Memory Lapse

The heat from the thousand-watt light bulb was starting to get to Linda. The Detective was not going to let off until he received the information he wanted, and Linda was not about to give it to him.

“Let’s start again, Ms. McIntyre,” Detective Cheney said. “Were you at the Hotel Ambrosia yesterday evening?”

“I don’t know,” Linda replies with a smug look on her face. She feels if she continues to deny her whereabouts, the Detective will not have any proof for his investigation.

“I have a video from the hotel lobby that shows you entering and exiting the room where Mr. McIntyre was found dead,” the Detective barked. “And now you’re going to sit there and tell me you don’t know if you were there or not?”

Linda McIntyre was a fifty-year-old woman with short blonde hair. She was slim and always dressed as if she was on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. She always told people; you only get one chance at making a first impression. You better make sure it’s a good one. Everyone knew she married Henry McIntyre for his money. She was twenty years younger than him and never paid him any attention until she found out his balance in his bank account. She sat across the table from the Detective, wearing an evening gown with a mink shawl and an arrogance that filled the room like the flatulence of a cow – it stank, and the Detective knew it.

“Well, Detective,” Linda says with an attitude, “if you know I was there, then why do you keep asking me? I honestly cannot remember where I was that night. You seem to know more about what I did than I do.”

“All I know is you walked into that room where Mr. McIntyre was at 11:00 PM. Then you walked out at 11:30 PM. What I don’t know Is what happened during those thirty minutes you were in the room with him.” The Detective was doing his best to remain calm. But Linda’s smug attitude was getting on his nerves. “So, do you care to tell me what you did when you were there?”

Linda looked directly at the Detective as if she were about to scold him. “I do not recall.”

“Is it possible, Ms. McIntyre, that you don’t want to remember?” the Detective asked.

“What do you mean by that, Detective?”

“I mean, if I was a wife of a millionaire that had a multi-million-dollar life insurance policy, I might forget that I murdered my husband, too.”

Linda rolled her eyes in disgust. “You think I killed my husband?”

“I did not say that, Ms. McIntyre,” the Detective replied. “All I’m saying is you were the last one to see him in that hotel room. He was alive when he went in and dead when you came out. Can you explain that?”

Linda looks at the Detective with an evil glare. “I don’t remember.”

The Detective exited the room and reappeared moments later with a laptop computer. He opens it up to a video that is ready to go, and he hits the play button. “See that person? That’s you, Ms. McIntyre. That’s you entering your husband’s room.”

Linda watches the video intently. “That does look like me. I’ll give you that, Detective. But I will tell you again, I do not ever remember being at that hotel.”

“Where’s the fur coat you were wearing in this video?” the Detective asks.

“If that is me, and that is my fur coat, I would assume the coat would be hanging in my closet at home,” Linda replied.

“We thought the same thing,” the Detective said. “While we’ve been here talking, I had a team searching your home. They can’t find that coat.” The Detective got angrier and leaned in towards Linda. “Where did you dump it?”

Linda became more relaxed, knowing she may have no way out. “Detective,” she said, “have you ever had something happen in your life that you don’t want to remember?”

The Detective was caught off guard. “What do you mean?”

Linda reaches for a pack of cigarettes on the table and lights one up. She takes a drag before continuing. “How’s Margret doing, detective?”

Margret was the Detective’s only daughter. He had not seen her in years, and the last time he did see her, it was a long-drawn-out fight that ended with her storming out of the house. The Detective’s wife always blamed him for the daughter becoming distant and never talking to them again.

The Detective was puzzled. “How do you know Margret?” he asked.

Linda remained calm, puffing on the cigarette one more time. “That doesn’t matter how I know her. You had a fight with your daughter and have not seen her since. That was, what? Two years ago? But it’s something that you don’t talk about, and it’s something you try to move on from. And to do that, you put that event in the past, hopefully, to never be brought back up again.”

The Detective wanted to get the investigation back on track. “We’re not here to talk about me. This investigation is about you and your dead husband.”

“See,” Linda said, “you want to forget about Margret. You’re trying to put it in the past and forget about the incident ever happening, don’t you?”

The Detective was done talking about him and his daughter and became agitated. “Look, Ms. McIntyre. You were at the hotel, and I want to know the details. Don’t give me any of this crap saying you don’t remember. I know you do, and I want to know the details.”

Linda takes a puff of her cigarette and puts it out in the ashtray next to her. “Detective, I did kill my husband. I’m not proud of it, and it is something I now regret. I didn’t regret it then, but I do now. And it’s something I want to forget about, but you are making me relive that moment over and over again. The fur coat is in a dumpster a block away from the hotel. You can’t miss it. It’s covered in blood. The knife was dumped in the lobby trashcan.”

The Detective became calm now that he had the confession he was looking for. “Why, Ms. McIntyre? Why did you kill your husband?”

“Abuse comes in many forms, detective,” Linda says calmly. “It’s not always physical. It can be emotional or psychological. I was abused, Detective, and I was tired of it. I realized that no amount of money could be worth the abuse that I was subject to. I felt the only way to stop it was to stop him.”

The Detective put handcuffs on Linda McIntyre and led her out of the interrogation room. He passed her on to one of the waiting officers to process her. She was formally arrested for the murder of her husband.

The Detective returned to his desk and opened the top drawer where he pulled out a photograph of him and his daughter. It was from a camping trip they had gone on several years ago. It was when Margret caught her first fish. The Detective thought about her and thought about how Linda McIntyre was able to come clean on an event she would rather forget about.

The Detective picked up his phone and dialed a number. “Margret, this is your dad. How are you doing?”