He looked around eagerly now, hoping to remember more things, but nothing came of it. His frustration level rose, because that one memory was all he could get back. He was disappointed that, with so many possible triggers all around him, nothing was happening.
His desk yielded an address book. Lola Henderson was the only one on the H page. Most of the pages were blank. He wasn't sleepy, and he had only a few plans, so he picked up the phone and dialed her number.
It rang a dozen times before an obviously sleepy female voice came on the line.
"Hello? It's two fucking thirty. This had better be some kind of emergency," she said.
"Hi. This is Kris."
There were exactly seven seconds of silence, then he had to hold the phone four inches away from his ear to keep from being deafened. She sounded mad and excited all at the same time. When she finally wound down he interrupted her.
"I was in an accident. I lost my memory. That's why I didn't call. So maybe it won't sound so strange if I ask you who my publisher is."
"Where are you?" she asked.
"I'm in my apartment."
"Don't go anywhere! I'll be right over!"
she screamed.
"No!" he said. "I just got here. I drove all night and I'm completely wasted." He wasn't sure why he was lying to her, but he didn't feel up to actually meeting this woman yet. "I have to turn in a manuscript in the morning, but I need some sleep first. I just need to know where to go. That's one of the things I lost." It occurred to him that his memories of being less than enthused with Lola might be suspect, so he threw her a bone. "I remembered you, but I couldn't remember how to contact you. I would have called a lot sooner, Lola, but I couldn't."
She argued with him, insisting that she should come over. She offered to sit and watch him sleep. He finally got her to agree to wait until morning, when she could come get him and take him to the publishing house. She said she knew where it was and knew people there.
When he was finally able to hang up, he booted up his computer and stared at the password field. Nothing came to him at first. He closed eyes and a mottled picture of a dingo/dog appeared in his mind. He grinned, opened his eyes, and entered "gypdog" in the password box. Then he explored for a while.
There were some interesting ideas in documents that were mostly just outlines. There was also a complete copy of the manuscript that Lulu had worked so hard to save. Finally, because he was so keyed up, he began to write the story that he'd fronted to Mitch ... the story of what had happened to him. There were large gaps that he knew he'd have to fill in, but he just put notes in those places, and wrote about the people he'd met and the things he'd done. He wasn't sure what the plot was going to be yet. If reality wasn't good enough, he'd just make something up.
Besides, writing helped the hurt at having lost the best woman he'd ever met.
Mitch decided to skip breakfast at the Early Girl. He ate a peanut butter sandwich on his way to work. It took him over an hour, working the phone to get Harper's number, but he wouldn't talk with anybody else. He remembered the debacle of trying to do anything with the NYPD when whoever was on the other end of the phone line didn't know you. His relief at hearing the man's voice finally come on the phone was palpable.
"Hey," he said when Harper answered the phone. "I need a favor if you have time."
"Maybe," said Harper, carefully.
"Farmingham remembered something from his past, and it's kind of weird, but I had to check it out."
"Okay," said Harper.
"He remembers running somebody down with his car and being shot at. He left the scene."
"You're shitting me."
"Not at all," said Mitch. "He said there was a crowd of people around. Since he's from New York City, I thought maybe he'd hit a cop or something. Have you had any incidents like that ... where somebody ran down a cop?"
"I can't remember anything like that happening," said Jim. "I'd remember that, I think. I can put in a call to traffic if you want me to."
"Please," said Mitch. "I'd appreciate it. It's probably nothing. At first I thought it might be something from a long time ago, and it was just a memory that popped up. You know, like something from his juvy years. But then we got his car out of the river and it had damage consistent with the kind of accident he described and a couple of bullet holes in it. It might have happened while he was on his way up here."
"This guy gets more interesting every day," said Harper. "I'll run both his names through the system and see what pops up."
"Shit! I almost forgot! I have another name for him now," said Mitch.
"Another one? Like two wasn't enough?" Harper laughed. "What's this new alias?"
"It isn't an alias, really. It was on a manuscript in the briefcase we found with the car. He turns out to be an author, just like he said. Writes under the name Ron Stevens. I've actually read one of his books."
"Small world," said Harper. "Okay, I'll check all his names. Give me a day or two."
"No problem. I really appreciate this," said Mitch. "It may turn out to be nothing. I kind of doubt he ran over a cop anyway. The bullet holes in his car look like they're from a forty-five and practically nobody in law enforcement carries a forty-five these days. See you later."
Mitch hung up and decided to go through the recovered car. It would still be wet and muddy, but maybe the bullet that had penetrated the trunk was still in there somewhere.
Harper hung up the phone and reached for the department phone book. He was leafing through the pages looking for a contact in the traffic division, when the information in the last couple of sentences Mitch had spoken finally sank in.
Forty-five. Farmingham/Phillips/Stevens had hit a man, who had shot at him with a forty-five.
The hairs stood up on the back of Harper's neck and a chill ran through him. It wasn't possible. Life just didn't work this way.
In a frenzy of movement he searched through the files on his desk, pushing six or seven aside. It was still there! The file on the Henderson woman was still there, waiting for him to write a final report. He opened it, searching for the information about when Farmingham had gone "missing." Her statement had the last date she'd seen him in it.
It was two days before the Custer kidnapping attempt.
He read further. He was sometimes accused of being overly thorough, but once again he was glad he got extra details. He'd gone on to ask her the last time she'd talked to him.
That was the night before the Custer incident. The day the Higginbothams reared their ugly heads was the first day she hadn't been able to reach her boyfriend.
He went to the part of the file where the victim statement should be, then remembered he hadn't transcribed Farmingham's deposition yet. He cursed. He found the tape and plugged it into the tape recorder on his desk. He put on the headphones.
It took ten minutes, but he finally found it. The information was actually provided by the voice of Mitch Connel, who wasn't identified in the beginning of the tape. That was a minor problem ... no problem at all, really, since the case wasn't going anywhere, but he was thankful that Mitch had spoken up when he'd asked Farmingham what date he'd arrived in Pembroke.
He'd been brought to the hospital around midnight ... the same day the Higginbothams tried to kidnap Governor Custer's wife. The same day Moe Higginbotham had been run down and had fired a forty-five at the car that had hit him, as the mystery driver sped off.
Harper spent a quarter of a minute berating himself for not having connected the dates before this. It was insane, but it all fit. They hadn't been able to find the car, because Farmingham had driven it to Connecticut and into a river! Whether he'd pretended to have amnesia to avoid getting caught for leaving the scene, or the gunshot wound to his head ... or the accident itself, for that matter ... had caused real amnesia didn't really matter. He'd told Mitch about it and now Mitch had told him.
It seemed like an incredible series of coincidences, but Harper didn't care. He couldn't do anything about it himself, and he couldn't call Connel back. He'd been told in no uncertain terms that any information that came in on the case was to go directly to the FBI. If he pursued it, he'd get his ass handed to him.
He dialed Jefferson's number.
"Hey," he said as calmly as he could into the phone. "This is Harper. You're not going to believe this."
Lola showed up at his apartment at six-thirty, hours before the publishing house would be open. She was almost frantic, speaking loudly as she told him all the things she'd had to do because he was so inconsiderate as to leave town without telling her first. She reminded him of how simple things would have been if he'd been forthcoming with her. She tried to get him to apologize for withholding other information from her too ... that he was a best-selling author.
He tried to explain that he couldn't remember anything from his past and didn't know why he hadn't told her he was much more of an author than she said he'd represented himself to be.
In an almost astonishing change, she turned from a harpy into a woman possessed, as she tried to get him naked and into bed. He resisted, both because he couldn't remember her as a lover and because his initial memory of her ... of being less than enthusiastic about her ... had been reinforced by her opening tirade. Other resistance was there, too, even though the woman responsible for it wasn't with them. He couldn't very well tell Lola that she couldn't possibly compete with Lulu. In the mood she was in, she might actually try to hurt him.
Finally, he lied and said that the doctor had forbidden him to get "excited" because of his head wound.
She looked at his forehead, where he pointed, as if it was the first time she realized he'd been shot.
"That's going to leave a scar," she said.
Then she said, "You really can't remember anything about ... before?"
"Almost nothing," he said.
Her eyes took on what he could only think of as a crafty appearance.
"I hope this won't disrupt our marriage plans."
Chapter Thirty
Mitch was covered in black mud. He'd finally hooked up a hose to the spigot at the back of the station and just started hosing down the interior of the car. The floorboards were full of dark water, but he'd exposed the area of the back seat where the bullet from the trunk had penetrated. Hosing down the back of the front seat had found an entry hole, which had led him to the exit hole in the front of the seat. He hosed off the dash and saw immediately that there was a hole in the front of the radio.
He'd had to go home to get the tools, but he finally got the radio out and was unscrewing the last of the screws that held the cover on. He had to pry the cover off, because the whole thing was warped, but when he was finished, there it was ... a bright copper-colored slug, misshapen, but recognizable as a .45 caliber bullet. He looked at it dubiously. It was pretty mangled and he'd have to pry it out of the guts of the radio to recover it, which might damage it even more. He didn't want to do that.
He wrote the whole radio up as a piece of evidence and took it in the station to put in the lockable closet that was the Pembroke PD evidence locker.
Then he went back outside to get the laptop he'd found jammed under the front seat.
Kris stepped off the elevator as Lola pulled his arm. She had her arm looped through his and had been holding on to him tightly ever since they'd gotten out of the car. He'd finally convinced her that what needed to happen first was the trip to the publisher's. She scoffed when he said he needed to sell the book because he was probably broke. She reminded him he was a best-selling author and was probably rich. He said that maybe they could check with the bank ... when he figured out what bank he dealt with. He knew that he hadn't received any bank statements in his forwarded mail. That probably meant he got electronic statements online. It would take a while to figure that out. He needed to talk to his publisher before they did that anyway.
Now she made it very clear that she felt possessive about him. Her large, soft breast-so different from Lulu's-was pressed firmly into his arm as she walked beside him. He found it interesting that the feel of that soft flesh didn't excite him. Her conversation with the receptionist seemed to carry a vicious undercurrent, when she announced who he was and that he'd brought another bestseller with him. The receptionist rolled her eyes, but made a call.
He didn't remember the short, bald man who came hurrying out of an office nearby, but the man knew him. That he knew Lola, too, was obvious.
"You
found
him!"
"Yes, I did," said Lola, obviously ready to claim having done something she didn't do at all.