Echoes of Memory

by Sara Driscoll

Genres: Crime Fiction; Psychological Thrillers

Synopsis

A thrilling standalone mystery featuring a San Diego florist grappling with post-traumatic amnesia. The only witness to a murder she can’t remember, her handwritten notes and razor-sharp wits are all she has to solve the crime—and save her life.

After surviving a terrible attack, Quinn Fleming has recovered in every way but one—her ability to retain new memories. Now, months later, it appears to the outside world as if the San Diego florist’s life is back to normal. But Quinn is barely holding on, relying on a notebook she carries with her at all times, a record of her entire existence since the assault. So when she witnesses a murder in the shadowy alley behind the florist shop, Quinn immediately writes down every terrifying detail of the incident before her amnesia wipes it away.

By the time the police arrive, there’s no body, no crime scene, and no clues. The killing seems as erased from reality as it is from Quinn’s mind . . . until the flashbacks begin. Suddenly, fragments of memories are surfacing—mere glimpses of that horrible night, but enough to convince Quinn that somewhere, locked in her subconscious, is the key to solving the case . . . and she’s not the only one who knows. Somebody else has realized Quinn is a threat that needs to be eliminated. Now, with her life on the line and only her notes to guide her, Quinn sets out to find a killer she doesn’t remember, but can’t forget . . .

Release date: July 23, 2024

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

All gone. Leaving only a terrifying blankness.

Taking the words of Robert Frost to heart—the only way out is through—Quinn learned to put one foot in front of the other, finding ways to compensate and falling back on skills retained from before the day the life she knew ended. Because to surrender to the darkness was more terrifying than trying to force her way through it.

Quinn checked the wall clock, a large wooden panel overlaid with a watercolor vase of garishly bright flowers. Her boss, Jacinta, had bought the clock when she opened her florist shop, Gaslamp Blooms, saying she liked the rustic charm of the whitewashed boards, the simple flowers, and the swirl detail on the wrought-iron hands.

Quinn frowned as she studied the timepiece. Not because of the time—though it was getting late . . . again—but because of the arrangement of daisies, tulips, petunias, and pansies. The perfection of the design set her teeth on edge. Too symmetrical, too pastel, too predictable.

Boring.

She had considerable artistic skills herself—pastels and colored pencils being her media of choice—but liked to dabble occasionally in oil paints, and knew she would have captured a more vibrant and lifelike scene.

Where was the panache of nature and the lack of man-made symmetry to complement the colors and textures? The silk of petals against the slick sheen of greenery? The surprising pop of color hiding among quieter tones? Not to mention no painting could ever convey the complex perfume of the blooms.

Closing her eyes, she drew in a slow breath through her nose, her lips curving with pleasure at the combined scents. Opening her eyes, she looked down at the hand-tied bridal bouquet cradled in her hands. Anchored by the gorgeous silvery-lavender blush of amnesia roses, offset by bright bursts of lilac freesia and spikes of lavender, threaded through with clusters of white spray roses and branches of willow eucalyptus, and cradled in the wide, waxy leaves of Italian Ruscus, the bouquet had the kind of life and beauty that hadn’t been accurately captured behind plodding clock hands.

Unable to help what was now an ingrained habit of self-defense, she glanced down again, scanning the floral order, laid out in precise detail, and then at the open notebook beside it, its pages sprawled open, marked by a narrow brown ribbon.

Write it all down. Check it. Then check it again.

Her mantra. When you couldn’t trust yourself, you found ways to compensate.

She no longer trusted herself.

Picking up a set of clippers, she made quick work of the ragged stems, trimming them to an even, scant few inches below where the bottom of the ribbon would lie when she added it the next morning. Then Jacinta would deliver the full shipment to the church well before the morning’s eleven o’clock wedding mass.

Bouquet complete, she moved to the walk-in cooler, yanking open the heavy door inset with a twelve-by-twelve-inch window to reveal the rainbow contents within. She stepped inside, cold air washing over her, raising gooseflesh on her forearms as she lowered the bouquet into the waiting vase of water. Now all the bouquet needed the next morning was a quick wrap of smoky silver satin ribbon, secured with a line of pearl straight pins, before being placed into the bride’s hands.

Perfect.

A quick scan of the cold room confirmed the arrangements she’d already checked and rechecked—boutonnieres for the groom and ushers, corsages for the mothers nestled in clear plastic containers to protect the fragile blooms, the smaller hand-tied bouquets for the bridesmaids, twin altar arrangements and a dozen pew arrangements for the church, and another container of loose amnesia and white roses for the wedding cake.

She cast a disparaging glance in the direction of the amnesia roses. Gorgeous, but lately they were a nagging reminder of what she’d lost and a physical representation of her shortcomings. Still, she wouldn’t allow those failings to ruin a couple’s special day. She would do what was required to make sure everything was perfect.

She left the cooler, firmly latching the door behind her, as if she could similarly lock those same shortcomings away.

At the counter, she couldn’t refrain from a quick check of the order one more time before she slipped it into the file folder.

Another glance at the clock as it ticked past nine o’clock told her this job had taken far too long. All her fault, but it was why she preferred to work the late shift in the shop, closing up at seven o’clock and then working until the job was finished. Jacinta didn’t know how many overtime hours she’d worked since coming back. She wouldn’t force her boss, who had been nothing but understanding and endlessly flexible following her release from the hospital, to pay for the work that used to come as naturally as breathing, and now was a marathon of uncertainty and triple-checking. She’d yet to make an error, but her self-confidence remained in tatters, nonetheless.

She’d never meant to stay this long. Now the light had long faded away, meaning a wait for the bus in the dark, an idea that sent a shiver of terror down her spine. She’d meant to still have the safety of the last of the day’s light for the return trip but had lost track of the time.

Get it done. Then figure out your next step.

She splayed fingers over the open notebook on the counter, reviewing the list outlining everything that needed to be done to close the shop for the night—securing the small amount of cash, reviewing the receipts, making sure the live plants had been watered and the cut blooms in the cold cabinet up front had sufficient volume, taking out the trash, shutting off the lights, locking up.

All steps she knew by heart from before, but she wouldn’t allow herself to make a mistake and didn’t trust herself not to. She was well aware of how far she’d fallen, of how low her confidence ebbed. Even when she knew what to do because that knowledge was cemented in memories formed before her world turned upside down.

She closed the notebook and slipped it into a back pocket of jeans that carried the pale outline of its constant presence. Then she gathered the trash into a black garbage bag and dragged it to the rear of the shop. Jacinta had told her repeatedly to leave the garbage for her to do first thing the next morning in the light, but Quinn felt guilty leaving extra work for her. Though she appreciated her boss’s care and concern for her well-being, especially when it came to working alone at night following her attack, the alley was behind a locked, barred gate and the trip there and back would only take sixty seconds at most.

She unlocked the deadbolt and stepped out into summer humidity so thick it flowed over her skin. She stood at the end of the narrow, dead-end alley that cut between the buildings on this block, with only a pair of dingy security lights to fractionally lighten the gloom. In the distance, live music from one of the clubs spilled into the streets, and laughter echoed from down the alley.

Gaslamp Blooms was located in the heart of San Diego’s chic and historic Gaslamp Quarter. An eclectic mix of boutique shops, art galleries, restaurants, and clubs, the Gaslamp, as it was known locally, was a national historic site and still bore the footprint of its early builder, Alonzo Horton—Horton Plaza Park, sold to the city in the late 1800s, lay only a handful of blocks to the north, not to mention a hotel and apartment block also bearing his name. The Gaslamp was a popular hot spot, considered chic by locals and visitors alike. The district was busy during the day, but after the shops and galleries closed every evening, the area really came alive. And on a Friday or Saturday night, only more so.

The music and laughter should have lifted her spirits. Instead, it twisted her stomach and caught at her breath.

It had been a social evening, just like the one she could hear now, that had sealed her fate. She only knew what she’d been told; she had no actual memory of the incident herself. The attack had taken that from her.

Maybe that was a blessing.

Instead, she’d learned repetition could, with time, start to rebuild knowledge instead of a true memory. She’d reviewed the account in her copy of the police report—an account derived from interviews with everyone she’d had contact with that evening, as well as evidence at the scene—enough so she now had a basic understanding of the night her life had changed forever.

She’d been on her way home, not from work, but from a night out with friends a few blocks north of where she now stood. It had been a Friday night similar to this one, an evening of drinks and dancing just down the street, blowing off steam at the end of a long work week. She’d stayed out late, having sweet-talked Jacinta into giving her a rare Saturday off. There’d been no wedding on the books for that Saturday, and Jacinta had told her she’d cover the shift solo and to party for both of them—she had a date that night with her cat and the latest steamy, streaming period drama. Quinn had enjoyed dinner and then danced for hours. Yes, alcohol had been involved, but she hadn’t overindulged. Maybe she was a tiny bit tipsy, but that had been the extent of it. She’d watched the time and had promptly bid her friends goodbye in time to catch the last Route 3 bus of the night just before midnight to take her home to her rented apartment on Ocean View Boulevard, south of the sprawling Mount Hope Cemetery.

That’s when everything went wrong.

Already at the north end of the Gaslamp, she’d apparently decided the bus stop at Fourth Avenue and B Street was closer than the one at Fourth and G. She’d left the more populated area of downtown and headed north, leaving the restaurants and clubs behind to enter a quieter area flanked by a shuttered drugstore on one side and a darkened office building on the other. Ahead, a boarded-up hotel was being renovated, and a tarp-covered pedestrian tunnel ran the entire length of the facade, protecting those on the sidewalk from the external work going on overhead during the workday. The construction site had been deserted, but the safety feature remained.

It was unknown if the attacker surprised Quinn from inside the tunnel, or if he’d been drawn by a pretty blonde with an artistically messy updo, followed her up the deserted street, and struck once away from the prying eyes of anyone driving by. What was known was she was beaten unconscious and then robbed of her phone, her credit cards, some cash, her dead mother’s sapphire ring, and the life she knew.

A bartender walking home after the end of his shift had found her body rolled into a corner of the scaffolding. He nearly hadn’t seen her in the dark, walking with his eyes fixed on his phone, and would have missed her entirely if he hadn’t tripped over an uneven raised lip on a section of sidewalk and madly juggled his phone in an effort not to let it smash onto the concrete. But as the light from the screen flashed around the enclosed space, it caught the rhinestone detailing on her platform stiletto sandals. He’d likely saved Quinn’s life that night, calling 911 and staying with her until help arrived. She’d regained consciousness in a hospital bed the next day, alone, confused, and terrified at the blankness where the attack should have been.

She only grew more terrified when it became clear that blankness might dog her steps for the rest of her life.

Doctors told her about the amazing recuperative power of the brain—“neuroplasticity” as they called it, having the ability to literally rewire itself in response to trauma or stroke. The first six months were crucial and her recovery might be bumpy and uneven, something she could attest to—how could she remember the word “neuroplasticity” when she couldn’t remember what she’d eaten for lunch that day without looking at her notebook? Now, almost three months later, she was beginning to dread that the majority of her healing and rewiring was complete, and this was going to be her life forever—an almost entirely blank page, punctuated by only the most mundane and repetitive acts, creating, essentially, a single collective memory.

A crash of dishes drew her attention to the restaurant across the alley. A plastic dairy crate jammed between the door and the frame left an eighteen-inch gap to allow hot kitchen air to escape. Considering the unusual heat of this August evening, the temperature inside must have been truly unbearable if the stagnant alley air was considered cooler. Raised voices followed the crash—one accusatory, the other full of derogatory humor—but then subsided. It wouldn’t do to have the restaurant patrons think there were hot, sweaty, exhausted chefs behind the kitchen door of one of the area’s swankiest restaurants. Facing out onto Fifth Avenue, the street that traversed the heart of the Gaslamp, Casa Morales was a local success story, lauded by restaurant critics and patrons alike, and was typically swarmed on a Friday evening. Quinn could picture Fifth right now: the thick foot traffic, the outdoor patios lining the sidewalk and spilling out into the outer lane, a popular holdover from the pandemic loved by restaurant owners because it let them expand their virtual floor space. But here on Fourth Avenue, it was quieter at this time of night, with almost all the foot traffic a full city block over, separated by the bulk of the packed one- and two-story buildings.

She dragged the garbage bag to the dumpster, grasped it with both hands, and heaved it over the tall lip. The thump of a door closing made her spin around in surprise to face the alley, now even darker with Casa Morales’s kitchen door closed, its energetic spill of light and activity gone, leaving the alley quiet and somehow colder despite the thick heat.

She turned to head back to lock up the flower shop when a flash of movement caught her attention at the end of the alley—a lone man, dressed in dark clothes, slipping into the skinny driveway only half the width of the alley. Someone had left the narrow-barred gate open again, allowing him into the private lane. For only the briefest of moments, he was silhouetted against the backdrop of the streetlight-flooded sidewalk, giving her a fleeting view of long pants and sleeves despite the heat, either close-cropped hair or a bald head, and a tall, wiry build, before he pressed against the side of the building well inside the gate, and probably fifteen or twenty feet into the lane.

Something about his furtive movements telegraphed danger to Quinn. Or, at the very least, illicit action.

Was he coming for her?

Cold sweat prickled as her heart started to hammer, and she shrank back into the shadows, squeezing into the scant space between the bulk of the garbage and the organic waste dumpsters, suddenly feeling her isolation in the alley with a stranger blocking the only unobstructed exit to the outside world. Her heel landed in something soft and squishy, and she began to slip sideways, catching herself with a hand on the dumpster, clamping her jaw shut hard to keep from crying out in surprise. Behind her, quiet scrabbling told her she wasn’t the only living creature hiding in the shadows, and a shudder ran through her at the thought of sheltering with vermin who might consider her their freshest meal ever.

Better the rats than what might be out in the alley.

Her gaze shot to the door of the flower shop, just visible from where she sheltered, dark under the security light that had stopped working more than a year ago. If she was in jeopardy, how fast could she pull out the correct key, jam it into the dimly lit lock, shoot back the latch bolt, slide inside, and shut the door behind her? If she could latch it, the door would lock automatically, but that gave entirely too much time for an attacker to block the door, or slide into the deserted shop behind her. She could only imagine what he could do to her then. Alternatively, if she ran to the restaurant, even if she pounded on the door, would her cries for help be heard over the din of the busy kitchen?

Stay out of sight.

Quinn sank deeper into the shadows, wincing as the rough, rusted steel of the garbage dumpster rasped along her bare arm below her cap sleeve, scraping the soft flesh. She slapped one hand over it, the wound burning under her grip. A putrid stench rose around her, mostly from the food rotting in the heat inside the organic waste dumpster, though she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t joined by the smell of decomposing rat. It made her stomach rise into her gorge, but sheer terror helped her beat it down again. If she lost control of her stomach, there would be no doubt as to her position. Saliva pooled sourly under her tongue, and she concentrated on inhaling shallow breaths through her mouth to keep the stench out of her nose.

She kept her eyes fixed on the mouth of the alley where the man nearly disappeared in the dimness, his body flat against the wall. Had she not seen him move into place, she’d have never spotted him. She might have strolled out into the dark alley to be jumped just as she had been only months before.

A whimper rose in the back of her throat, and she pressed a shaking hand to her lips to ensure no trace of sound whispered through. There was safety in the quiet darkness; she just needed to stay in it. Surely, he’d go away soon. But in the meantime, she’d be prepared just in case. She pulled her store keys out of her pocket, clutching her fingers around them tight so they could make no noise, and then rearranged them to lie in her clenched fist with two of the keys sticking out between her fingers.

A jab to the throat or eyes could do major damage. She might be terrified, but she wasn’t going down without a fight. It might be a fearful and pathetic life, but it was hers.

Likely only sixty or ninety seconds had ticked by, but it already felt like she’d been hunkered in the stinking dark for fifteen minutes. And still the man remained motionless against the wall.

Slowly, realization sank in that she wasn’t his target, that his attention was solely focused out onto the street, not into the alley. Then it dawned that what she initially saw as danger, might be desperation.

The thought barely had time to coalesce when a second figure appeared in the mouth of the alley, moving fast. He headed for the man sheltering inside the gate, his steps sure with single-minded purpose and aggression; there was no doubt in Quinn’s mind that violence was his intent. Quinn had the briefest impression of height and bulk before the two men collided. Their struggle sent them reeling into the alley proper, around the corner toward one of the shop doors, and out of sight of the street. Nearer now, and in a direct line to her hiding place, Quinn tried to track the fight as the two men grappled in and out of the murky light, the one clearly at an advantage because of his stature.

It happened so fast Quinn could barely follow their movements, but the larger man got behind the smaller, wrapped one arm around his neck and gave it a brutal jerk. The wiry man went limp, and might have tumbled to the ground had his attacker’s arm not stayed around his neck.

He hung there unmoving, and it took seconds for Quinn’s stunned brain to compute what she was actually seeing.

He’s dead.

The words ricocheted around her brain as she pushed even farther into the shadows. Her back hit rough brick and her heel rammed into something solid, sending it spinning. There was a muffled metallic clang as the object hit the dumpster, and she had to clamp both hands over her mouth to keep a startled cry of fear from breaking loose.

The tall man whipped around to face the rear of the alley, the limp body dangling from his choke hold flopping awkwardly and then falling still. He was only a dark form, mostly hidden by shadows, but she could feel his eyes on her, penetrating the darkness. Seeing into her soul.

He’d just killed a man; what did he have to lose in killing the only witness to his crime?

She clamped her teeth tight to hold in the scream fighting to break free, catching the soft skin of her inner lip, and tasting a metallic tang as blood spurted onto her tongue. Her breath rasped hard and fast, and her head spun as she fought for calm.

The man took a step toward her, the lower extremities of his burden dragging behind him along the filthy alley.

The kitchen door to Casa Morales abruptly opened, the milk crate sliding back into place as light spilled into the darkness. The tableau at the end of the courtyard—one man standing tall, the other limp in his hold—was spotlit by the light cascading into the alley for a second before the living melted with the dead into the shadows.

With a grinding of brakes, a white panel van pulled up to the mouth of the alley, the side door sliding open by seemingly invisible hands. There was only a moment’s hesitation—Quinn could imagine the battle going on in the man’s mind, to fight or escape—before a dark form ran into the light at the end of the alley, a mass over his shoulder. He jumped into the van’s cargo hold, dropping his bundle carelessly. For a moment, he paused in the open doorway, staring into the darkness at the end of the alley.

Looking for her.

His head whipped sideways as if someone spoke to him, and then he grabbed the door and slammed it shut. The van took off down F Street, quickly, but not so fast as to attract attention.

Then Quinn was alone in the alley, her heart pounding so loudly in her ears it blocked out all other sound.

Logic finally pushed through the fog of terror on a single insistent note. Move. Now. Before anyone changed their mind and they circled back to clear up the inconvenience of a pesky witness. If she was gone, they’d never know if someone had truly been there, or if only the scurrying rats had witnessed their crime. Or if they found traces of a human, they’d never know from which shop they’d come.

Bracing her free hand against the filthy wall, Quinn pushed off hard and fast, slipping out from between the dumpsters and sprinting for the back door of the flower shop. She took extra seconds to stay near the wall, in the murkier shadows, rather than taking the shorter route straight across the alley, just in case. Reaching the door, she raised her shaking hand, the keys still protruding from between her fingers as she aimed for the lock. Her hands shook so violently she fumbled the keys, the key ring tumbling to the dirty concrete at her feet with a metallic jangle that struck her ears like the earthshaking clang of a gong. With a muttered curse, she picked it up, willing her hands to steady as she selected the correct key and tried again to line it up with the lock. The key vibrated in her white-knuckled grip, bouncing off the edge of the lock twice before it finally shot home. She opened the door, slipped inside, and pulled it closed behind her.

She leaned against the door and slid down to sit with her knees pressed against her chest. And rocked.

Holy Mother of God, she’d witnessed a murder.

She had to call it in. But first she had to get her heart out of her throat.

Write it down. Check it. Then check it again.

As her mantra sounded in her head, she knew there was something else she had to do first, and thrust her hand into her back pocket to pull out the notebook. She knew herself—if she didn’t write down what she’d witnessed in exacting detail this minute, chances were good it would be gone the next. And then someone would have died and the only person who could have helped the police find his killer would have willfully left him without justice.

The world was unfair, had been brutally unfair to her. She knew the pain of it. She could never be intentionally cruel to someone else in that same way, even if they weren’t alive to experience it themselves.

Her hands still trembled as she opened the book to the second ribbon—not the regular tasks she had to do as part of daily life, marked by the first strip of brown satin, but her daily updates, where she noted the details of her everyday life, so what her brain wouldn’t retain, her journal would. Still not trusting her legs to hold her, she stretched them out in front of her, pressed the open book to one thigh, pulled the pen out of its elastic loop, and began to write.

Experience had taught her to include every last detail, because you were never sure what was important. So she wrote down what still played in her head like a Technicolor cinema classic, then went back and added more, scribbling in the margin and circling key points. A third time, to make sure she got it all down, while her heart rate finally slowed when no one pounded on the door at her back.

Finished, having expelled every sight and nuance she could recall before it trickled away, she let the pen drop from her lax fingers as the book slid. . .