Just a Memory

by Lois Carroll

  “Please, Mac. Every time you move you make the wounds bleed more. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but just lie still.”

  “Water. Can I have some water?” Mac saw the worry etched in the frown on Carolyn’s face. If he was going to be of any use in getting her out of here, he had to maintain what strength he had left.

  “That I can do,” she said, managing a smile. “Here. Can you hold this?”

  She lifted Mac’s good arm and pressed his hand on the toweling bandage over his shoulder. After explaining the nature of her errand to Harry, she got a glass of water and returned. Lifting Mac’s head, she held the glass up to his lips, letting a few drops fall into his mouth. He strained to lift his head to drink more.

  “A little at a time, Mac. We’d better be sure your stomach is ready for this.” She helped him patiently until he swallowed. She lowered his head to the pillow and kissed his forehead.

  Then positioning herself between Mac and Harry, she sat against the headboard with her legs up on the bed. She returned to wiping Mac’s face and neck with the cool cloth. She told him all that had transpired since Harry had brought her here. “He won’t let me take you to a doctor,” she complained.

  Mac ran his tongue over his parched lips. “God, my mouth feels like cotton.”

  She helped him drink another swallow. He watched her and marveled how well she was holding up under the strain. Next he asked questions specifically about his bullet wounds.

  “I’m no doctor, Mac. I don’t know what to say.”

  “I need to know everything that’s wrong with me.”

  “You’re computing the information like a machine. How can you be the victim of such violence and remain in control?”

  “I’m no rookie, Caro,” Mac said as he closed his eyes. “Damn. I have a hell of a headache.”

  “Maybe the fever?”

  He raised his good arm and ran his fingers through his hair toward the back. “Ouch! That’s why.”

  “Turn your head.” Carolyn leaned over to inspect the swollen ridge behind his ear. “You’ve got a good bump, but there’s not any blood there.”

  “Good.” Mac tried to lick his dry lips.

  “I’ve got some lip balm in my purse. Should I put some on your mouth?”

  “That sounds good.”

  She retrieved her purse from where she had dropped it by the door when she first saw Mac. Harry stopped her when she started back toward the Mac.

  “I’ll take that.” He grabbed the bag and dumped the contents on the foot of his bed.

  “I just want that,” she said, pointing to the small tube.

  He picked it up and tossed it to her. Seeing a roll of breath mints, he took them and sat down again, popping them into his mouth. Carolyn covered Mac’s lips generously with the moisturizer and sat down next to him again.

  Mac took her hand. He cursed himself for not realizing the danger to her. “What’s next, Harry?” he asked in a louder voice. “And what the hell is she doing here?”

  No answer. Harry was watching the movie with seemingly total disregard for them.

  Mac used the opportunity to test the strength in his limbs. He bent his legs and then stretched them to find them in working order, though one ankle ached. His good hand held Carolyn’s. That arm was okay but weak like the rest of him. His other arm was useless and in pain all the time that got much worse when he moved it. He had no idea how much blood he’d lost. He might even be too weak to stand up.

  Harry was ignoring them but Mac gambled on the way to get him talking. “At least you can tell me when he’s coming…when Brown Eyes is going to get here.”

  The music came up louder on the television, signaling the end of the program. Harry laughed and stretched. “So when did you figure it out, pretty boy? It’s been a fun game, ya know: Guess the day Mac will remember. We had money down on what date that would be. But nobody won nothin’. We all figured it’d be long before now. I’ve had to stick around this god-forsaken town for weeks, just waiting for the day to come.”

  He looked Carolyn up and down and his laugh became lecherous.

  “I guess you found something to keep your mind off the old case, huh? That was a big mistake, Mac, the first big mistake I’ve seen you make. You never got involved before. But you know that’s what made you so hard to get at before, don’t ya?”

  Harry laughed and the sound made Carolyn shiver. “But we got you now; we got you now,” he said happily. Then with an evil sneer he added, “‘Cause we got her.”

  Late Sunday morning, Hines sat on the edge of Mac’s desk in the Lakehaven Police Station punching the redial button on the phone. “Any word?” He swung the mouthpiece up away from his mouth and gritted his teeth to retain control so he wouldn’t say what he really wanted to say. He listened again, all at once very attentive. “You’re sure. The blood’s a match.” He listened only a moment longer. “Yeah, I know. You’ll call as soon as you have something.”

  He hung up the phone and stood up to stare out the window at the snow falling. They’d found Mac’s blood staining the deck outside his dining room sliding doors. Some of his hair had been pulled from the wood of the doorframe, but Mac was nowhere to be found. He and his gun, even his handcuffs, were gone, but not his coat. It still hung in the closet. So wherever Mac had gone, he’d gone without a coat. In this frigid, snowy weather? Not willingly.

  Hines hit the window frame with his fist as he made his decision. He turned again to the phone. He punched a set of numbers and waited for an answer. “Ellie?”

  He waited a moment and then spoke, interrupting her. “Not yet, but the blood is his. Listen, I need you here. We’re not going to leave a stone unturned and I’m not waiting to hear it from the Sheriff.”

  He nodded as he listened and then ended the conversation with a simple “Thanks.” He flipped open the file numbers of the two other part-time patrolmen in the Lakehaven force and called them. Four people could do what had to be done a lot faster than one. When he had reached all of them, he punched in a long distance number and listened for twelve rings before he slammed down the phone. Morris was still out.

  The phone rang as he rose to study the map on the wall. He dove back to the desk and snatched it up. “Lakehaven Police.”

  “Detective Hines, this is Jean in the Sheriff’s office. We just got a call from a neighbor of one Mrs. Carolyn Blake,” she said, saying the names maddeningly slowly so Hines would be sure to get it. “He said the front door of her house is wide open. The storm door glass is broken and the frame bent. He rang the bell and called out to her, but no one answered.”

  “When was this?”

  “They saw it just a few minutes ago. They live across the street from her house and saw it when they were driving past on their way home from shopping.”

  “Did they go in?” Hines asked.

  “Yeah, the husband did. They were afraid she might be hurt. He walked through the house, but didn’t see anything. The side kitchen doorframe was splintered as if broken in, and there were smashed pieces of cooked potatoes on the kitchen floor. More on the counter. They left everything without touching it and ran home to call us.”

  “Good. I’ve been getting no answer there or at her store,” Hines told her.

  “We’re sending out a car now to check the house. We’ll let you know what we find.”

  “Have someone check her store, too–The Costume Nook. The landlord’s name is Elliot White. He should be able to get you inside if you get no response.”

  Hines called the neighbors who had spotted Carolyn’s broken door and asked them for all the details again and made a note of the time they found the door open.

  “We have to tell you, officer, we couldn’t just stand there looking at the door. We had to go in to see if she was okay. But there was nothing. She wouldn’t leave food out like that, and she would never leave the door open.”

  “Could she have run to the neighbor’s?”

  “We thought of that, so I
called around. Her daughter is still at Judy’s where she’s been all night, but no one has seen Carolyn. Someone did say they thought she had company not long before we got home. They saw a gray car in the driveway.”

  Hines’s silent epithet would have melted the phone if he’d said it out loud.

  There was a muffled sound as the woman put her hand on the phone, but didn’t completely cut out her voice. “Should I tell him, dear? I don’t want to send them on a wild goose chase if it wasn’t her.”

  Someone responded with words that Hines couldn’t make out. She came back to tell him that they saw someone they thought was Carolyn Blake going east on the highway outside of town.

  “It was starting to snow pretty good, and we were both watching the road and other cars in case one skidded. We weren’t going fast, though, and I’m sure it was her. I didn’t see who was driving except I know he was white and had dark hair.”

  “Was it a gray sedan?”

  “Why, yes, now that you mention it, I believe it was.”

  Hines took down the time and all the details she could remember about the gray car and the driver. He asked for Judy’s full name and phone number before ending the conversation. He called Judy to let her know what was happening. They agreed not to worry the girls by telling them Carolyn and Mac were missing.

  “I’ll keep Terri here until I hear from you. You’ll call me as soon as you learn something?”

  “You got it.”

  Hines wrote the time the Martins thought they saw Carolyn on a small flag-type pin and stabbed it in the location of the sighting on the map of the county just as Ellie arrived at the station.

  Ellie didn’t like the look on his face. “Is there any news? Is Mac okay? Please tell me he’s been found.”

  Hines sighed heavily and shook his head. “More bad news. Now Carolyn Blake is missing too.”

  Ellie’s hand flew to her mouth but failed to muffle the tiny shriek completely. “Dear God…”

  Harry looked out the window and then let the drapes fall closed. “Shouldn’t be long now ‘til Morris gets here, unless this damn snow slows ‘em up. God, I can’t wait to get out of this one-joint town.”

  “I hear your boss got a promotion,” Mac said to get him to talk.

  “Yeah. Big shot with more power. He’s in a much better position to get things done on the inside now. So when he says he’s coming, we wait.” Harry leaned back against his pillows, his attention back on the television.

  “Mac, he’s been following you all over,” Carolyn said. “That’s how he knew about me and where I lived. He came to my door for directions a couple of weeks ago.”

  “What?!”

  “I guess he wanted to make sure I lived there,” she responded with a shrug.

  “God, I’d bargain my soul to the devil for you not to be involved in this,” Mac declared. He turned away from her, covering his eyes with his palm as he massaged his temples with the fingers of his good hand.

  Carolyn took his hand back in hers. “Here, let me do that.” She held his hand between her breasts with one hand and rubbed his temples and forehead in small circles with the other.

  After a few moments Mac spoke again. “Hey, Harry, what’ve you got her here for anyway? She’s nothing to you now that you’ve got me. I’m all Brown Eyes wants. In fact he’ll probably be madder than hell that you got her involved. I’ll bet he’s not going to like finding her here at all.”

  But Harry refused to take the bait. His voice was sharp when he answered. “Shut up over there. I’m trying to watch a little TV.”

  “Harry, you’ve got to let her go.” Mac’s voice was threatening, but he had nothing but his voice to threaten with, and they all knew it.

  “I don’t gotta do nothin’.”

  Mac tried a different tack. “When they take you all in I could tell them you let her go so she wouldn’t get hurt. They’re sure to take that into consideration.”

  “Cute. Real cute. Nobody’s goin’ nowheres. Now shut the hell up. Both of you.”

  Mac knew trying to get Harry to release Carolyn was a dead end. But his body was sending him signals that gave him an idea. He wanted to see how much strength he had left in him and it would give him a chance to see the other rooms in the cabin. This was no time to be delicate. “At least you can let me use the bathroom.”

  Harry looked at Mac and must have figured Mac couldn’t escape in his condition anyway. He shrugged and turned back to the TV.

  Carolyn stood as Mac painfully rolled onto his uninjured side and tried to sit up. She pushed the spread out of his way.

  “I don’t think I can walk, Harry. Can you give me a hand?”

  “What I got her here for? Lean on her.”

  Mac could see Harry wasn’t taking any chances getting anywhere near him.

  Carolyn picked up the cloth that fell from his shoulder. She took his uninjured arm in her hands and slowly raised it over her shoulders so she could help him to stand. “Come on. I can get you there,” she promised.

  He managed to get up and leaned heavily on her as dizziness hit him.

  “Steady!” she pleaded.

  He swayed and fought to stay standing. He tried to raise the other arm to hold her and the pain canceled out some of the dizziness for him. His head fell down on her shoulder.

  “Mac! Don’t you dare pass out, because I could never catch you!”

  Mac smiled through his lightheadedness at her sternness. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll do my best.”

  He could smell her herbal shampoo. He longed for two good arms to hold her with. Instead they shuffled together to the bathroom door. Carolyn leaned her shoulder against the doorframe and looked at him questioningly.

  “I’ll be okay from here.” He wished he felt as confident as he sounded, but there was only so much he was willing to have her do for him at this point.

  “You’re sure? This is no time to be modest.”

  He kissed her temple and lowered his arm from her shoulders, reaching for the sink for support. His stomach was churning. He swallowed hard as Carolyn stepped out and closed the door behind him.

  While he took care of his immediate need to be there, he eyed the room as a possible escape route. Maybe, just maybe, the window was big enough to climb out. Not for him, though. He wouldn’t have the strength to climb out even if the window was big enough to accommodate his size. Carolyn was slender enough to go through and tall enough to get down outside safely, he judged.

  Under the camouflage sound of flushing water, he staggered to the window and found it unlocked. Not lockable was more precise. He gave it a push upward. It wouldn’t budge. He wished he could use two hands. He ignored the pain stabbing his chest. His anger and rising panic on top of worrying about Carolyn’s safety led him to gather his waning strength and try again, harder.

  This time the window moved, but too far. It flew open and Mac was thrown off balance against the wall. He hit the glass shelf over the sink with his elbow. The glass shot off the narrow metal shelf holders and smashed into the sink. Lunging back to the window, he just managed to get it shut and turn around again when Harry flew into the room, gun pointed at Mac.

  “What the hell is goin’ on?” He saw Mac leaning against the wall, holding his bad arm. He took in the smashed glass all over and looked back at Mac suspiciously.

  Not wanting Harry’s attention called to the window behind him, Mac said, “I started to pass out. I grabbed for the sink and knocked the shelf off. I’ll be all right in a minute, Harry. I know how very much you care.”

  Mac leaned his head back against the wall and gave a good performance of a dizzy man in a lot of pain. Only he wasn’t acting at all.

  “They just said on TV the state cops have closed the highways ‘cause of the damn snowstorm. I don’t know how Morris will get here now and I don’t want nothin’ happenin’ to ya before he does, got that?”

  “That makes two of us. I don’t want anything happening to me either, Harry.”

  With
a “Hmph!” Harry stepped out of the little room to make room for Carolyn, who had found a broom in the kitchenette. She swept the shards of glass out of the way under the sink.

  Mac watched her careful movements. His shoulder burned and he was getting more lightheaded by the minute. He held out his hand to her and said softly, “Come here.”

  She leaned the broom against the wall and stepped into his arms. They melded together in a kiss that burned straight from their hearts. They longed to have the kiss go on to wherever it would lead, but that wasn’t the reality of the situation. When they ended the kiss reluctantly, Mac held Carolyn’s head against his good shoulder. He kissed her hair and whispered, “We’d better get back in there.”

  He felt warm blood running down his chest, but said nothing. She would discover it soon enough. Carolyn nodded and helped him raise his arm to around her shoulder for support for the walk back.

  “It took you long enough,” Harry said, hardly glancing at them.

  With Carolyn’s help Mac settled in bed. She went through the process of cleaning his chest and stopping the bleeding yet again. She covered him with the spread and resumed her position at his side, holding his hand.

  Mac could see she was exhausted. So was he. The trip to the bathroom had taken a lot out of him. He wanted to shut his eyes and had to fight to stay awake. Hell, it had been hours since he’d been shot. How much longer could he hold out to be sure Carolyn was safe?

  “I gotta get some shut eye.” Harry yawned and stretched. “I’m gonna leave the TV on so I can hear any news bulletins that come on about the weather. But you two are a problem. I got to be sure you ain’t goin’ no place. I got to tie ya up.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Carolyn said at once. “I have no boots or gloves or even a hat, and Mac is too weak to walk. Just how do you think we’d be able to go anywhere?”

  “How would I know, sugar? I didn’t get where I am takin’ chances and I ain’t startin’ now. But to show you what a good guy I am…”