Dying to Remember

by Glen Apseloff

  The ramifications of Elizabeth’s findings were alarming: patients who had received the GBF-complex-coated screws were walking around with time bombs in their bodies. These bombs might never go off, but if they did, the patients would become senile, just like someone with Alzheimer’s disease.

  “I don’t believe this,” Barnes said out loud, and he began scribbling furiously on a sheet of paper from the fax machine. First the key information—GBF-complex causes Alzheimer’s, blood-brain barrier must be compromised, evident in a 19-year-old girl with meningitis, killed a 46-year-old man. He needed to get the essentials onto paper before anything interrupted his train of thought. To forget a discovery of this magnitude would result in God knows how many deaths.

  Everything finally made sense. The motive for Elizabeth’s murder—to silence her and cover up the damage caused by the screws. And the identity of the killer—Shirley Collins.

  Chapter 53

  Barnes said her name out loud—Shirley Collins—to reinforce the revelation and make it less likely to slip away in an instant.

  The sound of a throat being cleared startled him. He thought he’d been alone, yet someone was standing in the doorway.

  Shirley!

  Wineglass in hand, she looked down on him. Where on earth had she come from?

  “We were having dinner,” she said in answer to what must have been a dumbfounded look on his face. “I guess you forgot.”

  Dinner! “Yes, of course . . .” With her? Here? “I guess I ran out on you.”

  She said nothing, just looked at him with eyes that pierced.

  “You’ve cut your hair.” He was trying to fill the silence with something, anything. “It looks . . . short.”

  “I presume you’ve figured out what happened.”

  He looked down at his notes, to confirm what he knew. “You killed Elizabeth. You killed her. How could you do that?”

  She set the wineglass on a bookshelf. “I did it for the money. Why do you think?”

  “For money?”

  A look of resolve came over her. “That’s right. It doesn’t mean much to you because you have it. I’m still paying off student loans, I can’t afford to take care of my own mother, and I can’t even rent a decent apartment in a safe neighborhood. GBF-complex-coated screws would have changed all that. I staked my career on those screws, and then Elizabeth had to stumble across this obscure adverse event that might not even be related to the GBF complex. She insisted on reporting it, even though it was sheer speculation. I tried everything I could to talk her out of it, and any reasonable person would have agreed with me, but she wouldn’t listen. And the FDA would have put a hold on the approval, just because of a finding that happened in only two patients and likely had nothing to do with the screws.”

  “Of course it has to do with the screws! The GBF-complex crossed the blood-brain barrier and caused the neurofibrillary tangles and plaques. Those screws cause Alzheimer’s disease.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Christ, Shirley. Open your eyes!” He stood up. That’s when he noticed the firearm in her hand.

  With surprising swiftness she pointed the barrel at him. “Sit down.”

  In an instant his anger disappeared. Like flipping a switch—anger, fear.

  His life was about to end. Worse, his discovery would be meaningless. Shirley would shred the papers, and no one would know. His heart pounded so hard he felt it in his throat.

  He eased himself back into his chair. This woman was going to kill him, and he had no idea how to stop her.

  “Empty your pockets onto the floor, and stay in that chair.”

  He stared at the barrel. What was it—a 9mm? Head on, it looked like a cannon, and it was pointed right at his heart. In an instant he pictured the organ, its delicate electrical nodes and branching nerve fibers, its thin papillary muscles holding the valves in place.

  The barrel of the gun drifted a few inches higher, now aimed at his aorta, the largest blood vessel in the body.

  “Everything!” she ordered. “Turn your pockets inside out. I want all of your notes.”

  Without leaving his chair, he emptied his pants pockets. Papers. Change. Car keys. He put them in a pile at his feet.

  On one piece of paper, he’d written, Denny has a Glock. Why couldn’t he have asked Denny to lend it to him? Of course, Denny would probably have told him to buy his own.

  He finished with his pants and reached into his sport coat. In the pocket normally reserved for his billfold, he felt something entirely different—a tape recorder, the type used to dictate operative reports. He pressed what he hoped was the “Record” button.

  From the pocket with the tape recorder, he removed only a pen. From his other jacket pocket, he removed his wallet, then placed both items on the floor with his other personal effects. As he did this, he tried to figure out a way to remember what he’d just learned, to tie everything together before it slipped away. He created a mental image of Shirley wearing a T-shirt with “GBF Alzheimer’s” emblazoned across the front. In one hand she held a stack of autopsy reports; in the other, a smoking gun.

  If he could just remember that image, he could forget everything else and still solve the case again. Even if he could remember only half of it, he might still be able to piece everything together. He concentrated in an attempt to etch it into his mind.

  Shirley took the wineglass from the bookshelf and walked a wide circle around him. Still training the gun on him, she placed the glass on the edge of his desk. Before Barnes could even think about trying to disarm her, she had returned to her position near the door.

  “Now drink that.” She motioned with the gun.

  “What is it?” He looked at the wineglass but still saw the mental image of Shirley that he had created.

  “A sedative. To be sure you forget everything. I can’t take the chance that some fragment of tonight might lodge somewhere in the recesses of your mind.”

  So much for the mental image, Barnes thought. He wondered what she would do if he spilled the wine. Probably kill him. She had already murdered her best friend. How hard would it be to kill again?

  He leaned forward and picked up the wineglass. It was half full. “What type of sedative?”

  “Just drink it!” The look in her eyes told him her patience had run out.

  Holding the glass in his hand, he wondered, Is this how Socrates felt drinking hemlock, knowing that death—slow death—awaited him?

  No. Socrates had accepted his fate. Barnes couldn’t do that.

  The wine was close enough that he recognized the smell—a Pinot Noir. “You don’t want to do this.” His mouth had gone dry, and he had to force the words out.

  “Drink it. I’m not going to ask again.”

  No, he didn’t expect she would. His hands had always been steady in surgery, in any crisis. Now they trembled. In the OR they could function independently, but at this moment the simple act of bringing a glass to his mouth seemed daunting. Yet Shirley was giving him no choice.

  The glass touched his lips. Then the wine. Never had a Pinot Noir repulsed him so much. His throat constricted.

  Just drink it, he told himself, and he upended the glass. Wine streamed down his throat in burning gulps.

  “Now put the glass down,” Shirley said.

  He placed it on the desk. “I hope you get the death penalty for this.” He was surprised to hear himself say that. The words bolstered his courage.

  “Aside from the fact that the death penalty in Massachusetts was abolished three years ago, I’m surprised you would say that, after all we’ve shared.”

  “I don’t remember sharing anything with you.”

  “Perhaps not, but you did. And we’re going to share more. Much more.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m going to get rid of your notes and type new ones for you. When you wake up tomorrow, with me at your side, you’ll read what I want you to believe. You’ll read that you love me.” />
  “I’ll never love you. You killed Elizabeth.”

  “You’ll love me, and you’ll trust me. I’ll become a part of you. I’ll give you your own memory. After I get rid of your notes, you’ll be less obsessed with Elizabeth. I just have to stay close enough to you to keep all this from happening again. And of course I’ll have the financial resources to hire people to keep an eye on you.”

  He pictured himself trapped in a relationship with her, sharing a bed and a life with the woman who had murdered Elizabeth and who would knowingly inflict premature senility and death on unsuspecting patients. To be dependent upon this woman, manipulated into believing her wishes were his truths, would be worse than death. Yet the prospect of death, of a bullet ripping through his heart, kept him planted in the chair.

  “I hope there’s a special place in hell for you, Shirley. Elizabeth was your friend.”

  “Yeah, and Denny Houston is yours. We sure know how to pick ’em.”

  “You even killed Rex. He was harmless.”

  “I couldn’t take the chance he’d throw a fit the next time I came over.”

  “How did it happen?” Barnes leaned forward and looked at his notes on the floor.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You knocked on the door, right, and Elizabeth turned off the alarm and let you in?”

  “That’s how it started.”

  He moved the notes around with his feet, then looked up at her. “You killed her and the dog, then cut a hole in the dining-room window to fake a burglary, and you did the same thing to Denny’s house so the police would think it involved him and me, not just Elizabeth.”

  “Something like that. And I put the love letter in her purse.”

  “The love letter . . .” He looked down at his notes. “She didn’t . . . she wasn’t . . .”

  “Not that I’m aware of. As far as I know, she loved you, even when you were a self-centered jerk who didn’t want to father her child.”

  Barnes didn’t say anything.

  She continued. “I sent the other letter, too, the one about the ten thousand dollars.”

  He saw a mention of that letter in his notes as well. “To implicate me?”

  “That’s right. It wouldn’t have been necessary if you hadn’t recovered from your coma. But with you digging around in Elizabeth’s files, that extra measure seemed prudent.”

  When he didn’t say anything in reply, she asked, “How did you know to look for the autopsy reports? Those don’t go to the FDA, and even the investigators at the site didn’t see anything there.”

  He tried to recall, but the sequence of events had escaped him. “I don’t remember.”

  She laughed. “That’s pathetic. You solve the big mystery, but you can’t remember how you did it?”

  “I figured it out. That’s what counts.”

  “Yeah. Well, not for long.”

  He didn’t like the sound of that. “So you’re going to kill me.”

  “No,” she said condescendingly. “Can’t you remember anything? I put a sedative in your wine.”

  “Right.” He thought he remembered that. Certainly he should have; the fear of what it was doing to him should have kept it in his consciousness. He felt the drug already taking effect, causing a weariness to settle over him. Was it chloral hydrate? “You should turn yourself in,” he said.

  She scoffed. “Then Elizabeth’s death would be for nothing.”

  “It was for nothing. If those screws cause Alzheimer’s—and we both know they do—then it’s just a matter of time before the FDA realizes that and takes them off the market.” Anger seemed to stave off the weariness.

  “Maybe. But it’ll take years for them to do that, and by then, I’ll already be rich. Jarrell Pharmaceuticals will be sued, but all I did was obtain the patent. I’ll be out of the legal loop.”

  “Don’t you have any morals? Don’t you care if people die?” His tongue felt thick. Words were beginning to slur. He had to do something to stop her. Something.

  “Of course I care,” she said. “But I also care about me.”

  The room began to spin. Subtly. As though he had a mild inner-ear problem. Soon it would get much worse. Then everything—including hope—would fade away. He had to stay awake. Sleep now would be worse than death. To succumb to sleep would be to surrender his humanity, to become forever enslaved to the woman who had killed Elizabeth. Living her fantasy at the expense of innocent lives.

  But how could he not sleep? Staying awake was like treading water in the middle of an ocean. The waves were growing, and his body was getting heavier.

  How could he think of a plan now? Even clearheaded, he hadn’t been able to come up with anything.

  Stay awake!

  He kept treading water, unwilling to yield to the sea of dreams. Yet the water was pulling him under. His mind seemed to float in another direction, drifting away from the crisis.

  Somehow he had to concentrate.

  At that moment the doorbell rang. A faraway chime so distant it could have been only a memory.

  “Don’t make a sound,” Shirley warned, “or I’ll kill both of you.”

  The bell rang again, two pitches reverberating through the house and through Barnes’s mind. A rescue ship. Yet if he didn’t signal it, the ship would pass him by.

  The window, he thought. He could throw something through the window to alert whoever was there. But that would achieve nothing. Shirley would kill him. She’d already murdered his wife.

  He had to think of something else. Now!

  He stood up. The room swayed, but he stayed on his feet.

  Shirley trained the gun on him. “Sit down.”

  He raised his hands in a conciliatory fashion. At least that’s what he thought. He couldn’t tell for sure what he was doing. The room was beginning to blur, although his thoughts seemed to be more focused, maybe clearer from the exertion of standing.

  He knew what needed to be done.

  He took a step toward the window at the rear of the house. Another step put him in front of it. The drawn metal Venetian blinds hid him from view to anyone outside, but being seen wasn’t the plan.

  “Get away from the window,” Shirley warned, urgency in her voice, “and keep your hands where I can see them. I will shoot you.”

  The doorbell chimed again, and she glanced in the direction of the sound.

  Barnes hurtled himself at the window.

  With luck the metal blinds would shield him from the shards of broken glass that might otherwise kill him. He’d seen people who had gone through windows, and it wasn’t pretty. Not like in the movies where cowboys stand up and brush themselves off. Usually people suffer disfiguring wounds and severed arteries. But in his case the blinds offered a protective screen of sorts. He only hoped he’d generated enough force to carry him all the way through.

  The window shattered. Taking the blinds with him, Barnes plummeted toward the wooden deck in a tangle of metal and a shower of glass. As he fell through the cold darkness, he thought, I can’t believe it worked. He hadn’t seen, heard, or felt a gunshot. Maybe Shirley had hesitated to shoot because he was moving away from her rather than toward her and she didn’t feel threatened, or maybe she cared for him after all and couldn’t bring herself to do it. Or maybe she simply couldn’t make up her mind that fast.

  Barnes crashed to the deck. He landed with his feet underneath him, although he fell to one side, hitting his hip, arm, ribs, and finally his head on the unforgiving cedar. All thoughts of Shirley, the autopsy reports—everything from the entire evening—exited him upon impact. His world turned white, like the bursting brightness of a camera’s flashbulb, then faded to darkness. In the confused moment before losing consciousness, he wondered, Where’s Elizabeth?

  Chapter 54

  Shirley put the gun back inside her purse. She turned out the light in Barnes’s office and rushed to the broken window. Taking care not to cut herself on the jagged glass, she stuck her head out and s
quinted into the frigid night. Darkness and snow flurries obscured the view, transforming everything on the deck below into poorly defined shapes. The outline of a dark mass directly below appeared to be Barnes, but she couldn’t be sure. Nothing moved.

  She strained to see more, and her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The shape on the deck came into view. Definitely Barnes, partially draped in the metal blinds. Probably the fall hadn’t killed him—it was only two stories—but that didn’t matter. He appeared to be unconscious, and she knew when he woke up, he wouldn’t remember anything. If he woke up. Even without the windchill factor, the temperature outside was well below freezing, more than cold enough to kill him if he didn’t regain consciousness soon. Of course he could be faking it, but that didn’t make sense. If the fall hadn’t knocked him out, he would certainly have tried to scramble off the deck to safety. Lying there and risking a bullet would be foolish. He must be unconscious.

  Shivering, she backed away from the window, then flipped on the light again and quickly surveyed the room. She had to get rid of anything that might help Barnes or the police implicate her again, and she had to do it in a hurry, before anyone saw her standing there or moving about. She pulled the disk out of the computer and shoved it into her purse, along with the faxed autopsy reports and the note Barnes was writing. She also gathered up the notes from his pockets. Thank God he’d emptied his pockets before going through the window.