Flash

by Tim Tigner

  The finality of Luther’s verdict hit Oliver like a slap in the face. He suddenly felt dizzy. He had let his hopes rise. Two years was manageable. He had come to accept that. But four years, more than a thousand days: that crossed a line. He would be a different man when he emerged. If he emerged. He would not fare well in prison as a rich white man whose greed for a bigger bonus killed two poor Hispanic kids.

  “No,” Luther continued, “two years would be virtually impossible to plea-bargain in this political environment. Fitch was right about that. In fact, the four he already negotiated is a hell of a deal—no doubt due largely to your contacts. But if you place your faith in me, if you turn down the prosecutor’s offer and go to trial, I can get you off.”

  Chapter 17

  The CayMart clerk was a skinny white male with a greasy ponytail and teeth that would have embarrassed an old mule. Troy watched him ogle Emmy unabashedly as she approached the counter.

  “Good morning,” she said, seemingly unfazed by the stare. “I’d like to cash some traveler’s checks, Earl.”

  Earl said, “We charge three percent,” and kept right on staring.

  Emmy produced a plastic envelope from Mrs. Gordon’s fanny pack, counted out four hundred-dollar checks, and then added a fifth as if by afterthought. “Do you have a pen I could use?”

  Earl grabbed one from the side of the register and asked, “Do you have ID?”

  “Sure,” Emmy said, accepting the pen before withdrawing Mrs. Gordon’s passport from the fanny pack. She laid it off to the side of the counter and began signing checks. When she finished, she stacked them neatly and handed the pile to Earl with a smile.

  Earl accepted the checks with his left hand and scooped up the passport with his right. He opened the passport to the picture page and ripped his eyes from Emmy long enough to study the photo.

  Emmy said, “Gotta love that Atkins.”

  Earl did not comment. He just shifted his attention to the traveler’s checks and sorted through to the fifth one Emmy had signed. After another tense moment he said, “To my eye, the signature looks perfect. To my nose … not so much. And then there’s the picture …”

  Emmy reached over the counter and took the passport and checks from Earl’s hand. He did not resist. He just gave her a surprisingly penetrating stare and said, “I could ignore my nose and cash all the checks you want, but there would be an additional fee involved.”

  Emmy stared back at him, her expression noncommittal.

  Earl answered without further provocation. “Fifty percent.”

  Five minutes later, Troy and Emmy left CayMart with six Snickers bars, twenty-five-hundred dollars in cash, and the agreement that Earl would not process the checks until his shift ended at three that afternoon.

  “You should check in alone,” Emmy said. “They’ll be looking for couples, and single women raise more questions than single men.”

  Troy did, and shortly thereafter he was admiring their bungalow’s king-size bed. “You want the left side or the right?” He asked, testing the springs.

  “What are you doing?” Emmy asked. “We don’t have time to sleep.”

  “I’m not going to be much good without it,” he replied, aware of the reversal in their positions but too tired to care. “Just a thirty-minute catnap to recharge the processor.”

  Emmy did not yield, and before he knew it Troy was behind a table in a semicircular beachfront cafe called The Grotto. He was looking out at sugary sand and crystalline water while a waitress informed him that, “Stingrays be swimmin’ there at the edge of the shelf where the water changes from turquoise to indigo. Morays and octopi too. What will you be having? I recommend the lobster omelet with brie and papaya salsa.”

  Troy looked over at Emmy who nodded. “We’ll take two, along with the bakery basket, orange juice and coffee.”

  She poured the coffee into waiting white mugs and disappeared. As Troy stirred in cream, he tried to find the best kickoff question for their let’s-get-acquainted conversation. He knew a lot about Emmy’s character, but little about her biography. Her choice of profession left him halfway between concerned and enthralled, and he could not help wondering if her work had somehow caused their predicament. It was on that sensitive topic that he wanted to start, but Emmy beat him to the punch. “I lied to you earlier—in the garage.”

  Troy managed to swallow his sip of coffee without choking, but only just. “How so?”

  “I … I … I really couldn’t have changed the tire in five minutes. I’ve never changed a tire in my life.”

  Troy exhaled.

  Emmy smiled. “Just wanted to jump-start your processor.”

  “You did that.”

  “Good. Tell me, what’s the last thing you remember?”

  Troy added another creamer to his coffee and took another sip. “Afghanistan. I’m—I was—a military surgeon who was stupid enough to volunteer for the Special Forces after my first tour with a forward surgical team. I was tired of seeing corpses that had bled to death on the battlefield. Figured I could save a lot more lives if I was at the scene.”

  “That sounds almost suicidal,” Emmy said, her face a mixture of admiration and concern.

  “I convinced myself that it wouldn’t be that much more dangerous because the Green Berets are so highly trained. But as time went by and death and injury thinned the ranks, replacements came from deeper and deeper down the barrel. Many weren’t what we call tab qualified. Weekend warriors who had been given the beret without all the training. One such reservist, an accountant from Paducah called to active duty, made an amateur mistake and triggered a booby trap. He literally and figuratively kicked a bucket—one that the Taliban had packed with silverware and explosive.

  “The accountant and two other soldiers were instantly shredded. I got a fork in my belly, and four others were similarly lucky. The last scene I remember is looking down at the inch of protruding aluminum handle as it siphoned off my venous blood like a spigot.” Troy held up his fork with a piece of lobster omelet speared on the end. “I’ll never forget the joy of pulling that baby out and stuffing gauze in its place to staunch the bleeding. I remember giving myself a morphine shot and running to help Captain Chapman, but nothing more.

  “I must have passed out.

  “When I awoke locked in Evan’s trunk, my assumption was that I had been captured by the Taliban. But when I found the healed scar after seeing the dates on Evan’s documents and evidence that I was on Grand Cayman, I put the pieces together.”

  “Incredible. Did you get the scars on your forehead then too?”

  “I don’t know when I got those, but they’re fresher than this.” For some mysterious reason, he felt uneasy talking or even thinking about his forehead scars. He wanted to change the subject. “Tell me, what did you think had happened when you first woke up?”

  “I thought I had been kidnapped by some South L.A. gang. Waking up in a strange dark car spattered in blood, with a gun in my lap and a jackhammer in my head, it was ... horrible. Let’s talk about something else. Do they teach you about memory loss in medical school?”

  Troy nodded appreciatively as he worked to swallow the remainder of his croissant. “We studied the brain and the functions assigned to each of its various lobes. After combat I’m also very familiar with the psychological manifestations of cranial trauma. What we have is called episodic amnesia. We don’t remember certain experiences—in our cases those from the past six or seven years—but we do remember biographical data and skills, so our semantic and explicit memories are in tact.”

  “Is there a cure?” She asked.

  “I don’t know for sure. Memory involves billions of neurons and trillions of neural connections. Much of their function remains a mystery—or at least it was seven years ago. Anyhow, if the neurons themselves are damaged, the memories are likely gone forever. If it’s a matter of bad connections, like what Alzheimer’s patients suffer, we can get those memories back if we heal those connections o
r establish new ones.”

  “Is there a pill for that?”

  Troy shook his head. “Unfortunately, it’s not that kind of headache.”

  “I take it we can assume that we don’t have Alzheimer’s, or some other naturally occurring condition?”

  “No, we can’t assume that. For all we know, we could both be patients of the same clinic. If I got Alzheimer’s or some other similar disease at this age, I would seek out the best clinic on Earth. Perhaps we both did and that’s how we came to be together on Grand Cayman—you from L.A., me from Afghanistan or wherever the Army had me.”

  “Do you believe that?” Emmy asked.

  “No. Clinics don’t dump you in a car with a dead cop … unless perhaps they’ve injured you in some failed secret experiment and want to cover it up.”

  “I could never have afforded a fancy island clinic,” Emmy interrupted.

  “Drug companies often pay for your treatment during clinical trials, but I agree that scenario is a long shot. Still, it can’t hurt to check the phone book for clinics when we get back to our room.”

  Emmy shrugged. “So you favor the alternative—that someone intentionally did this to us?”

  “I think that’s the most logical conclusion given the violence that has followed us. But to anticipate your next question, No, I don’t know how they did it.”

  Troy finished off his omelet while Emmy digested his words.

  Emmy finally set down her own fork and said, “In the movies it’s always either a whack on the head or brain surgery.”

  “Every whack on the head is different. That could account for one of us, but not both.”

  “Well then it’s obvious what we need to do next.”

  “What’s that?” Troy asked.

  Emmy tilted her head to the side and flashed him a breathtaking smile. “Check each other for scars.”

  Chapter 18

  Honey dismissed the last of the eleven couples his colleagues had scooped off the streets with a shallow word of thanks for their cooperation. Eight hours into the chase and he had nothing. The murderers had vanished.

  “You get the security photos yet?” He asked, coming up behind the staff secretary.

  “Shouldn’t you be sleepin’, Captain?” Susanna replied, swiveling around in her chair and looking at him over the top of her glasses.

  “I’ll sleep when they’re behind bars. Meanwhile, I’ll thank you to answer my questions without editorial.”

  Susanna’s cheery features dimmed. Honey knew he was being a grouch, but didn’t care. He would apologize when the job was done. “Oscar just sent them,” she said, pulling a grouping of four photos up on her computer screen and proceeding as though he could not see them for himself. “We got three-quarter and profile shots of both the man and woman as they pulled out of the garage, but the resolution is poor. The low lighting and rain-streaked car windows didn’t help either.”

  “I know what the lighting was like. I was there.”

  “Yes captain.”

  “Take this down,” he said, stepping around to the front of her desk. “He’s mid-thirties, height about a meter eighty-five, weight about eighty kilos. Blue eyes, dark hair cut like a politician’s. He’s got two v-shaped scars descending just below the hairline above his right eye, and a big-old dimple on the middle of his chin like Kirk Douglas. Last seen wearing running shoes, khaki shorts and an olive shirt. All bloody. Got it?”

  “Got it,” she said, her French-manicured fingers still tapping keys.

  “Good. Now the woman. She’s about thirty. Tiny, say a meter and a half high, forty-five kilos. Got bright green eyes and thick dark shoulder-length hair. Last seen wearing tennis shoes, pink shorts, and a white button-down top—also blood-spattered. Both are to be considered armed and dangerous, even though I did recover the guns.”

  “Got it. What you want me to do with the descriptions?” Susanna asked.

  “Paste them beneath the photos and make me wanted posters. I want every law-enforcement and customs officer on the island to have a copy within the hour. Put COP KILLERS on the top in big bold letters.”

  “What about taxis? I can drop off stacks at the cab companies, and they can pass them out to the drivers when they come in.”

  Honey was impressed. He took his fidgety fingers from his Adam’s apple and said, “Good idea. But add a bold note that no civilian should try to apprehend them. They should just call 911 as soon as possible. Do the same for the marinas. And don’t forget the charter flights to the Sisters,” he added, referring to Little Cayman and Cayman Brac. “For once it will work to our advantage to be an island. If we get a lock on transportation, it’s just a matter of time till they’re rotting away in my jail.”

  Chapter 19

  “What’s your first name?”

  Troy opened his eyes and looked down at the lady shaking his leg. She had roused him from a deep dreamful state, and he found himself struggling to resurface. As she came into focus, he had the strongest feeling that she was the wrong woman. She should be taller and blonde, and her eyes turquoise blue instead of emerald green.

  Then, quick as a blink, the disorientation evaporated. Everything came back to him—the trunk, the sniper, the loss of seven years—and Emmy. “We didn’t find matching scars, did we?” He asked, referring to their inspection of each other’s scalps. He reached up reflexively and ran his fingertips across his forehead. “We’ve still got no clue as to the cause of our collective amnesia.”

  “I did find another angry scar on your scalp,” Emmy said. “But unlike the forehead scars, you knew where it came from. You told me it was from a bicycle chain, the remnant of one of your weekly rows with Tommy McGuffin. As for me, I don’t have any scalp scars at all.”

  Troy nodded, remembering.

  “Then I crashed,” Emmy added, “while you, apparently, went shopping.” She stood up, held out her arms and twirled, exhibiting the jade Pirate’s Cove polo shirt and khaki shorts that he had purchased in the gift shop. “You did a good job guessing my sizes.”

  “I had a pretty good look at your body.”

  The expression on her face told him that a change of topic would be a good strategic move, so he rolled up into a sitting position and said, “What was it you asked me?”

  “Your first name. I had assumed Troy was your first name, but I see now that it’s your last.”

  Troy wondered how she could possibly see that. When he hesitated, she mistook the reason and added, “You know my sizes; surely I can know your name.”

  “Sebastian. My first name is Sebastian.”

  Emmy nodded. “Not the best name for a skinny kid with mismatched eyes growing up in an orphanage.”

  “How’d you know I was skinny?”

  “Lucky guess.” Emmy said with a wink.

  “I forgot,” Troy said. “That’s what you do. But seriously, how did you know Troy was my last name?”

  “Your tattoo.”

  “I don’t have a—” Troy stopped himself. He pulled up the sleeves of his Pirates’ Cove polo to check his shoulders. Nothing. He checked his calves and ankles. Again nada. Where else could it be? Had she checked his butt while he was sleeping?

  Emmy headed off that embarrassing train of thought by saying, “It’s on the bottom of your left foot. Pretty strange place for a monogram if you ask me.”

  He crossed his left leg over his right knee and took a look. There it was, plain as day. Two palm branches arced around the initials SBT. The tattoo was in an unusual place, Emmy had been right about that, but the location was not the strangest part.

  “Do you remember getting it?” Emmy asked.

  “This is odd.”

  “That’s what I said. Plus you don’t strike me as the tattoo type. An officer and a gentleman and all that. Tattoos speak volumes, so I pay a lot of attention to them. It’s not just what a person chooses, but where he or she puts it, the color, size, quantity. They’re—”

  “No,” Troy interrupted. “I mea
n—I don’t have a middle name.”

  Emmy put her hands on her hips. “Come on, it’s Bartholomew, isn’t it? Sebastian Bartholomew Troy. You can tell me.”

  “Seriously. No middle name.”

  “Huh. So you don’t remember getting it?” Emmy repeated.

  Troy looked back down at his foot. “There’s no way that I could. This is a henna tattoo. They don’t last more than a month.”

  “You’re up on your body art,” Emmy said, more to herself than to him. “That’s surprising.” She snapped her fingers after a moment of thought. “Henna is all over the place in Asia and the Middle East, including, I presume, Afghanistan. Am I right, doctor?”

  “You are.”

  They both stared at the tattoo in silence for a minute. Then Emmy said, “Perhaps the initials are your wife’s?”

  “I’m not—” Again Troy cut himself off. Seven lost years … Was there a Sara Beth Troy out there somewhere, worried sick?

  Emmy reached out and took his left hand. She held it up. He was wearing a gold band. How had he failed to notice it earlier? “Oh my …”

  “I know,” Emmy said, holding up her own left hand. She was not wearing a ring, but looking closely Troy could see the pale indentation where one had recently resided.

  They both sat in silence on the edge of the bed as the implications ran the first lap of what promised to be a long course. Had they been having an affair? Was the dead cop moonlighting as a detective sent by one of their spouses to get incriminating photographs? Were they married? Was it possible that he did not remember his own wife? What if he had kids? The questions were maddening. A man could go crazy just thinking about the possibilities.

  He ran his fingers over the tattoo in an effort to refocus his thoughts and another possibility entered his mind. “Is Emerald Green your real name? Or is it a professional name?”

  “A professional name?” Emmy asked, her tone bordering on belligerent.

  “Yeah,” he added quickly. “Like Norma Baker’s Marilyn Monroe.”