The Memory Thief

by Don Donaldson

  “Is it all that urgent? I’ve got a lot of other work to do.”

  “Please . . . it would mean a lot to me.”

  The woman hesitated, then said, “I’ll do it this time, but in the future, you need to give us a little breathing room.”

  “I will, I promise.”

  The woman got a pen and a scratch pad from her desk. “Who are the patients?”

  Marti rattled off the names of five patients she remembered as having overflow records in the stack of files she’d reviewed when she’d first arrived. She was about to add a sixth name for good measure, but, noting the increasingly unhappy expression of the clerk as she wrote, decided against it.

  The records here were arranged by number, not patient name, which meant the clerk had to find each name in the computer database, write down the identifying number, then pull the file. The good thing about this procedure for Marti was that the required computer was not on the desk out front, but was somewhere in the back, out of sight.

  Marti had just about decided this was going to work, but as the clerk turned to go, she picked up Nadine’s file and carried it to her desk, where she left it.

  Damn it.

  If the clerk had caught her reading the file when it was left on the counter, it wouldn’t be such a big deal . . . something she’d done out of boredom while waiting. But now . . .

  As the clerk disappeared into the stacks at the far left end of the room, Marti’s heart, already clipping along at a rapid pace, accelerated, for she had a decision to make. To her right, the counter had a gap in it and its top was hinged so it could be lifted, creating a walk-through.

  Go or stay . . .

  Go or stay . . .

  Unable to walk away after coming this far, she ducked under the counter and hurried to the desk, where she pulled Nadine’s file around and flipped up the cover.

  Aware that at best she had only minutes before the clerk returned, she looked at the document that lay on top of the file’s contents and read it in snatches with her eyes flicking between the words and the aisle where the clerk had gone.

  The document turned out to be Nadine’s death certificate, which surprised her. Even though she believed Nadine had committed suicide as the certificate stated, it seemed like there should have been at least the semblance of an investigation. But the sheriff and the ME had apparently thought mental patients didn’t warrant that kind of time.

  She flipped first to the tabbed section labeled HISTORY and ripped through the contents using the speed-reading skills she’d taught herself to get through medical school.

  She read that before Nadine had come to Gibson, she had been a research tech at St. Jude Children’s Hospital in Memphis, just as Rosenblum’s secretary said. She had been committed as a severe bipolar, who was suicidal when she was down and unable to control her anger when she was up, a lovely combination.

  What Marti was really looking for was a note explaining the scar on Nadine’s neck. So she turned next to the section labeled MEDICAL, where she quickly found an entry indicating that around eighteen months ago, Nadine had experienced a bout of appendicitis and had the organ removed at Gibson.

  Appendicitis . . .

  Now that was interesting . . . and curious.

  She made a mental note of the date the operation took place, then moved on.

  She skimmed the rest of the medical section, then, even though she knew she needed to get out of there, turned to PROGRESS. There she found a copy of a letter from Quinn, dated a year after Nadine’s admittance to Gibson. Apparently intended for the judge who’d signed Nadine’s commitment papers, it said that Nadine continued to be a danger to herself and others.

  Considering how normal and functional Nadine seemed that day in the lab, Marti found this conclusion a bit surprising. But the letter was written nearly ten months ago, so maybe she’d improved in the interim. But if that were true, why was she still at Gibson?

  Feeling it was just too risky to continue reading, Marti closed the file and ducked back under the hinged section of counter, standing up just as the clerk returned with the records she’d requested.

  Marti was very lucky not to have been caught, but her visit was actually a failure, as she’d found no explanation for that scar.

  She did, however, carry with her a question that sent her first to her office to dump the unneeded files she’d acquired, then up to Two East, where Sandi Cooper, the ward’s junior nurse, was making up the afternoon pill dispensation. Sandi was concentrating so much on her work, Marti made it to the chart cart without having to engage in any conversation beyond tossing off a cheery good morning as she passed.

  Picking up Odessa’s file, she thumbed through it until she found the entry she’d remembered from her review of the contents the first day she’d arrived for work. Odessa, too, had been operated on at Gibson for a case of appendicitis. And his operation had taken place a mere two days before Nadine’s.

  Both with a case of appendicitis . . . both with unexplained scars on their neck. The correlation between these two things couldn’t be just coincidence. But what did it mean?

  These links she’d discovered between Nadine and Odessa made it difficult to give in to the little voice that kept telling her if she persisted in this Nadine fixation, it could put next Monday’s plans for Odessa at risk. So she let her mind go where it would.

  In med school, because she had an uncanny ability to pick the correct answer from the distracters even when the topic was something she knew little about, Marti always tested better than her fund of knowledge would have predicted. Today, the part of her mind responsible for that sent her back to her office, where she picked up the phone book and took it to her car.

  From Nadine’s death certificate, Marti had learned that the medical examiner’s name was Frank Nichols. After driving to the In and Out Mart two miles from the hospital, she looked him up in the phone book and found that the only Nichols listed was a pediatrician.

  ME and a doc for kids . . . odd combination.

  She had no idea how medico legal investigations were conducted in this county, but because the only listed phone number for Nichols was his private medical practice, she concluded that when an autopsy was required, the body was probably sent to some central facility, maybe as far away as Nashville. But Nichols had signed off so quickly on Nadine’s death, Marti doubted he’d even considered an autopsy. He might not have even removed Nadine’s clothing for a complete examination of her injuries. All of which meant he probably wouldn’t be able to answer Marti’s question.

  And how was she going to ask it anyway? It was going to sound really strange. “Yes, Dr. Nichols, I’m calling from Gibson State Hospital about the incident that happened there yesterday . . . We were wondering . . . did Nadine Simpson have an appendectomy scar?”

  And suppose Nichols mentioned the call to Quinn? Even though she’d be using a pay phone, Quinn might somehow link her to the inquiry.

  No, she couldn’t do it that way. But she could ask . . .

  Having decided on a plan, she got out of the car and punched Nichols’s number into the pay phone keypad. A female voice answered even before Marti heard it ring. “May I speak to whoever handles the medical examiner records, please.”

  “Hold on . . .”

  Another female came on the line. “Karen speaking. How may I help you?”

  “This is Gibson State Hospital calling. One of our patients, Nadine Simpson, committed suicide yesterday. Dr. Nichols has already signed off on the death certificate, and we were wondering where in the process the body is at the moment.”

  “Let me check.”

  After a short interval, Karen returned. “It’s been sent to Edwards Brothers for cremation, just as Dr. Quinn instructed.”

  Marti thanked Karen for her help, went back to the car, and picked up the ph
one book again.

  Edwards Brothers . . .

  It was a funeral home on Clifton Street. Where the devil was that?

  Two minutes later, having obtained the directions to the funeral home from the clerk in the store, she returned to her car, fired up the engine, and left the parking lot faster than she’d entered it, hoping she wouldn’t arrive at Edwards Brothers too late.

  She’d never have considered making a personal appearance at Nichols’s office to inquire about Nadine, but the funeral home, being once removed from the action, was a different matter. Still, she felt very uncomfortable just walking in, looking like she normally did. So, despite the need to get there ASAP, she sped into Linville, grabbed a few things from the Super Saver drugstore, and hurried home. There, she blackened her eyebrows, applied a dark lipstick, hid her short hair under a slouchy hat she’d brought from California, and donned a duster that would make it difficult for anyone to guess her weight.

  EDWARDS BROTHERS funeral home was in an old Queen Anne four-square house whose columns and trim-work needed paint. Half the yard had been converted to an asphalt parking lot. If their sign were to be believed, the brothers were A PILLAR OF STRENGTH IN A TIME OF NEED. Prospective customers were also advised that the place was AIR-CONDITIONED, and there was a PAYMENT PLAN AVAILABLE.

  Preferring not to go in the front door, where she would likely encounter someone practiced in the art of visitor scrutiny, Marti followed the asphalt around to the rear of the house.

  The brothers might be a pillar of strength, but they were also an untidy pair, for the back of the place was a mess. The cedar fence around the parking lot was falling over, there was a big pile of old lumber near the rear property line, and there were bits of Styrofoam everywhere. The parking lot itself had sunken in several places, and the low areas were full of water that glistened with an iridescent gasoline slick. Through a sagging gate in the rear of the fence, Marti saw a separate weed-choked enclosure that contained stacks of rusting fifty-five-gallon drums. Reminded of the crematorium in Georgia that had been running a little behind and was discovered to have hundreds of bodies stacked around the place, Marti briefly wondered if Nadine might be in one of those drums.

  She parked her car in a spot that was dry, then, in one more attempt to look like someone else, she took off her glasses and put them on the seat. Leaving the car, she walked up to the big metal door that seemed to serve as the funeral home’s rear entrance, where she turned the door handle and pushed.

  As the door opened, she paused, expecting to hear an alarm go off. But all remained quiet. Inside, she found herself in a well-lit storeroom shared by more fifty-fivegallon drums, a lot of cardboard litter, and caskets—some in crates, some ready for occupancy.

  She made her way across the storeroom and went through the door at the opposite end, entering a white tile-lined room that smelled faintly of embalming chemicals. There were three gurneys in the room, each bearing something lumpy covered with a heavy cotton sheet.

  Could she be that lucky?

  She walked over to the nearest gurney, took hold of the smallest bit of the covering sheet she could get between her thumb and forefinger and pulled, uncovering the cadaver’s head.

  It was an old woman with drool dried on her cheeks.

  Oh this is fun, Marti thought sarcastically as she re-covered the woman and moved on to the next gurney.

  This time she found a young man with a head wound so horrible he was probably going to need a closed-casket funeral.

  One left . . .

  She gripped the sheet and pulled. At practically the same instant that she realized she was looking at the remains of an ancient black man, she heard the door on the far side of the room open.

  “Who the hell are you?” an angry voice said. “Get away from there.”

  The man who’d caught her looked like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family TV show, only Fester’s face was never as red as this guy’s. He had on a rubber apron and was pushing a blue furniture dolly that Marti thought he might use to drive her from the building.

  Marti launched into the story she’d made up on the way over. “I’m Lori Simpson, Nadine Simpson’s sister. They told me her body was here. I haven’t seen her in years. When I heard she was dead, I came right away, hoping to see her one last time.”

  If this worked, she was going to ask if she could be left alone with Nadine for just a minute or two to commune with her departed spirit.

  “What’s wrong with our front entrance?”

  “Didn’t want to make a fuss. I just wanted to see my sister.”

  Fester’s manner suddenly softened. “Honey, I’m sorry to say, you’re too late. She’s already been cremated.”

  Marti’s heart sagged with disappointment. “I was afraid that might be the case.”

  “Since you’re her sister, you might be able to explain something to me. It’s in here . . .”

  Fester pushed his dolly to the side and motioned for her to follow as he went back the way he’d come in.

  The next room was similar to the one they’d just left, but in an alcove straight ahead Marti saw the crematory, a long, blue metal structure about six feet high with some data-recording equipment attached to it.

  Fester went to a stainless-steel bench against one wall, picked up something, and brought it back to where Marti waited.

  “I found this in the crematory after the burn. It’s not uncommon for there to be metal surgical objects among the cremains, clips, screws, mending plates . . . but I’ve never seen anything like this. Do you know what it is?”

  Fester held out a black object about an inch long and a quarter of an inch wide that had a melted appearance.

  Marti took it from him and looked at it more closely.

  “I’m puzzled, too. May I keep it? Just to remind me of her?”

  A door to the right opened, and a slim, blond man with the tallest forehead Marti had ever seen came in.

  “What’s going on, Jonathan? Who’s this woman?”

  “The sister of the suicide from Gibson. I was just showing her that odd thing I found. She’d like to keep it as a remembrance.”

  “I have no problem with that as long as you’ve established her identity and kinship to the deceased.”

  Jonathan looked at Marti. “Do you have anything you could show us?”

  Marti’s mind suddenly felt like one of those phony cans of peanuts whose lid had been removed, releasing a bunch of spring-loaded worms. All she could think to say was, “Afraid I don’t. I discovered on the way over here I’d left my wallet back in my room at the motel. I’ll go get it and come back.”

  She turned to leave the way she’d entered.

  “Where’s the black object?” tall forehead asked.

  “Miss, I’m afraid until you prove who you are, you’ll have to leave it here,” Jonathan said.

  Reluctantly, her face burning at having been tripped up, Marti gave it back.

  “See her out, Jonathan,” tall forehead said, with an inflection that made it clear he knew she wouldn’t be returning.

  A minute later, as she pulled from the funeral home parking lot onto Clifton Street, Marti hoped the Edwards brothers hadn’t called the cops. All the way back to her cottage to remove her disguise, she kept checking the rearview mirror for flashing lights.

  By the time she finally reached the Blue Sky Farm driveway, she’d decided it was far too risky to pursue her suspicions that Quinn was up to something sneaky with his purported mind-reading test. Leave it alone, accomplish what you came here to do, and leave, she told herself.

  THAT SAME afternoon, Oren Quinn walked along the sidewalk of a strip mall in Jackson, Tennessee, the tiny hole in his briefcase aligned with the young girl in the short skirt a few feet in front of him. Inside the briefcase, positioned so its lens was peering thr
ough the hole, a digital movie camera recorded every sensuous movement of her legs and thighs as she headed for her car after her shift at the Radio Shack.

  His little film was a work in progress. And no part of it had been easy. First, he’d had to find just the right subject; he preferred to think of her as a subject rather than the term outsiders might use. To qualify, she had to be blond, between eighteen and twenty-five, with long hair, and, of course, she had to be attractive. Just as important, she had to live alone in a place with the appropriate geography.

  He would have preferred not knowing her name, but in order to determine exactly which of the units she occupied in the quadriplex where she lived, it had been necessary to learn who she was. It was something that, when it was over, he would try hard to forget.

  Just fulfilling the selection criteria had taken a month. Then he’d started on his film. He couldn’t risk her realizing she was being followed, so he’d been able to capture only a single angle and a few seconds of footage on each trip. It was all so tedious that were it not for the fact this was definitely going to be the last one, whatever the outcome, he might have packed it in.

  Today, he managed to get about twelve seconds of footage before she reached her car, not a bad day’s work. One or two more trips and they should be ready to proceed.

  Chapter 14

  FRIDAY EVENING, Marti closed the door on the bungalow’s dishwasher and was wondering whether she should run it for such a small load when she heard the sound of a car engine approach the house. The engine stopped and a door slammed. Going to a front window, she saw Clay Hulett walking toward the porch. She had the door open even before he knocked.

  “I see you still have your eyebrows,” she said. “So I guess you handled that fire the other day successfully.”

  “A couple kids set the inside of a junked car on fire. It wasn’t much as fires go.”

  “I guess you’re wondering about my phone call to you yesterday.”

  “It did rouse my curiosity.”

  After a lifetime of hiding who she was from people, there was no way she was going to tell Clay about her memory loss or anything else that had been happening. Why should she? They barely knew each other. So she had decided to do what, by now, came naturally . . . she’d lie.