Dying to Remember

by Glen Apseloff

  “That’s right. We’re hoping you’ll join us.”

  “According to my notes, Darcia met Elizabeth a couple of times.”

  “Yes. Once or twice.” She sounded distracted. Papers rustled in the background.

  “What court is she in?”

  “Common pleas.”

  He took notes.

  A muffled male’s voice said something, followed by a second male voice, this one more strident. “Could we perhaps talk about this another time?” Claire said. “You caught me in a meeting.”

  He apologized again and let her go. In his notes he wrote, “Common pleas—common criminals.” Maybe it was reaching, even paranoid, to suspect a female judge of committing murder, but presiding in a common-pleas courtroom, she might have access to convicted felons who could be manipulated to do her bidding. If, God forbid, Elizabeth was having an affair with Claire, Darcia could have found out. In a jealous rage—or perhaps a calm, calculated rage—Darcia could have arranged for someone to kill Elizabeth. Barnes would have to find out more about her.

  He called Shirley at work. One of the research scientists in her lab answered the phone and paged her for him.

  “Hi, Chris. What’s up?” She sounded pleased to hear from him.

  “I called to see whether we can move dinner up to six o’clock.”

  “All right. I’ll bring Chinese again. I might be a little late, but I’ll be there.”

  “Thanks. I’ll make a note of it.”

  “How’s everything going?” she asked.

  “Slowly. Just working on things related to Elizabeth.”

  “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “No. I should go now, but I’m looking forward to seeing you later.” He wasn’t really sure about that, but his notes suggested it was the right thing to say. He might not understand why he’d written half of what was there, but he understood the importance of relying on it as a surrogate memory. The bottom line was that he had to follow his notes.

  Even if he didn’t agree with them.

  Wright and Gould continued to sift through Barnes’s garbage, just the two of them. It turned out the captain couldn’t spare anyone else. They hadn’t spent the entire afternoon there—they’d managed to squeeze in a late lunch and some other work—but it was now after five thirty, and a substantial pile of unsearched trash remained.

  They’d uncovered several pages of shredded notes, presumably written by Barnes, but they would have to be pieced together, and the ones that they’d started taping didn’t appear to have been written in English. To Wright it looked like French. To Gould it was gibberish.

  “At least it was a strip shredder and not a crosscut,” said Wright.

  “Why the hell can’t he write in English like a normal American?” said Gould.

  “He doesn’t want someone reading it,” said Wright. “We need to get a translator in here.”

  Wright asked the captain. The captain said he would look into it.

  In the meantime, Wright kept taping shreds of paper and searching for more evidence.

  Gould continued to complain about items in the trash. “Look at all this crap! I said it before, and I’ll say it again: I didn’t join the force to dig through some guy’s garbage. Barnes is gonna pay for this.”

  An hour later Wright and Gould were still looking, and an hour later they still didn’t have a translator. Wright was mainly taping strips of paper, while Gould was finding more strips for him to tape. Wright passed some of the time by thinking about the holidays. He wondered what Gould would get for Gloria and, more important, what Gloria would get for Gould. He hoped it wouldn’t be anything annoying, like shoes that squeak.

  “I’m getting the feeling we’re not going to figure this out tonight,” said Wright.

  Then Gould thrust his hand into the air, clutching a scrap of paper. “Bingo!”

  Chapter 51

  Shirley arrived promptly at six, and Barnes took her coat. Wearing a sapphire-colored dress and matching stud earrings, she appeared more radiant than he’d remembered. In one hand she carried a bottle of wine, and in the other, dinner from Shanghai.

  “Potstickers, Szechuan chicken, broccoli beef, and fried rice,” she announced.

  Barnes wondered whether he’d told her that potstickers, and in particular potstickers from that restaurant, were his favorite appetizer. Most likely. Otherwise the woman had read his mind. Clearly their relationship had evolved since the last time they’d had dinner at the Union Oyster House.

  He went to hug her before taking her coat, and she kissed him on the cheek. What if she had kissed him on the lips instead? How would he have reacted to that? Someday it could happen, as they spent more and more time together. But although his list could tell him what to do, like “Kiss Shirley hello,” it couldn’t change the way he felt. Somehow he would need to do that on his own.

  In the kitchen, Shirley served Barnes while he worked on opening the bottle of wine she’d brought. “You probably don’t remember much of the time we’ve spent together,” she said, “but I do think that will change.”

  “I wish I shared your confidence,” he said.

  “You might if you spend a little more time with me.” Then she asked, “Do you remember anything from when we had dinner the day before yesterday?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I keep notes.”

  She rubbed his shoulder. “We’ll have to work on that.” Her touch spread in soothing ripples.

  Just then, the cork slipped out of the bottle with a hollow pop. Barnes filled two glasses. As he put down the bottle, the telephone rang.

  “Probably a telemarketer.”

  He tried not to sound too annoyed when he answered it.

  “Hey, buddy.” It was Denny. “How’s it goin’?”

  “Okay, but I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

  “I won’t keep you. Just called to talk about our research, the abstract I wrote.”

  Barnes searched through his notes. “What about it?”

  “Just wanted to make sure you don’t have any problems with it. The deadline for changes is coming up.”

  Barnes found what he was looking for, a note that he’d withdrawn the abstract and hadn’t told Denny. “I can’t remember. You know how I am.”

  “Yeah, well, okay,” said Houston. “Let me know if there’s a problem.”

  “Sure thing. Talk to you later.”

  Barnes hung up.

  “Dr. Houston?” Shirley asked.

  “Yeah. Good of him to call.”

  She shook her head. “Chris, that man is not your friend. I can’t believe you still talk to him.”

  “Denny’s okay.”

  “Yeah? I called him yesterday and asked him to at least act like he cared and spend a little time with you, and you know what he said?”

  “What?”

  “He said, ‘Let him have sex with you. He’ll like that a helluva lot more than spending time with me.’”

  “That sounds like Denny.”

  “The man has no concept of empathy. He’s not your friend. Friends don’t abandon you when you need them. They don’t make excuses to avoid you. If he calls again, you shouldn’t even answer the phone. Or better yet, you should take the phone off the hook.”

  “Let’s forget about Denny and go into the other room.”

  She picked up Barnes’s plate and wineglass and handed them to him. “After you.”

  He led her to the family room, and they sat in front of the fireplace.

  “How about a toast?” Barnes lifted his glass.

  She didn’t have hers. “Oh, I left mine in the kitchen.” She set her plate on the coffee table and stood up, smoothing out her dress. “I’ll be right back.”

  He watched her walk into the other room. Something about that dress drew him in, like a deep blue sea. Within it her legs and buttocks shifted and slid against the thin fabric.

  He wondered whether she knew the effect it created.

  In the kit
chen, before retrieving her wineglass, Shirley took the telephone off the hook and put it in a drawer under a stack of dish towels. Then she returned to the family room. Barnes had already started eating.

  “You didn’t wait for me,” she scolded playfully.

  “I forgot you were here.”

  She shook a finger at him. “You’re getting a sense of humor. I like that.”

  Billings pushed the “Disconnect” button on his telephone. He was pacing the family room but trying not to obstruct the big-screen television. Priscilla had just turned on the news. Their daughter was upstairs on her own telephone, talking to her sixteen-year-old boyfriend whom Billings trusted about as much as a cat with a field mouse.

  Sitting on the couch, Priscilla looked up at Nate. “The line’s busy again?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Maybe he . . . forgot to hang up.” Billings felt guilty as soon as the words came out. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

  “You didn’t mean anything by it, baby.”

  “Remind me to call him again in ten or fifteen minutes. I know he’ll be relieved to hear they’re keeping him on staff.”

  “Sure, hon.”

  Ten minutes later the line was still busy.

  “I wonder if his phone is off the hook,” Billings said.

  “Call the operator and ask.”

  He dialed the operator. Afterward he said to Priscilla, “Either the phone is off the hook or there’s . . . something wrong with the line.”

  “Maybe you should go over there and see if he’s all right.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I’m serious. He doesn’t live that far away.”

  “He doesn’t live that close, either.”

  “Suit yourself, hon.”

  Billings grumbled to himself, then went to get his coat. “I’m probably going to . . . regret this.”

  Chapter 52

  Barnes and Shirley finished their dinner and relaxed in front of the fireplace.

  “This is so peaceful,” Shirley said. She kicked off her shoes and let the flames warm her outstretched feet.

  Upstairs a telephone rang, the one in his office. It rang twice, then stopped.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “My fax machine. Somebody’s sending me something.”

  She touched his arm. “Please don’t get up. Read it later.”

  Reluctantly Barnes got to his feet. “No, if I put it off, I’ll forget. It’s probably something I’m expecting.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “In a minute you’ll have forgotten about me.”

  She was cute when she pouted. But the fax could be important. “I won’t forget. Don’t go anywhere.” And he headed up to the office.

  The fax machine had already printed a cover sheet from Dr. Kapryn in California, with a note scrawled across the bottom:

  I tried calling, but your line was busy. We had two deaths among the study participants at our center, not just one. The medical examiners were reluctant to fax the reports directly to you, so they faxed them to me instead. Here they are. I hope they’re what you’re looking for.

  In the bottom right-hand corner, Dr. Kapryn had written page 1 of 12.

  Barnes skimmed through the list in his pocket, looking for a reference to Dr. Kapryn. Who was this man? His notes answered the question. These were autopsy reports that might be relevant to Elizabeth’s research.

  More pages emerged from the fax machine. Two autopsy reports: those of a nineteen-year-old woman who had died of meningitis and a forty-six-year-old man who had died of Alzheimer’s disease. The latter patient was a white male with a history of degenerative disk disease and an old fracture in the thoracic region of his vertebral column. Nothing suspicious. Barnes had hoped the extra autopsy report would reveal something more striking, like massive liver damage or sudden kidney failure.

  Alzheimer’s disease wasn’t very exciting, even in someone as young as forty-six. Usually it afflicts the elderly, typically people in their seventies and eighties, but sometimes younger adults are stricken, and in those cases the disease often progresses rapidly. From his childhood Barnes remembered a next-door neighbor, Mr. Mallory, who’d succumbed to it in his forties. The man would sometimes throw a football with him and talk to him about his work as an architect and the importance of getting a good education. But Mr. Mallory began getting confused and wandering the neighborhood late at night. His wife put him in a nursing home, and before he passed away not long afterward, he didn’t even know what a football was.

  Barnes reflected on whether the GBF-complex-coated screws had somehow caused or contributed to Alzheimer’s disease, especially considering that this autopsy appeared to have been deleted from Elizabeth’s files. But how could he or anybody else prove that the disorder had been caused by the screws? The man had died eighteen months after having two rods and several screws inserted along his spine in the thoracic region.

  Barnes skimmed the autopsy report again, looking for something out of the ordinary. Anything. He found nothing. The brain showed neurofibrillary tangles and plaques, microscopic changes typical of Alzheimer’s disease, although occasionally older people will have these findings without any apparent damage.

  He reread the section on the gross appearance of the brain. It was normal size. That struck him as unusual, now that he thought about it. Typically with Alzheimer’s disease, there’s shrinkage of the cerebral cortex, the largest part of the brain. The sulci, or spaces, become wider, and the gyri, the brain matter between the spaces, become narrow. He couldn’t remember how common this was, but he remembered it as being typical of the disease. Yet it was also typical of old age, and most people with Alzheimer’s disease are old. Since this patient was relatively young, maybe a normal-size brain wasn’t so unusual.

  He put down the report and turned his attention to the other autopsy results still printing from the fax machine. The nineteen-year-old with meningitis had died more than a month after the onset of her disease. Apparently the bacterial infection had been misdiagnosed and mistreated. She’d received an insufficient dose of penicillin, and the meningococci bacteria had resisted the treatment and subsequently multiplied. The exact cause of death was ruled a basal adhesive arachnoiditis—the obstruction of the space around the base of the brain. From what he could tell, this nineteen-year-old had died horribly and needlessly.

  He pored over the report. In the external examination of the teenager, the pathologist described a white, plastic identification band encircling her wrist and a red band above it with the word Sulfa, indicating that she had been allergic to sulfonamide antibiotics. The pathologist then described her general appearance, skin, head and neck, thorax and abdomen, back and anus, extremities, external genitalia, and hair in enough detail that Barnes could form a mental picture: a five-foot, 105-pound, blonde-haired, brown-eyed, freckled young woman with pierced ears and red fingernail and toenail polish.

  In his internal examination, the pathologist described all the girl’s organs and body systems including her brain. The brain weighed 1,710 grams—more than normal—and appeared markedly swollen. The gyri had widened, and the sulci between them had narrowed.

  Barnes skipped down to the microscopic findings. Large areas of the brain had filled with white blood cells—an indication of inflammation—and the brain had developed a mild vasculitis, inflammation around the blood vessels. The girl even had microinfarctions, tiny areas of dead brain tissue resulting from the obstruction of small blood vessels.

  She’d been incredibly unlucky, he realized. People who die from bacterial meningitis usually succumb to it in a day or two. The progression of the illness is rapid and can be fatal if not treated with antibiotics. But if it is treated in time, the patient usually recovers without problems. This nineteen-year-old had received treatment, but not enough and too late. How that had happened, he didn’t know, but it certainly had nothing to do with GBF-complex-coated screw
s.

  Buried within the microscopic report, Barnes read about an incidental finding that the pathologist described in a single sentence: “Neurofibrillary tangles and plaques of unknown significance were identified in the frontal, parietal, and occipital lobes using Bodian and Bielschowsky stains.” Barnes had no idea what Bodian and Bielschowsky stains were, but that didn’t matter. His mouth went dry. The patient had neurofibrillary tangles and plaques in her cerebral cortex, a characteristic finding of Alzheimer’s disease. Why did a nineteen-year-old have findings of a disease that typically afflicts people in their seventies and eighties? This must have been what Elizabeth had wondered, too.

  Barnes thought about the implications of his and Elizabeth’s findings. Two young people afflicted with a disease that has a predilection for the elderly. Either one of these cases by itself would probably have been overlooked as insignificant or considered, at most, a finding of mild interest without clinical relevance, but together they suggested something ominous. The likelihood that these changes in the brain had occurred merely by chance in two of four cases was vanishingly small. Something had caused the changes to happen, and the only thing these two patients had in common was their GBF-complex-coated screws.

  But that raised another question. If the screws caused something similar to Alzheimer’s disease, why had only these two patients gotten it? Of the hundreds or thousands of people who had received the screws, why hadn’t any of them died of Alzheimer’s or at least showed some of the symptoms of the disease?

  And then he understood. The realization took his breath away. GBF-complex was destructive to the brain only if it could reach the brain. In his own condition, the key factor determining the extent of damage had been the blood-brain barrier, the natural filter that prevents many drugs and toxins from entering either the spinal canal or the brain. According to his notes, that’s what had saved his life—his blood-brain barrier had filtered out most of the poison from the mussels.

  But the blood-brain barrier isn’t perfect, and certain conditions can weaken it. That’s what the forty-six-year-old man and the nineteen-year-old woman had in common: their blood-brain barrier had been compromised—his probably by the insertion of the screws along his spinal canal, allowing the substance to gain access to his cerebral spinal fluid, and hers as a direct result of the inflammation caused by meningitis. Barnes recalled that patients with bacterial meningitis respond well to treatment with large doses of penicillin, even though that antibiotic doesn’t normally cross the blood-brain barrier. In patients with meningitis, the barrier is compromised and the penicillin is able to enter the brain and spinal fluid and thereby fight off the infection. Similarly, in this patient the GBF-complex had gained access to the brain and caused the neurofibrillary tangles and plaques observed during the autopsy.