Kathleen Creighton - Memory of Murder

“Why don’t we sit in the car out of the wind,” he said. “You don’t want to get chilled.”

She nodded, and he opened the passenger-side door, waited for her to settle into the seat, then closed the door and went around and got behind the wheel. He closed the door and the dusk and the quiet and an unexpected sense of intimacy enveloped them. And for a moment, for some reason, he couldn’t think what he’d come to say.

Lindsey stared through the windshield at the darkening sky, listening to the thumping of her own heart. Other than that, the silence seemed profound, and she thought, This is weird. One of us has to say something. And felt herself on the edge of panic, unable to think of anything.

But then, miraculously, she heard herself say, in that blessedly calm and grown-up voice that came from she knew not where, “What was it you wanted to tell me? The reason you wanted to meet me.”

Instead of answering her question, he looked at her and said abruptly, “Tell me more about the snow.”

“There isn’t any more. Just that.” She shrugged. “Mom said Jimmy loved to play in the snow. That she would dress him in his snowsuit and he looked like a fat little penguin.” She looked at him expectantly, and her heart continued to beat too fast.

He let out a hissing breath and for a few long moments, just stared out at the ocean and sky. Finally, he glanced over at her, and in the remaining light she could see the frown on his face. “Before she got sick, did your mother ever talk about her childhood? When she was a girl? Did she have any photographs? Mementos? High school yearbooks?”

Her stomach gave a queer little lurch. She looked at him for a moment, then shook her head and looked away. “I used to ask about that. Mom would just laugh and make some general remarks about being a bookworm, not very popular-which I always thought hard to believe, since she was-” she caught a quick, painful breath “-so beautiful. If I pressed her for more details, she would get upset and sort of look to my dad for help. So…” She paused again, this time to clear her throat, to give a small laugh of apology. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t think this was going to be so hard.”

He nodded and murmured something encouraging, and after a moment she went on.

“Anyway, one day he took me aside and explained that there had been a house fire when my mother was still in her teens and that everything was lost, including both her parents. Mom was injured-she has a scar on one side of her head. The way she wears her hair, you can’t see it at all. Dad says there’s a lot she doesn’t remember about her childhood. So, naturally, it was upsetting for her to talk about. After that…” She shrugged.

After that, she’d never asked again. But she remembered still the feeling of walls going up and doors slamming shut. She almost told Alan about that, and about the nightmares she’d had for a long time after, of watching her mother slide away from her down a long, long corridor, growing smaller and smaller, until she could barely see her, and crying out to her to come back, and feeling bereft, like a small child abandoned in the woods. She’d never told anyone, not even her husband, about that dream, or the loneliness she’d felt then. What would make her think this man, a police detective with a hard face and sharp eyes, might understand?

“Why?” Her voice was harsh because of the ache in her throat.

Instead of answering, he muttered, “That could explain it.” He sounded distracted, distant, and the impulse to bare her soul to him vanished like smoke. “Maybe.”

He was silent for a moment, then abruptly shifted in his seat, turning so he almost faced her, left arm draped across the steering wheel. “You wanted to know what I’ve found out so far. The truth is, precious little. In fact, Lindsey, according to public records, your mother, Susan Merrill, didn’t exist before roughly forty years ago when she appeared in San Diego as the wife of Richard Merrill.”

The man…was very protective of her. He tried always to put his body between his wife and my gun. As if flesh could stop bullets.

Excerpt from the confession of Alexi K.

FBI Files, Restricted Access,

Declassified 2010

“Idon’t understand,” Lindsey said. She felt sick. “What do you mean, she didn’t exist? How is that possible?”

“Not literally, of course, just according to public record.”

“But, I told you, there was a fire-”

“And that could explain it,” Alan said, cutting her off. But it was plain to her that it didn’t explain it, not to his satisfaction.

Anger filled her, although she didn’t know quite where to direct it; she’d asked for this herself, after all. “What about my dad?” she asked, keeping her voice under tight control. “I know there’s stuff about him. I’ve seen it.”

“Oh, sure there is. Birth certificate says he was born in a little town somewhere in Nebraska.”

She nodded, fidgety now with a nervous excitement she couldn’t account for. “Yes-that’s where he grew up. He played high school sports-mostly football, I think. He was even student body president, prom king-the whole thing. I’ve seen his yearbook,” she added with an emphasis that bordered on belligerent.

“Yeah, the only problem with that is,” Alan said, reaching to turn on the ignition, “the Nebraska town where Richard Merrill supposedly did all those things was wiped off the map by a tornado in the nineteen-fifties.”

He didn’t look at her, and in the dashboard light his profile appeared grim, even menacing. She told herself it was only the way the shadows played across his rather sharp features, but she was shaking again, hugging herself inside the warm-up jacket to try to make herself stop it. “So?”

He swept her with a glance as he backed out of the parking space. “So, there’s no way to verify any of it, except maybe to try to track down some of the town’s former residents and see if any of them remember Richard Merrill and his family. I’m thinking there’s a pretty slim chance of that, after more than half a century.”

“I don’t believe this,” Lindsey muttered, staring out at the palm trees and pricey ocean-view houses slipping past the car window. It was beginning to seem to her like a bad dream. Her mother’s delusions, the Alzheimer’s-that had been hard to take. But this didn’t even seem real. “Look-I know my dad didn’t do this thing-whatever it is my mother thinks he did. He’s just not-he couldn’t have. You’d have to know him. If you did, then maybe you’d understand- he did…not…do…this.”

He nodded. “I am going to need to talk to him.” He heard the sharp intake of breath and glanced over at her. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes. Just…please not yet. Okay? Not…yet.”

He swore silently to himself. Wished he wasn’t driving. Wished for better light. Wanted-needed to see her face, to see if the fear he was hearing in her voice was reflected there, too. Was it just the fear of a daddy’s girl afraid of hurting or disappointing the parent she adored, or something else? Being a cop, he knew he was programmed by experience to expect the darkest. The ugliest. The worst.

“Why not?” he asked gently.

She exhaled again, slowly this time. “It’s just that…I haven’t told him about…um, that I’ve talked to the police about this. And I don’t want to, not until I have something I can tell him, some kind of explanation for my mother’s dreams, some reason for the way she’s been behaving. I don’t want him to think I-” She stopped there and half turned in her seat to look at him. “Do you understand?”