Distant Memory (33 page)

As if the cosmos were lending its aid, Massey saw two men appear from the glass front doors of the building. One moved slowly and wore a green surgeon’s shirt. Even from across the street, Massey recognized Nick Blanchard. He moved with one crutch placed firmly under his right arm. That made sense. Massey remembered that the man had had a large bandage on his left shoulder. Apparently, he also had an injured leg. Massey filed that bit of information away.

With Blanchard was a man dressed in a suit. Massey couldn’t be sure, but he thought that it might be the man who fired back at him at the orchard. It was too dark then to make a clear identification, but the man seemed to have the same build and height. Massey now had his confirmation. The woman must be there. But that knowledge was just the beginning. It was now time to form a plan. Seconds counted. Massey knew nothing of amnesia, so he had to assume the worst, that her memory might even now be returning. If so, Moyer Communications was doomed.

He would have liked the luxury of a few hours to formulate a stratagem that included undetected entry, the execution, and a stealthy retreat, but he understood that luxury was not his tonight. Finesse was good, but at times brute force was more efficient. Perhaps he could do a little of both.

He watched the two men talk. If body language was a trustworthy communicator, the man in the suit was put out with Blanchard. He
stabbed at the air with his index finger, pointing it at Blanchard like it was a knife. Massey agreed. If the opportunity presented itself, he would kill Blanchard on principle alone.

“I find all this trench-coat stuff infuriating,” Hobbs said to Nick. He and the NSA man were standing at the front of the hospital. Hobbs wanted to press Nick for more information, even though he doubted that he would get any.

“I can’t help that, Detective,” Nick replied easily. “I don’t make the rules; I just live by them.”

“How do I know what you’re telling me is true? The only ID you have is a driver’s license, and that’s not real either.”

“I bet you have people trying to confirm my identity at the NSA.”

“Calls have been made,” Hobbs said.

“Washington, D.C., is three hours ahead of us. It may be hard to find someone who could confirm my story at 3:00
A.M.
”

“We’ll wake up whomever we need to,” Hobbs said.

“If you doubt my story, why don’t you arrest me?”

“If you try to leave, I will,” Hobbs answered.

“I’m not leaving Lisa,” Nick said.

Hobbs turned to the man next to him. He had been through a great deal—attacked in his own home, held at gunpoint in a motel, been involved in two shootings—yet he was as cool as ice, unflappable. Hobbs had been pushing him, trying to mine even the smallest nugget of information that might help him tie all this together. Nothing was working, and his frustration was growing. He had a mystery he couldn’t solve, a mystery man from the government next to him, a killer on the loose, and he was out of his jurisdiction. Already he had bent the rules of police procedure and cooperation more than he should, but he had come too far to back off now.

“What does she know?” Hobbs asked bluntly. “What is so important that powerful people want her dead?”

“That, Detective Hobbs, is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.” Nick limped over to one of the stucco columns that held up the front portico and leaned against it. Earlier he had told Hobbs that he had given up on trying to use both crutches since his left arm, the one ripped open by a bullet, hurt too much to support any weight. “Lisa works for us and had been undercover. She discovered something that frightened her deeply. That’s why she bailed out on Moyer Communications. We never found out what she learned.”

“Would you tell me if you had?”

“No.”

“All I get from you is the same tidy little story,” Hobbs lamented. “I can’t do anything with it.”

“I understand your aggravation, Hobbs, but it’s out of my hands. What you have is all that you’re going to get.”

“Why haven’t you contacted your superiors?”

“What makes you think I haven’t?”

This was going nowhere. “All right, Blanchard, I believe you. If you’re not NSA, then you’re the cleverest crook I’ve ever seen. No one - could have his or her background erased as clean as yours. Not even - people in the witness-protection program. You would need the help of a government agency.”

“That’s the way it works,” Nick said.

“So what now?”

“We continue to protect Lisa until I can arrange to have her taken someplace else.”

“Do you know her past?”

Nick shook his head. “No. Until yesterday, I had never met her. I was ordered to pick her up in Mojave, just as I told you earlier. The truck was my cover story. From there, I was supposed to protect her. Once she was with me, I would receive instructions about the next few steps. That
call came in on my cell phone, but I never got to hear it. Lisa went ballistic and tore my phone apart.”

Hobbs nodded. “Yeah, we found it in your truck with the battery yanked. Why would she do that?”

“Because the night has ears, Detective. It has ears and eyes. If her memory were working correctly, she would have remembered that the call would have been encrypted. We had taken precautions so that the phone couldn’t be traced. That was just one more memory that was lost.”

“The accidents in Mojave. One was Lisa’s; the other—a Dodge Ram pickup—was the dead man’s. Lisa remembers that she was rammed. Are you responsible for the second accident?”

Nick was slow to respond. Hobbs knew that he was weighing his answer, wondering if this was a trick question. “Yes,” he finally said. “Lisa had made better time than expected. As luck would have it, she passed me around Tehachapi. I had trouble keeping up with her. It was a good thing the truck was empty, or I would have lost sight of her.”

“So you recognized her car, but she didn’t recognize your truck?”

“That’s right, and when I saw her rammed, I took action. I wasn’t able to stop her from going off the road, but I could keep the attacker from returning to finish the job.”

“You then stopped and went to her aid.”

“She was woozy, uncertain of where she was. I took her to the Pretty Penny Motel in Mojave, got her a room, and stayed with her until she was asleep. The next morning, I discovered that she had amnesia. I’ve been playing it by ear ever since.”

“I thought you said Moyer Communications was in San Francisco. Why plan a meeting in Mojave? That’s a long way from the Bay Area.”

“True,” Nick said. “I’ll say one thing for you, Detective, you don’t miss much. The answer is simple. She felt that her life was in grave danger in San Francisco, so when she stepped out for lunch, as she did every day, she took off and started driving south. She contacted us an hour or so later.”

“From a pay phone I assume.”

“I’m impressed, Detective. How did you know that?”

“Someone, we assume Ms. Keller, had dismantled and removed the built-in cell phone and the GPS system in her car.”

“She was afraid of being tracked,” Nick said thoughtfully.

Hobbs noticed that Nick looked puzzled. Apparently he was unaware of the dismantling. “Can a person really be tracked that way?”

“It depends on a number of factors. Some GPS systems are more than read-only. You’ve seen commercials on television where someone is lost or in need of a gas station and gets live advice over the GPS unit. That means someone must be able to determine the car’s position. There are also security systems that people can buy and have installed in their cars. Should their car be stolen, the police can activate a transmitter and locate the vehicle. It’s quite an achievement and has many safety advantages, and it’s risk-free as long as the person on the other end is friendly.”

“Moyer Communications wouldn’t be the friendly type in this case.”

“That’s right, and they specialize in satellite systems for telephone, data, and military communications. They’re pioneers.”

“But the car was a blank too. The VIN and license plate numbers were untraceable. I assume NSA provided the car. Why wouldn’t she trust those devices?”

“Systems can be altered or even tapped, Detective. The GPS system came with the car. If anyone could intercept a GPS signal, Moyer Communications could. The cell phone unit could give away her location whether she was using it or not.”

“So why does NSA plant a spy in the midst of Moyer Communications?”

Again Nick hesitated, weighing his answer. “There are some who think that Moyer may have more than his country’s interest at heart.”

“You mean he might sell out?”

“There are laws about selling certain technology to other countries. But there are ways around those laws. There’s reason to believe that national security is at stake.”

“Then why not arrest the guilty parties?”

“Because we only have suspicions. Lisa was to provide the evidence.” Nick paused for a moment then said, “As you can see, there’s much more here than a simple auto accident.”

Hobbs frowned. “Nothing about this has been simple.”

Massey watched as the two men at the front of the hospital turned and entered the building again. He started the engine and pulled away from the shopping center lot. It was time to get to work.

Lisa was exhausted; still she could not sleep. She closed her eyes, longing for the blissful nothingness of slumber, but it eluded her. Too much had gone on, and her mind continued to race with the events of the day. When she had been a child, she had overheard her mother tell her father that she had been too tired to sleep. It made no sense to her young mind. How could someone be too tired to sleep—?

Lisa’s heart skipped a beat. She had had a memory—an actual, valid memory. In her mind she could see her mother, a short woman with light brown hair and a thin frame. She could see her father, too. He was tall with a prominent nose, kind gray eyes, and a face that was accustomed to smiling.

As if a floodgate had been opened, additional memories poured in. She could see the living room of the house where she grew up. Jade green drapes hung over the windows, the carpet was brown, the walls white. A
painting—a barefoot boy in a straw hat with a homemade fishing pole slung over his shoulder, walking toward a covered bridge, kept company by a golden retriever—hung over the sofa.

The smell of food came with the memory. Pancakes. Mom in the kitchen, pouring batter into a skillet. Lisa could hear the sizzle as the moist mixture hit the hot pan. On the counter rested a plate of flapjacks and a platter of bacon. Between the bacon and the platter were several sheets of paper towels. It was something her mother always did to remove the excess grease. It was her idea of making breakfast healthier.

She saw her father snitching a piece of bacon.

“What do you think you’re doing?” her mother asked with pretend anger. “Can’t you wait until it’s on the table?”

“You know the house rule. It isn’t Saturday unless the papa steals a piece of bacon.”

“I know the rule,” Mom said. “I also know who made it up.”

“Truth is truth,” Dad countered with a broad smile.

“Unless you plan to do the dishes, get out of my kitchen.”