Chapter 24

Kris was more worried now than he'd ever been since waking up in the Pembroke hospital. The interview with the detective hadn't helped at all. He was almost ill that nothing in the photograph looked at all familiar. And he knew no more about the accident or hitting the man than he had before. Normally, he wouldn't have worried, or at least thought he wouldn't have worried.

But Lulu was involved now.

Oh, sure, she didn't know anything - certainly nothing that could get her in any trouble - but he liked her. Just as important ... he was in love with her. He loved her on a level that made him think about asking her crazy questions having to do with their future, even though she'd said she wasn't the marring kind.

But he couldn't do that. Not until that memory was dealt with. He needed to know if he was in trouble or if it was just some random memory from a misspent youth that he'd already paid the price for. He couldn't move things any further along with Lulu until he knew if he'd be there later ... to keep being there with her.

On impulse, he turned around and went back to the station. He was so intent on his destination that he completely missed seeing Jim Harper drive past him, heading in the other direction.

Mitch was sitting at the desk in the station house. There was another policeman there Kris had never seen.

"Can I talk to you ... alone?" he asked a surprised Connel. He didn't stay surprised for long. Confession WAS good for the soul, and it was just possible that Kris had stewed about whatever his secret was long enough for it to get to him. He asked Don Hemphill, the other patrolman on duty, to step into another office for a minute. The man did so without saying a word.

Mitch waited, still seated, looking up at Kris, who was standing nervously. He said nothing, hoping that Kris would fill the silence. Farmingham seemed to work up to his first question.

"If I had been in some kind of trouble in the past ... it would be on my record ... right?"

"What kind of trouble?" asked Mitch. He felt his gut tighten.

"Trouble that might land me in jail," said Kris.

"You think you've been to jail?"

"I can't REMEMBER!" Kris almost shouted. "But it would be in my record, right? You could check on that."

"I already did. Your name ... Kristoff Farmingham ... comes up clean as a whistle."

Mitch watched the man almost crumble in front of him. He felt pity and it moved him.

"Unless it happened when you were a juvenile," he said. "That record would be sealed. Wouldn't show up in the kind of check I did." Something popped into his mind. It fit. "Or ... well, it's a longshot, but if you're in the Federal Witness Protection Program, that could be it. They'd have given you a new identity. If you got arrested and then rolled over on somebody bigger, and made a deal, there's no way I'd have been able to find that out."

Kris sat down heavily in the same chair he'd been interviewed in.

"I don't think that's the deal," he said. "It wasn't something like that."

"What wasn't something like that?" asked Mitch, softly.

Kris looked up. "It wasn't something the feds would be interested in," he said.

"Why don't you tell me about it and let me decide," said Mitch. He loosened the muscles in his shoulders and chest, upon finding them tight as a drum. He knew he was close and it excited him.

"I don't know what to do," sighed Kris.

"Tell me," said Mitch. "Whatever it is, I'll try to help you as much as I can." He was too excited, and he pushed, when he should have sat silent. "Is this about the gunshot?"

Kris blinked. His face went calm. Mention of the gunshot didn't cause him any discomfort at all. He stood.

"No," he said. "Never mind. You checked, and I didn't get arrested for anything in my past. That's really all I need to know."

Mitch almost groaned with the frustration he was feeling, but kept his voice neutral.

"I know you'd feel better if you got it off your chest ... whatever it is. Maybe I can help."

"I'll think about it," said Kris. "I have to go. I need to get some sleep."

Mitch wanted to pound his fist on the desk as he watched the man leave the station again.

By pure force of will, Kris tried to stop worrying about the memory of his hit and run accident. It wasn't on his record and the detective hadn't said anything about it. Everyone was interested in the gunshot wound, but Kris' total lack of memory about it left him more or less unconcerned about that. He was here, dealing with things. Lulu returned his affections and he knew, somehow, that she was the best thing he'd ever chanced upon. If fate was going to dump him in Pembroke, under completely odd circumstances, then he was just going to deal with it.

One thing that still worried him was that Lulu might think the only thing he was interested in was the sex, which wasn't true by a long shot. Had he known her better, he wouldn't have wasted the time worrying. She was an excellent judge of character, which was one reason she hadn't "tested" her IUD since it had been implanted. She just hadn't met a man who'd made her want to.

It seemed like their relationship had been mixed up since the beginning. Usually a couple went on some dates before they had sex. In this case, he was pretty sure neither of them had planned on having sex at all ... until it just happened. In any case, that evening, when he suggested they go to Clairmont, a larger town thirty miles away, to visit a museum there ... and called it a date ... he was relieved when she got excited about it.

They planned to go on her next day off, which also made him feel relieved, because if they did that for most of the day, they'd be unable to make love, and she didn't seem to mind that at all. At least she didn't say anything about it. He was mistaken about that, too, also because he didn't know her as well as it would've helped to.

It all went very normally, even though, as a couple, they looked very unlike a couple. He was older, with a slightly yuppie look to him, and she looked a bit like some renegade biker's woman. Her mohawk got some stares, as did the flaming tattoo on her shoulder, which was exposed when she took her parka off in the museum. She was wearing a black tank top with thin spaghetti straps. It had flames on it, which was appropriate because Kris thought she was the hottest woman in the building.

It turned out that the visit to the museum triggered a lot of memories for Kris. They didn't seem to be about his life, but "knowledge" popped into his head as they examined Native American artifacts on display. Most of the recovered memories had to do with Australian aborigines, and the similarities and differences between artifacts he had obviously seen Down Under and the ones they were seeing now.

Lunch was at a Thai restaurant, which triggered more memories as Kris realized he'd had this food before and liked it. Lulu had a taste for hot things, which he thought went with her shirt as well.

All in all, it was a great day. Ambrose hadn't minded going to Roslynn's, and they'd had a wonderful time just being together. On the way back to Pembroke, he looked over to find Lulu staring at him.

"You make me so hot," she said, her voice low.

"I do?" He sounded surprised.

"You're a very sexy man, Kris Farmingham," she said.

He glanced over and was shocked to see her undoing her jeans.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"You just drive," she said. "I'm having fun looking at you, and I'm going to be having even more fun in a minute."

He had to correct his steering as he realized what she was doing, when he saw her slide her hand into the front of her unbuttoned and unzipped jeans. She was masturbating ... right there in the car!

"I do not believe this," he sighed.

"Believe it," she panted, her hand moving in her pants. "When I'm done here, I'll help you believe it. Are you wearing underwear?"

"Of course I'm wearing underwear," he laughed.

"Boxers or briefs?" she asked. Her hips were moving now.

"Why does it matter?"

"I'm just trying to figure out how hard I'm going to have to work to get your magnificent penis out, so I can suck it."

"In the car? While I'm driving?" He laughed harder.

"Mmmmmm, I can taste you already," she moaned. She leaned back, closing her eyes. She had spread her legs as widely as she could. Her hand was very busy in her pants.

Kris forced himself to watch the road. There was a logging truck up ahead, with enough of a load on it that it was going fifteen miles an hour slower than all the other traffic. People ahead of him were passing the truck, when they could.

Watching traffic was made more difficult by the sounds she was making. He looked over to see her other hand up under her shirt, moving around on one breast.

"You are SHAMELESS!" he laughed.

"You turn me on sooooo much," she moaned. Her head flopped back on the headrest and she closed her eyes.

He didn't tell her he was going to pass the truck. He didn't, in all truth, think about the fact that the cab of the truck was up high, or that the driver, if he looked over, would easily be able to see where Lulu's hands were and what they were doing. Later he'd say he was distracted. In any case, he passed the truck and then jumped as the air horn of the truck started making repeated blaring sounds that he recognized as the rhythm of "Shave and a Haircut."

Lulu jumped too, because the horn started sounding before Kris had actually completed the passing maneuver. She twisted in the seat to look behind them and saw the driver waving at her, smiling.

"He SAW ME!" she squealed.

"Um ... I guess so," laughed Kris.

"Ohhhh shiiiit," groaned Lulu. "Nnnnnnnggggg."

Kris realized with astonishment that the fact that a random trucker had seen what she was doing had set her off. She was having an orgasm. He felt his prick stiffen and, by pure force of will, kept his eyes on the road. She lay limply, breathing hard for another few minutes, and then did up her pants. She started giggling and leaned over to grope the front of his pants.

"Stop that!" he laughed.

"Pass another truck!" she giggled, trying to find the tab of his zipper.

"You're crazy!" he yelled, batting at her hand.

"Move the seat back!" she ordered. "There's not enough room for my head."

"You're certifiably insane!"

"No I'm not," she said. "I'm just ... HUNGRY!"

With that she pushed her face into his lap and began making eating noises, just like she did when she pretended to eat Ambrose's neck. She couldn't get his zipper down, but she rubbed her face against his burgeoning erection.

"Let me get us home first!" he roared. "THEN you can do what you want."

She sat back up, grinned, and scooted over to sit next to him, her hand still fondling his prick on the outside of his pants.

"OK," she said simply.

Then she unbuttoned her jeans again.

"See if you can find another trucker to pass!" she yipped excitedly.

Harper's return drive to New York City gave him a lot of time to think about the interview he'd just conducted. It had been a bust, as far as getting what he'd gone after. The Henderson woman would walk. That didn't bother him all that much. She wasn't really a problem, in terms of being a criminal. He thought it was interesting that a man who had no real memory of his girlfriend would come to the conclusion that he hadn't been that much into her in the first place.

The bullet wound was also interesting. It was pretty rare for someone to get shot and for no one to know anything about the circumstances surrounding the incident. Lots of people got shot and had no idea who had shot them, but they at least knew the situation in which it had happened. If they lived through it, anyway.

It wasn't that he was particularly interested in Kristoff Farmingham's particular situation. It was just something to think about as he drove through scenery that he didn't get to see that often, which was so much easier on the eyes than the garish stuff that man created and called cities. He also thought about what it might be like to be in Mitch Connel's shoes and do police work in a place where a shooting was unusual. That had to be a pretty much stress free environment.

He spent a while fantasizing about leaving the city and retiring in some little hamlet where an experienced cop could actually make a difference in the crime rate.

All that fled when he got back to the precinct, though, with its noise and barely controlled confusion. There was a note on his computer monitor for him to call FBI Agent Jefferson. He was surprised when Jefferson himself answered the phone. He had expected to have to go through several underlings.

"What's up?" asked the detective.

"I need a favor," said Jefferson. "You've got the network of snitches there in town. This kingpin shit on the Custer case just won't die. Plus they want me to pursue the lead you got on where Moe got the gun. I was wondering if you'd nose around with your sources and see if you can come up with any associates of the Higginbothams who would know if they ever worked for somebody else, or who this guy with the missing trigger finger is."

"It must be killing you to ask for this," said Harper, smiling.

"Come on," pleaded the federal agent. "We're on the same team here."

"I'll see what I can do," said Harper. "It's been a while since I've seen some of my informants anyway. It will give me an excuse to get out of the office and make the rounds."

"I really appreciate this," said Jefferson. "This case is killing me."

"You're the one who snatched it from my hands," Jim reminded him, still grinning.

"I know, I know. Just see what you can come up with. And please document it well, so I can include it in my file. And who knows? Maybe you'll come up with something interesting."

"Not likely," said Harper. "You and I both know there is no mastermind. I'll do it, though. I want you in a position to owe me."

"Thanks a lot," said Jefferson. Both men knew it wasn't actually a display of gratitude.

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For Want of a Memory

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