Yesterday's Thief: An Eric Beckman Paranormal Sci-Fi Thriller (8 page)
I thought about the phrase my tablet had translated. “Do you know anyone named ‘Zaza’?”
She perked up, “Yes. Yes, that is my uncle, Uncle Dudnic. Is he here?”
“No, I’m sorry—”
“How do you know that name?” Her eyes narrowed. “Is what I called him when I was young.”
“You, uh, said it when you were coming out of the coma.”
“You were not here then.”
Oof, she’s sharp.
“Dr. Porter told me.”
Craig gave me a questioning look, and she probably caught it.
C’mon Craig, learn to play along!
He directed a thought my way,
“Is silly question. Everyone knows year.”
We waited. She looked from one of us to the other.
I wrote it on my tablet phonetically. If only I could record her thoughts.
“My memory is fluffy on this. What is date, please?”
“Today is October sixth,” Craig said.
“Year?”
“Twenty twenty.”
The color drained from her face and her hand flew to her mouth. She stared straight ahead. Her heart rate, displayed on the monitor, went up ten beats per minute.
She seemed to recover quickly, but her heart rate remained elevated. The monitor gave a beep, but Craig turned the sound off. A nurse rushed in. She must have gotten warnings from the remote heart rate monitoring at the nursing station. Craig waved her off.
Craig felt her pulse. “Are you feeling okay, Viviana?”
“Oh, I am fine. I just realize how bad my memory is. More than fluffy.”
I couldn’t help myself. “We say ‘fuzzy.’”
She looked at me with that big smile of hers. “Yes, fuzzy. Thank you. Am working on the English. I am tired. Maybe sleep now.”
Craig nodded. “I can give you a pill to—”
“No, no. Do not need pills. Sleep very good. Do not worry. I feel good.” She started singing the James Brown song with an entrancing accent. “So good, beep beep, so good, beep, I gotta you.”
On the word “you,” she poked me in the stomach and winked.
* * *
Craig and I retired to his office. A large window looked out across a courtyard at another wing of the hospital. Craig’s dark wood desk held nothing but a keyboard and a monitor. He had his diplomas on the wall, but no books or papers. The paperless office.
Craig sat in his wire-mesh office chair, and I collapsed into a visitor-slash-patient seat. It was three a.m., and I’d had a long day. I never should have gone bar hopping.
Craig leaned forward. “Well, what was she thinking?”
“I have no idea.”
“What?”
“She’s thinking in another language, probably Romanian.”
“Or whatever they speak in Moldova. Just a sec …” Craig typed a few things. “Romanian. That’s what they speak. But whatever it is, it’s a problem.”
“Right. Unless we can find a mind-reading Romanian, we’re just going to have to handle this the old-fashioned way. But I got a few things.”
“Like what?” Craig got up and paced.
“First, she’s lying about her last name. It’s not Petrescu.”
“What is it?”
“It’s … well, let me check some things out. It’s not clear.” I’m not sure why I lied. I could trust Craig, of all people.
He looked at me sideways. “Hold on. You’ve been acting funny. This isn’t some kind of love at first sight thing, is it?”
“No, definitely not. That’s—”
<
Bingo.
> “Because if it is, you’ve picked the wrong woman. We don’t know anything about her, and you just said she was lying to us.”
“No, no. Nothing like that.” I wanted to change the subject, but Craig did it for me.
“Can you remember, phonetically, anything she thinks?” He perched on his desk. “You could repeat it to someone who speaks Romanian.”
“No, it’s just too fast and unfamiliar. On the other hand, when we were talking about the date, she thought a lot of syllables, but I got the last three: opt say chee. It’s a long shot, but—”
“Wait, I’ll enter it here.” He went to his computer. “Like ‘opt’ and then ‘say cheese’ without the final S?”
“Right.”
“Okay, it doesn’t have anything for ‘say chee,’ but ‘opt’ is ‘eight.’ Now, I’ll translate ‘eighty’ from English to Romanian … hey, look at that. ‘Optzechi.’” Craig clicked the “pronounce” button. “Opt say chee.”
“Yup, that’s what I heard.”
“So, she thinks it’s 1980.” Craig tapped his desk.
I whistled. “Could be. Forty years in the past. Wow. And by the way, I don’t think she’s from Moldova. Why would she have a tattoo of Romania on her hip? She’s trying to keep us in the dark. Another lie.”
“Well, I worry that we won’t be able to figure this out. The FBI will take her away. Or the paparazzi will figure out we’ve tricked them.”
I smiled. “Maybe you need to be more like her: Don’t worry. Be happy.”
“What else could you understand?”
“Not much, but my theory is that—”
A nurse knocked, opened the door, and stuck her head into the room. “You wanted to be told about Ms. Petrescu.”
Craig stood up. “Yes.”
“Well, she took off her leads. The heart rate monitor alert sounded at the nursing station. It looked like she was about to go somewhere.”
I stood also. “Is she in her room now?”
“Yes, she is.”
* * *
We rushed down the hall. Over by the window, she was doing stretching exercises.
Craig went to her. “Viviana, I thought you said you were sleepy.”
She did a hamstring stretch with her heel up on the high windowsill. “I had a second blowing.”
“A second wind?” I asked.
She held the stretch, with her hands wrapped around her foot, and smiled back at me. “Yes, a second wind. I want to hit the road, Jack. Go somewhere.”
The gown showed off her legs, but my eyes were drawn to her biceps. The firm muscles were those of a gymnast. I pictured her scaling a rope with ease.
Craig scratched his head. “We’d like to keep you under observation. You’ve been through a lot. You seem healthy, but we need to be sure. Do you remember anything about the position of your heart and other organs?”
Ah, the heart being on the right side. I guessed that she’d know nothing about that.
“My heart? Something is wrong?” She put her hand on the left side of her chest and went a little pale. <
Chay?
> She moved it to one or two other places above and below her breast, then put her fingers on her neck and relaxed.
Okay, “chay?” probably meant “what?” Or maybe “where the fuck did my heart go?” I’d remember to look it up. My first Romanian word. One down, a million to go.
“No, no. Everything is fine,” Craig said. “We can talk about that later.”
“Maybe walk around hospital? Maybe Dr. Becksman takes me around? He can be looking at my hair.”
Heat rose into my cheeks.
Sheesh
,
this isn’t like me
.
I rubbed my face.
“You know, it’s four a.m.” Craig tapped his watch.
Viviana waved her hand. “Does not matter. I am a little
fuzzy
”—she looked at me—“on the time. Like the jet lag, no? I am getting the cabin sickness in this room. I want to look around.”
After Craig gave her a quick exam, she took my arm, tightly, and we started off down the hall.
Anyone who’s brought a new cat home would recognize her behavior. She seemed interested in every nook and cranny, opening closet doors, checking the stairwell. Cats do this to learn their territory—they might need it if they have to hide or escape.
She stood by an evacuation map on the wall, taking it in with surreptitious glances. “I don’t mind your investigation.”
“My—”
“You know. You are investigating me. Trying to read me, figure me out. Everything I say, you are analyzing. You look deep into my eyes, when you are not looking at my hair. Is okay. What have you learned, Meestair Becksman?”
“Please call me Eric and I will call you Viviana. You speak English quite well.”
She disengaged from my arm and stood with her hands on her hips. Then she shook my hand like a man. Her grip made me wince. She lowered her voice and made it gravelly. “Well, howdy do Mistah Eric Beckman. Ah’m pleased as punch to meet y’all.”
My jaw dropped.
She’s full of surprises.
She could pass for a Texan. She must have memorized that phrase and practiced it until she spoke with no accent.
Viviana latched back onto my arm and flashed me a smile. “I am full of the surprises, no?”
Ack!
Right then I realized how others must feel when they were around me. She couldn’t read my … no, it was just a coincidence, wasn’t it? I’ve searched for years and never found any other mind readers.
Easily tested. I turned to her and put a conscious, verbal thought in my head:
I know who you are, Ms. Petki.
“There you go again, staring at me, trying to figure me out. Looking deep into my eyes. Aren’t you afraid I vill hypnotize you like Gypsy? You are under my power, dahlink!” She took my arm again and patted it with her free hand. “Let’s just have nice promenade.” She batted her eyelashes at me. “No more investigating. I like to talk the way I do. Is hard work to talk better. This is more fun. Maybe I am pulling on your legs.” She reached down and pinched my thigh.
Whoa!
A nurse walked by making notes on a tablet. Viviana seemed fascinated.
“Viviana, when Craig mentioned the year—”
“Upp! No! No investigating, just promenade, remember? Maybe your memory is a little fluffy, too. So many nurses and doctors. Hospital is so much bigger than in my country. Is that a locker room for workers? And they use cards, plastic cards, instead of keys?”
“Now who’s investigating?”
She smiled and pulled on my ID, which was on a lanyard around my neck. “It says here, consultant. You are not doctor here?”
I shrugged. Both shoulders were working now. “It’s a little complicated. I used to be a scientist, not a medical doctor. I studied the brain.”
“And what do you do now, meestair used-to-be-a-scientist?”
“I’m a private investigator.”
“Ha! I knew.”
“Retread?”
She nodded and switched to her Texas accent. “Better hope y’all don’t deee-laminate, yes? Is right word, pardner?”
We came to a window at the end of the hall and looked at the blinking red lights atop the towers of the distant Golden Gate Bridge. As we watched, lights blinked out in a large section of the Richmond district.
Viviana pointed. “Look, power went out. What is happening?”
“You have no idea?”
“Memory is fluffy, remember? Please tell.” She hugged my arm tighter.
I pictured taking her in my arms.
Concentrate.
“You don’t know anything about the oil infection or the new electric cars?”
“Am all ears.”
“Okay, I’m going to pretend you have been asleep for the last forty years.” I examined her face out of the corner of my eye.
She didn’t react, but in her mind:
Right?
“Okay, here’s what’s going on. A one-two punch caused an energy catastrophe for the world. Years ago, scientists developed an oil-eating organism to clean up oil spills. It worked great, but then the organism infected oil wells, and the infection spread. Oil production dropped and prices skyrocketed. With me so far?”
“Am foreigner, not idiot.”
I chuckled. “Fair enough. The second punch was the development of a new battery. After years of minimal breakthroughs, a small company came up with a new, miracle battery. It could store surprising amounts of energy, resulting in much improved ranges for cars. This battery could be produced quickly and cheaply and was plug-and-play with existing electric cars.”
“What is ‘plug-and-play’?”
“Sorry, it means you could just replace existing batteries with the new ones with few modifications necessary.”
“The new battery sounds like good thing. Not punch.”
“Right. You’d think so. Except that this battery requires more energy to charge. Much more. And because of the high price of gas, everyone wanted a car that used one. Not only did car companies ramp up production of electric cars, but every neighborhood had someone who would convert your gasoline car to run on batteries.”
“So, power plants in trouble, yes?” She rubbed her eyes and stifled a yawn.