Dying Memories

by Dave Zeltserman

  “I don’t believe I asked your opinion about that,” Boxer said flatly, and then the connection went dead as he hung up.

  Bill had no idea who G was, and he forwarded the email to the Tribune’s computer guy to see if he could get him a return email address. He reread the newspaper article, then did a search for more recent articles concerning Jenny Larson’s murder. He found one from a year ago which was about how the chief suspect for the murder, a John Gandre, was killed in an alleyway behind a bar. Bill got on the phone to the Smithfield police, and without too much trouble tracked down the investigating officer, who told him they had little doubt that Gandre had killed Jenny but the problem was they could never get enough evidence to arrest him. “Eventually justice caught up to him,” the detective told Bill.

  “You’re sure he was your guy?”

  “Yep.”

  “No other suspects?”

  “None. We closed the case once Gandre got what was coming to him.”

  “Ever hear of Kent Forster?”

  “Never heard that name before. Sorry.”

  The detective begged off the phone, telling Bill he had to get back to work. After verifying that Janet Larson’s address was the same as what was given in the email, Bill got up to talk to Jack O’Donnell. He first knocked on Jack’s office door, then walked in and saw the city desk editor looking as harried as usual; his clothes rumpled, his shirt sleeves rolled up, the little hair he had left on his head in disarray. Jack O’Donnell had always put in long hours, but since the cutbacks, he’d been working seven days a week, in each morning by seven and usually not out at night until past midnight. His eyes were bloodshot and set deep within his fleshy face, and he gave Bill a confused stare over the intrusion.

  “I’ve got tomorrow’s front-page for you,” Bill said.

  He showed Jack the same article about Jenny Larson’s murder that he was sent. When Jack finished reading it, Bill told him how Larson’s parents now lived in the same apartment building as Gail Hawes.

  “The mother looks a lot like Hawes,” Jack observed as he chewed on his lip. He eyed Bill slowly. “What’s your take on this?”

  “My guess, some sort of transference,” Bill said. “Hawes must’ve found out about Jenny Larson and identified strongly enough with Larson that she started thinking of the loss as her own. I don’t know why she would’ve pick Kent Forster. According to the police in North Carolina, the perpetrator was a local character who was killed last year in a knife fight. I’d like to spend a little bit of the Tribune’s money and consult with a psychologist about this.”

  Jack blanched at that prospect. “Try the local universities first, see if you can find a psychology professor who’ll talk to you in exchange for getting his name in the paper. If you can’t find someone, try to keep the cost down, okay? And talk to this Janet Larson.”

  “Will do.”

  “Write me up two thousand words. You’ll be getting a front page byline again. If that nut job third party candidate hadn’t spouted off about bombing North Korea and Iran you’d be getting the full front page.” A thin smile crept over Jack’s lip. “Transference, huh? Did you actually pick up a psychology book and do some research?”

  “No reason to do that,” Bill said straight-faced. “Not when I can watch In Treatment on HBO.” Bill nodded to O’Donnell, and left to find himself a psychologist.

  Chapter 5

  Emily Chandler’s stomach was in knots during the entire lecture she gave for her introductory western art class. When she was done, she sped through the student’s questions at the end, anxious to call Bill and make sure he was okay. Earlier, before leaving the restaurant, she had stopped to look over her class notes for her planned lecture, and had walked outside a minute or so after Bill. That was when she thought she saw that man following him. The man had been across the street from Bill, and maybe she had only imagined what she thought she saw, drawn more to the man’s unusual appearance than any nefarious task he was involved with.

  The man was thin, very well-dressed, and had the pinkest skin Emily had ever seen, almost like bloodied ham. It was his eyes that freaked her out. No bigger than dots but they were the cold-blooded eyes you’d see on a snake, not on a human. Maybe that was it, that those eyes made her imagine him skulking after Bill. Still, though, as soon as her class cleared out, she ran to the nearest payphone and called Bill. She needed to hear his voice.

  When Bill answered his cell, she immediately felt stupid over what she had imagined. The last thing she wanted to do was make him think she was crazy, and instead of mentioning the odd-looking man, she told Bill how much she enjoyed having lunch with him, and wondered whether he’d like to meet for dinner. She badly wanted to see him with her own eyes to convince herself that he was okay, but as she realized how forward she was being, she blushed deeply.

  “I’d like that,” Bill said. He paused, his voice apologetic as he added, “The story I’ve been working on just exploded on me, and I’m probably going to be stuck here late.”

  “I wouldn’t mind sharing a midnight pizza,” she said.

  “That sounds great,” Bill said. “I’ll call you when I know what time I can get out of here. How about we meet near your place in the North End?”

  “Okay.”

  “I can’t wait to see you later.”

  Emily told him the same. As she hung up the receiver, she felt a little stupid, but also relieved and glad that she hadn’t mentioned to Bill her paranoid thoughts about him being followed. She tried to figure out why she imagined what she did, and all she could come up with was some sort of hysterical fear of losing the man she was going to be marrying.

  The thought stopped her.

  The man she was going to be marrying…

  She’d known Bill less than twenty-four hours, and she was already allowing herself to have thoughts like that. Maybe she was crazy after all. It wasn’t as if she was looking to get involved in a relationship. Far from it. Her and her mom had made many sacrifices so that she could continue her studies in Boston.

  She knew that she was susceptible to trying to fill the emotional and physical void that her father had left her, and that made her overly cautious about allowing herself to enter into any romantic relationship. She was twenty-nine, and there’d been very few times since high school that she had let her guard down, and even those times she knew from the start at an intuitive level that the men weren’t right for her and those relationships never lasted long. Yet here she was already allowing that thought about Bill to enter her head. But it was something that felt right, and she couldn’t help smiling thinking about it. If she were being completely honest with herself, this was something she knew the moment their eyes locked in that North End restaurant.

  Love at first sight.

  Yeah, right.

  The idea of that was just as crazy as thinking that that odd-looking man had been following Bill.

  Chapter 6

  Bill explained his transference theory regarding Gail Hawes to Dr. Sidney Whitfield, a small owlish-looking man in his late sixties. “So Doctor, does that make any sense? Could Gail Hawes have grown to believe that the murdered girl was her own?”

  “Let me guess,” Whitfield said. “You’ve been watching In Treatment on HBO, and that’s the extent of what you know about transference?”

  Bill showed a sheepish smile. “You got me there.”

  Whitfield nodded. “You’re not too far off, though,” he murmured. “The show is accurate in its depiction of that phenomenon, and what you described is possible.” The psychologist grimaced severely enough that his eyes disappeared under a thick tangle of bushy gray eyebrows as he gave the matter some more thought.

  “A traumatic event could’ve triggered this,” he admitted cautiously. “A death of someone close, a major disappointment, a victimization, so yes, this is very possible. She could have found herself identifying so strongly with Mrs. Larson’s pain that she began to think of it as her own. Usually people with these ty
pes of fixed delusions show other evidence of psychological instability, but it is possible she was able to fool those around her. Underneath, she must be a mess.” Whitfield stopped to rub his eyes. When he took his hand away he offered Bill a bleary-eyed stare and added, “I would obviously need to examine Ms. Hawes to say with any certainty whether this was the case, but yes, you can quote me on saying this is possible.”

  “Why pick Kent Forster?”

  Whitfield shrugged, and his thin rounded shoulders drooped lower. “She could’ve fixated on him for any number of reasons. It could’ve been nothing more than spotting him on the street, then finding out who he was. My guess is that she is suppressing memories of abuse, and that this Mr. Forster had the bad fortune of reminding her of her abuser.”

  Bill spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find evidence of past abuse or a recent traumatic event in Gail Hawes’s life but came up empty. Although he tried several times during the day to call Janet Larson, it was a little after six before Bill was able to reach her. Her voice had a despairing quality, but also a sense of inevitability, as if she knew she was going to have to talk to someone about what Gail Hawes had done.

  “We moved up to Massachusetts nine months ago,” she told him. “This was a few months after Jenny’s murderer was killed, and we moved up here hoping to escape all that. I’ve been struggling all day whether to call the police, but I just couldn’t bear seeing Jenny dragged through the mud again.”

  “I’m sorry,” Bill said. “I’ll try to be respectful to your daughter’s memory, but I am going to have to write about this. Did you know Gail Hawes?”

  “No. My husband and I saw her in the building’s lobby a few times, and when someone looks as much like you as she does, you notice. But no, neither of us ever talked to her.”

  “Any idea how she found out about Jenny?”

  Bill heard a gasp as if Janet Larson was struggling not to sob. “No,” she said after some heavy breaths. “My husband and I, we don’t talk to people about that.”

  “Do you know why she might’ve blamed Kent Forster for your daughter’s death?”

  There was another long silence, then, “That woman must be mentally ill. That’s all I can imagine. John Gandre killed Jenny, not this Kent Forster. But that’s what happened, isn’t it? She somehow found out about Jenny and deluded herself into thinking that Jenny was her daughter, not mine, and that’s why she killed that poor man?”

  “I don’t know,” Bill said.

  “But that’s what you’re going to write for your newspaper, isn’t it?”

  “I’m going to have to, yes.”

  She started sobbing softly then. He heard the click as she hung up the phone. Bill felt sympathy towards her, but he had no choice. The story was going to have to run. Understanding how explosive this story was going to be, he decided he’d better give Boxer a heads up. He called the detective and told him what he found out. Boxer listened quietly, and then told Bill that none of this proved anything. “No fucking way she’s criminally insane,” he said. “She knew exactly what she was doing. This was a cold, calculated killing, and I don’t believe this fairy tale of yours.” Boxer’s voice grew angrier as he added, “This is a con job. Hawes is using that poor girl’s death to create an insanity defense.”

  “What’s her reason for killing Forster?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Boxer nearly growled. “That’s what I got to find out. But thanks for telling me about this. At least I know the bullshit I’ll be dealing with.”

  Bill couldn’t imagine the scenario Boxer was grasping onto, not with what he found out about Gail Hawes. There was little chance she would ever have known Kent Forster. With what he knew about her, her growing to imagine Janet Larson’s loss and pain as her own made more sense than anything else he could think of. He just wished he knew what traumatic event triggered all this. After he got off the phone with Boxer he worked fast and furiously on his story, and by ten o’clock he finished his first draft and went over it with Jack. The city desk editor had some changes he wanted made, and by eleven o’clock Bill had the story ready for printing. He then gave Emily call, and headed off to the North End to share a late night pizza.

  Chapter 7

  For four days in a row Bill met Emily for lunch near Boston University, and then again, usually around eleven at night, for a late night dinner and several hours of hanging out in the North End before he’d walk her back to her apartment and drive home alone to his Medford apartment. The fifth day after he walked her back to her place, she stood silently searching into his eyes, her skin flushed a light pink. “Would you like to come inside?” she asked in a soft whisper. Bill found himself nodding, and what happened next was a dizzying rush of them in each other’s arms, and somehow ending up on her bed, with them pulling off each other’s clothes and losing themselves in each other. It was a long time before they finished their first round of lovemaking. Emily crawled on top of him and stretched her lithe, naked body over his. At five feet and four inches, her toes reached a few inches above his ankles. While she lay on top of him, a wisp of a smile showed as she used her right index finger to trace all the twists and turns of his nose.

  “When did you break your nose?” she asked.

  “The correct question should’ve been how many times did I break it.”

  “Okay, smart guy, how many times?”

  “Two times during a brief and sadly unsuccessful amateur boxing career.”

  “Your father never broke your nose?”

  Bill was taken aback by the question. “Why would you ask that?”

  Emily’s smile had faded. “Bill, I know you came from an abusive family situation. I know that because I did also, and I can recognize the signs. How guarded you become if I ask you anything about your childhood, how you always find ways to change the subject. In my own situation, my father was a violent drunk, but fortunately he was arrested for robbing a gas station when I was eight, and my mom moved us while he was in prison. I haven’t had to see him since. But I won’t push you. You can tell me when you’re ready.”

  Bill was amazed at how perceptive she was. He did break it twice in the ring like he told her, but his dad also broke it three other times while in an enraged state. She was right. He was guarded when talking about his past, but over the last five day he had opened up more to Emily than any other person, telling her things about himself that he had never told anyone else, even a little about his army experience. There was little chance though that he’d ever tell her or anyone about his mom and dad and the horror show he lived through as a kid.

  As Emily looked at him, a profound sadness flooded her eyes. She kissed the tip of his nose. “That’s okay,” she said. “It gives you a rugged look.” And then her mouth searched out his, and before long he was tasting the saltiness of her tears and feeling the intense heat from her body. And then they were making love again and losing themselves in their passion.

  The next morning Bill’s internal alarm clock woke him at a quarter to seven. At first he lay on his back disoriented, not sure where he was, but as his hand reached out and his fingers grazed Emily’s hip and felt the coolness of her skin, he remembered. He turned to look at her. Emily was asleep on her stomach. The sheets and quilt had mostly fallen off of her and only covered the lower part of her left leg, her hair spilling down her back like melted copper. God, she was beautiful. Bill didn’t want to move, but as he craned his neck to focus on the clock on the night stand next to Emily and saw the time he forced himself off the bed. He walked silently to Emily’s side of the bed so he could gently pull the quilt up and cover her with it. After that he went around the room gathering up his clothes from where they were tossed the night before, and then made his way to the bathroom.

  He tried peering hard into the vanity mirror above the sink but his eyes just weren’t quite functioning properly yet and what stared back at him was mostly a blurred reflection of himself. He badly needed a dose of caffeine. After that he’d be back to
normal. Rubbing a hand across his face, his skin felt like sandpaper, but he kept an electric razor at work and would be able to take care of that later. He used his finger as a makeshift toothbrush and tried to be quiet as he washed up so he wouldn’t wake Emily. Then after slipping his clothes back on and slicking back his hair, he left the bathroom. Emily was still asleep and had curled up onto her side so that she faced him, her skin pale in the early morning light, her hair fallen haphazardly across her face. He stood watching her, feeling a lump in his throat as he did so.

  The other night after they had finished their second round of lovemaking, Emily lay on her side next to him and told him more about her father, about how terrified she had been of him, especially when he’d get drunk. Her mother would have her hide in her bedroom closet when that happened, and she would listen to him rampaging through the apartment, yelling threats and smashing things, sometimes hearing her mother’s cries as he beat her. Emily was dried eyed as she told him this, but she choked up later when she told him about the day her father robbed that gas station. It turned out there was much more to the story than that. Afterwards he had come home bloodied and waving his gun around and threatening to kill them before surrendering to the police. Bill was mostly choked up himself as he told her how sorry he was about what had happened to her. They lay silently for a long time after that, then Emily edged closer to him and kissed him on the cheek. Shortly after that she drifted asleep. It was a long time later before Bill was able to get the image of a terrified eight year-old Emily out of his mind, and was able to fall asleep also.

  Bill closed his eyes and tried to remember the way her body had felt against his when she had told him all this, then later the rhythmic shallowness of her breathing and the way her head nestled against his chest after she had fallen asleep against him. It touched him deeply that she was able to share with him what she did. He knew it couldn’t have been easy for her. He also knew that this was one of the reasons why they felt so strongly connected, that they both experienced things that most people wouldn’t be able to understand. He wished he had been able to tell her his own situation, but as bad as what happened to her was, what happened to him was at a whole different level.