Forget to Remember

nail Michael. Do we have to stand? The ground is damp and muddy and covered with branches and dirty leaves.”
    It had rained recently. Ivan opened his pack. He pulled out a thin tarpaulin, unfolded it, and spread it on the ground. He also took out a pair of binoculars. Carol knelt on the tarp. This was marginally better than standing. Ivan sat down beside her.
    “I’m worried about your bare legs. They’ll get cold.”
    She had jeans at the motel, but that was too far away. She’d just have to tough it out. Ivan had put on an old sweatshirt. He also had a moth-eaten sweater in the pack. He lay on his stomach and had her do the same. Then he covered her legs with the sweater. He was a gentleman.
    “How do we go to the bathroom?”
    “Well, that isn’t much of a problem for a man, but I can see where it could be for a woman.”
    Carol wanted to wipe the smile off his face. “In today’s world of equality, that is by far the biggest disadvantage of being a woman—at least outdoors. Is there a reason for starting the stakeout now when we know Katherine isn’t here?”
    “Michael might be here. Even if we don’t see him, we may learn something when Katherine comes home.”
    Carol wondered whether Michael was a ladies’ man. She couldn’t remember anything about her brother. He’d have to be pretty sharp to have Katherine for a girlfriend, judging by her picture. He had probably promised her they’d take the inheritance once the foundation received it and split to some exotic part of the world.
    To while away the time, she asked Ivan about himself. He had been in the military. He was wounded during Desert Storm in 1990 and discharged. He had recovered enough to become a policeman, but the remnants of the old wound plus a more recent one had left him disabled, at least as far as police work was concerned. He had gone into business for himself. Carol was certain he’d been wounded in the face and wondered where else. He didn’t say, and she didn’t ask.
    She told Ivan about her amnesia and went over everything she remembered. She mentioned the four times she thought Michael had tried to kill her. Ivan said Michael was demented, and he ought to know because he’d seen a lot of demented people in his life.
    She eventually gave up her resolution to play camel and said she had to pee. She moved away from Ivan along the inside of the fence to do it. He didn’t show any interest. In fact, he barely looked at her at all. She wondered if he were gay like that scam artist, Beard. Or maybe his injuries had made him impotent.
    Ivan focused the binoculars, which would come in handy if a person appeared. There were no windows on this side of the house, so seeing the interior wasn’t a possibility. They had eaten a big lunch, but when the hunger pangs started to gnaw, Ivan pulled energy bars out of his pack. He also had a couple of water bottles. He had obviously done this before.
    The sun was setting when a car drove into the driveway and stopped. Ivan looked through the binoculars, but Carol could tell with her naked eyes that the woman who got out of the car was Katherine. All that blond hair. She disappeared from their view and presumably went into the house. It was anticlimactic. They had learned what they already knew.
    Carol turned toward Ivan who was still looking through the binoculars. “What do we do now?”
    “Chances are she’s going out again since she parked in the driveway. We’ll wait a little while longer.”
    Five minutes later someone walked along the far side of the car and then down the rest of the driveway to the mailbox. It was a man with long hair. Carol grabbed the binoculars from Ivan and tweaked the focus as she looked through them. As the man left the mailbox and started back toward the house, she had a good look at his face and his red hair, lit by the last rays of the sun.
    “That’s him. That’s Michael.” She forgot to keep her voice down, but the noise of the traffic behind her drowned her out. “Let’s go get him.”
    Ivan grabbed her shoulder as she started to get up. “Let him go. He’d see us coming long before we got to him. Besides, we can’t just grab him.”
    “What, then?”
    “We know where he lives. Now we have to make a plan to entice him out of there.”

    CHAPTER 37
    At nine o’clock the next morning, Carol met Ivan in his office. It barely qualified as an office. It was cramped and dingy with plentiful quantities of dust and grime. There were stacks