Dying to Remember

by Glen Apseloff

  She picked up his wallet and placed it on the desk, then wiped her fingerprints off it.

  Where else would her fingerprints be? All over the downstairs, of course, but that was okay; he’d invited her over for dinner. Fingerprints in his office would be harder to explain.

  She wiped the doorknob, took the wineglass off the bookshelf, and left the room. Rushing from one room to the next, she looked for more notes that Barnes had posted on the walls, mirrors, and furnishings. She gathered the scraps of paper and shoved them into her purse, including the note that had been taped to the alarm clock.

  Satisfied that she’d gotten rid of anything that might incriminate her, she carried the wineglass downstairs to the kitchen, rinsed it, and put it in the sink. She put the other wineglass and dinner dishes there, too, and rinsed them. Time to go.

  She grabbed her coat from the front hall closet. What else? Purse, hat, gun. Time to go.

  Her hand on the front doorknob, she suddenly remembered . . .

  The telephone!

  She rushed to the kitchen and took the phone out from under the pile of dish towels in the cabinet drawer. Leaving it there would have been a major blunder. Possibly a fatal one. She wiped it down with one of the dish towels.

  What else was she forgetting? Her mind went over every detail of the evening. Last chance to cover your tracks. Everything seemed in order.

  She returned to the front door and looked through the peephole to see whether whoever had rung the doorbell was in sight. The fish-eye covered the entire entryway, but beyond that, darkness and snow obscured much of the view.

  You have to go, she told herself, realizing that every moment spent in the house increased her likelihood of being caught.

  Steeling herself, she opened the door and slipped outside. Only after she pulled the door closed did she dare look around.

  Nobody.

  She hurried straight to her car at the curb. Snow crunched under her feet, leaving behind footprints. Evidence she had been there.

  It’s irrelevant, she assured herself. You were invited to dinner. Besides, in half an hour or less, the footprints would be obscured by wind and new snow.

  A car sped by. She strained to see whether the driver appeared to notice her. Probably not, but impossible to tell for sure. The street was always at least half full of parked cars, although she appeared to be the only pedestrian. She threw herself into the driver’s seat and shoved her key into the ignition. The engine whined, then turned over. The windshield had fogged and iced up, but waiting for the heater to defrost it wasn’t an option. She rubbed a knothole with a gloved hand, then put the car into gear and stepped on the gas.

  Time to go home.

  Chapter 55

  Billings heard glass shatter, followed by a crash that sounded as though a piece of furniture had been thrown through a window and onto something hard. He hoped the noise had come from a neighbor’s house, but it sounded more like the other side of Barnes’s place. Barnes was known for having a temper. Throwing a TV or a chair through a window wasn’t beyond the realm of possibilities for him. Billings hoped that was what had just happened. The alternative was more troubling. If Barnes had gone through the window, he was probably lying in a heap, half-dead, bleeding out.

  Billings ran around the side of the house, through snow and over bushes. A chain-link fence seemed to appear out of nowhere, and with it the nagging fear that a large dog might be behind it. He would have to take that risk. He stuck the toes of his shoes in the diamond-shaped holes, pulled himself up, and hauled himself over. At least this wasn’t a wrought-iron fence with spikes. A man could get impaled on something like that.

  Landing in a shrub on the other side of the fence, he lost his balance and fell to one knee, muddying a pant leg and glove with dirty snow.

  Barnes, you are not worth this, he thought. But he got up and ran to the back deck.

  A figure there lay motionless, surrounded by broken glass and entangled in Venetian blinds.

  Barnes.

  Kneeling beside his unconscious colleague, Billings pulled off and pushed aside the metal blinds.

  Airway, breathing, circulation, he remembered—the ABCs of emergency care.

  Barnes’s airway appeared unobstructed—no broken teeth or anything else in his mouth—and his breathing seemed regular, although shallow. No profuse bleeding, either—no deep cuts from the glass—and no signs of major trauma, no obvious broken bones. Yet Billings couldn’t risk moving him. If Barnes had an injury to his spine, any movement might paralyze him. Instead he took off his coat and draped it over his colleague.

  “You’re going to be . . . okay,” he said, although Barnes remained unconscious. “I’ll get help.” Already Billings was shivering in the cold, despite having just run around the outside of the house. He rubbed his arms to keep warm. “I’ll be right back.”

  Retracing his footsteps, he headed back to the street.

  He had just reached the front of the house when a police car pulled up to the curb.

  Chapter 56

  “Everything’s going to be all right,” Shirley said to herself, gripping the wheel of her car, squinting through the fogged-up windshield. “Just stay calm.”

  As she drove, the car warmed up. The events of the evening, like Barnes’s house, soon seemed far behind her. She couldn’t believe she’d had dinner with him less than an hour ago. Too bad he’d been so obsessed with solving Elizabeth’s murder. Too bad he couldn’t just go on with his life.

  She spotted a Dumpster at a gas station and stopped to throw away Barnes’s computer disk, his notes, and the faxes of the autopsy reports. Then she made a second stop to get rid of her handgun. For that she chose the Charles River. In another month it would freeze over, but this early in the season, only a thin shelf of ice had formed along its banks. She threw the gun from the Cambridge side of the river, where passing cars wouldn’t notice, and she hurled it far enough from shore that no one would ever find it.

  Losing the 9mm was a shame, but the chances of getting caught with it had become too great. She’d made the right decision. Her heart stopped pounding. Her hands stopped shaking.

  By the time she got home, the events of the past hour seemed so distant they almost could have happened to someone else. She poured herself a glass of wine, put a movie into the VCR, and, kicking off her shoes, relaxed on her sofa in front of the TV. Everything was under control.

  She watched Dr. Zhivago, a story of love, war, and adultery. She’d already seen it twice and had fallen in love with Omar Sharif. Then there was Julie Christie, who played a character even more admirable—stunning and intelligent, driven by passion, although plagued by injustices. The cast, the script, the editing, and the directing—all had come together perfectly to create this cinematic masterpiece. But now it was just a distraction.

  Despite the tensions of the evening, she felt herself start to drift off. Then, during Omar Sharif’s first strained encounter with Sir Alec Guinness, the doorbell jarred her back to reality.

  Who would come to her place, uninvited, after dark? Better not to find out.

  The doorbell rang a second time. Still she ignored it.

  It rang a third time, and a man’s impatient voice yelled, “Open up. Police.”

  “Just a minute,” she answered finally. Were they here to make an arrest? How could she have become a suspect so quickly? Her mind reeled as she slipped her shoes on. Maybe the police were only going to question her. They probably just needed information. After all, Chris couldn’t possibly have told them anything incriminating. There wasn’t a chance he could have remembered anything after being drugged and after that fall, even if he had survived.

  The police might somehow have placed her at his house, but that didn’t mean anything. She and Chris had spent part of the evening together. She was just being a friend. Maybe he’d become so despondent afterward he’d jumped through the window. Stranger things had happened, and certainly he had every reason to be suicidal—his wif
e had been killed and he’d suffered major brain damage. Who wouldn’t be suicidal after that?

  Opening the front door, she willed herself to be calm. Two plainclothes policemen crowded the entryway. She recognized them from a few weeks earlier when they had questioned her regarding her relationship with Elizabeth.

  “Shirley Collins,” one of them stated. Clearly he remembered her, too. He was tall and slender with sandy hair and an unpretentious demeanor.

  “Yes?”

  “You’re under arrest for the murder of Elizabeth Barnes and the attempted murder of Christopher Barnes.”

  The other one, more stocky and smelling strongly of cologne, took out a pair of handcuffs.

  “You’ve got to be joking,” she said, but the tremor in her voice belied any indignation.

  “You have the right to remain silent . . .” the stocky one began. Just like on TV.

  She couldn’t believe this was happening. “Why do you think I did those things?”

  “We don’t think, ma’am,” said the tall one. “We know. Now put on a coat and come along with us.”

  She turned from them, and they followed her to the hall closet. “This is a mistake.”

  “Put your coat on, ma’am,” said the stocky one, dangling the handcuffs from one finger.

  She took her coat from the closet and put it on.

  “Button it up. It’s cold outside.”

  “I don’t believe this,” she muttered, her fingers trembling with the buttons.

  “Believe it,” said the tall one. “It’s over.”

  Chapter 57

  Barnes awoke late the next morning with no recollection of what had happened. The last thing he remembered was eating mussels in a Canadian restaurant in the company of Cheryl. No, the last thing he recalled was seeing Cheryl naked in a hotel room. He hoped with all his heart that Elizabeth would never find out.

  Was he still in Canada? And what day was this? What month? November, maybe. He wondered whether some sedative or other medication had caused a temporary amnesia.

  A movement at the foot of the bed caught his attention. A woman reading a magazine. She wasn’t someone he recognized, and a woman like that—with flowing chestnut hair and delicate features—wasn’t someone he would forget.

  He noticed railings on the bed. And controls for raising and lowering its head and foot. This was a hospital room. Yet his visitor didn’t appear to be any sort of employee or nurse. She wasn’t wearing scrubs or a uniform.

  She set down her reading material and came to his side. “Don’t try to sit up,” she said in a breathy voice that sounded familiar. She looked to be in her late twenties. “You’ve had a concussion, but the doctors say you’re going to be all right.”

  “Where’s Elizabeth?” he asked.

  “That’s a long story. Do you know who I am?”

  “I’m not sure.” Something about that voice.

  “I’m Claire, Elizabeth’s friend.”

  He remembered. “The attorney.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What happened to me?”

  “That’s a long story, too. It’s understandable if you don’t remember. You’ve been through quite a lot. We can talk about it later. Right now you just need to get better.”

  I need to know what’s going on, he thought, but fatigue and apprehension drained him of the strength to argue. Part of him suspected something terrible had happened, like a car accident that Elizabeth hadn’t survived. He wasn’t ready to face that just yet.

  He closed his eyes and tried not to think about it.

  After Claire left, Detective Wright visited Barnes at the hospital and briefed him on the events leading to the arrest of Shirley Collins. He and Gould had taken her into custody after playing back the tape recording Barnes had made. The recorder had fallen from his jacket pocket when the emergency medical technicians had lifted him onto a stretcher, and Wright had noticed it on the deck in the snow.

  Wright told Barnes that apparently Shirley hadn’t wanted to risk killing him in his backyard where someone might witness the event. He didn’t mention that he and Gould had driven to the house to arrest him rather than rescue him. In their search through the piles of garbage, Gould had discovered a crumpled note that happened to be in English and that described the letter demanding $10,000; it also indicated that with Elizabeth’s death, half the profits from her research would go to Barnes. Logically they concluded that Barnes had hired a professional to solve his financial problems and at the same time eliminate the woman who was threatening to have a child from another man.

  Wright also neglected to mention that only a few hours ago, they’d decided not to turn over to the district attorney the tape of the wiretap in which Barnes discussed his illegal gambling on football games. They didn’t throw it away—that would be destroying evidence—but they might as well have. By the time anyone with authority happened upon that information, filed away with piles of other documents in a closed case, the statute of limitations would long since have run out.

  Wright concluded by saying, “We didn’t know it was Shirley Collins until after we played the tape, but we would have figured it out on our own pretty soon.”

  Barnes raised the head of his bed.

  Wright had to admit that “pretty soon” was a stretch. Regardless, he’d wanted to figure it out himself, but Barnes had done it instead. Now he understood how Karen felt when he did things for her that she wanted to do herself.

  “You can have the next one,” said Barnes.

  “Yeah. Maybe it’s better this way, but it would have been nice if you could have solved the case before we spent an entire day going through your garbage, although I have to say it smelled better than my partner’s cologne.”

  Barnes didn’t say anything to that.

  “Well, I guess I should leave you alone. You need your rest.”

  “What I need is to get out of here. I told them I want to sign out, but they stall until I forget. They think I’m not onto their game, but I know what they’re doing. Some things I can remember for more than five minutes.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Wright replied. “I think they want you to stay until tomorrow.”

  “I want to leave today.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. The good news is they say you’re going to be fine. They tell me you had a concussion and that’s it.”

  “That and preexisting brain damage.”

  “The doctors say that may get better, too. You just have to give it time. In a few days you’ll be over your bumps and bruises, and I’ll bet pretty soon you’ll be back to normal.”

  “Back to normal,” Barnes echoed. “That would be nice.”

  Chapter 58

  Four months later

  Barnes awoke to the drone of his alarm clock. He’d been dreaming of Elizabeth, vacationing on Maui in celebration of their five-year anniversary. They’d cast aside their clothes and were making love between two blankets on a black-sand beach, under the stars, while rhythmic ocean waves crashed to shore in tempo with their movements. Behind them a waterfall cascaded into a freshwater pool, and the thundering water had translated itself into the sound of his alarm. He slapped the “Off” button and, as the memory of the dream slipped away, looked at the time: 6:00. He wanted to go back to sleep, to recapture that fleeting dream, but it was time to get up and start his day.

  He rubbed his eyes, then looked again at the clock. A message in his own handwriting, taped to the top, hung partially over the digital readout: Read note on bathroom mirror. Surgery at 7:30 with Nate Billings.

  He remembered Nate now, not just as the deliberate and cautious black surgeon he and Denny Houston had avoided but also as the surgeon who had helped him, who had befriended him. He vaguely recalled having scrubbed with Nate on a case, or was it several cases, and he thought maybe he’d had dinner with him and his family, although he couldn’t remember how many children Nate had or even what his house looked like. But one thing was certain: Nate wa
s a friend.

  Barnes rolled out of bed and sat on the edge of the mattress, trying to recall the previous night. Dinner, a movie, a conversation, anything. Instead he remembered mussels in November in Toronto. That was the dinner that had changed his life, and opposite him had sat the woman with whom he’d eaten that fateful meal. He pictured her for the umpteenth time, in her dress with the neckline that gapped and revealed the tops of her breasts. She still had cascading blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes, but her face and her body no longer appealed to him.

  Her image transformed to that of Elizabeth the last time he remembered seeing her, through the rearview mirror of his Mercedes as he drove to the airport on his way to the conference. He had left the Ritz-Carlton early that morning and had stopped by the house to drop off some clothes. He and Elizabeth had spoken only briefly. Then they left for the airport and work. He remembered that she’d waved good-bye to him wistfully from her car before turning off Harvard Street to head to the hospital. He’d regained that memory many weeks earlier and now had no recollection of ever having lost it. He also recalled her being pregnant, and fragments of their fight about the pregnancy, although the details escaped him.

  He forced himself out of bed and headed to the mirror to read a note he presumed he’d drafted the previous night. He didn’t remember having written anything but now realized his retentive skills were minimal. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder whether the note on the mirror might jog his memory, enabling him to recall events from the days and perhaps even weeks before. He stretched and turned on the light near the dresser. It filled much of the room with a harsh glare. Turning away from it, he felt empty, as though a part of him had taken flight, never to return. At the moment, he didn’t know whether months or years had gone by since the food poisoning, but he sensed that enough time had elapsed for things within him to stabilize. His memory would not improve.