Memory Lapse: A Slater Vance Novel (19 page)

Slater leaned against the
archway watching his brother and Janet. For the first time since their
acquaintance, she was standing straight up without the aid of crutches. She was
wearing a pale pink sundress which flowed around her olive-colored legs. The
sundress also left her shoulders bare and her dark hair swirled against them as
she tipped her head back in laughter at something Tucker was saying. Her mood
was a far cry from what it’d been this morning at breakfast. Gone from her eyes
were the shadows and fears that’d been so prevalent before.

From the looks of things,
Tucker was showing Janet how to make his world-famous chili. He cleared his
throat and they both swung around and grinned at him.

“So, Tuck, did you take
my advice and get a bigger car?
But red?
Really?
For a priest?”

Tucker laughed, “I wish.
No, I convinced one my parishioners to lease it for Honey… I mean Janet.”

Switching his attention
to her, Slater said with a grin, “Well, well, Janet, look at you – no casts. As
my grandfather used to say, you look ready for the dance.”

Awkwardly, she twirled
around causing her dress to flare at her knees, as she giggled, “I know. It’s wonderful.
I’ve never felt so free.”

As he looked closer,
Slater could see the telltale signs of the paler skin and thinner muscles which
had once been encased in plaster. “So Tucker’s convinced you to help him make
his famous-in-his-own-mind chili?”

“Yes, we’re celebrating,”
she replied, grinning almost giddily.

Tucker turned to him,
smiling. “Yes, we are,” with a more serious expression he asked, “Do we have
anything else to celebrate? Did you find out anything for Janet today?”

Slater grabbed a beer
from the fridge and twisted the cap off before replying, “Well, I have
information, but I don’t know about celebrating information.” He paused before
saying, “The address on your driver’s license was to a vacant lot.”

Both Janet and Tucker
stared at him blankly. Janet finally asked, “What does that mean?”

Sitting down at the table
and taking a pull from his beer, he said, “I wasn’t sure at first, so I had
Bridge run a check. All your personal information only goes back five years.”

Silence met his words.
Slowly peeling the label from his beer bottle, he continued, “Generally, when
information can’t be accessed beyond a certain point, it’s a sign someone
doesn’t want to be found – or maybe they’re on the run from something.”

Slater glanced up at the
continued silence to see Tucker and Janet staring at him open-mouthed. He
watched the joy from Janet’s face fade as her face whitened. With fluttering
hands, she rubbed them down her sides, straightening out imaginary wrinkles.

Quietly she murmured,
“Please, excuse me…” before darting out of the room.

Tucker sat down heavily
next to Slater. “What’s going on?” Tucker asked.

With a slow shake of his
head, Slater replied, “I don’t know… I just don’t know.”

As he’d watched Tucker
prepare his chili hundreds of times before, Slater agreed to continue on with
it while Tucker went to check on Janet. After a few minutes, Tucker returned
alone.

Slater turned to him with
upraised palms, “Well?”

“She’s just disappointed
she still doesn’t know more. She was hoping you’d have found out where she
belongs so she can move forward with her life. She’s… well, she’s feeling a
little overwhelmed right now. She just needs a little time to digest what you
told her. She’ll be fine.”

With a nod of his head,
Slater continued mixing and stirring, the joy of the event long since passed.
Tucker stayed long enough to eat, say goodbye and counsel once more with Janet,
then he left and the house was once again quiet.

Slater cleaned up, took a
hot shower,
then
sat down in front of his computer to
pull the information sent to him by Skye Data Systems. Before scrolling the
information forwarded by Skye, Slater took a minute to go through the hundreds
of emails he’d missed since his computer had gotten stolen.

He spent an hour
discarding or answering emails as needed. He’d gotten about two-thirds through
the list when emails from Wiseman Linear began to pop up:
Please call me… Please contact me… I need to see you right away… It’s
imperative I speak to you… I urgently need to speak to you…
and finally
I need to see you – its life or death… for
the both of us
.

Well now. What could be
so important to Wiseman Linear? Slater sat back in his chair and raised his
arms to lock his hands behind his head, staring unseeingly at the computer
screen. Was there really anything in which he wanted to be intertwined in with
Wiseman Linear? He probably would have deleted the whole lot, but the last
email bothered him. It had his interest piqued. It took him ten minutes to
reach his decision. Lowering his arms, he typed:
Tomorrow.
Noon.
Oak Grove
Mall
.

It took him a little
while to figure out all the ins and outs of his new-fangled computer. But
eventually, he was able to set up his files into a more systematic order, and
before long, he was scrolling through his last two years of information. It
took him almost two hours to finally get to his last case – Senator Baldwin’s.
He slowly flipped back through the pictures. There were pictures of Senator
Baldwin spanning the space of nearly a month. Some weren’t what he deemed essentially
important, but were taken to help document and validate the time spent on the
case.

Slater took special
interest in the pictures from the last night of his detail when he’d followed
the Senator to the boat. There were pictures of the Senator and Sierra
Hinsley
, his paid escort, walking up the gangplank to the
boat; sitting on the deck eating by candlelight; and twirling slowly around the
deck as they swayed to unheard music. There were pictures of the Senator
lowering the strap of her gown and his mouth lowering to follow its path. And
finally, pictures taken through the porthole as Sierra’s clothes were snatched
away and she and the Senator were joined by his aide, Daniel Stevenson. The
pictures continued as the three of them performed different acts on each other
and then together. The last picture was slightly out-of-focus of the Senator,
but showed the name of the boat,
The
Esmeralda
.

Outside of the surprising
sexual content, Slater didn’t think they were enough to break into his office
twice, and then his home. The Senator’s political team had to realize all the
photos would be stored virtually and not in a safe. At this point, Slater still
didn’t know which direction to look for his assailants.

Frustrated, he stretched
and groaned at the shaft of pain through his ribs, reached forward, and powered
down the computer. Rising slowly with his hand to his back, he went to the
kitchen in search of a stiff nightcap. The kitchen was dark when he entered,
the only light being the illuminated numbers on the stove which showed it to be
well after midnight. He had no idea it was that late. Flipping on the stovetop
light, he poured a nice tumbler full of Jim Beam.

Turning, he was surprised
to find the sliding glass doors ajar. Walking to them, he was further surprised
to find Janet sitting on the lounge chair with a throw over her, just as she
had been on her first night here. Stopping to pour her a stiff drink as well,
he slipped through the door.

As he approached, he
could see she was in a pale-colored nightgown covered modestly by the throw.
The color of the gown was indistinguishable in the light of the moon. She was
sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, staring out into the garden
sightlessly.

Moving to her, she jumped
when he tapped the tumbler against her arm.

“You look like you could
use this,” he said.

She murmured her thanks
as she simultaneously accepted the glass and fussed with the throw. “Sorry, I
didn’t know you were still awake.”

“I was just doing some work.”
He paused as he took a sip of his drink, “Quite a day all the way around, huh?”

Looking down at the
liquid in her glass, she replied softly, “
Yep,
sure
has been.”

Slater sat in a chair
next to the lounge chair, the cushion deflating as the air was pushed out from
the weight of his body. “You want to talk about it?”

She gave a small shrug of
her shoulders as she took a small sip of the whiskey.
“Nothing
to say, really.”

“Tell me why you think
you were controlled, as you put it this morning.”

Again, she gave a small
shrug. “It’s nothing, really, more like impressions, vague feelings, and maybe
memories. But the thing is
,
I don’t know if they’re
really memories… or dreams… or stuff I’ve seen on television.” She took a
bigger swallow and coughed as it burned on its way down. “I only know that
lying in the pit of my stomach is fear; pure, unadulterated fear.”

Leaning forward to rest
his forearms on his knees, he asked softly, “Tell me about them – these dreams,
impressions, memories. What do you see?”

She cringed and her brows
furrowed. “If what I think I remember is true, it’s embarrassing… the things I
allowed… the things I didn’t fight against. I don’t know how I could be so
weak.”

Softly, he encouraged her
again, “Tell me.”

She took another sip to
fortify herself. “Remember the night you dropped the spaghetti?” She waited
until he nodded. “That night, at that instant, in my mind, I saw me spilling
pasta and sauce onto white carpet and a man – I couldn’t quite make out his
face – shoving my face down into the mess. Another time I… I was pregnant and
found a shirt with lipstick on it and he caught me with the shirt and I just
knew… I knew he was going to… punish me, I think.”

Slater felt anger tighten
the muscles in his stomach which in turn applied pressure to his sore ribs,
causing him to wince. Slowly, he sat back in his chair and took a long swallow
of his drink. What kind of man had she been involved with? Rubbing the cool
glass against his temple and closing his eyes to remain calm, he asked softly,
“What else do you remember?”

“I think I might have
been happy for a time. I remember… or at least I think I remember…” she
hesitated not wanting to talk about her sex
life,
“doing something good …” she trailed off as a frown marred her features. “I
mean, it started out… good; but then he got angry and tried to choke me. I
don’t know what I did to make him so… angry. I just know when I see those
things, I’m always afraid… very afraid.”

Staring at her bowed
head, he said, “Even if what you think is true, you’re safe here. He can’t
possibly know you’re here.”

Her lips began to tremble
and a tear slid down her cheek.
“But what about my child?
How could I have left my child with… with such a horrible man?”

“We don’t know that you
did leave a child,” he said delicately.

Janet wiped the tears
from her cheeks and blew a deep breath through her lips. “You’re right, we
don’t know. I’m just not sure what to do from here. I was hoping you were going
to be able to tell me where my home is; where I belong. I feel like a boat without
a rudder. I’m just drifting with no destination and I feel I should be fighting
against something or someone, but I just can’t remember what or whom. I have no
money of my own, I have no home of my own, I have nothing and no one… I don’t
even have a name,” she ended on a sobbed whisper. The tears were now streaming
down her face and her shoulders shook as sobs racked her slight frame.

Slater sat in indecision.
This was not his element; comfort was his brother’s world. Rising, he sat next
to her and pulled her into his arms against his chest and rubbed a hand up and
down her back.

“
Shhh
.
Everything will work out. You just have to take things a step at a time. Decide
what you need to do first, and do that one thing. Then move on to the next
thing and so on. And before long, things are… well, working out. You can stay
here as long as you need. Tucker will always help you. So, see? You aren’t
exactly alone. And legally, right now anyway, your name is Janet Jackson. So,
there’s no reason to cry, okay?” he continued awkwardly.

Rubbing a hand across her
face to wipe away the tears, she took deep breaths and began to reign in her
feelings of desperation. Pulling away from him, his chest, and his arms, she
leaned back against the lounge’s cushion and took a settling swallow of her
drink.

“Thanks, I know you’re
right. I’m just being silly. I’m okay now, really. You can go in if you’d like.
I’ll be in shortly. I’ll lock up.”

Shoving her shoulders
over with his playfully so they both were lying on the lounge chair, he also
leaned back and took a sip of his drink. “I think I’ll just hang out for a
little while, if that’s all right with you. I mean, it is my house and all,” he
said teasingly.

“Well then, by all
means,” she said with a smirk.

“Yeah, so if you’ll just pipe
down a little and let me enjoy the peace of the night, I’d appreciate it.”