Marcie's Murder (36 page)

“Okay,” Hank said.

“Henry Fink arrived at the bar at
about
9:10
p.m
. He saw Dave Toler arrive, and the others, including you. He gave me a very good description of you, as I mentioned before. He thought you looked very suspicious. His theory was that you were an ex-con who was passing through, looking for women to prey on. A serial killer type.”

Hank
smiled
.

“Dave
Morris confirmed that he arrived
around
11:25
p.m.
, as you said. He had one beer and left. He said he’d been out of town for the day, shopping in Bristol, and got home late. Stopped in for a beer because he didn’t want to go home right away. He lives alone. Said he wanted a little company and was hoping to see someone he knew. He didn’t know any of them, so he finished his beer and went home.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want me to keep going? None of them had anything useful to say. No one mentioned anyone who hasn’t already been accounted for. There were no glaring contradictions, nothing worth spending any more time on.”

“Is this where you live?”

“Yes, it’s where I live.”

“Relax, Hall.”

“I am relaxed. In fact, as soon as you get out of my car I’m going to go inside and relax some more.”

“My car’s back at the station,” Hank said.

“It’s not too far to walk.”

“That’s not very hospitable.”

“Hospitable’s my middle nam
e,” Hall said. “Just not today.”

“Live alone, do you?”

“I’m not going to do this, Donaghue
.
” Hall
took
the keys out of the ignition and unbuckl
ed
his seat belt.

Hank looked through the windshield at the enclosed front porch of Hall’s house. “Looks like you’ve got a couple of chairs there. How about inviting me in
.
We
can talk
.”

“Maybe another time.”

“Tell you what,” Hank said. “You’re thirsty. I get it. I wouldn’t mind a beer myself. Get me a beer, we’ll sit on the porch,
we’ll talk
,
and then
I’ll walk
back to the station. Won’t take long.”

“For godsakes,” Hall said, getting out of the car.

Hank followed him across the lawn and waited at the bottom of the stairs while Hall unlocked the
metal screen
door of the enclosed verandah.
Hall let himself inside the house as Hank
sat
down
in one of the big rocking chairs, looking out onto the street. It was a pleasant street, quiet and tree-sheltered. Hank felt that it would look better with sidewalks
,
but he understood that a town could afford only so much.

After a while
Hall came
back
out onto the verandah carrying a serving tray. On the serving tray were two bottles of beer, a quart of corn whiskey
,
and two tumblers. He set the tray down on a table between the two rocking chairs and handed Hank one of the bottles of beer. He removed the top from the quart of whiskey, poured himself a generous drink
,
and
tipped
the bottle to
ward
Hank.

“Just a little,” Hank said.

Hall poured more than just a little into the other tumbler and set it close to Hank’s hand
,
then
sat
down
in
the other rocking chair.

They watched a car drive past the house. It slowed and turned into a driveway three houses up, across the road.

Hank watched an elderly man get out of the car with a plastic
shopping bag
in his hand.
The man
walked up to the front door of the house and let himself in.

“Do you really have a photographic memory? Or is it just bullshit to impress the girls?”

Hall snorted.

Hank watched an elderly woman get out of the passenger side of the
car
. She slowly walked up to the front door of the house and let herself in. Hank wondered why the hell the old man hadn’t had the courtesy to wait for her so
that
they could walk into their home together.

“Actually, what I have is hyperthymes
tic syndrome.” Hall took a large gulp of whiskey and coughed. “Enhanced autobiographical memory. People like me remember everything that ever happened to them.” He chased the whiskey with beer. “Every fucking
minute of every fucking day
.”

Hank sipped the corn whiskey. It tasted harsh against the back of his throat.

“Photographic memory,” Hall went on, “a.k.a. eidetic memory, is supposed to be total recall of visual images recorded in the brain. Some people believe that eidetic memory’s a myth, that people who claim to have it simply have a very good memory and that’s all. I don’t know about that, I’m not an expert. I do know about hyperthymesia, though. It’s too
goddamned
real.”

Hank chased the whiskey with beer, looking out at the street. A bird flew across the yard from left to right.

“It means I can remember everything that’s ever happened to me, right back as far as I can remember. I can recall complete conversations,
w
hich is why I can tell you everything a subject said to me in an interview. I could recite it verbatim, but that’s too weird. I only do that when I’
ve had too much, just to get under peop
le
’s skin
.”

“You remember things clearly from your past?”

“I remember every day of my past. In detail. Name a date and I can tell you what the weather was
like
, what clothes I wore, what I ate, who I saw, what we talked about. When I was eight. Or eighteen. Doesn’t matter.
Memory is highly associative, too, so I’m constantly
getting
flashback
s
to previous experience
s
. Which is to say it’s not just passive, sitting there waiting to be recalled, but active, pushing into my brain constantly even though I don’t want it.
But don’t ask
me questions to test me
, just take my word for it. I’m not a
goddamned
trained dog.”

“I won’t ask,” Hank said.

They drank in silence, watching the street.

“My dad taught high school physics
h
ere in Harmony. He had an exceptional memory as well, although I don’t think it was this kind. He was just like a computer for facts, names, dates, instrument readings, measurements, any kind of numbers.”

Hall poured himself more corn whiskey and waved the bottle at Hank, who shook his head.

“He built this house,” Hall went on, putting the bottle down on the table a little too hard. “I grew up here.”

“It’s a nice street.”

“Yeah, but it’s worth shit. Two years ago I decided to put it up for sale. I was going to get the hell out of here. The real estate agent said it would list for
forty-five
grand
,
and I’d probably have to settle f
or
forty
, tops. It wasn’t worth it
.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Asbestos siding
.
” Hall waved a hand at the house behind him. “That’s a killer, right there. And the rooms are all small. Basement’s unfinished. Steam radiators
,
and I need a new water heater.
The roof leaks.
It’s a
dump
.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not your problem
.
” Hall
pulled at his drink
as though it were serious business that c
ould not be put off any longer.

“Don’t you think you should go a little easy on that stuff?” Hank asked.

Hall shook his head and refilled his glass. “
You want
ed
to hear about it,
didn’t you? So shut up and listen.”

2
6

I
probably inherited
my memory from my
father
. My mother was just an ordinary person with an ordinary mind. Housewife. Worked part time in the drug store to help my father make ends meet. She was nice. They were both nice. I had a decent childhood. They were p
retty good. No booze. No abuse.

I was an only child in a quiet house, so I grew up with an introverted personality. I didn’t make friends easily
,
and today I can say in all honesty I don’t have a single friend in the world. That’s not something that bothers me at all; it’s just the way my life is.

My father, when it came down to it, was my best friend. I miss him to this day because he helped me as much as he could with my problems. You see, Fate couldn’t leave me alone with just the hyperthymesia, it also had to deal me another joker from the bottom of the deck
by the time I was twenty
: chronic depression.
Back then, the medication available to treat depression was worse than the condition
itself
. My
father
kept me off
of
it and spent a lot of time with me instead. I
woul
d tell him whenever I was crashing, we’d talk,
and
he’d hold my han
d until the worst of it had passed.

Naturally my perfect memory became the perfect weapon I could use against myself when the depression became bad. I would
dredge
up every
small,
negative thing that ever happened to me.
Things
I
’d done
wrong that
had
made me look stupid or feel guilty, things people
had
said that were nasty, all the negative stuff
.
I turned it all against myself
and made the whole thing worse. It was a nightmare. My father was a saint. He spent long hour
s trying to talk me through it. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have been for him, looking back on it now.

My grades in high school were outstanding, given my perfect memory, and I was offered several academic scholarships. I chose law enforcement. We all have different reasons for wanting to become police officers. Mine, I’m embarrassed to say, is because my favorite television program at the time was
Hill Street Blues
,
and I wanted to be Officer Andrew
Renko, the character played by Charles Haid. He was so different than I was, so full of energy; I just thought he was cool and I wanted to become a cop like him.

I managed to get through
college
, earn my degree
,
and come back home in one piece. It took a while, but I finally got hired by Harmony PD as an officer.

Six months later
my
father
was on his hands and knees in the lab at school, trying to reach a steel ball bearing that had rolled under a table, when the janitor came in with some equipment on a lift jack. He didn’t see my
father
until the last minute, swerved, and banged into the table. A motor that was sitting right on the edge of the table fell over and hit my dad on the back of the head
, knocking him out
. Three weeks later a blood clot in his brain caused a massive stroke
and j
ust like that, he was dead
.

For the next ten years it was just my mother and
I
. I put off going back to the doctor to have the depression treated
,
and my mother tried her best to replace my father as my sole support mechanism but she didn’t really understand what I was going through. She knew I had a very good memory and she knew I often got upset about things, but she didn’t have my father’s depth of understanding and couldn’t reach me when things were at their worst.

Then I began to notice little changes in her. Fits of temper. Forgetfulness. A lack of focus. She became paranoid and insisted that people were playing mind games with her and doing things behind her back.
They forced her to quit her job at the drug store because she kept having lapses and it was causing problems with customers.

Finally
,
I came home late one afternoon and found her
crawling around
in the back yard on her hands and knees. She said she was looking for the key to the garage, that she wanted to put something in the garage but had somehow lost the key in the grass. I got her back in the house and saw that she’d left her breakfast half
eaten on the kitchen table. She’d been out there all day, crawling around on her hands and knees, missed lunch, didn’t take her midday medication, looking for a key that was hanging on the hook inside the back door where it always was.