, so kindhearted—so bullheaded. That brought a flicker of a smile to his face. It was easy to imagine her jumping forward with the otherwise awkward alibi that he’d been with her all night, then facing off with his accusers by reiterating the points she’d made to him so often that he couldn’t be Marlene’s murderer.

  He prayed she was right.

  He heard a car engine surging uphill in the distance.

  A few moments later, a sheriff’s vehicle appeared around the bend. Judd held his breath and kept still in the cover of the bushes. A middle-aged male deputy was at the wheel, a young woman beside him in the passenger’s seat.

  Judd watched carefully as they passed, a frown of puzzlement appearing on his face. The fact the siren wasn’t going was understandable: a lawman trying to take him by surprise wouldn’t announce his approach. But the light bar, always used for safety during a pursuit, had not been lit; the officer was driving at a moderate pace; and the female passenger, in a plaid shirt, had been attired as a civilian rather than a deputy or detective. But it would be too much of a coincidence to find a sheriff’s vehicle on Hamblin Road not heading for the Hall cottage.

  The enigma provided a mental distraction from his emotions. But after another ninety minutes of waiting, the cruiser did not return, and Judd’s restless apprehension grew unbearable. He returned to his own car and studied the map; Hamblin dead-ended about two miles up. As he’d thought, the only way for the deputy to return to the station was to pass by this point. He studied the undergrowth around him; it was incredibly thick here and dotted with poison oak.

  This…premonition…that he was on the brink of turning into someone else, itched at him like a rash. It would be impossible to approach the cottage without resorting to the road, but he’d explode if he didn’t do something. He’d waited long enough.

  Adrenaline burned in his veins. He had to see if the sheriffs man was up at Marlene’s, and if the fellow had company. Judd quickly locked his car door and strode down the lane. All his senses heightened to acute awareness as he looked both ways, then stepped out into full view on Hamblin Road.

  “I WISH YOU HAD AGREED to let a deputy stay with you,” said Ruth Cohen from behind the wheel as she drove toward downtown Silver Creek.

  “It would have been a waste of manpower,” Karen said. “I’m sure they need every available man to help track Judd. I don’t think he’ll come around the house again.”

  “Then why are we driving to a sporting goods store to buy you a gun?”

  Karen couldn’t give an answer that would ease her friend’s mind, not without lying to her. The truth was, she’d refused a guard not because she felt safe doing so, but because she couldn’t stand the thought of a stranger hanging around to witness her grief.

  Mrs. Cohen had shown up as Karen’s family doctor was leaving, his offer of a sedative politely but firmly refused. Mrs. Cohen, full of news of the murder and anxious to offer her comfort and assistance, had assured Dr. Small she would care lovingly for his patient. Karen would have sent her landlady away also, had she not vaguely realized that the purchase of a firearm could be a difficult transaction and that Mrs. Cohen might be of help. The wealthy woman was a bulldozer when she wanted something, for herself or one of her friends, and Karen didn’t feel up to negotiating the purchase herself.

  But all Karen really, desperately wanted at this moment was to crawl back home, close the drapes and turn off the phone, and give in to the pain and remorse that pressed in on her like a vise.

  “I don’t care for guns, myself,” Mrs. Cohen said.

  “Neither do I.”

  “I suppose that’s heresy, here in hunting country.”

  Karen tuned out Mrs. Cohen’s chatter and thought of her uncle. Perhaps his spirit was hovering protectively near her; perhaps he’d gone on to the next life to be with his brother and sister-in-law, Karen’s father and mother. But if he were to try to get a message to her now, she was sure she knew what it would be: Don’t let that madman get you.

&nb
sp; Where had Judd gone wrong? What had made him capable of taking the lives of other human beings? She could still hardly believe it—she’d been sure she saw so much good in him, so much desire to do the right thing. He had certainly been troubled, but not unbalanced! Had his memory returned as Uncle Ed talked to him about Marlene? Had overwhelming fear of capture made him brandish the gun? He should have realized that killing Ed was absolutely wrong, senseless. It made her heartsick to think he’d done it. But the proof against him was overwhelming.

  “Karen, did you hear what I said?”

  “Huh?” Would Mrs. Cohen never stop talking?

  “I said, ‘I wish you would accept my offer and come stay at the house with Truman and me, until they catch this kook.’”

  Karen said nothing. She’d already politely declined the offer several times. Ruth apparently decided not to argue with her this time, because she started musing on another topic. “Truman was scheduled to give a lecture in New York tomorrow, but they canceled and he didn’t go. I’m just as glad, because there’s the maid, of course, and the gardener lives on the grounds, but with a madman on the loose, I feel safer having Truman at home.” With barely a breath in between, Mrs. Cohen changed subjects again. “Do you think Judd really had amnesia, or was he only pretending?”

  “I don’t know. With all my training and field experience working with people, I should have been able to read him. But I still don’t know what was acting and what wasn’t. If you had asked me, I would have said he was a very different man.” Her voice broke at that.

  Mrs. Cohen regarded her with beetled brows. “Karen, exactly what happened between you and Judd? Did you fall in love with him?”

  Karen couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. She dug in her purse for a tissue and held it over her face.