The Memory Killer

by J. A. Kerley

  Scott passed his chair, smacking the back and setting it into rocking motion, then disappeared out the door. He returned within two minutes, his right hand holding a syringe and a fifty-cc vial of dark brown glass. In his left was a small leather bag. A bouquet of green balloons bobbed behind Scott as he walked, popping with every step. When they popped they left black smoke roiling in the air.

  They’re just hallucinations, Patrick told himself, again tapping his head against the floor and letting a strand of spittle fall from his mouth.

  Scott set the syringe and vial in the lounger and approached Patrick, the leather bag bouncing from hand to hand.

  “You’ve been a bad girl,” he chided, looking at Patrick. “You were mean.”

  Patrick’s lips bubbled at the ceiling and he slowly thudded his head against the floor. He had no recollection of ever seeing Derek Scott before he came into the hospital, a supposed victim. Never.

  Scott set the leather bag next to Patrick and strode casually to the chair, beside it the sixteen-ounce Budweiser. “I’ve figured it out, Patty,” he said, picking up the bag and tapping its contents into his hand. “I’m gonna help you prepare for your exam.”

  A hand appeared in front of Patrick’s face. It was holding a blade as curved and as wicked as the tip of a scorpion’s tail. A linoleum knife. “You’re interested in anatomy, right?” Scott said. He laughed and reached for the vial, loading the syringe and setting it on the floor beside the vial.

  “Just some locust for the muscles,” Scott said, bending over Patrick with his finger on the plunger. “I want you nice and soft and ready to learn all about insides.”

  Patrick saw a luer lock IV syringe. He waited until the needle was sliding into his thigh to mime a spasm, his right arm jerking in what seemed an involuntary motion, catching the syringe and snapping off the needle in his leg.

  “Fuck!” Scott screamed, jumping back from Patrick’s flailing limbs. His face screwed up in rage and he threw the useless syringe at Patrick and stormed from the room.

  He’s getting another needle, Patrick thought. Move!

  Patrick pushed himself up on his hands and started toward the chair. Fighting to make his flaccid limbs move in unity … left, dammit, now right … Come on, move …

  He crawled to the brown vial beside Scott’s can of beer and tried to pick it up, but his fingers had stopped working. Patrick put his head on the floor and used it as a backstop, wedging the vial between his index and middle fingers.

  Hang on …

  He lifted the vial and shakily poured several cc’s into Scott’s beer, hoping his eyes were telling him the truth and the liquid was entering the can.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING!”

  Scott’s voice filled the room, bouncing between walls. Patrick’s hand froze, the vial stuck between his fingers. Scott’s face was golden and glowing. A broad grin came to his face. Scott strode to Patrick …

  60

  And dissolved into a pile of black cats. They howled and skittered across the floor and ran up the walls, disappearing as they reached the ceiling.

  A hallucination, Patrick realized, his heart hammering in his ears. He looked at the can and saw dark beads of toxic liquid at the opening, a giveaway to the tampering. An army of cockroaches appeared on Patrick’s arm but he ignored their clacking, metallic legs and dropped a shoulder, rolling back to his original position.

  He resumed the slack-mouth staring, trying to ignore the insects crawling across his body. The door opened again and a second Scott entered, naked and aroused and bearing a new syringe and a pair of handcuffs. It took seconds to lock the cuffs in place. Patrick felt the needle sting his thigh. “Fifteen minutes,” Scott whispered, setting the glowing linoleum cutter on Patrick’s belly. “Then we’ll have an anatomy lesson, Patrick. Just you and me.”

  Scott retreated to the chair. He picked up the beer can, rolled it between his palms. Held it toward Patrick like offering a toast, tipped it back …

  And drank.

  “Think,” I said to Gershwin. “Where would Scott be?”

  We were on the streets, too restless to sit at the department. We had every damn invisible wire in hand except the one that led us to Scott’s lair. Night was falling, and what would normally seem a pleasant orange cast to the sky seemed like a blanket of fear turning darker by the moment.

  My phone was in my lap and I kept wishing it would sound, a cop saying he’d just spotted Derek Scott’s 2012 maroon Explorer. We’d been looking for a silver sedan, possibly with a bike rack. Scott had moved us like chess pieces.

  “How would Scott acquire property?” Gershwin asked as I turned on to I-95 and headed south. “Without using his name?”

  “He might rent it,” I said. “Pay enough and there’s no questions asked.”

  “There’s a risk the owner might show up to check out the property. Scott is risk-adverse, Big Ryde.”

  Gershwin was right. I replayed his relationship with Gary. A thought hit.

  “Gary’s cloud data. He kept business dealings there.”

  I saw the nearest exit and took it, pulling into a clothing-store parking lot. I dialed Sparrow at computer forensics.

  “Yo,” she said. “S’up?”

  “The download from Ocampo’s cloud account. There were some business records with the videos, right?”

  I heard her scratching through files. “Usual stuff, tax records and whatnot. Inventory. Plus some property papers.”

  “More than the shop?”

  A minute of keystrokes. She told me what she found.

  I hung up and looked at Gershwin. “Eleven months back Gary Ocampo bought a building in Kendall. Two stories, almost three thousand square feet. How far is Kendall?”

  “Fifteen minutes from here,” Gershwin said. “But I know a shortcut.”

  Scott left the room and returned with another beer, sitting in his chair and playing with himself as he studied Patrick. His hand made an ugly squeaking sound as it rose and fell, an aural hallucination, Patrick knew. He also knew the anti-toxin was overcome, the floor now glowing as if lit from below. Lightning had started crackling against a far wall. Sickly purple clouds sped across the ceiling.

  Derek Scott rose from his chair, fifteen feet tall. He lifted the knife.

  “Time to study anatomy,” he said, his voice coming from inside Patrick’s head. Scott pulled the cushion from the lounger and propped Patrick’s head high, Patrick staring at his chest, his open and bare belly. Scott’s hand closed around the linoleum cutter’s wooden handle, its wicked curve echoing the curve in Scott’s smile as Scott made the blade draw circles in front of Patrick’s eyes. The blade left trails, like a sparkler.

  “Wonder what we’ll see first …”

  Scott paused. His eyes flashed to a corner. His head cocked, like hearing a distant voice.

  “Gary?” he said. “Gary?”

  Scott stood and walked tentatively to the corner and waved his hand in the air, like trying to touch something only he could see. He turned slowly, looking between Patrick and the can of beer on the floor, the vial at its side.

  “YOU BITCH!” Scott screamed. “I’LL GUT YOU!”

  Lightning crackled through the room as Scott stumbled toward Patrick, the knife glowing and buzzing in the sparking air. Scott dropped to his knees at Patrick’s side, his face black, his mouth dripping fire. He slipped the knife under Patrick’s chin. NO Patrick croaked, trying to roll away as the room spun like a wheel and the glowing blade burrowed toward his heart. PLEEEEASE NO …

  Lighting exploded again. Two blinding flashes, like twin suns exploding. Waves of thunder spun the room so fast it turned inside-out.

  Time stopped.

  Took a breath.

  Re-started. Patrick blinked his eyes open to the sound of wind blowing inward from the door, turned his head into the wind. Superman stood at the door, his cape flapping in the breeze, his dark hair rippling, and smoke drifting from a hole in his palm. He lifted from the floor with a swo
osh and flew to Patrick. But it wasn’t Superman’s face above the massive cartoon shoulders, it was Detective Ryder’s face.

  “I’ve got to get you to a hospital, brother,” Superman Ryder said in a voice that sounded like trumpets. “Hang on.”

  Clouds surrounded Patrick and he could not tell if he was rising or falling.

  61

  Four days passed and I’d actually gotten some sleep. Derek Scott was chained to a hospital bed, recovering from datura and two gunshot wounds in his abdomen. After healing he would go to trial and thereafter to a maximum-security prison, where he would no doubt wreak sexual havoc on handsome young men gone afoul of the law.

  Patrick White would be the key witness at Derek Scott’s trial. We had enough to lock Scott up and White’s testimony would let us throw away the key. Patrick had an inch-deep, two-inch-long slit in his upper chest, but would soon recover. He had re-scheduled his missed exam and I knew he’d be a superb nurse practitioner.

  Gershwin and the lovely young woman who worked the desk at the morgue went to Memphis to soak up a few days of blues and barbecue. I ordered him to visit the National Civil Rights Museum, saying it would be one of the most profound experiences of his life. After that, I said, go to Gus’s for fried chicken.

  And me? I was looking toward a horizon where two blues met, the back-lit blue of the sky, the wet-jewel blue of the sea. I heard Ava and Vivian speaking behind and above me, both marveling at the odd stroke of Fate that had made my brother an acquaintance of the incoming pathologist at the morgue. According to my brother’s new backstory, he had passed through Mobile on business at the time Ava was there and I had introduced them. They had reconnected when he’d recently learned – through me – that Ava was in Miami.

  Jeremy Ryder’s false history wove through my false history like the graveyard rose of Sweet William and the briar of Barbry Allen, however you want to translate that.

  I heard a door close and Jeremy sat beside me, a fresh glass of lemonade in his hand. He wore a linen safari shirt and tan cargo shorts that looked pressed, a creamy straw Panama hat providing shade. We’d been discussing the cases, and I’d detailed the video where the pair had met.

  Jeremy had been delivering his commentary, which he gleefully continued now that he’d refreshed his glass. “Scott recognized vulnerability in Gravy from the moment he gave his sad little Mummy Hates Me speech,” my brother grinned. “Scotty probably wondered, What can I get from this whimpering doughball?”

  “Everything he wanted, I think. Scott even adapted his intro speech to align with Gary’s. He drew him in.”

  “Scott was a predator who sought out weakness, Gravy a sad widdle chubbins with mommy issues and repressed anger. Needy-boy Gravy bared his adipose heart to Scott, including little dead Donnie, his need to bare his boobies in Rio, and his magical ways.”

  “All of which Scott used from day one.”

  “Scott’s an inventive sort. The only problems were building his secret lair – which he loved doing, by the way, exercise while he dieted – then going to Te-jas to empty a casket. What do you think Derek-boy did with little Donnie, Carson?”

  “He was in a freezer in Scott’s garage.”

  Even my brother looked surprised at that one.

  “Stage set, the abductions begin,” Jeremy continued. “Scott leaving spermy evidence everywhere. But in the data banks it’s listed as Gary Ocampo’s juice. And folks like you –” he winked – “are looking for the Invisible Man.”

  “It gets weirder,” I said. “Scott moved to Miami twenty-seven months ago, where, you’d think, he crossed paths with the victims. But none recall seeing him. Only when we showed them Gary Ocampo’s photo – the real version – did the memories kick in: Brian Caswell vaguely remembers picking on Gary during a performance. Dale Kemp made some cutting remarks at a theater, Harold caught Gary spying on him in high school and broadcast the incident, making Gary a butt of widespread joking. Prestwick and White jerked Gary around in a bar years ago, an incident with a mirror. Eisen also gave him a pretty bad verbal rough-up in the same time frame.”

  Jeremy absorbed the information and nodded. “Little weepy Gravy tells Derek tales of humiliation. Crazy Derek absorbs every detail of Gravy’s woe and adds it to his own, then puts on his magic sharing hat and goes a-hunting for the nasty trolls who poor-mouth sweet widdle fat boys. Think it’s coincidence Derek tracked down the slimmest, prettiest little meanies?”

  “He had money and time. And Gary’s humiliations, which he no doubt shared.”

  “Derek Scott was an opportunistic predator who found the perfect opportunity to live the dream, Carson. If he’d kept his anger in check he’d still be out there. But of course …”

  I heard Vivian and Ava laughing again. They were swim-suited, sunglassed, and eight feet above us on the boat’s flybridge where they’d been sunning. Jeremy and I sat in the stern. The craft was seventy feet of gleaming Viking motor yacht, hired with captain and three crewmen out of a Key West marina.

  Jeremy had wanted to go fishing.

  I’d brought about four hundred bucks’ worth of saltwater angling gear. My brother had a dime-store cane pole, the kind we’d used as kids, holding three meters of cheap monofilament with a tiny hook and a shiny red-and-white bobber, the tiny bobber floating astern like a joke.

  “Catch us a fish,” Viv called down, nodding to a gas-fueled grill. “We need lunch.”

  “It’s problematic,” I called back, pointing at a pair of black triangles cleaving the water two dozen feet from the boat: sharks. They were ten-to-twelve-footers by the looks, and even if I hooked a fish, they’d tear it to shreds in an eyeblink.

  “No excuses,” Ava chided. “If you boys can’t catch a fish, we’ll have to eat burgers. We want fish, y’hear?”

  I sighed – fish sounded good to me, too – and wandered to the rear where Jeremy’s bobber floated forlornly in the mild chop. I was turning away when the bobber disappeared, reappeared, quivered …

  Then zipped beneath the water like a bullet.

  “A bite!” I yelled. “You’ve got a fish on!”

  Jeremy yawned and picked up the cane pole. It bent in his hands as he pulled up. I watched six pounds of red snapper break the surface and splash to the boat. The women whistled and applauded as lunch flopped on the deck.

  I stared at the snapper, a deeper-water fish rarely found near the surface. As the women dug out cameras, I heard splashing and leaned out over the gunwale to look down the hull toward the distant bow. Two of the crewmen were yanking the swim-finned and scuba-masked third crewman up a boarding ladder, the man scrambling aboard like hellhounds were snapping at his heels.

  The scenario was clear. The snapper had been caught previously and kept in the yacht’s live well, an aquarium, basically. When my brother had gone inside he’d signaled his need for the fish. I wondered how much Jeremy’d had to pay for someone to swim through shark-infested waters just to hook a fish on his line and give it a yank. I shot a glance at the circling sharks, then quietly studied my brother, doing a doffed-hat bow as the women giggled and cameras clicked.

  Jeremy was free. He owned his life. He had scads of money and could do whatever he wished: Endow a charitable foundation, collect Pre-Columbian artifacts … hell, he could even buy rare comic books. Instead, he’d just put another human being at great risk for the sake of personal amusement.

  How much had he really changed?

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to the fine and hard-working folks at the Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency and HarperCollins UK – special high-fives to Sarah Hodgson and Anne O’Brien – for again helping to bring another of my stories to fruition. I’m backed by the best.

  About the Author

  J.A. Kerley spent years as an advertising agency writer and producer before his wife demanded he quit work and write a novel, which he thought a fine idea. The result was The Hundredth Man, the first in the Carson Ryder series. An avid angler, canoeist and hiker, Kerle
y has traveled extensively throughout the South, especially coastal regions such as Mobile, Alabama, the setting for many of his novels, and the Florida Keys. He has a cabin in the Kentucky mountains, which appeared as a setting in Buried Alive. He lives in Newport, Kentucky, where he enjoys sitting on the levee and watching the barges rumble up and down the Ohio River.

  Also by J.A. Kerley

  The Hundredth Man

  The Death Collectors

  The Broken Souls

  Blood Brother

  In the Blood

  Little Girls Lost

  Buried Alive

  Her Last Scream

  The Killing Game

  The Death Box

  If you liked THE MEMORY KILLER, try:

  Carson Ryder thought he’d seen everything …

  A specialist in twisted crimes, Detective Carson Ryder thought he’d seen the lowest depths of human depravity. But he’s barely started his new job in Miami when called to a horrific scene: a concrete pillar built of human remains, their agony forever frozen in stone.

  Finding the secret of the pillar drags him into the sordid world of human trafficking, where one terrified girl holds the key to unraveling a web of pain, prostitution and murder. There’s just one problem: Ryder’s not the only one chasing the girl.

  And the others will kill to keep the secret safe.

  Click here to buy The Death Box

  THE HUNDREDTH MAN

  In Alabama, Detective Carson Ryder is on the hunt for a disturbing killer. Famous for solving a series of crimes the year before, Carson has experience with psychopaths. But he had help with that case – from a past he’s tried to forget. Now he needs it again …