Chapter Eighteen
Memories

By the time Gibbs' yellow and black Hemi had cleared the front gate McGee had called to report that Paul Saunders had arrived at Glenwood Cemetery in the Northeast quarter. Dorneget waits in his car on the street in sight of the Lincoln Road NE entrance his charge had used, allowing Saunders privacy to conduct his affairs. Gibbs, who has a talent for warping space to the extent that his team theorizes that he can actually arrive at his destination before leaving the Navy Yard, makes the cross district trek in near record time.

A call ahead to the surveilling agent brings them together across the street from the cemetery entrance. When he'd followed Saunders and saw him leave the office, Dorneget had gone in and obtained a map of the complex and marked the location of the Saunders' burial site. He'd returned to the street and had it ready when Gibbs and Pride arrived.

Leaving Dorneget to cover the entrance, the Senior Agents navigate the sprawling expanse of curved and interlinked roads through gravestones and monuments into the northeast section between I and K. They see several people scattered through the tremendous range this Monday morning as they travel the road which meanders between the manicured expanses of green until they pull behind a Mercedes SLK.

Paul Saunders doesn't look at them as he leans against the side of the car. When Gibbs and Pride get out they don't approach him. Instead they pass onto the grass, walk the three rows to a trio of plots, one marked with a large stone for Harold and Nora straddling the pair of graves to the left while Robert and Elizabeth's large stone extends between the third and fourth, half over each of them. There are two spaces to the right of these, the grass level and unmarked.

They stand in respectful silence with their own thoughts for half a minute, and only then do they turn to find Paul is standing behind them by the second row.

"Thank you." He returns to the car and the agents follow until they gather at its side. "I called this morning to make the arrangements. We've had the plots for years, when my Grandfather died we got all six so we would be together." He looks to the far left plot. "I never knew him, dad's father. Today I just... came out. One thing about cemeteries, people leave you alone." He looks from one to the other. "Who told you where to find me?"

"You never were alone," Pride tells him. At his blank look, he explains "Our agent just gave you your space."

"I needed to be alone, to process all this. It's like things just turned upside down for me. But I guess you have questions."

x

"Our ME says he found injuries on your sister," Gibbs says, "that she had a broken arm, broken rib. They kept her out of work for a couple of weeks."

"Oh yeah." He continues staring at the graves. He's focused on the unoccupied ground, fifth from the left. "She had an accident. She was watching a football game, one of those High School things, but from right on the edge when she got slammed a couple of months before it happened. Before... It happened. She was... Dad... they settled it out of court."

After long enough, Pride points out that "She also said in her diary that three days before she disappeared she dislocated her shoulder. She also says she didn't tell anyone, but went to work at the Clinic."

He nods. "She slipped on the marble steps in the foyer, not long after they were done. They should never have been polished, I don't know what Sam Elliot was thinking way back then. Those things were a menace, they looked prettier than they deserved to be. She fell halfway down those stairs. There are runners on them now, but back then... She slipped, on what I never knew. She wasn't really hurt, not badly. I mean falls on marble steps that high could kill you but she... She didn't fall all the way down, grabbed the banister but did it way wrong. She knew how to tell dad to help; they got her shoulder fixed, popped the arm back in, then took her to the hospital. They said it was more pain than real damage, tendons and ligaments not quite torn."

x

He stares ahead at the distant graves.

"Good thing she had a closet full of Emergency meds," Gibbs says quietly.

"Yes," he whispers, staring at the graves.

"And the defibrillator. For your grandmother."

"Yes," he says as quietly. His eyes shift slightly to the second grave.

"But when Nora Saunders needed it, Annette wasn't there to help. She was already dead."

"Yes."

"And she was the only one who knew how to work it properly."

Paul's face is a mask of grief. He leaves the car, walks slowly to the graves. Slowly he kneels down but not before the second grave or the other paired ones, but at the foot of the fifth plot, the first without a stone, Annette's to-be grave, the still grass soon to be uprooted when the plot receives its charge. Gibbs and Pride stand on each side before the empty plot. Paul doesn't look up at either of them, stares at the undisturbed grass and his voice is low, infinitely sad. "Yes."

"You tried to use it that day," Gibbs says, finally sure of the truth. "But you didn't know how."

"Yes." Hands clasped before him, shoulders shaking, he begins to cry. Neither Gibbs nor Pride do anything as Paul sobs.

x

For a long time the men wait until finally the tumult passes. It takes a great effort but Paul Saunders finally forces himself to look up. His face is drawn as though he's aged ten years and in his eyes is a lifetime of pain.

"What happened?" Pride asks.

He can't keep their eyes, can see only the graves. "I've spent these past two days... three days... remembering... trying to remember. For a long time it was like dreams, bits and pieces of reality forcing their way in, forcing the fantasy out." His voice is distant. Quiet. Dead. Tears trickle down his cheeks. He doesn't try to stop them.

"Mom and dad took Nana out for a celebration, I don't know why any more. Ann was supposed to mind me. I was the kid, needed his big sister as a sitter. I remember I didn't think I did," he sighs, "but I did."

His eyes never leave the grass. "We were in the kitchen. She was cooking dinner. She'd just come back from work. She wasn't even supposed to be in but she went anyway. No matter how much she hurt, she worked. She came home late, had to hurry dinner, only got her shoes and jacket off. I was sitting at the table with my school books. She was cooking, helping me with my homework, preparing the food, setting the table, half a dozen things." He wipes tears away.

"She was helping me with some stupid math problem I couldn't get when a pot of water boiled over. We had an electric stove back then. She ran to get it, slipped in her socks on the hot water covering the floor, hurried to turn off the stove, tried to pull the plug over it..." He wipes his eyes hard. "What idiot puts a power strip over a stove?" he demands with fire, but there's no answer that can mean anything.

x

"I only remember her screaming. I stood there, frozen stiff as she screamed and screamed and I couldn't move. I remember now being scared, so scared." He scrubs the tears from his face.

"She was screaming and I couldn't do anything but watch! She fell down and wasn't moving. I tried to help." He finally looks up to the men. "I tried to help!" He takes a deep breath, finally lets it out. "But I was a kid. I didn't know how to help. But I watched all the shows, Emergency, Marcus Welby, Doctor Kildare, Saint Elsewhere, E.R., all the old things. Ann used to record them, I think even when she was a kid she wanted to be a doctor, and we used to watch some together.

"That's why I thought I knew what to do. When someone's heart stops you use a defibrillator and Ann had a defibrillator in her room.

"I ran to get it. I knew from television how to turn it on, how to charge it. It was a simple one. I could figure it out. I used it," he presses his fists against his eyes to rub away the tears. "It shocked her but nothing happened. She didn't wake up. They always woke up on TV, when the heart restarted. So I did it again. It didn't work either so I tried it again. And again. And again."

He looks up to them, wet eyes haunted with decades of pain. "I remember screaming at her. Wake up. Wake up. Come on, Ann, you have to wake up. I kept trying and trying and trying... and trying... and trying..." He shakes his head. "I remember now crying so much I could barely see the controls, but I kept trying. I have no idea how many times I tried."

Gibbs thinks 'Twenty' but won't torture the man by saying it. There had been forty marks beside the burns on her right fingers, hand and her feet.

"I stopped, I don't know why." His gaze drops, he can't look at them any longer. "I think I realized she was dead and shocking her wasn't bringing her back like it was supposed to and wouldn't bring her back."

x

"Paul," Pride says, "it was an accident. But why did you hide her?"

Still kneeling, he looks up at them, tears streaming down his face. "I was a kid. I didn't know better. All I did know was that when the Police find a dead body someone gets blamed. I was the only one there so I was going to prison for the rest of my life.

"I was scared.

"But I had my secret hiding place. I'd found it years before, when I was really a kid, five or six I think. I'd had a temper tantrum, kicked the wall and it had opened. No one else knew. I found it by accident, kept it up. It became my secret headquarters, my private place for when I really wanted to be alone. Well, I knew I had to hide Ann or I was going to jail. I hid her, cleaned up everything." He looks to the four graves to his left. "And I lied to my family when they came home, told them that she never came home.

"I was scared, so I lied. The police came and I lied. You came and I lied. I lied because I was scared, but as I kept lying it started becoming easy. Dad had no idea how many times he helped me by constantly sending me to my room when people came to search or help or ask questions.

"I lied and I lied and I lied, down through the years. Nana died and I knew it was my fault that she was dead, because I killed Ann and so Ann wasn't be there to save Nana."

x

He takes a deep breath, holds it, lets it out slowly and stops looking into the past, stares instead at the graves. "I don't know when the lies became truth. I don't know when I started believing that I hadn't seen her, that I didn't know anything. I think my mind... they say your mind pushes out truth too terrible to face. I don't know. All I know is I forgot the secret room. I forgot what happened to Ann. I forgot what I did. The lies became the truth. I don't know when it happened, how it happened, it happened so gradually, but my killing my sister, leaving my grandmother with no rescue, was so horrible I finally couldn't remember it any longer. The lies became the truth." He takes a deep breath, looks up to the towering agents.

"Agent Gibbs, when you came on Friday and told me you found Ann I swear to you I really was shocked. When you showed me the room I swear to God I had no idea it had been there. I think it didn't exist for me anymore. When you showed me her body I was shocked because I'd had no idea she was there. I didn't tell one lie to you on Friday or Saturday because my lies had become my truth. I really believed she had just disappeared, and as I grew up over the past twenty one years the lies became my false memories.

"They became my reality. My truth."

x

He looks down to the grass. "But over the past two days, talking to you, thinking, remembering, the real reality started breaking in, a bit at a time, a flash here and there, gradually whole memories. I remembered what I did, what I didn't do."

He looks to the graves to his left. "I came here yesterday, not just to arrange for Ann, but to apologize. To deal with my guilt. I don't know if I murdered my sister. I don't know if my stupidity caused my Nana to die. I would confess if I knew what to confess to. I didn't want them to die. I tried to save Ann. I tried to save her and as God is my witness," tears come hard, "I didn't know how!"