The Girl in Kellers Way

by Megan Goldin

  ‘It might seem frightening,’ she agreed. ‘But it has positive applications. If we can plant new memories then we can help people who have suffered from trauma. Soldiers returning from war with post-traumatic stress disorder could be given replacement memories to forget a traumatic incident in the battlefield. By the same token, as you’ve pointed out, this field is filled with ethical dilemmas.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘For example, to do this particular study we had to create false traumatic memories,’ she says. ‘But that would be unethical because a trauma, even a false trauma, can be harmful. And it’s unethical to do anything harmful to research subjects.’

  ‘So how did you get around that problem?’

  ‘Well, our two lead researchers volunteered to have false memories implanted.’

  ‘You mean Matthew and Laura West?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Helen, playing nervously with a gold bangle on her wrist. ‘Nothing major. The memory Matthew had planted in his mind was of almost drowning as a boy.’

  ‘And Laura?’ I asked. She didn’t respond. ‘What about Laura?’ I repeated. ‘What was her fear?’

  ‘Equinophobia,’ Helen answered eventually. ‘A fear of horses. Her implanted memory was that she’d almost been killed in a horseback riding accident when she was a child. It made her terrified of horses.’

  ‘Did she try to overcome her phobia?’ I asked. ‘By getting riding lessons?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Laura dropped out of the study. It was very problematic. The study, I mean.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘It wasn’t possible to do a study that tested the boundaries of memory without implanting highly traumatic memories and, as I said, we weren’t ethically able to do that. But by using the researchers as subjects instead, we were injecting bias into the study. No peer-reviewed journal would publish an article with such a flawed methodology. In the end Professor West, Matthew, took the study to a local college and focused on less controversial elements of the same general principle.’

  ‘Such as what?’

  ‘Implanting insignificant memories in subjects.’

  ‘What would be considered an insignificant memory?’ I asked.

  ‘Bad memories around food or drink. Getting a subject to believe that when he was a boy he came out in hives after eating raspberry jam. That sort of thing.’

  ‘And what were the results of that study?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t involved. But I gathered they had some good data. A person who believed he’d once gotten food poisoning from eating a hard-boiled egg suddenly stopped eating eggs. That sort of thing. The trouble was it couldn’t be properly quantified. The sample was too small. And in the end . . . ’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘In the end?’ I prompted.

  ‘Well, Laura died and Matthew lost interest in the study. From what I heard, he didn’t apply for the funding to be renewed. Eventually, he shut it down.’

  ‘Do you know where I might find the documentation from the study? Initial results, a list of subjects?’

  She picked up her glass of water and drank it until it was empty. I could see her mind ticking as she thought through her possible answers.

  ‘I don’t know what happened to those documents,’ she said finally. ‘I tried to access them a couple of years ago as a reference point for my own research, but they weren’t in the system at either university.’

  ‘The documents disappeared?’ I asked. ‘Just like that?’

  ‘It believe they did.’

  ‘Is that usual?’

  She said nothing. I saw her swallow again. ‘It’s not usual,’ she finally ventured.

  ‘I understand that Professor West’s new research interest is unconnected to memory?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He has recently produced important work in the area of impulse control. He’s making a name for himself in that field.’

  I knew there was more to it than she was letting on. ‘But?’ I said. ‘I can tell there’s a “but” somewhere.’

  ‘No,’ she said, still unable to meet my eyes. ‘There’s no but. Impulse control was Laura’s area of interest and it’s good that someone is continuing her work.’

  ‘Did he plagiarise Laura’s research?’ I asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ she said. ‘Laura did extensive preparatory work in this area. His work wouldn’t exist without Laura’s contribution.’

  I thanked Helen for her time and showed her out. Picking up the work where his wife left off was hardly a crime. But could it be a motive for murder? Even that seemed far-fetched for a couple almost universally described as deeply in love, even if he couldn’t keep his pants zipped up.

  Helen Williams, on the other hand, had at least two reasons to want Laura West dead. She’d clearly had a crush on Matthew West, if not a full-blown affair. If that wasn’t enough, Laura was trying to get her fired. I could tell Helen still had a soft spot for Matthew West from the way she said his name and the way she refused to say anything negative about him, even though she clearly had reservations about his research.

  When the interview was over, I ran a check on the charitable foundation that Matthew West set up in Laura West’s memory. Helen Williams had received several generous grants from it over the years. I mulled the implications of her conflicts of interest as I headed out to meet Will for an early lunch.

  ‘Hey Will,’ I said, joining him in a red vinyl window booth at a diner two blocks from our office. ‘Did Matthew West’s alibi check out?’

  ‘It sure did,’ he said, biting into a BLT and speaking with his mouth half full. ‘Matthew West has very good taste in women. Chelsea Marshal was a stunner. The wife of his best friend, by the way.’

  ‘So she confirms she was with him over the weekend when Laura West was murdered?’

  ‘All afternoon and all night,’ he said after swallowing his food. ‘She said her husband was abroad at a different conference, in Shanghai. And she spent most of the weekend with Matthew West in Charlotte. She joined him at his hotel after lunch on the Saturday and stayed until breakfast on Sunday. They spent the whole time in bed except on the Saturday evening when he went to the gala dinner for a couple of hours. Then they resumed their dirty weekend.’

  ‘So,’ I said after processing the implications of that information. ‘Sounds like Matthew West is a first-class wife cheater, but his sexual indiscretion probably rules him out as a murder suspect for the simple reason that it gives him a solid alibi. What else do you have?’

  ‘Something very interesting,’ he said as the waiter brought my chicken caesar sandwich.

  ‘How interesting?’

  ‘I was working on the Henderson case this morning,’ he said. ‘I went to his old college to access his student records. Turns out he paid his way through school by working at a campus burger joint. So I went over there as well, and you won’t believe what I found in his employee records.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘His ex-girlfriend was none other than Matthew West’s second wife. Julie West.’

  ‘Damn, Will.’ I thumped the table. ‘You know how I hate coincidences.’

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Julie

  I’ve made a decision. I’m not going to allow Emily to destroy my life. It’s because of Emily that my marriage hangs by a thread. It’s because of Emily that I may lose Alice. It’s because of Emily that everything I have built is teetering on the edge of oblivion.

  Now comes the hard part: figuring out how to get her out of our lives. A guilt trip might work. I could tell her what a divorce would do to Alice. I could convince her to back off for the good of the child. Except that might not mean much to Emily. She doesn’t strike me as the type to lie awake at night racked by guilt for destroying a family.

  Emily looks particularly pleased with herself this morning, nonchalantly swinging her leather satchel as she walks to her lunchtime yoga class. I follow her wearing my university g
ear, a baseball cap and glasses. She doesn’t notice me. I’m wallpaper. I put my hand inside my heavy purse and run my palm over the cold metal barrel of my pistol. Its weight is reassuring, especially when I see the secret smile on that bitch’s face. She’s thinking about her morning rendezvous with my husband.

  Matt left home early, long before I woke up. He makes no effort to cover up his transgressions. He doesn’t care what I think anymore, so why should I? Why should I be the one to show an ounce of common decency when nobody else does?

  Emily’s yoga class goes for fifty minutes. I watch through the window of the yoga studio door until the students move into their first pose. Then I head to the locker room down the corridor. I unlock Emily’s locker using the combination code that I wrote in a notebook when I first started my surveillance.

  I take out her purse from the metal shelf and remove the key to her apartment. I would have preferred the easier option of using the key she’d given Matt, but I couldn’t find it when I snuck into the garage and searched his car again. I don’t know where he hides it now.

  Copying a key is simple if you plan properly. I found out how to do it from a YouTube video by a smart-ass kid who never quite explains what he does with the keys he copies.

  I take Emily’s key ring to a shower stall. There I loop a thread through the hole in the top of the key and shove it deep into a block of softened paraffin wax that I bought at an art supply store. I leave the key in there for five minutes to set and then put the paraffin block in a freezer pack that I’ve brought with me.

  It takes forty minutes until it is cold enough for me to remove the key without damaging the indentations in the wax. With just minutes until Emily is due back in the locker room, I snip off the thread, wipe the key clean and put the keyring back in Emily’s locker. I walk right past her in the corridor as she comes out of her yoga class.

  Step two is even easier. Back at home, I shove epoxy putty into the cavity in the paraffin block created by the key. When it’s set, I break the paraffin block by hitting it with a brick on my patio floor. It cracks to reveal a key made from putty with all the ridges perfectly replicated. A shady locksmith across town uses that to cut me a real key in two minutes flat. It costs me ten bucks and it’s worth every cent.

  The next morning, Matt leaves early again for yet another morning rendezvous at Emily’s house. I hear his car backing out of the driveway not long after dawn. I drift off once he’s gone. My sleep is filled with images of the two of them writhing together in her bed. When my alarm goes off, I wake Alice.

  After I drop off Alice at school, I head to the university and wait until Emily enters the auditorium for her first lecture of the day. Then I quickly double back to her apartment, which I know is empty because Matt is the one teaching her morning class. I slide my key into her apartment lock and pray under my breath that it works. It opens with a click.

  The blinds are half drawn. The apartment is tidy and feminine, just as I’d imagined it. Though there are no photographs of ballet dancers on the wall. The place is filled with Emily’s distinctive floral scent that I know so well because Matt brings it home every night.

  On the counter are two coffee cups, still warm to the touch when I press the back of my hand against them. Two cereal bowls are in the sink. The bed is not properly made. Not a surprise. Matt always leaves it to me to make the bed. The sheets are rumpled. The quilt is half on, half off the bed. One of the pillows has fallen to the floor. I pick it up with hands clad in disposable gloves. I put the pillows on the mattress, one next to the other. I smooth down the bottom sheet before throwing on the quilt so that it’s all nice and neat.

  I check the cupboard under the bathroom sink and find a toiletry bag inside. It’s black. Masculine. Inside is a toothbrush, male shaver, and the same shaving lotion brand that Matt uses.

  In the kitchen pantry is a jar of Matt’s favourite coffee and the cereal brand he eats for breakfast. It’s as if Matt has another home. Another wife. All that’s left is for her to move into our house and for him to kick me out. Alice is still so young, she’d eventually adapt to another mother. With time, she’d forget about me.

  I open the drawer of the table in the entrance hall. There is a pile of greeting cards tied together with an elastic band. They’re for Emily’s birthday in November. Almost five months ago. One of them is unsigned. It’s written in black ink, in the distinctive jagged handwriting that Matt uses. Their affair has been going on for months.

  Matt has been away a few times at conferences. He doesn’t take me along. I’ve asked often enough. I thought myself enlightened, letting him go on a golfing weekend with the boys to Florida back in February. Now, I question every excuse he has ever given me. Every place he has gone overnight without me. He has been lying to me for months. I’ve been gullible, and stupid, and incredibly naive.

  No, Emily. It stops here. It stops now.

  In the kitchen, I take a glass tumbler out of the cupboard and fill it up with water from the faucet. When I’m done drinking, I smash the glass in the sink. I put the broken pieces in a plastic bag, which I tie up and store in my purse to throw out later. I collect the tiny slivers of glass lying in the sink and carry them in the palm of my hand to the bedroom, where I pull off the quilt and scatter the shards on Emily’s mattress. Instead of rose petals, the two of them will get what they deserve. I neatly arrange the quilt on top.

  On a corner table next to her dresser is a framed photograph of Emily with her arms around her parents at the Washington Monument. They obviously love their daughter very much. I almost feel bad for them.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Mel

  The fingerprint report was in a large brown envelope waiting on my desk when I returned to the office. The lab had expedited the job for me.

  Julie West’s fingerprints were all over the photographs that she’d looked at when I stopped by her house. I’d bagged the photos in the car after the meeting and taken them straight to the lab. It was sheer good luck that she’d handled the photos so thoroughly. I could hardly let good forensic material go to waste. If truth be told, I was hoping she’d get her fingerprints all over those pictures, which is why I’d gone to see her.

  Julie was a person of interest because of the rumours I’d heard from her old college classmates that she’d had an affair with Matthew West while he was still married to Laura. She was also one of the last people to see Laura West alive, at the horse ranch. That was motive and opportunity right there.

  There was a nervousness about her, a palpable anxiety that she tried to hide during our meetings. I never trust people who can’t look me in the eye. Whenever I talked to her, Julie West looked everywhere but at me.

  I took the fingerprint report from the envelope and opened it with a certain amount of expectation, the same feeling I have when putting a piece of a jigsaw puzzle in a gap to see if it fits.

  ‘She’s clean,’ I said to Will after I’d digested the information in the report. ‘Julie West is absolutely clean. A model citizen.’

  ‘Yeah, those are the ones I worry about the most,’ he said absently. ‘Hey, do you want to come with me to the lab? Dennis wants to go over the forensics for the Henderson case.’

  ‘Might as well,’ I said. ‘After that I have to head over to my kids’ school. I promised to help out at Joe and Sammy’s baseball club barbecue tonight.’

  Dennis was waiting for us by the garage of the forensics building, at the back of the lot. He was chewing gum rapidly.

  ‘Nicotine,’ he said in answer as we approached. ‘I’m trying to quit again. Better to chew it than smoke it. Right?’

  Dennis opened the garage door with a remote control to reveal the damaged silver car I’d last seen weeks before, crushed against a tree at Kellers Way. I got the impression that Dennis knew something we didn’t and he was enjoying this moment of superiority.

  Under the fluorescent light inside the garage, patches of dry blood were clearly visible on the car upholstery. Th
ere were hard crusts of congealed blood on the steering wheel and blood splatter on the driver’s window, where Alexander Henderson’s head was resting awkwardly when his body was found.

  ‘Let me take you through what happened,’ said Dennis. ‘The driver hit his head against the side window on impact.’ Dennis used a laser pointer to indicate the first point of impact against the side window.

  ‘His head ricocheted and then hit the steering wheel, which is why we have plenty of blood on the window and the steering wheel panel. Here. And here.’ Dennis pointed the laser at the locations of blood splatter in the car.

  ‘The blood over there was probably from his nose. The autopsy showed his nasal septum was crushed. We also have blood on the head rest and the seat, possibly from the arm wound after he was cut by a broken whiskey bottle that was loose in the car.’ He pointed the laser at dark patches on the fabric of the seat.

  ‘Presumably that’s all standard in a car accident of this type?’ I asked.

  ‘It is.’ Dennis nodded in agreement.

  ‘So why are we here?’ asked Will.

  ‘What isn’t standard is that we found blood drips here.’ Dennis pointed with his gloved finger to the edge of the front passenger seat. ‘It means the driver wasn’t killed on impact. It suggests Henderson leaned over. Maybe he tried to get out of the car on the passenger side. But he was too injured to climb out, so he fell back into the driver’s seat, where he died.’ He paused to allow us to take it all in. I still didn’t get why this was putting a glint of excitement into Dennis’s grey eyes.

  ‘Within the congealed blood over here,’ he continued, again pointing to the drops of blood on the front passenger seat, ‘we found a partial fingerprint.’

  ‘Which means it was applied after the accident?’ I said.

  ‘That’s right,’ responded Dennis. He pointed to the door. ‘We also found a partial bloodied print on the front passenger door handle. It too would have been applied after the accident. Neither print belongs to the driver. Both prints were on top of the bloody surface. That means someone was in the car with the driver after the accident.’