by John Saul
“I don’t want to go up there, Mom,” Lisa said quietly, her eyes beseeching. “I’m scared of Alex.”
Carol patted Lisa’s hand reassuringly. “It’s all right, honey. We’re not going anywhere. I’m … well, I’m just as frightened as you are.” Suddenly Jim appeared in the doorway, and Carol’s attention was diverted from her daughter to her husband.
“I just talked to Marsh,” Jim told them, “and he wasn’t making much sense. And Ellen’s not talking at all. He says she’s just sitting on the sofa, and he’s not sure she’s even hearing what anyone says.”
“Anyone?” Carol asked. “Is someone else there?”
“The police were there. They just left.”
There was a silence. Carol sighed as she came to a decision. “All right,” she said quietly. “If you think you have to go, we’ll all go. I guess you’re right—we can’t just sit here and do nothing.” She stood up, but Lisa remained seated where she was.
“No,” she said, her eyes flooding. “I can’t go.”
And finally, seeing the extent of his daughter’s fear, Jim relented. “It’s okay, princess,” he said softly. “I guess I can understand how you’re feeling.” His eyes moved to his wife, and he offered her a tight smile. “I guess that lets you off the hook, too.”
Carol hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll stay here.” Guiltily, she hoped the relief she was feeling didn’t show, but she was sure it did.
“I won’t stay long,” Jim promised. “I’ll just see if there’s anything I can do, and let them know they’re not alone. Then I’ll be back. Okay?”
Again Carol nodded, and walked with her husband to the front door, where she kissed him good-bye. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I’ve lost my nerve, but I just have. Forgive me?”
“Always,” Jim told her. Then, before he closed the door, he spoke again. “Until I get back, don’t open the door for anyone.”
Then he was gone, and Carol went back to the kitchen, to wait.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Darkness was falling as Alex made the turn off Middlefield Road, and as he started up into the hills on La Paloma Drive, he reached down and turned on the headlights of Raymond Torres’s car. He wondered if he would dream about Dr. Torres tonight—if he chose to live that long—and wondered if, in whatever dreams he might have, he would feel the same emotional pain again, as he had when he dreamed about Mrs. Lewis and Mrs. Benson. With Dr. Torres, he decided, he wouldn’t. Torres’s death was very clear in his memory, and he felt no pain when he thought about it.
But he would dream about Mrs. Evans, and Carolyn, too, and then the pain would come.
There was, he had finally come to believe, still some little fragment of Alex Lonsdale still alive, deep within the recesses of his central brain core. It was that fragment of Alex who was having the dreams, and feeling the pain of what he had done. But when he was awake, there was none of Alex left. Only … who?
Did he even have a name?
Alejandro.
That was the name Dr. Torres had chosen for him, and then carefully built the memories of Alejandro into him. But the emotions that went with Alejandro’s memories were Raymond Torres’s, and those he had carefully left out.
It had, Alex realized, avoided confusion. When he saw the women—the women Torres hated—in the environment of Alejandro’s memory, they had become other people from other times, and Alejandro had killed them.
And why not? To Alejandro, they were the wives of thieves and murderers, and as guilty of those crimes as their husbands.
But in the darkness of night, in the visions generated by the remnants of Alex Lonsdale’s subconscious, they were old friends, people he had known all his life, and he mourned them.
And that had been Torres’s mistake.
For his creation to have been perfect, there should have been none of Alex Lonsdale left.
Ahead of him, the headlights picked up the sign for the park that lay on the outskirts of the village. Alex pulled into the parking lot and shut off the engine.
His father had told him that when he was a boy, he’d played here often, yet he still had no memory of it. His only memory was Raymond Torres’s memory of standing on the street, pleading with his mother to take him to the swings and push him as the other mothers were pushing their children.
“No,” María Torres would mutter. “The park is not for us. It is for los gringos. Mira!” And she would point to the sign dedicating the park to the first American settlers who had come to La Paloma after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had been signed. Then she would take Ramón by the hand and drag him away.
Alex got out of the car and began making his way across the empty lawn toward the swings. Tentatively he settled himself into one of them, and gave an experimental kick with his foot.
The movement had the vaguest feeling of familiarity to it, and Alex began pumping himself higher and higher. As the air rushed over his face and he felt the slight lurch in his stomach at the apex of each arc, Alex realized that this must have been what he’d done as a boy, this must be what he’d loved so much.
He stopped pumping, and let the swing slowly die until he was sitting still once again.
Then, knowing he had much to do before he went to the house on Hacienda Drive where the people who thought they were his parents lived, he left the swing and returned to his car.
He drove on into La Paloma, and turned left before he got to the Square. Two blocks further on, he came to the plaza. In the flickering lights of the gas lamps, the memories of Alejandro began creeping back to him, but Alex forced them out of his consciousness, keeping himself in the present. Only when he drove around the village hall to the mission graveyard did he let the memories come back.
Was this where they would bury him, or would they take him up into the hills above the hacienda and bury him with his mother and his sisters?
No.
They would bury him here, for they would be burying Alex, not Alejandro. Again he got out of the car, and slipped into the little graveyard. Tucked away in a dusty corner, he found the grave he was looking for.
Alejandro de Meléndez y Ruiz
1832–1926
His own grave, in a way, and already sixty years old. There were flowers on the grave, though, and Alex knew who had put them there. Old María Torres, still honoring her grandfather’s memory. Alex reached down and picked one of the flowers, breathing in its fragrance. Then, taking the flower with him, he went back to the car.
In the Square, he stepped over the chain around the tree, and stood for a long time under the spreading branches. Alejandro’s memories were strong again, and Alex let them spread through his mind.
Once more he saw his father’s body swinging limply from the hempen noose knotted around his neck, and felt the unfamiliar sensation of tears dampening his cheeks. He took the flower from Alejandro’s grave and laid it gently on the ground above his father’s grave. Then he turned away, knowing he’d seen the great oak tree for the last time.
Lisa and Carol Cochran were still sitting in the friendly brightness of the kitchen when they heard the car pull up outside, and a door slam. Carol hesitated, then pulled the drawn shades just far enough back to allow her to peer out into the street. A car she didn’t recognize sat by the curb, and it was too dark to see who had gotten out of it. She dropped the shade back into position, and went to the stove, where she nervously poured herself yet another cup of coffee. As soon as Jim had left the house, she had given up any idea of sleeping that night.
“Who was it, Mom?” Lisa whispered, and Carol forced a grin that held much more confidence than she was feeling.
“It’s no one. I’ve never seen the car before, and I don’t think anyone’s in it. Whoever it was must have gone across the street.” But even as she spoke, she had the uncanny feeling that she was wrong, and that whoever had arrived in the car was still outside.
At that moment, the doorbell rang, its normally friendly chime taking on
an ominous tone.
“What shall we do?” Lisa asked, her voice barely audible.
“Nothing,” Carol whispered back. “We’ll just sit here, and whoever it is will go away.”
The doorbell sounded again, and Lisa seemed to shrink away from the sound.
“He’ll go away,” Carol repeated. “If we don’t answer it, he’ll go away.”
And then, as the bell rang for the third time, there was a pounding of feet on the stairs, and through the dining room Carol could see Kim, apparently having leapt from the third step, catching herself before crashing headlong into the door. Knowing what was about to happen, she rose to her feet. “Kim!”
But it was too late. Over her own cry, she heard Kim’s exuberant voice demanding to know who was outside before she opened the door.
“Don’t open it, Kim,” she cried, but Kim only turned to give her an exasperated glare.
“Don’t be dumb, Mommy,” Kim called. “It’s only Alex.” She reached up and turned the knob, then pulled the door open wide.
Carrying the shotgun in his right hand, Alex stepped into the Cochrans’ foyer.
“How long we going to sit here?” Jackson asked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette, then cupped his hand over his lighter as a brief flame illuminated the dark interior of the car they had parked fifty feet up the hill from the Lonsdales’.
“As long as it takes,” Finnerty growled, shifting in the seat in a vain attempt to ease the cramps in his legs. He’d been up too many hours, and exhaustion was beginning to take its toll.
“What makes you so sure the kid’s going to come back here at all?”
Finnerty shrugged stiffly. “Instincts. He doesn’t really have any place else to go. Besides, why shouldn’t he come back here?”
Jackson glanced across at his partner, and took a deep drag on his cigarette, hoping perhaps the smoke might drive away the sleepiness that was threatening to overwhelm him. “Seems to me that if I were in his shoes, this is the last place I’d come. I think I’d be heading for Mexico right about now.”
“Except for one thing,” Finnerty growled. “According to the kid’s dad, the kid couldn’t have done anything, remember?”
“You believe that shit?”
“We saw Alex Lonsdale the night he wrecked himself, remember? By rights, that kid should have been dead. Jesus, Tom, half his head was caved in. But he’s not dead. So who am I to say how they saved him? Maybe they did exactly what Doc Lonsdale says they did.”
“All right,” Jackson replied. Though he still wasn’t accepting the strange tale they’d heard, he was willing to go along with it for the sake of conversation. “So what’s your idea?”
“That maybe the kid was programmed to kill after all, and was also programmed to forget what he’d done, after he’d done it.”
“Now you’re reaching,” Jackson replied.
“Except it accounts for the discrepancy in our notes. Remember how you wrote down that Alex said he parked across from Jake’s last night, and I wrote down that he said he parked in the lot next door?”
“So? One of us heard wrong.”
“What if we didn’t? What if we both heard it right, and we both wrote it down right? What if he told us both things?”
Jackson frowned in the darkness. “Then he was lying.”
“Maybe not,” Finnerty mused. “What if he went down to Jake’s, parked across the street, then changed his mind and went up to Mrs. Benson’s? He kills her, then goes back to Jake’s, and parks in the lot. But he forgets what he did in between the two arrivals, because that’s what he’s been programmed to do. When he tells us everything he remembers about last night, he remembers parking both places, so that’s what he tells us. We didn’t make any mistakes, and he didn’t lie. He just doesn’t remember what he did.”
“That’s crazy—”
“What’s happening in this town is crazy,” Finnerty rasped. “But at least that theory fits the facts. Or at least what we think are the facts.”
“So he’ll come home, because he doesn’t remember what he’s done?”
“Right. Why shouldn’t he come home? As far as he knows, nothing’s wrong.”
“But what if he does remember?” Jackson asked. “What if he knows exactly what he’s doing, and just doesn’t care?”
“Then,” Finnerty said, his voice grim, “we might have to do exactly what his father suggested. We might have to kill him.”
Jackson took two more nervous drags on his cigarette, then stubbed it out in the ashtray. “Roscoe? I don’t think I could do it,” he said finally. “If it comes down to it, I’m just not sure I could shoot anyone.”
“Well, let’s hope it won’t come down to that,” Roscoe Finnerty replied. Then, giving in to his exhaustion, he slid deeper in his seat and closed his eyes. “Wake me up if anything happens.”
“Kim!”
Carol Cochran tried to make the word commanding, but her voice cracked with fear. Nonetheless, Kim turned to gaze at her curiously. “Come here, Kim,” she pleaded. Still Kim hesitated, and gazed up at Alex, her face screwed into a worried frown.
“Did you hurt yourself, Alex?” she asked, her eyes fixing on the cut over his eye.
Alex nodded.
“How?”
“I … I don’t know,” Alex admitted, then turned to look into the kitchen, where Carol and Lisa seemed frozen in place. “It’s all right,” Alex said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
As he spoke the words, Carol took a step forward. “Kim, I told you to come here!”
Kim glanced uncertainly from her mother to Alex, then back to her mother. She backed slowly into the dining room, then turned and dashed on into the kitchen.
When her younger daughter was in her arms, Carol’s strength seemed to come back to her. “Go away, Alex,” she said, the steadiness in her voice surprising even herself. “Just go away and leave us alone.”
Alex nodded, but moved slowly through the dining room until he came to the kitchen door, the gun still clutched in his right hand.
From her chair, Lisa watched Alex’s eyes, and her fear, instead of easing, only grew. There was an emptiness to his eyes that she’d never seen before. It was far beyond the strange blankness she’d almost grown used to over the last few months. Now his eyes looked as if they might be the eyes of a dead man. “Go away,” she whispered. “Please, Alex, just go away.”
“I will,” Alex replied. “I just … I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry for what’s happened.”
“Sorry?” Lisa echoed. “How can you be—” And then she broke off her own words, as her eyes suddenly fell on the shotgun. Alex followed her gaze with his own eyes, and his expression became almost puzzled.
“I didn’t kill anyone,” he said softly. “I mean … Alex didn’t kill anyone. It was the other.”
Lisa and Carol glanced nervously at each other, and Carol shook her head almost imperceptibly.
“I’m not Alex,” he went on. “That’s what I came to tell you. Alex is dead.”
“Dead?” Lisa echoed. “Alex, what are you talking about?”
“He’s dead,” Alex said again. “He died in the wreck. That’s all I came to tell you, so you wouldn’t think he’d done anything.” His eyes fixed on Lisa, and when he spoke again, his voice was strangled, as if the very act of speaking the words was painful for him. “He loved you,” he whispered. “Alex loved you very much. I … I don’t understand what that means, but I know it’s true. Don’t blame Alex for what I’ve done. He couldn’t stop it.”
Suddenly his eyes filled with tears once again. “He would have stopped it,” he whispered. “If so much of him hadn’t died—if just a little more of him had lived—I know he would have stopped it.”
Carol Cochran shakily rose to her feet. “What, Alex?” she whispered. “What would you have stopped?”
“Not me,” Alex breathed. “Him. Alex would have stopped what Dr. Torres did. But I didn’t know. He wouldn’t let me
remember, so I didn’t know. But Alex found out. What was left of him found out, and he’s trying to stop it. He’s still trying, but he might not be able to, because he’s dead.” His eyes suddenly took on a wildness as they focused on Lisa once more. “Don’t you understand?” he begged. “Alex is dead, Lisa!” Then he turned, and shambled back through the dining room and out into the night. A moment later, Carol heard a car door slam and an engine start. And then she heard Kim, and felt the little girl tugging at her arms.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked. “What’s wrong with Alex?”
Carol swallowed hard, then held Kim close. “He’s sick, honey,” she whispered. “He’s very sick in his head, that’s all.” Then she released Kim, and started toward the phone. “I’d better call the police,” she said.
“No!” Carol turned back to see Lisa standing up, her expression suddenly clear. “Let him go, Mama,” she said softly. “He won’t hurt anyone else now. Don’t you understand? That’s what he was trying to tell us. All he wants to do now is die, and we have to let him.” She knelt down, and pulled Kim close. “That wasn’t Alex that was just here, Kim,” she said softly. “That was someone else. Alex is dead. That’s what he was telling us. That he’s dead, and we should remember him the way he used to be. The way he was the night he took me to the dance.” She hesitated, as her eyes flooded with tears. “Do you remember that night, Kim?”
Kim nodded, but said nothing.
“Then let’s remember him that way, sweetheart. Let’s remember how he looked all dressed up in his dinner jacket, and let’s remember how good he was. All right?”
Kim hesitated, then nodded, and Lisa’s gaze shifted to her mother. “Let him go, Mama. Please?” she begged. “He won’t hurt anyone. I know he won’t.”
Carol stood silently watching her daughter for several long seconds, then, at last, moved toward her and embraced her.
“All right,” she said softly. Then: “I’m sorry.”
“I am too,” Lisa replied. “And so is Alex.”
