And a blind girl whose memory was filling in a thousand-piece jigsaw one puzzle piece at a time could be the key to everything. They had tried to kill her once but the attempt had failed. It was twenty years later, but could she still be recognized? Would she still be slated for a kill?
So I said to myself, screw the details and start off with the kidnapping. Why was Bettie the target back then? Could Bettie possibly have recognized the man for somebody other than who he was pretending to be?
When we were together, she’d been an avid reader of newspapers, had two national news magazines delivered to her home and for mental excitement attended court cases of nefarious criminals. I went with her twice, but those things were pretty damn dull after getting your hands dirty in making an arrest on those slobs.
I was back to being the barroom psychiatrist again. You didn’t need a college degree for that. Experience would do nicely, with some cop smarts on the side.
When I got my car out of the parking area beside the airport I drove directly home. The lights in Bettie’s house were on, so I parked in my carport and walked up the stairs of her porch. I heard Tacos sound off with a happy yip and when Bettie opened the door she held her arms out and gave me a big squeeze.
And all those years of not having her were suddenly wiped away again. She was more charmingly beautiful than ever, still smelling of little-girl freshness and wasn’t at all surprised when I kissed her lightly.
But lightly wasn’t what she wanted. There was an excited quivering to her, almost a sparkle in her sightless eyes and she said, “I remembered you, Jack! It was like waking from sleep when you have a great dream, but can only recall it for a second.”
I waited a long moment and she continued, “It was from a long time ago! We were young!”
“I was never young, Bettie.”
“It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Would you want it to be?”
“Oh, yes,” she said very softly.
Tacos’ tail thumped the floor. If I had a tail, I would have thumped it too.
When all the exuberance had settled down, I sat next to her on the sofa and recounted my visit with her old boss. With the medical details out of the way, I eased into his telling me about the customer who bought twenty-five years of service in advance.
And that got a reaction. It had come from someplace way back in her mind and opened a mental door she thought had been shut forever. Her shoulders made a sudden twitch and her whole body tensed, then she said barely audibly, “He paid in cash.”
I waited without speaking.
“He... I had seen him before.” Her eyes were staring at the other side of the room. “He was... wrong.”
“How was he ‘wrong,’ Bettie?”
“He was bad.”
“You are sure of that?”
“They didn’t convict him.” She frowned, her forehead wrinkling.
I knew now what was going through her mind. She had seen the guy in one of those court cases she enjoyed attending. He had been up on charges and had not been convicted, but the D.A. had leveled some pretty heavy evidence on him, enough to put in her mind that he was “wrong.”
Trying to sift this event out without a photo ID of the guy would be nearly impossible. But at least it was a start.
I asked her, “Do you remember working at Credentials at all?”
Hesitatingly, she replied, “I think so.”
“What was it like?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Like a dream.”
Then I took a wild swing at a badly pitched ball and said softly, “Remember when you looked at that man’s files?”
Her answer was a strange, jerky nod. “There were odd symbols and numbers. Pages of them.” Then she turned and gave me one of those sightless stares and said, “Where is... Oak Ridge?”
I took a deep breath. Oak Ridge was the site of a nuclear development installation a long time ago. She didn’t notice my reaction and went on, “There was something else...”
“What?”
I saw that familiar blank expression again.
“I don’t know,” she said. That special moment had disappeared, but it had lasted longer than former episodes and if I played it right her memory might spark another bright moment.
Might. Maybe. Foggy words you couldn’t depend upon.
From out of nowhere, I said, “Where are those files now, Bettie?”
With a small smile and a solemn tone she said, “I took them.”
“Why?”
“That man was... bad.”
“Yes?” I encouraged her.
“I opened a sealed envelope. I saw the words.... ” And she paused, frowned deeply and said quietly, “ ‘Expected mass destruction potential,’ then a large number and.... ” She drifted off into total silence, looking straight across the room, seeing nothing at all. She turned back to me, her beautiful face taut with anxiety.
She said to me, “Jack... what happened to me just then?”
“You were returning to normal. You damn near made it.”
“My memory.... ?”
“A little bit of it was showing.”
“Do you think.... ?”
“We’ll take it easy,” I interrupted her.
“What did I say?” Sudden interest was showing on her face.
I was taking a chance, but I went ahead anyway. “You mentioned expected mass destruction potential.”
“I did!”
“You did,” I repeated.
“Mass destruction,” she said. “I’ve heard that on the news.”
“Often, probably,” I said. “It’s a common enough expression today. The civilized world is shaking in its boots, hoping the more aggressive nations don’t get weapons to cause it.”
I was watching her closely now. Her mind was trying to break through its barrier and tell her something. “What else?” she asked me.
“You opened an envelope and read it there.”
She frowned and nodded.
I added, “Where is the envelope, Bettie?”
She didn’t answer immediately. She was like a computer whose electronics were on a search pattern, making thousands of contacts a second to find the answer to a query the operator typed in. A minute passed, then another. They seemed like hours. Then she simply shook her head and let her unseeing eyes stare at me. “I don’t know.”
“You hid it,” I said bluntly.
Her answer was a quiet, “Yes.”
“Good!”
“But... I don’t remember where.”
When you interrogate a crime suspect you don’t have to do it all at once. Fear and aggravating circumstance can block his memory, so you give the suspect a chance to recover the information you want. He may try to disguise it, but the interrogator is an expert and can spot the opening when it appears, and then he’s up to bat and the right pitch will come along and the ball will go over the fence. Bettie wasn’t a crime suspect, but the situation was damn near identical.
Out of the blue she said, “Jack... tell me about us.”
“Us?”
“Before you came here. It didn’t just ‘happen,’ did it?”
When I said no she noticed the quietness in my voice and didn’t say a word. She was waiting for me to explain another part of her life that had been taken from her. She was rational, she could think, she could reason, but would she be able to comprehend the details of the past without losing any of the progress she had made?
Now the ball was in my court.
I said, “Twenty years ago you and I were in love. We were going to get married.”
Damn... she was smiling!
I felt a little bit nervous. She was waiting so I continued. “At work you uncovered something in the files that was so important to the public welfare that you pulled it out and carried it home with you. You knew I was a cop and planned to show it to me. Unfortunately, I figure the guy who had left that information at Credentials returned, discovered what had happened and the finger led right to you. He employed some hired killers to wipe you out... after snatching you and retrieving those files. It had to be a quick move, simple torture would have made you talk, then your body would have been disposed of.”