Dying to Remember Read online

  He looked in his right pocket. Empty. He tried the left. That, too, was empty.

  The collar of his shirt suddenly felt tight, and his heartbeat pulsated in his temples. What was he doing on an airplane? Where was he, and where had he come from? He didn’t even know what day it was.

  A scene took shape in his mind: a heaping bowl of mussels on a white tablecloth in a fancy hotel restaurant. Another memory supplanted it—a beautiful blonde woman, naked, standing in a doorway.

  Toronto, he remembered. He’d been in her room, or she’d been in his. Naked. What had he done?

  He suddenly realized he was hyperventilating. If he kept it up, he might pass out in his seat.

  Slow, deep breaths, he told himself. Don’t think about Toronto. It seemed like a long time ago. Everything seemed like a long time ago. Was that where he was coming from? He had no idea.

  “Welcome to Boston’s Logan International Airport,” a female flight attendant announced over the loudspeaker, “where the local time is two fifty p.m. Please remain in your seats with your seatbelts fastened until we’ve finished taxiing and have arrived safely at the gate.”

  Barnes couldn’t even remember whether he had any bags. He searched his pants pockets again and looked around in his seat, on the floor, and in the aisle, in case whatever he needed had fallen out of his pocket.

  Regardless of where he’d come from, this must be his final destination. When you live in Boston and your plane lands in Boston, that means you’re going home. Hurriedly he stood up and opened the overhead compartment. Pushing aside jackets and coats, he looked for a familiar piece of luggage, ignoring the cramping and aching in his legs. He remembered none of the repeated sessions of physical therapy to get his strength back after being bedridden. All he knew was that his muscles felt weak and his joints arthritic.

  “Please remain seated, sir,” said an unfamiliar flight attendant, an older woman with wire-rimmed glasses and streaks of gray in her hair. “The captain hasn’t turned off the seatbelt light.”

  He sat down, too anxious to argue. The seatbelt sign stayed illuminated like a red light at rush hour, indifferent to his urgency. He stared at the sign and waited until the light went off. Then he jumped back out into the aisle and searched the overhead compartments. He found his carry-on bag and pulled it down. With a little luck, it would have his itinerary and something that might jog his memory. He rummaged through it as passengers filed by.

  No itinerary. No claim ticket for checked luggage. Not even a boarding pass. These things must be somewhere.

  He upended the bag and dumped the contents onto his seat. A shaving kit, assorted papers and journals from work, a throwaway novel, and other clutter, but still nothing to indicate where he’d come from and whether he had any baggage to claim.

  Don’t panic, he told himself. Get a grip.

  “May I help you?” It was another flight attendant.

  He didn’t even acknowledge her. The itinerary or ticket—where could they be? If one of them didn’t turn up somewhere, he would leave. After all, he lived here. If he was supposed to go on to some other destination, he could always catch another flight.

  Then another thought occurred to him—his overcoat; maybe the ticket was in one of those pockets. He pulled it out of the overhead compartment and turned the pockets inside out. Nothing except gloves. He searched his other pockets again. Front pants, back pants, shirt, jacket.

  Jacket. There it was! The receipt of his ticket, a baggage claim check, and the stub of a boarding pass. Also, a folded sheet of paper. He unfolded it and started reading.

  Elizabeth murdered on 11/26.

  His hand shook, but he kept reading. Rex killed too.

  “May I help you?” A flight attendant.

  He turned to her. “No, I’m fine.”

  But he wasn’t fine. Nothing was fine. And it probably never would be. Elizabeth was dead. Murdered!

  He finished skimming through the list. Number seven told him he’d lost his short-term memory. That explained the confusion. What a disaster; he wasn’t going to be able to remember anything. How was he supposed to function like that? Already he’d been seriously confused, and he hadn’t even stepped off the plane! How was he supposed to live in the real world when he couldn’t complete a nonstop flight without major complications?

  He returned the list to his right pants pocket, then shoved his belongings back into the carry-on bag and picked up his overcoat.

  Just go home, he told himself. Walk out of the airplane, get in your car, and drive home. You’ve done it a hundred times. How hard can it be?

  He had no idea.

  Chapter 15

  Denny Houston waited just beyond the row of customs officials that separated the arriving international travelers from the general public. A tall man who’d played forward on his college basketball team, he peered over the heads of passersby in an attempt to spot Barnes. A prominent jaw and muscular build gave him an athletic demeanor, while gray hair mixed in with his natural sandy color lent him an air of maturity.

  As Barnes cleared customs with his luggage, he and Houston locked gazes. Like two men on a mission, they strode toward each other.

  “Hey, buddy.” Houston held out a large hand, and Barnes grasped it.

  “Damn good to see you, Denny.”

  At that moment two plainclothes policemen approached, badges displayed.

  “Dr. Barnes?” one of them queried, a taller man with dirty-blond hair and a no-nonsense demeanor.

  Barnes stopped in his tracks. “Yes.” Moments earlier he’d been reminded from his list that the police intended to question him, but still they caught him off guard.

  “Dr. Barnes,” the same man continued, “I’m Detective Wright, and this is Detective Gould. We’d like to take you downtown to ask a few questions.”

  “Horse shit,” said Houston. “He just got here.”

  “What’s this about?” Barnes asked as Wright took him by the arm.

  “It’s about your wife.”

  “Talk to his lawyer,” said Houston. “Dr. Barnes is with me, and I’m taking him home.”

  “Back off,” said Gould, putting a hand on Houston’s chest and pushing him back.

  “It’s okay,” Barnes said to Houston. “I want to talk with them.”

  “As soon as you step off the plane?”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  Houston remained where he was as the police whisked Barnes away. “Call me later, Chris,” he yelled after them, “and tell them you want a lawyer.”

  Those words lingered in Barnes’s mind. Tell them you want a lawyer.

  “Do you have all your luggage, Doctor?” Detective Gould asked. He was a meaty man who looked like the type not to waste words, and he struck Barnes as an unlikely partner for the other detective.

  “I’ll have to check.” He couldn’t recall, but his watch reminded him of the list in his pocket.

  Number five—luggage. “One suitcase.” Now that he thought about it, he could also have verified that from his baggage-claim receipt.

  The three of them walked in silence toward the main security checkpoint. As they approached that line, beyond which only ticketed passengers or people with special permission were permitted, Barnes noticed television camera crews and half a dozen reporters.

  “There he is!” announced a brunette he recognized from the local evening news.

  The two detectives flanked Barnes to isolate him from the reporters.

  “How does it feel to be back, Dr. Barnes?” asked the anchorwoman.

  Before he could respond, another reporter asked, “Can you tell us anything about your wife?”

  “What would you like to say to her killer?” a third added.

  Barnes kept walking. The throng followed, inundating him with questions, but he responded with only silence.

  “What do the police want to know?” a reporter shouted to him over the din.

  Detective Gould answered that one. “The police want t
o know why you people don’t got nothing better to do.”

  “Let us do our job and talk to Dr. Barnes,” said Detective Wright. “Then we’ll issue a statement.”

  Barnes was looking past the reporters. Something had caught his attention—a woman with her back to him. She was seated in a wrought-iron chair, alone at a table outside one of the airport restaurants along an intersecting concourse. From across the expanse, she looked like Elizabeth. Same size, same shade of brown hair cut in a bob. Even the same type of clothes—nondescript shoes, jeans, and a sweater with the sleeves shoved up. In one hand she held a paperback book, in the other a Styrofoam cup. Tea, maybe. Elizabeth would have had tea.

  Barnes felt the urge to head down the concourse to get a closer look, to see her face, but he knew that would be a mistake. The woman couldn’t possibly be Elizabeth and, up close, would look nothing like her. Confirming that would only heighten the sense of loss. Better to cling to the fantasy than to satisfy any curiosity.

  He turned to the tall detective. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter 16

  Barnes’s ticket from the parking machine indicated the short-term garage, and the detectives cruised up and down the rows looking for a silver Mercedes. By the time they found it, he could no longer recall how long they’d been searching.

  Under the eye of the detectives, he slid into the driver’s seat and pulled the door closed. Doing that shut out not only the cold but also the uncertainty. The Mercedes was more than just a car; it was part of the orderly world he had left behind. Now he was reclaiming it. His normal life. The car even smelled normal. A lingering odor of cigarette smoke permeated the air. That took him aback. The car must have been sitting there for days, maybe weeks. He hadn’t expected to smell anything. Even stranger, the odor didn’t cause a craving, and he obviously hadn’t just finished a cigarette; there was no taste of it in his mouth. He wouldn’t have believed anyone if they’d told him, but the evidence was clear: he had quit smoking. Elizabeth would have been pleased.

  He followed the detectives out of the airport to the Sumner Tunnel, where traffic funneled toward the one-way passage. Near the tunnel’s entrance, clogged roads intersected and converged on numerous tollbooths before merging into only two lanes. The cars edged forward so slowly that Barnes had time to read the inscription on a large metal plaque mounted on concrete by the right-hand side of the road. It was dedicated to Enrico Fermi, who had played a key role in the Manhattan Project and had been awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics. After coming to America from Italy in the late 1930s, he’d lived in New York and then Chicago. Never Boston.

  A likeness of the man’s face looked out at the gridlock, and Barnes couldn’t help but feel a connection, returning to a world different from the one he’d left. If the real Enrico Fermi had been standing there in the cold, breathing in exhaust fumes, he surely would have asked himself, “Where am I, and what on earth is going on here?”

  Barnes paid a forty-cent toll and worked his way to the opening of the tunnel. At the entrance, he passed beneath two cement angels. He’d always liked driving under them, heading into the heart of the city through the grand gateway. Although built in the 1930s, the tunnel had been renovated in the 1960s, and now panels of painted steel covered the cement walls—glossy white with two horizontal stripes of blue, the color of the ocean above. Along the top of each wall, a wide tube of fluorescent light ran the entire length of the tunnel. For most of that, the ceiling was the same glossy white as the walls, and innumerable taillights reflected in shimmering streaks of red along its surface. A tunnel of red, white, and blue. Fitting colors for a city that had played a key role in the American Revolution.

  Barnes reflected on this as he edged forward. He also reflected on the amount of time he had spent over the years, during numerous trips from the airport, sitting in traffic along this stretch of road. The speed limit signs of thirty-five miles per hour were a waste of taxpayer money. He could push a hospital gurney faster than they were going.

  On the other side of the tunnel, he drove into Government Center. A film of ice and oily water covered the streets, and snow dusted the grass and rooftops. Soon the salt air would turn everything to slush, and the city would change from white to dirty gray. Winters in Boston were usually drab. Still, he felt relieved to be in familiar surroundings, no matter what the weather. Brick buildings dirty with soot, jaywalkers dodging traffic, even orange cones marking road construction—all seemed to welcome him home.

  He felt the urge to drive around, zigzagging through the bustle of Chinatown, stately Beacon Hill, and the quaint North End. Boston had everything—the best sports, the best seafood, the best universities and hospitals. Even the best art, and the most unusual, including the largest copyrighted piece of artwork in the world—the 140-foot-high, painted fuel storage tank near the southeast expressway. The abstract rainbow of colors concealed what appeared to be a profile of Ho Chi Minh, although the artist, Corita Kent, claimed the design simply represented hope, uplifting, and spring. Spring was now a long way off, but Barnes did feel uplifted driving past that storage tank.

  On the way through town, he tried to recall any recent events. He vaguely remembered driving through the Sumner Tunnel, and he remembered that Elizabeth had been murdered, but everything else from his recent memory seemed to have vanished. Then the face of a man emerged. Broad, almost bloated, with dark hair plastered over a bald spot. The visage smiled—a friend, Barnes guessed, maybe from his hospitalization. He remembered a polyester tie. Then another odd image came to mind—a picture of Kermit the Frog eating a red ball.

  At the next traffic light, Barnes turned right. That was the way to get onto Storrow Drive, to go home. Deep down he sensed there was something else he needed to do, some sort of errand, but the nature of it escaped him.

  Tires screeched a short distance behind his Mercedes, and in the rearview mirror an unmarked police car swerved into view, a red light flashing on its roof. The car had cut across the intersection he’d just left. Barnes pulled over to let it pass.

  But the car didn’t pass. Instead it stopped behind him, the red light still flashing, and a man who looked unfamiliar stepped out of the driver’s side. Barnes didn’t think he’d been speeding, and he’d driven this road enough times to be sure he hadn’t made an illegal turn. Could this have something to do with Elizabeth’s death? That would explain why the police car was unmarked and the officer wasn’t wearing a uniform. Barnes didn’t know much about police policy, but he knew it was irregular for a policeman out of uniform to stop someone in traffic. Were they legally allowed to do that?

  He lowered his window as the officer approached.

  “Dr. Barnes,” the policeman said, “I think you may have forgotten where you’re going. Do you know where you’re going?”

  He wondered how the man knew his name. “Home?”

  The policeman shook his head, then took out a badge. “I’m Detective Wright. Does that ring a bell?”

  “No. Do I know you?”

  “We met at the airport. You do remember you’re coming from the airport.”

  “Right. The airport.” That would explain his suitcase on the passenger’s seat.

  “You were following me to the police station when you took a wrong turn back there.” The detective paused, as if expecting an answer.

  Barnes glanced down at his watch: Examinez votre poche droite. He reached into his right pocket and took out his list. “Just a second.” He unfolded it and read through the items. There it was—the police had met him at the airport. A snapshot of the event formed in his mind. Real or imagined, he wasn’t sure, but it seemed real.

  “Dr. Barnes,” the detective continued, “how about if I ride with you, and Detective Gould follows us?”

  Barnes put the list back into his right pants pocket. “Okay.” He moved his suitcase to the backseat and opened the passenger-side door.

  “Just go straight for now,” Wright said, pulling on his seatbelt. “Then ta
ke your first right.”

  “Uh-huh.” Barnes put the car into gear. “To the police station?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay. Sure.” Then he asked, “Why are we going there?”

  Chapter 17

  When they arrived at the police station, Barnes parked his car and wrote the location on the list in his pocket. At the airport he’d already put check marks next to items two, three, and five, indicating that he’d flown from Toronto to Boston, had met the police, and had retrieved his suitcase from baggage claim. Next to item four, which read, “Denny Houston will be at airport,” he’d put a check mark and had also written, “Call him later.”

  At the station, Detectives Wright and Gould escorted Barnes to an interrogation room. There they instructed him to sit in a folding chair at a metal table. It was a narrow table, and the detectives sitting on the opposite side seemed uncomfortably close to him in the windowless room. The place was barren, with nothing on the walls except for a large mirror to his left. Barnes figured it must be one-way glass.

  “Dr. Barnes,” began Detective Wright, “we’d like to ask you a few questions about your wife. We’re hoping you might be able to help us with our investigation.”

  “Should I have an attorney?” asked Barnes.

  “That’s your right, of course, but all we’re doing is trying to gather information that might shed some light on what happened.”

  “What my partner means is you don’t need one unless you got something to hide,” said Gould. “You don’t got nothing to hide, do you?”

  “No, I have nothing to hide,” Barnes answered, “and I don’t need the attitude. If you can’t be civil with me, I’m not going to have this conversation.”

  Gould leaned closer. “Civil’s in the eye of the beholder. Maybe you being nervous makes us seem less civil, like we’re after you or something. I can see how you might think that, you being nervous and all.”

  “I’m not nervous. I’m annoyed.” It was a lie. He’d never been questioned by the police, and who wouldn’t be on edge under those circumstances?