The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes (9 page)

why can’t I—

Easy, he had to go easy. It would come, it would come, it would come.
remember?
He jammed his eyes shut as hard as he could, ground his fists into them until he could see stars and comets, until the jelly shifted under his knuckles. He felt like screaming, like throwing the picture across the room, like grabbing a chair and hurling it through the window in a sparkling rain of glass. He felt . . . he felt so . . . so . . .
Helpless.
Relax. Relax. It will come back. You can feel it, all of it, so close. Just stay loose. Be calm.
Get a drink.
Daniel opened his eyes. Stood up, set the picture back on the mantel. Walked through the living room, the dining room—a showpiece table surrounded by antique chairs, all looking very expensive— to the kitchen. The air changed as he did, a sweet smell of rot.
The kitchen was a cook’s dream. Six-burner Viking stove, butcher block countertops, a window on the back wall to an avocado tree in an enclosed yard. There were dishes in the sink with food crusted on them. The lid of a stainless steel trash can was propped open, the garbage explaining the smell. There were liquor bottles on the counter, mostly bourbon, some Irish whiskey. The way they were arranged, the level of booze in them, he could tell that someone had been doing some serious drinking. Binge drinking. Lose-yourself-inan-amber-sea drinking. And he had a feeling it had been him.
The bottle of Blanton’s still had a couple of inches left in it. He opened a cabinet—knew just which one—and took out a rocks glass. The smell was melting caramel; the taste was melting gold. He closed his eyes and felt the familiar, lovely burn. Better. Better.

Okay. What do you know?
Well, first, this was his house, and he was Daniel Hayes. Those two facts were now solid. Which meant the BMW was his car, and that for some reason, he had driven it cross-country to that lonely Maine beach. The same beach, it appeared, where he’d gotten married to Laney Thayer.
So where was she?
No way to tell exactly how long he’d been gone, but at least a week. And what, four days since he woke up without his memory? Four days was a long time for someone to be missing. She must have gone crazy. Been calling the police, the hospitals. Maybe she was running the cops ragged right this second. That would explain the dishes in the sink, the housekeeping.
If that’s true, she might have called to see if you were back. You should check the—
He found the answering machine on the other side of the counter. The cords were frayed, and the plastic body was shattered like someone had jumped up and down on it.
Right. No messages, then.
Daniel refilled his glass, then returned to the front hall. Like everything else in the house, the staircase was striking without being gaudy, wooden steps rising from polished marble with airy grace. Whatever worries they might have had, money wasn’t one of them. At the top of the stairs, arbitrarily, he chose left.
The master bedroom. Holding the glass like a totem, he stepped in.
The room took up half the second floor. Windows on three sides gave way to sweeping sunny vistas, the backyard, trees. There were more photographs, but he didn’t think he could handle more pictures right now. The bed was a full-size, smaller than he’d expected. A size that belonged to couples who chose to touch when they slept. The covers were neat. His end table held an alarm clock, a lamp. He opened the drawer: lip balm, lambskin condoms, a dish filled with coins, a Gregg Hurwitz novel. It felt like something was missing, but he couldn’t have said what.
Laney’s side table had a pile of scripts a foot high. She’d been looking for her next project, wanting to cash in the
Candy Girls
cred for a meaty role in a serious film. It had always made him smile, the look on her face while she read scripts. Totally unaware of the outside world as she leaned against the headboard, pages held in both hands. Her lips moving and face trying on the emotions of the characters. Sometimes he’d put down whatever he was reading and watch her, catch an advance screening.
The memory took his legs away. His hands shook as he raised the glass to his lips. He took a long swallow, then coughed.
More. There had to be more.
He forced himself up, a little wobbly. Walked into the bathroom: sunken tub, enclosed shower, the lighting an actress would demand. A window looking out onto the avocado tree in the backyard, the leaves so green they looked wet. Daniel moved to the counter, picked up a small container of moisturizer. When he opened the top, a sweet lemony smell rose, like the best dessert in the world, like a night in a Caribbean hammock, like lying down beside Laney, the smell of the stuff mingling with the smell of her, the way she turned on her side and made soft noises and reached back, fumbling, to grab his arm and pull it around her, draping him across her like a favorite blanket. God, they had fit well together, their bodies were made for it, and even after all the years, the feel of her skin against his set him to tingling. As luxuriously comforting as a hot shower.
The bathroom had gone bleary and wet. Daniel wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. He set the skin cream on the counter, went back down the hall.
The next door opened into what looked like a guest room. Tasteful, but emotionally resonant as a hotel suite. He didn’t bother, just closed the door and went into his office.
It was a third bedroom they’d converted, ripping up the carpet and putting in shelves. Three walls were covered floor to ceiling with books and bound scripts. A pale wood desk sat in front of a window looking out to trees and the street. The desk had a photo of Laney looking dynamite in an evening gown, a stack of unopened mail, a crystal statue, and a closed Dell laptop.
The statue was the one from the photo downstairs, the one he’d been holding while he stood at a podium. An abstract curve of sweeping glass. At the bottom there was a small plaque, which read:

BEST WRITING IN A NEW DRAMA CANDY GIRLS “Broken Wings” Daniel Hayes

Huh.
Huh.
On second thought, maybe it wasn’t a lurid melodrama aimed at

teenage girls.

Well, that explained some things. The way he kept jumping into stories—making up tales for the people around him on the highway, the pleasure he’d felt writing in his journal, his “script” at the MRI clinic. He set the award back on the desk, pulled out the chair, and sat down.

It felt . . . like home.
For the first time he could remember, he felt at home. No, he didn’t have all the answers yet, but they were coming, each one triggering the next. Just sitting here they were coming. Looking at the wall-to-wall bookcases, he remembered putting them in, doing the work himself. Years ago, sweating in the heat, Drive-By Truckers singing about Daddy playing poker in the woods they say, back in his younger days. The smell of sawdust and the whine of the circular saw. They’d had the money to hire a professional, but he wanted to do it. There had been a time when carpentry had paid his rent, before sitting at a desk started to become more profitable than building one.
This was where he belonged. This chair, this desk, this computer, those windows with their view of paradise, the ocean just visible over the swaying trees, the broad, quiet street, with the work trucks of gardeners and the sheriff’s department squad car—
Fuck!
The cruiser was parked two houses up pointing this direction. The lights were off, but he could make out the shape of a cop inside.
Daniel leapt from the chair and shot to the other window. A pale blue sedan that screamed “unmarked police car” sat at the security gate. As he watched, the window rolled down and an arm reached out to the call box. A bell chimed.
Someone must have seem him climb the fence. Did it matter? He knew who he was now. He was a television writer, and this was his house, and Laney was his wife, and he may as well face things, deal with the police. There would doubtless be consequences for running from them, but he could explain . . .
What? You still don’t know why they’re after you.
Maybe Laney, petrified with worry, had called the police, and they had tracked him . . . no. The cop in Maine had his gun out.
Hell, he
shot
at me.
This was no missing person case. They were after him. They thought he’d done something, something terrible.
The bell sounded again, longer this time, the cop losing patience.
Decision time. Think carefully.
Well, he’d already run from the police once. How much worse would it really make it to run twice? And there was so much he still needed to know. Things he couldn’t find out from a jail cell.

Besides. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

 

Daniel tore open drawers. Pens, notebooks, a Slinky, a digital camera, rubber bands, stamps, DVD-Rs. The bottom drawer was

 

file folders neatly tabbed:
RANDOM IDEAS, DIALOGUE, REJECTIONS, MEM

 

_{BERSHIPS, SHORT STORIES}
. A gold mine, but too much of it. He flipped to the back, where the tabs were more prosaic:
UTILITIES, DR., CAR
STUFF, RECEIPTS, BANK STATEMENTS
.

What are you looking for, a folder marked, “In case of sudden amnesia”? How much of your life would be in a file cabinet?
“Mr. Hayes, this is Detective Waters. We know you’re there. Open the gate.” An intercom somewhere. There must be a button on the call box that let you speak. This was Malibu, home to the wealthy and liberal, and Waters would want to avoid a scene. But that didn’t mean his patience was infinite. They’d climb the fence soon.
The laptop! It would have his e-mail, scripts, calendar, contacts. It probably held more clues than anything else in the house. Daniel yanked the power cord from the wall and wrapped it around the computer.
Time to go. The cops were at the front, so the back seemed like his best option. He was halfway down the steps when he thought of one more thing. He froze, cursed. The odds that the house was being surrounded went up second by second. The smart move was to get out right now, to just sprint out the back door—
“Mr. Hayes,” the detective’s voice echoing closer now; the speaker must be downstairs. “I know you’re scared, but running from us is the wrong thing to do. Open the gate.”
Daniel turned, raced up the stairs, swung into the master bedroom. Hustled past the bed, into the bathroom, and grabbed the lemon moisturizer, the one that had brought Laney to him so powerfully.
Now
he could leave.
The bathroom window was in the back of the house, facing the yard with the avocado tree. He could see the street beyond, but no sign of a cop car. He had the window half-open when he heard banging on the front door.
“Police! Open up!”
He was pleased that he didn’t panic, didn’t freeze. Just forced the window the rest of the way, then unlatched the screen and yanked it aside. Leaf-carved sunlight spilled across his hands. The avocado tree was densely branched, most of them small, none of them easily reachable. Clusters of dark fruit swung, and he remembered that when they fell the backyard smelled like a Mexican restaurant.
Daniel jerked a bath towel from a hook and wrapped it around the computer, then leaned out the window to drop it to the grass. It landed with a thump, and he winced, partly for the computer and partly for himself, then tossed the moisturizer, put one foot on the ledge, and ducked through the window frame. Behind him he heard the yelling grow suddenly louder, and then pounding footsteps, the horse-hoof sound of men running.
Well, this should be fun.
He leapt into the tree.
Vertigo only had him for a moment before he felt the leaves slapping at him, the thin branches whipping his face and hands. He squinted as much as he could, kept his arms out and swinging. The air that rushed by was cool and sweet. He could smell the ocean, taste the bitter leaves. Then his hand hit something, and he grabbed, got it, slowed himself, lost it. Tilted back, arms wobbling and flinging wild, panic hitting as his forward vector gave way to gravity, and down he fell, ripping through in a maelstrom of green leaves and blue sky and blinding sun. The ground met him hard, right on his ass.
The suddenness of the pain, the sheer physicality of it brought tears to his eyes, little kid tears for a little kid injury, but he didn’t have time. He snatched up the computer and the moisturizer and limped along the wall of the house, ducking beneath the windows.
As he hauled himself over the fence, he could hear the cops inside the house, yelling to one another that a room was clear. His breath was shallow and his heart was racing and pain ran up and down his spine in pulses as he snuck away from his own home like a thief.
For all that, he wanted to laugh, wanted to yell and dance. Through the looking glass? Down the rabbit hole?
Oh,
hell
yes.

“W
hat are we doing today?”
The woman—she’d said her name was Sherri—hid bad skin under a thick layer of makeup.

Her hair was elaborately fried.
“I want a change.” Daniel met her eyes in the mirror. “Big or little?”
“Go nuts.”
The stylist smiled and led him to the shampoo bowl. After he’d made it back to his car, the urge to go through the laptop right there had been damn near irresistible. But the police would be after him, and he had to deal with that.

Apparently you’re a writer. Television, but still. Used to figuring out the intricacies of plot, of anticipating your characters’ next moves. So what would your move be if you were making this up?

Which was how he’d ended up in this hair salon in Santa Monica, sitting still for damn near two hours. Thinking,
I’m married. My name is Daniel Hayes and I’m a successful writer married to a gorgeous actress and we’re in love and have a house in Malibu and a perfect life.

And:
If that’s true, why are the police chasing you from one end of the country to the other? Why did you try to kill yourself in Maine? Why on the beach where you got married? Where’s your wedding ring? Hell, where’s your
wife?

Meanwhile, Sherri went at his hair like it had stolen her parking spot. She scissored and razor-cut and twisted foils and dabbed coloring. Under her ministrations, his affable, longish brown hair vanished, replaced by a rakish faux-hawk, sandy with blond highlights, gelled and twisted and pointed different directions. He didn’t look like a movie star, but his hair sure did.