Flashback Page 35

  Then a towel across her head to absorb the muffle the sound—

  Goddamn it, die.

  And blood …

  Dark clothes, bending over, legs straddling her as she lay groaning, twitching horribly on the floor by the stone fireplace.

  Her feet moving, as if trying to catch traction on the air. Groaning. The arm raised, hammer arching upward, coming down and down and cracking the bone.

  Die … Die … Die …

  The bright red spot spreading across a towel and puddling onto the floor.

  Looks this way, thinks twice: Do him, too—the kid in the crib?

  Stop that screaming.

  Charges over … the big shadow face.

  And all goes black.

  70

  “TELL ME ABOUT THE JELLYFISH DRUG.”

  “What about it?”

  “You said it had something to do with enhancing memory.”

  It was the following morning, and Jack and René Ballard were sitting in a booth at the Grafton Street Pub and Grille in Harvard Square. The luncheon crowd had left, and it was three hours before the dinner menu kicked in. Jack had surprised her with his call, reminding her of her offer to help if he had any problems.

  René looked very stylish in jeans and a black silk top and red paisley scarf, her shiny chocolate hair framing her face like a feathered wreath. Her face was smooth and well designed. Her nose was thin and sharp, her cheekbone high, her mouth full and expressive. Her eyes were perfect orbs of reef-blue water. It was a beautiful and intelligent face, and Jack took pleasure in it. “It reverses the damaging effects of the plaque that builds up in the brain of Alzheimer’s victims.”

  “And it restores memory.”

  “In patients with the disease, yes.”

  “Short-term and long-term?”

  “Yes. May I ask why you’re asking all this?”

  “In a moment. But just tell me approximately how far back, the recall.” He could feel something pass through her mind as she considered the question.

  “In some cases very far.”

  “Even early childhood?”

  Rene’s eyes were calm but guarded. “Yes. But why do you want to know?”

  But he disregarded the question. “And if they go off it, what happens?”

  “The process is reversed. The plaque returns. But …”

  “What about in non-Alzheimer’s patients? Any signs of plaque or dementia from taking the stuff?”

  “No. Now, why are you asking me all this?”

  “Because I think I witnessed the murder of my mother.”

  “that?”

  “I was very young at the time, but I’m almost certain somebody killed her in my presence. And I’m just remembering it by way of memory-related nightmares and flashbacks.”

  “Flashbacks?”

  “Yeah. Sometimes when I’m awake I have these spells. Just scraps, like a filmstrip with lots of frames missing.” And he described some of the episodes. But as disturbing as they were, he felt relief in getting them out, in telling her—and it was not just like lancing a psychic boil. For some reason he wanted her to know. He wanted René Ballard to know about him.

  At the moment, she seemed transfixed. “Go ahead.”

  “I think it was at the cottage on Homer’s Island the night she disappeared,” he continued. “And I think she knew whoever it was, because I don’t sense immediate hostility as with a stranger. I think there was a fight, because I remember shouting and commotion. The next thing, I’m looking outside and the man is smashing her skull with a hammer—actually, a meat mallet, I think.

  Die, goddamn it. Die.

  “My sense is that the killer was desperate to finish her off, because I keep seeing him hanging over her and hammering away.”

  René studied him suspiciously. “Do you have any idea who he was?”

  “I couldn’t see his face—just a vague dark shape with a pointed hat or something covering his head. Maybe a rain slicker. I couldn’t make it out. But I have a strong feeling it was somebody she knew. Besides, a storm was brewing so there wouldn’t have been strangers boating up, and the only other male in the area was a frail old guy in the mansion who couldn’t have made it down the stairs.”

  “And you’re certain you’re recalling something you’d experienced, not just a recurring dream.”

  “I know the difference between a dream and these spells. It’s like I’m reliving a very bad thing in flashes, but I can’t get the whole footage.”

  Silence fell between them as the sounds of the restaurant filled the gap. René took a sip of her drink. “What’s the connection with Homer’s Island?”

  “I’m not sure of the exact details, but Thaddeus Sherman let her stay in the caretaker’s cottage.” And he explained what Olivia Sherman Flanders had told him. “The official story is that she got swept off her boat while trying to secure it.”

  “And you don’t believe that.”

  “No.”

  “But someone she knew entered the cottage that night, had a fight with her, then killed her with … a meat mallet, you’re saying.”

  “It’s my grassy knoll.”

  He knew how absurd it all sounded—trying to piece together evidence of a thirty-year-old murder when there was no physical evidence and no body, where the only witness was a two-year-old baby and suspicion was rooted in bad flashes following emergence from a coma. Not exactly a hard-and-fast case.

  Even on the off chance that his mother was murdered, Jack had no idea how to mount an investigation. Most island residents from back then were probably dead or in parts unknown. Even if he had money to hire the best private investigator in town, there was virtually nothing to go on. And he had neither the energy nor the resources to play Sam Spade.

  “What I’m having problems with is how old you were at the time. Memory consolidation doesn’t start until a child is three or four years old.”

  “You don’t remember things from very early in life?”

  “Not that early. And what little I do remember is mostly fictionalized.”

  “Fictionalized?”

  “Yes. I know my father took me to the Statue of Liberty when I was five, and in my head I have a recollection of being there. But in reality I only remember the memory—what my father told me. I just put together the details and re-created the scenario, but not the experience itself.”

  “But isn’t that what’s happening with your dementia patients, the ones you’ve been testing at Greendale?”

  “Those are more interactive, autocreative.”

  “So you’re saying that I’m experiencing meaningless vignettes put together from some old horror flicks.”

  “I don’t know where they’re coming from.”

  He thought for a moment. “Maybe I am crazy.”

  “Doubtful, but I can suggest something to help counter the experiences.”

  “I’ve got enough meds. And that’s the problem. They’re working too well.”

  “Too well? What does that mean?”

  “It means that I don’t want to bury them. I want to catch them. I want to go back.”

  A sucking silence filled the space between them.

  Her eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”

  “Memorine. I’ve seen how it works on people with dementia—sending people back in their heads. I’ve seen what the stuff can do.”

  René’s eyes flared at him. “Jack, what you’re suggesting is ridiculous. It’s also impossible.”

  “Maybe, but to me it’s worth a try.”

  “Not to me. One, it’s a trial drug not for public consumption. Two, it’s not something you can fine-tune, just dial a date and pop a pill to relive it. Three, if I gave you samples it would also cost me my job. And that’s not going to happen.”

  He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “But nobody would have to know if a few pills are missing.”

  “Jack, every pill, every capsule, every cc of patient medication is accounted for, rigorous
ly documented on forms and signed off by doctors, nurses, and pharmacists.”

  “You mean to say that you can’t cop a few tabs and write down that Mrs. Smith took them?”

  René looked at him in disbelief. “No, I can’t.”

  “Or you won’t.”

  “And I won’t. Besides, we don’t know what the effects would be on you.”

  “But you said there were no effects on non-Alzheimer’s patients. Besides, they couldn’t be any worse than what I’d already experienced. Unfortunately, that’s gone the way of Zyprexa.”

  “Pardon me?”

  He tapped his head with a finger. “My VCR’s dead. Not even a lousy LED light. That stuff killed the flashbacks. I haven’t had one for days.”

  “Then maybe you should count yourself lucky.”

  So much for that idea, Jack told himself, and he dropped the subject.

  When it was time to go, Jack said, “By the way, doesn’t it seem odd that the same jellyfish that knocked me into a coma happens to be your Alzheimer’s drug?”

  She thought of that for a moment, “Just a coincidence. No more so than if you’d gotten stung by a bee. Ever hear of apitherapy?”

  “No.”

  “Bee stings can be fatal to some people, by causing such a severe allergic inflammatory reaction that the person can go into shock and die. But in small doses, the toxin is sometimes used to treat other inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis or neuralgia. Just a matter of the right dose.” And she stood up to go.

  “While we’re playing Scrabble, maybe you can tell me just what species of jelly it was. They said it was rare, but nobody ever gave it a name.”

  “Solakandji.”

  71

  THE WOMAN WITH THE CHILD FROZE when she saw him.

  Louis had just buried his parachute in a flowerbed and was crawling on his belly toward the water, his weapon in his right hand, two ammo clips and a grenade belt over his left shoulder. An enemy gunship was rounding the bend in the river. He could make out men in the machine-gun nests. One scream from her, and Commie soldiers would be all over him like ants. And if they didn’t kill him on the spot, they’d haul him off to another prison camp and finish him off for good. Or, worse, take him back to the Red Tent to beg Chop Chop and Blackhawk for death.

  Louis fanned the woman and kid with his carbine, looking down the barrel capped by the black military-issue silencer.

  Thwump. Thwump.

  And she and her kid would be gone—and he’d be out of harm’s way and back on his mission.

  God damn you, woman!

  Less than twenty-four hours ago, Louis and other select combat paratroopers were summoned to a group briefing at battalion HQ where recon officers displayed large photos of a small village with a cluster of buildings around a pavilion that was HQ of high-ranking North Korean officers who had fled Pyongyang. Because American POWs were believed housed in the same locale, they couldn’t carpet-bomb the site. So, their mission was to make a surgical combat parachute assault—their drop zone being a mountain clearing northwest of Jinan. Their assigned target was that pavilion.

  At Kimbo Airfield, Louis and the others boarded the Dixie Dame, a C-119 transport piloted by Captain Mike Vigna. They would take the plunge from six hundred feet up, knowing that if anything went wrong, they were seconds away from an abrupt death. Each man had been issued ammunition, rifle, grenades, pistol, extra ammo, three days’ assault rations, and a T-7 parachute. Louis must have weighed over 250 pounds with all that was strapped to him. But he didn’t mind, since among the attendees ID’d by recon was NK 23rd Brigade commander Lieutenant Colonel Chop Yong Jin and Russian military advisor Gregor Lysenko. Who made Operation Buster special. What Louis had been waiting for all these months.

  Colonel Chop Chop was the most hated man in the NK command—the same guy who had ordered his soldiers to pillage South Korean villages and massacre unarmed civilians. Same guy who had disregarded all international conventions on the treatment of POWs. Same bastard who had captured five GIs from King Company and left their bodies in a railway tunnel. And the same guy who had ordered the mutilation and death of Fuzzy Swenson and the summary execution of Louis’s buddies from the first platoon.

  That was four months ago, and since then Louis had declared his own private war against Colonel Chop Yong Jin and General Gregor Lysenko. Although Command had given him a copy of those men’s photos, their faces had permanently scored themselves into Louis’s memory banks that night in the Red Tent.

  He checked his watch. Right now, Marie was in bed in Wethersfield, Connecticut, and here he was in the middle of a gook village on the Yesong River. It had been a bad drop.

  Unexpectedly, Jinan was being defended by automatic weapons, including forty-millimeter ack-acks. At 20:15, just fifteen hours ago, under a clear, moonlit spring night, the Dixie Dame took off. The plan was to fly due north along the usual C-119 route, then break off over the sea and drop to seven thousand feet, where they’d make a left correction, drop again toward the water until they were at eight hundred feet, then bank right until they made landfall.

  All went according to plan as Vigna pulled up off the sea and rode the contours of the land. At about five minutes before target, the jumpmaster gave his command to hook up to the cable running down the aisle of the plane and face the door. But as they were doing equipment check on the next man’s chute, antiaircraft batteries opened up at them. Within seconds, Louis felt the plane get punched. In moments, they began bucking wildly.

  The jump door flew open, and Louis felt the 120-mile-an-hour rush of air. He could barely register the fire ripping at the right wing or the groan of the plane or the other bodies pressing him against the opening. All he remembered was the green light and the shout: “Go?”

  Hours later he woke up to morning light feeling stiff but unhurt. He had passed out under a thick willow, its branches stretching to the ground like a curtain—a perfect blind. He had just buried his chute among some tulips, when a village woman happened by with her son, a kid about eight or ten. Hard to tell with Asians.

  Slowly the woman backed away, shielding her son with her body.

  The kid said something to his mother. Louis had no idea what, but he lowered his gun because the kid looked terrified. He couldn’t shoot them. But he raised his fingers to his lips to warn them not to blow his cover. The woman nodded and took off with her kid.

  A quick surveillance of the area told Louis that he had landed in the People’s Garden. He could see lots of manicured green grass, some sort of garden park with flowers, fountains, walkways, even a footbridge—right on the banks of the Yesong River. Although he couldn’t see enemy troops, he could hear the din of their armored vehicles on the move toward Highway 1 to Kaesong. His heart sank because it meant Chop Chop and company were miles away by now. They had given him the slip.

  Louis crawled out from under the tree. He had no idea where the other crew members were or where the plane went down. He hoped they’d made it to the sea where allied patrol boats could pick them up.

  He made his way on his belly toward the river’s edge. Villagers were walking about, but Louis’s attention was fixed on a small fleet of boats. They were clearly Chinese because they were painted green with red trim, and the pilot’s cockpit was camouflaged as a large white waterbird. He also noticed that the pilot was actually peddling.

  Shit! The bastards were sporting a U.S. flag at the stern, and the troops were all disguised as US. civilians—which meant they were heading downriver to sneak up on allied warships for a midnight raid.

  God in heaven! He had to stop them.

  Louis positioned himself at the base of a large bronze lantern. Over his shoulder was a statue of a rider on a horse facing the other way. Maybe Chop Chop. This was his region, his town, his people. Louis steadied his weapon at the patrol boat emerging from the low bridge. It passed noiselessly in front of him, the troops playacting normal, like it was a typical day in the park. He had studied the movem
ent of the previous boat, so he knew it was going to round the island, then head downriver. And as soon as it did, he’d open up with everything he had.

  In a matter of seconds, the patrol boat rounded the island. Louis tracked the pilot in his crosshairs. Plug him then blow enough holes in the port side to beach the bastards. Do the same with the next one just nosing its way under the bridge. He knew he’d go down, but he’d take a lot of Reds with him. Slowly he began to squeeze his finger.

  “Hey, what the hell you doing?”

  Louis froze.

  Over his shoulder were two North Korean cavalry regulars on horseback. He rolled on his back with his gun raised.

  “It’s a hockey stick.”

  One Commie got off his mount and grabbed Louis’s gun barrel.

  Thwump, thwump.

  Louis squeezed off two shots, but the soldier didn’t flinch. Probably wearing a bulletproof vest.

  “What the hell you think you’re doing?”

  “I think he’s been in the sun too long,” the other soldier said, taking Louis’s gun out of his hands.

  After two years of duty Louis knew some Korean. “Kop she-da mamasan!” he said, telling the gook to go screw his mother.

  “What he say?”

  The mounted soldier shrugged and took hold of the reins of the other’s horse. “It’s all right, folks,” he said to the small crowd of villagers that was gathering. “You can leave.”

  “Poor guy,” one of the peasants said. And he took a picture of him with his camera.

  Louis held his arms high in the air. “Go ahead, shoot me, you Red bastards. Get it over with.”

  Louis thought about making a run for the water, but either they’d nail him in the back or the gunners in the duck boats would get him. The gook on the horse radioed for support while the other kept interrogating him.

  “Can you tell me your name, sir?” The soldier took Louis’s arm and inspected his wrist.

  They were trying to steal his watch. “Louis Martinetti. Corporal. US41349538.” They’d have to shoot him before he named his company and location.