For Want of a Memory Page 8

  "What's this?" asked Governor Custer, who knew exactly what the vaguely diamond shaped pill was, but didn't want to admit it in front of his employees.

  "They tried to kill me." She burst into tears. "I need to be loved and comforted."

  The governor just thought that the mess between her legs was anticipation of what he was about to do ... as soon as the pill took effect.

  Meanwhile, in the governor's "home office," the press secretary and executive aide were killing time.

  "We might have an opportunity here," said the press secretary.

  "That's kind of obvious," said the aide. "How often does someone try to kill a governor's wife?"

  "No, I mean about the Viagra," said the press secretary impatiently. "Bob Dole shilled Viagra. I bet he got a ton of money for doing that. And if we set something up between them and the governor, we might get a cut of the deal."

  "Don't joke about stuff like that," said the aide, mildly horrified that the press secretary wanted to announce to the world that the governor of the state of New York had erectile dysfunction.

  "I'm not joking!" said the press secretary. "Think about it. Custer is always saying he's a man of the people. If he goes out in favor of Viagra, sales will go up fifteen or twenty percent! And, if we do it the right way, our bank balances go up fifteen or twenty percent, too."

  The aide did some hasty figures in his mind. His wife spent money like it came from a water tap. Suddenly, the idea didn't seem so crazy any more. Something occurred to him.

  "You've got the wrong angle," he said softly. "What we need is for Chantal to come out in favor of Viagra. That would leave their current profits in the dust."

  Chapter Five

  Jim Harper surveyed the woman who was surveying him. She was a tasty dish, no doubt about that. He wondered if the techs recording everything through the one-way mirror on the wall behind him had repositioned their cameras, like they sometimes did when a good looking woman was being interviewed. He couldn't see Mrs. Custer's legs, but if she wasn't careful, the techs would find out if she was going commando or not. He didn't need that kind of crap, so he adjusted his chair to one side, to block the camera's view, in case the techs had been so idiotic as to try that. He knew a filing cabinet prevented them putting the camera low on the other side.

  "I'm Jim Harper. Thank you for being so gracious about all this," he said, opening the interview. "I'm sorry to have had to ask you to come in for a statement."

  She waved a hand in the air, and then settled long, sculptured nails down on the tabletop again, with a series of audible taps.

  "I never mind doing my civic duty," she said, blinking at him several times.

  "I'll try to make this go as quickly as possible," said Jim. "If this goes to court, you'll be called to testify, of course, but your statement now will help the prosecutor plan his case." He leaned back, signaling her in body language that she wasn't being pressed. "Just tell me what you remember."

  * * *

  "And so I defended myself," said Jean Custer. "I took off my other shoe and hit the miserable man with it to make him leave me alone."

  Jim held up a hand, trying to stop her. She was talking about Larry. She had already described how she had stomped Curly's foot, apparently unaware that the spiked heel of her shoe had gone completely through his foot. She had also described how she had kneed Larry in the groin.

  All that was fine, because when she took those actions, she really had been defending herself. But when she took her other shoe to Larry, he'd been down, helpless, unarmed, and no threat to her whatsoever. Technically, what she'd done to Larry with her shoe was assault, because she no longer had any need to defend herself. She wasn't under attack at that point. Furthermore, the six inch spike had torn Larry up enough that it could be viewed as a deadly weapon, which would make it aggravated assault.

  "I don't need all that," he said quickly.

  "Nonsense!" she said, her voice lilting. She looked a little flushed ... excited. "I want other women to know that a woman can defend herself. That miserable little man will think twice before attacking another woman. I made him pay for what he tried to do to me."

  She'd made him pay, all right. She'd almost killed him. The doctors still didn't know if they could save his left eye, and he was still on IV nourishment, because the hole she'd driven through one cheek hadn't healed enough yet to allow him to chew food.

  Jean Chantal Custer insisted on making what was, in reality, a full and detailed confession to having committed aggravated assault on Larry Higginbotham. Jim groaned inside. If the defense ever heard this, there would be hell to pay. He wondered who was on the other side of the glass listening to this. That became clear when the door burst open and a somewhat wild-eyed Chief Hooks stood there, mouth open. Harper did groan then, but what the chief said next wasn't what Harper had expected.

  "I just want you to know, Mrs. Custer," he said breathlessly, "that we're doing everything in our power to identify and arrest the mastermind of this egregious infringement on your liberty."

  "What?" Jim looked at the man like he was crazy.

  "You didn't catch them all?" Jean Custer's voice held a mixture of concern and anger.

  "Yes, we did," said Jim, looking at her and speaking soothingly.

  "We'll find the man who planned all this and bring him to justice, along with his three underlings!" gasped Hooks, shooting a warning look at Harper. "Detective Harper is unaware of recent developments, but you can be sure that you are safe and will remain so."

  Harper's eyes went hooded. If there were new developments, then he needed to get right on them. Particularly if the Chief of Police thought it was important enough to disturb a formal interview. He had pretty much everything he needed from the victim. He had planned on just chatting with her, because she was definitely eye candy, but that was just fluff. If there was another criminal to catch, he was interested in doing that. He turned to Mrs. Custer.

  "Thank you again for coming in. You've been most helpful. I'm sure Chief Hooks would be happy to see you back to your husband."

  * * *

  Outside the room, Harper approached Captain Hildebrand, who had been standing with the governor.

  "What happened?" he asked.

  "Why didn't you tell me there was a mastermind involved in this case?" asked Hildebrand. "I got caught flat footed in the conference room!"

  "What mastermind?" Harper felt a tightness in his chest begin to develop.

  "The chief says those three are too stupid to have planned this themselves," said Hildebrand.

  "That's it?" Harper's mouth fell open. "He broke into my interview and said all that shit, because he thinks they're too stupid to have come up with this by themselves?"

  "He's probably right," said Hildebrand, defensively.

  "He's a fucking moron," snorted Harper. "I talked to those idiots - and I agree they're idiots. In fact they're too stupid to take orders from somebody smarter than they are. There is no mastermind, except for the one in Hooks' mind ... and now in Mrs. Custer's mind, as well. What a fucking mess!"

  "Don't you take that tone with me, detective," said Lonny Hildebrand stiffly. "You just get your ass out there and find a mastermind. If the chief of fucking police says there's one, then there is one, as far as I'm concerned, and you'd better fucking find him."

  Harper looked at his boss like the man had sprouted a third eye.

  "You're as fucking nuts as he is," he sighed.

  "You take that back!" snapped Hildebrand. "You take that back or you're fucking fired!"

  Jim Harper was saved from an impossible situation by the approach of Jean Chantal Custer. Her arrival caused a very sudden silence between the two men.

  "Detective?" Her voice was high and sultry, somehow. "I meant to ask you about that man ... the one who saved me. Have you found him yet?"

  "No ma'am," said Harper. "We're still looking. We have a few leads on his car."

  "When you find him, I want to thank him personall
y," said Chantal.

  "I can't really make you any promises that we will find him," said Harper. "He seems to want to remain anonymous."

  "My husband and I will offer a reward, if you think that will help," she said.

  "A reward." Harper's mind was whirling. Who offered a reward for a witness? The guys in the crime lab had come to the conclusion that the accident was just that ... an accident. There was no evidence that the mysterious driver had intentionally hit Moe in an effort to stop the kidnapping. If anything, the evidence matched that of a hit and run type accident. "The man may not know that he helped you," he said carefully. It wouldn't do to let this woman know that if her "savior" was ever found, he might be arrested on a hit and run charge. Not that it would go anywhere ... but the wheels of justice were often in a very deep rut.

  "Then we will offer a reward," said Chantal. "That should get him to come forward. He saved my life, Detective, and I take that very seriously."

  Harper wasn't about to argue with Mrs. Governor, especially since her husband and the idiot Chief of Fucking Police were standing ten feet away, watching the scene.

  * * *

  Kris looked at his tray again, but nothing else had magically appeared on it. He turned off the TV. He decided that, in the life he could no longer remember, he hadn't been interested in morning television. It was mindless, vapid in a way that made him wonder why any advertiser would sponsor it.

  He was in the midst of hypothesizing that sponsors of morning TV had decided that anyone who watched it was such an idiot that they'd buy anything, when the door opened slowly. A very odd looking young woman stuck her head in.

  "Hi," she said. Her voice was high and light. It sounded more like that of a girl than a woman, though she was undoubtedly over twenty-one.

  "Hello," he said.

  She seemed to be looking at him like she wasn't sure she was in the right place.

  "You're Kris ... right?" She confirmed his guess.

  "That's what they tell me," he said.

  She came further in, but still stood in the door. She looked a little apprehensive.

  "I'm Lou Anne," she said.

  That didn't mean anything to him. "Well hi there, Lou Anne," he said.

  "You don't remember me, do you?" she suggested.

  He examined her, briefly. If he'd ever seen her before, he should remember her. She was about five-ten, and slim, but curvy at the same time. She was wearing a pink and white striped dress that was obviously a uniform of some kind and had on pink Converse high tops. From the neck down, she looked like any other woman that a man would enjoy looking at. She had curves in all the right places. It was her head that made her look strange. The sides of her scalp had been shaved clean, leaving a strip of hair about three inches wide down the middle. It wasn't a mohawk in the normal sense, where the hair stood straight up. Instead, the strip of hair fell down the right side of her head, to the top of her ear. At that, it was longer in the front, because it also fell forward and almost obscured her right eye. That hair was the color of black cherries, with distinctly red tones in it. It wasn't the red of genetically red hair and obviously came from a bottle.

  The side of her head that was exposed looked like it belonged on a much younger woman, like her voice sounded too young. The one dark green eye that stared at him was flanked by ears that glittered. The left had two small silver hoops, with a silver ball on one and a black ball on the other, hanging from the lobe. The right one, visible beside the hair that almost covered her right eye, had a silver hoop with a blue ball in the lobe and, higher up in the cartilage, a silver hoop with a silver ball.

  She had the smoothest skin he'd ever seen, despite the sprinkling of light freckles that lay as if strewn there, from one cheek, across her nose, to the other. The sweep of her jaw line made him want to touch it, because there wasn't anything angular about it. Her neck looked long, but he couldn't decide if that had anything to do with the odd haircut or not. What surprised him the most, for some reason, was that her appearance didn't put him off at all. He thought she was cute, verging on something very close to disturbingly good looking. There was no way in the world he could forget having seen this woman. It suddenly occurred to him that she might be on the payroll of that policeman, who seemed so suspicious of him, and might be there to get information.

  "I don't remember much of anything right now," he replied, vaguely.

  "I'm the one who found you," she said, taking another step into the room. Still, she held the door open with one hand, as if she was ready to bolt at any second. "On the road," she added. "You looked a lot different then."

  Kris spent a few seconds trying to dredge up some memory of anything that might involve this woman, but couldn't.

  "I don't remember any of that," he said. "But thanks for helping me."

  "Oh!" she yipped. "I didn't mind. Anybody would have done it."

  "Knowledge" leapt into his mind. It was a story he'd heard as a child. It was about the good Samaritan, from the Bible. A rush of thoughts went through his mind as he remembered being confused when a woman whose name he couldn't remember told the story. He had been in a dim room, with other children around him. Sunday School. He'd been in Sunday School. His father was the minister of the church.

  He remembered how, in some recent past, he'd been in the car with his parents and they'd seen a man on the side of the road, with his arm out, and his thumb pointing skyward. His father had been driving and had slowed down. His mother had upbraided him and told him not to stop.

  "You know better than to pick up a hitchhiker!" she had complained. Then she'd turned to Kris. "Don't ever pick up a hitchhiker!" she'd ordered him sternly. He'd only been about ten at the time, but her tone of voice had impressed him.

  Then, within a week or two, the Sunday School teacher told them about the good Samaritan and, just as sternly, informed the class that it was always their Christian duty to help those in need.

  It had been very confusing.

  "I just wanted to stop and say hi," said the young woman. Her body language told him she was getting ready to leave.

  "Don't go," he said suddenly.

  She stopped, as if frozen. "Oh?"

  "You were a good Samaritan," he said.

  She blinked. Then she smiled. It was a beautiful smile. "I guess so, huh?"

  "Won't you stay for a while?" he asked.

  "I'm not actually supposed to be here," she said, apology in her voice. "It isn't really visiting hours."

  "But it's me you're visiting," he said. "Shouldn't I have some say about that?"

  "I have to go get some sleep and then pick up my little boy," she said. "I work at night. I just got off."

  "Oh," he said. "Okay. Well ... thanks."

  "Anybody would have done it."

  "But nobody else did. You did. So thanks."

  "No problem," she said. "See you later."

  She turned to go.

  "Hey." His voice wasn't loud, but it stopped her and her head swiveled, so that she was looking at him over her shoulder. His eyes slid down to a uniform skirt that was packed in the back with what looked like a very nice ass. "Will I?"

  "What?" She looked confused.

  "Will I see you later?" he asked. "I'd like to ask you some questions, but I don't want to get you in trouble with your husband."

  She looked surprised. "I'm not married," she said, as if it should be obvious.

  "Oh," he said. "I just thought ... "

  "Are you a mobster?" she asked suddenly.

  "A mobster?" His eyebrows went up. Again, he thought about the policeman, and how she might be in league with him.

  "Yeah, like in organized crime." Her body turned just a little, but she still stood in the open doorway.

  "I'm an author," he said, sure of that somehow. "Why would you think I was a mobster?"

  "Somebody shot you!" she said, looking surprised. "Why would anybody shoot you if you weren't involved in some kind of funny business?"

  "Somebody s
hot me?" His voice was hollow.

  Lou Anne felt exasperated.

  "That's what the doctor said," she explained. "Didn't they tell you that?"

  "They haven't told me anything," he said. "And they for sure didn't say anything about me being shot." He lifted his head and looked down at his body. He lifted both hands, even though he'd already examined them. "Where did they shoot me?"