For Want of a Memory Page 3

  He looked around and sighed. This was going to take hours to straighten out, and they were hours that had to be spent, since Mrs. Custer was involved. It was plain, based on the ether-soaked rag, and the statements of a dozen witnesses, that the three had been trying to abduct Mrs. Custer. Then there was the accident. Dozens of witnesses also confirmed that a passing car had disrupted the kidnapping attempt. The problem was that nobody had gotten a license plate, and their descriptions of the car would have filled a small sized used car lot. There would be plenty of paint transfer to ID the suspect vehicle, when it was found, but he couldn't send out an APB based on what they had so far. At least he knew the car was silver, since it had left silver paint all over the door of the van.

  Moe had been found unconscious by first responders, still lying in the street beside the van, a cheap .45 caliber pistol in his hand. It had been fired a number of times, but they wouldn't know how many bullets they had to search for until the crime scene techs got there and processed the weapon. That model held eight rounds and almost everybody said they'd heard at least five shots, though nobody could say who he'd been shooting at.

  Harper had four patrolmen guarding the scene, which covered an area from the middle of the street to the entire front yard of the childcare center.

  He sighed. At least they had the perps, but it was going to be a long day.

  * * *

  Kris peered through the windshield. He had the wipers on now, because it was snowing hard. They made a funny sound as they went past the bullet hole in the windshield. The heater was going full blast, but not making much of a dent in the cold rushing through the missing back window. He'd realized a while back that the radio had stopped working for some reason, but he had much bigger problems than that.

  He had made it through Mill Valley, and it wasn't far now to Pembroke. His head wound had finally stopped bleeding, but the whole left side of his jacket and shirt had soaked up an alarming amount of blood. His vision still came and went, which was why it had taken him hours to get as far as he had. Three times he'd had to pull over and sit, until he could see to go on. He'd put his cell phone back in his briefcase because the urge to use it to call for help was almost overpowering. He knew he couldn't do that, though. He had to get to his rental first, where he could get cleaned up and rest. Then maybe he could figure out what to do after that.

  He was so tired. Another twenty miles and he could get into the house, clean up, and then decide what to do. The road turned suddenly and he felt the front wheels break loose for a second or two on the slippery surface. He had to pay better attention. Only one headlight was working and it reflected mostly blowing snow.

  He knew he was in trouble. There couldn't be any way out of that. But at least he could rest a while, before making a call and turning himself in. He'd have time to call his publisher and get a recommendation for an attorney too.

  Other than pulling over because his vision was blurred, he hadn't stopped. He'd watched the gas gauge constantly for the first half hour, worrying that a bullet had hit the tank, but there had been no unreasonable drop by the needle.

  The wipers were caking up with frozen slush. He thought about stopping and knocking the stuff off, so they'd clear the windshield better. He was afraid that if he got out and moved around, though, that he'd find something else wrong with him. He'd been hunched over the wheel, his hands frozen to it for so long, that he wasn't sure if the pains he was feeling were associated with that ... or with other bullet wounds.

  Five more miles, now. Then he could rest and get warm.

  * * *

  Lou Anne Rowan hustled from the babysitter's front door to her car, which was still running. It was a miserable night, but she knew her boss would bitch and moan if she didn't show up for work. It was unlikely there would be much work to do, but he wouldn't care about that.

  She felt lucky that she'd met Roslynn. She had to drive four miles out into the country to get Ambrose there, but Roslynn was willing to watch him from eleven-thirty at night until two the next afternoon, while Lou Anne worked the graveyard shift at "The Early Girl Eatery," a 24 hour diner on highway six, and then got some sleep. Working nights let Lou Anne spend her afternoons and evenings with her four year old, who was the light of her life and made all the horse shit worth putting up with. Besides, when he was at Roslynn's, he had kids his own age to play with during the mornings.

  While others met in this story thus far were all unremarkable in appearance, Lou Anne broke the mold. In fact, she'd broken it when she was thirteen and had been ever-so-noticeable ever since. The truth was that she would stand out in any crowd the average man ... or woman ... might wish to assemble.

  Standing five feet nine inches in her bare feet, she had the body of a well developed fifteen year old. Pale skin, with a rosy hue, made her look like she'd just stepped in from the cold. A broken nose from her youth had healed slightly crooked, but no one really noticed that because her lips, while small, were lush in a way that drew attention to them. Her voice might have had something to do with that, because her voice sounded like she might be pushing thirteen.

  Lou Anne was no child, however. At twenty-four she had been a lover half a dozen times, a mother once, and a thoroughly remarkable looking woman the entire time.

  With the onset of puberty, Lou Anne had decided she wanted to look different from the other girls. She'd accomplished that by the simple expedient of shaving the sides of her head, leaving a wide mohawk of sorts, except that the hair that was left wasn't stiffened or cut short. Pick a color of the rainbow and she had dyed what was left of her hair that color. She had also made it some colors that are not in the rainbow, like electric pink. Occasionally, she even left it the almost black that she'd been born with. That hair was left to flop down over one side of her face. It was long enough that it went to her jaw, sometimes, but was usually cut short enough to leave both ears clear. Startlingly intense eyes peered through that hair, when it fell across her face.

  Doc Martin's, leather vest, and a certified, genuine Harley Davidson motorcycle jacket made her look like a rebellious and dangerous girl. In reality, though, she was a sweet young woman. She didn't go in for the dark makeup that would have suggested she had goth tendencies. She merely liked looking as though she'd just as soon kill you as argue. It made getting through high school much less tense. Of course, most high school bullies tend to shy away from what they believe to be Satan-worshiping lesbians, for fear of having a hex put on them. Tattoos had been added, as sort of a garnish, when she was fifteen. She'd actually had her parents' consent for that, which gives you some idea of the freedom she'd enjoyed as she grew up. She disdained piercings, except in the ears and her navel.

  Lou Anne had also disdained college, and had taken a job as a waitress in a small town she found herself in one day. That didn't mean she was uneducated. Far from it. She'd always been curious about things, and loved learning just for the sake of learning. She was, in fact, probably better educated than the average college sophomore, though not in any specific educational track. She didn't think college was a bad idea ... she just hadn't gone to one.

  Some of that was because, out of the abandonment of joyfully exploring sex, came an unplanned little bundle of trouble, that had turned into a bundle of joy. With a little boy to support, she didn't feel like she'd gotten a raw deal. She'd just needed a job and taken the one that was offered, though her future boss did look askance at her, initially.

  She was popular at The Early Girl for a lot of reasons. She was a good waitress, for one thing. Her memory for details was astonishing. She knew her regular customers and what they liked, or might like. Those customers liked her for that, but one of the main reasons they returned again and again, was that the diner, situated on a well traveled highway, also got a lot of one-time customers. It was watching Lou Anne deal with those customers that was sometimes entertaining.

  Lou Anne didn't take shit from anybody, but she wasn't obvious about it. If a trucker pinched her b
utt, she just smiled in that flirty way she had, and then accidentally spilled hot coffee in his lap. Whole plates of food had ended up on shirt fronts too, or in laps, if the offending customer didn't drink coffee.

  Regulars liked to make bets on who she would flirt with, and who she wouldn't ... what she would take, and what she wouldn't ... who she would smile at, and who would receive her wrath. To Hank, the owner, she was a pain in the butt, but the regulars made sure he knew that wherever she went, they'd go too, so he had to put up with her. Besides, sometimes she even flirted with him ... just a little ... if he was being nice to her.

  * * *

  The first second Kris knew something was wrong was when the world lurched and he was thrown to one side. He had nodded off, and there was no shoulder or ditch to drive on. There was only a drop off, beyond which were thirty feet of precipitous downhill terrain, at the bottom of which was a river.

  The car rolled five times, traversing those thirty feet. Not being strapped in, Kris flopped around in the interior, amidst every loose item in the car, which filled the air with projectiles. The driver's side window exploded in a hail of glass chips, which were added to the storm of things hitting his body. Rolling one last time, the car came to rest on the frozen surface of the river, upside down.

  Barely conscious, Kris tried to gather his wits. His head wound had reopened, and he could feel blood running into his eyes and down his face. A horrible knocking noise came from the engine, which suddenly died. He smelled gasoline, and terror produced a surge of adrenaline. He wiggled through the broken window in a silence that was almost shocking after the noise of the car rolling down the hill. He became aware of creaks and cracking noises as his hands scrabbled on the ice.

  His legs had just cleared the window when a crack like a rifle shot filled the silence. The car lurched and Kris scrambled away from it as it began sinking through the ice. Water rushed up onto the ice he was scrambling across and soaked his pants and side. He reached for a branch and pulled himself onto the snow-covered shore.

  The only light was from the headlight, which suddenly went out, leaving him in darkness. He knew he had rolled down. It was freezing. He was tempted to just sit down and let it all be over, but something drove him to start climbing. The adrenaline helped, for the first twenty feet, and then he had to stop and rest, gasping.

  Even though it was too dark to see, he wiped the blood from his left eye. He knew that if he didn't get to level ground soon, he'd give up.

  He started dragging his body upward again.

  * * *

  Lou Anne drove carefully. There were four or five inches of snow on the highway-nobody had come out to clear it yet-and it was still snowing hard enough be called a blizzard. She knew the winding road well, but the blowing snow made it hard to get her bearings as to where, exactly, she was. She slowed some more, but tried to keep the car above thirty, just to keep her forward momentum going. There was a rise up ahead somewhere, and she would need that momentum to get up it.

  There it was.

  She gunned the engine carefully. Thank goodness she had studded tires on the car. She was only going twenty when she hit the top of the slope, but she relaxed then, because she knew the worst was over. She prepared to negotiate the next curve, which she knew was there, even though her headlights made it appear that the road just stopped.

  Halfway into that curve, she blinked. There was something in the road. Her foot flashed toward the brake pedal, and she slid fifteen feet. She was right on top of whatever it was. Her brain told her it was a body, but that was impossible. There was no car, and nobody in his right mind would be out walking on a night like this.

  She didn't know whether to get out of the car or not. What if it was a setup, to jack her car? The part of Connecticut she lived in was safe. That was part of why she'd moved there. But car jackings were on the news every day!

  She fumbled under the seat, feeling for the thing Jessica had given her-a telescoping rod, with a knob on the end. Lou Anne had laughed when Jessica, her best friend, had patiently shown her how to use it as a whipping tool of defense. But Jessica had insisted she keep it in the car.

  "Someday one of those truckers is going to try to get revenge for getting a lapful of Hank's cooking!" Jessica had said. "Just you watch. And while you probably deserve it, I don't want you getting beaten up by one of them. You keep that in your car, do you understand me?"

  Now Lou Anne backed up, until her headlights shone on the lump in the road. It was definitely a body. She clutched the rod and got out, carefully. Her feet slipped on the snow and she had to hold onto the door to stabilize herself.

  "Are you okay?" she yelled.

  The lump didn't move.

  She noticed that snow was beginning to cover the man. He'd been lying there for at least a few minutes.

  "I've got a gun!" she shouted into the darkness. "I know how to use it!"

  The lump didn't move.

  She edged forward. She snapped the rod downward and heard the swishing thunk as it extended.

  "Hey!" she said, standing three feet from the man on the ground.

  Nothing.

  For the first time she saw the red-stained snowflakes around the man's head. Her eyes took in the wet look of his sports coat, which was torn in several places. He wasn't even wearing a parka.

  "Hey mister," she tried again.

  She edged closer and poked him with the end of the rod.

  She looked around. Where had he come from? Had someone thrown him out of a car as it drove along? She couldn't tell if the tracks in the snow around her were fresh or not.

  "Shit!" she barked. "You better not be dead!"

  She went closer. She'd never seen a dead body and didn't want to now. This was already giving her the willies. She tried to remember what fist aid she knew and reached out to touch the man's cheek.

  It was cold, but not the cold of death. There was a hint of warmth in the skin.

  The lump groaned, and she fell on her butt trying to skid backwards.

  "Shit!" she yelled.

  The lump rolled and landed on its back. The hands didn't come up to brush the snow away, and Lou Anne suddenly knew this man was in real trouble.

  It galvanized her and she scrambled up, going to the man and getting to her knees to lean over him.

  "Hey," she said, her voice softer. "It's okay. I'll help you, okay?"

  The man gurgled, and one hand came feebly up to his face.

  "Ow," he croaked.

  She almost laughed. This guy was in terrible shape. She could see him bleeding all over his face, now that it was in the lights. He looked like he'd been beaten half to death. And all he had to say was, "Ow."

  "You have to get up," she said. "I can't lift you, and you'll freeze to death if you stay on the ground. I have a car. I'll take you to the hospital. You have to get up. Do you hear me?"

  She tugged at his sleeve.

  * * *

  Afterwards, when she was asked about it - and she was asked about it a lot over the years - she would not be able to explain how she'd gotten the man into the passenger seat of her car. Even as she put the car in gear, she couldn't believe she had pulled it off.

  The rest was crystal clear in her mind, though. His head flopped back on the headrest. He groaned a few times as she got the car moving. She'd left her door open, when she'd gotten out to investigate, and it was cold inside. The heater had already been on full blast, though, and the car began to warm quickly.

  That was when he slumped over, his head hitting her right arm.

  "Sit up!" she yelped, but he was beyond hearing her now. "You'd better not die in my car, you son of a bitch!" she growled.

  It was the longest four miles she'd ever driven, and she'd never been happier in her life to see the lights of the Emergency Room ... not even when she'd been in labor with Ambrose.

  She ran into the ER yelling her head off, and people went to remove him from her car. Then came the questions. Who was he? Who had done this to
him? Where did she find him? What was his name? What was her name?

  "I have to go to work!" she shouted, finally. "I don't know who he is. I found him in the middle of the road and I brought him here. That's all I know!"