The Murderer's Memories

by T. S. Nichols

  It was a good memory, a nice memory, but Cole knew that it wasn’t helping him. He needed clues; either clues to the bombing or clues to memories that would tell Cole something about the bombing. He didn’t care which. Time wasn’t on their side.

  “You find something?” Ed asked Cole as he opened drawers on the other side of the kitchen.

  “Nope.” Cole put the picture back where he found it. It was the only photo on Ivan’s refrigerator. No pictures of family, of friends or a girlfriend. Not a single picture less than twenty years old. Nothing but this one picture of Ivan with his friends from way back when he was a kid.

  Cole looked around the apartment. Even though it was morning, the apartment was dark. Not much light made it through the windows, which looked out onto another tenement.

  “Tell me again what I’m supposed to be looking for,” Ed said to Cole. “Because I read the report and they’ve already combed through this apartment without finding anything.”

  Cole would have normally tackled this part alone. He didn’t know what to tell Ed. He didn’t even know what he was looking for himself. “The reports don’t say that they didn’t find anything. They just didn’t find any clues to the bombing. That’s not what we’re looking for.”

  “Okay,” Ed said, “so what am I looking for?”

  “Anything that you think might help trigger a memory. I need to open up his memories in my head.”

  “How about you give me some examples?”

  Cole opened up the refrigerator and peered inside. He saw a six-pack of beer that was now down to three cans. Some leftover Chinese takeout was pushed into the back. There was an opened package of hot dogs in one of the drawers, along with processed cheese. A half-full carton of milk was on the bottom shelf. “Photos,” Cole said. “Letters. Anything that might have sentimental value.”

  “It doesn’t seem like he was that sentimental a guy,” Ed answered him. He walked out of the kitchen and into the only other room.

  “Just keep looking,” Cole said. “We’ll find something.”

  “What about this?” Ed called out.

  Cole followed Ed’s voice. Ed was standing in front of the closet. He had picked Ivan’s tool belt off the floor. “A tool belt?” Cole asked with skepticism.

  “His tool belt,” Ed said. Cole stared blankly back at Ed. “You’re not a tool guy, are you? Put it on. Trust me. See what happens.” Ed handed Cole the tool belt. Cole gave it another blank stare. “Here,” Ed said, taking it back so that he could wrap it around Cole’s waist. Ivan had not been a portly man but the belt was still big on Cole. Ed cinched it until it was narrow enough to hang without slipping down. Then he let it go.

  Cole felt the belt tug loosely at his sides. He looked down at his right hand. He moved his fingers. Without any warning, Cole could feel a throbbing pain in his knuckles. His hand was stiff and, as he wiggled his fingers slightly, the pain spread from his knuckles all the way up his forearm, stopping just below his elbow. Cole made a fist and then flexed his fingers out again. No matter what he did to his hand, the pain remained. All he could try to do was not move his fingers and ignore it.

  “Ivan!” Cole heard someone cry out. He looked up toward the voice. It was coming from the floor above him. He wasn’t in Ivan’s apartment anymore. He’d become fully immersed in one of Ivan’s memories. “Everything good down there? I don’t hear any hammering.”

  “Everything’s fine, boss,” Ivan said. “I’m making good progress.” He reached into the deep pocket of his tool belt. He felt the sharp steel of a few of the nails held inside. He wasn’t reaching for the nails, though. He moved his hand toward the back corner of the pocket and felt the plastic bottle. He grabbed it and pulled it out. It was a small bottle of aspirin. He held it in his left hand and tried to remove the lid with his right. A jolt of pain shot through his forearm like an electric shock. “Fucking child safety lids,” Ivan mumbled to himself. Then he switched hands, holding the bottle in his right hand and squeezing and twisting the lid with his left. With a little effort, the lid came free. Ivan spilled two pills into his hand and then popped them into his mouth dry.

  “You’re sure everything is okay?” the same voice called down again from upstairs.

  “Yeah,” Ivan shouted back. He began to chew the dry pills in the back of his mouth. They tasted bitter but this was the only way he could take them without them upsetting his stomach. “Any chance I can get the gun?” Ivan asked with another shout.

  “Not today, Ivan,” Ivan’s boss shouted down to him. His voice had no hardness in it. Cole thought he could even hear a bit of sympathy. “The guys working on the roof need it today.”

  “No problem, boss,” Ivan shouted up again. He couldn’t afford to make a big deal out of it. They only had one air compressor, which meant that they only had one nail gun. He went back to the pile of studs lying on the floor. He picked one up and walked toward the corner of the skeleton of a room, full of space and surrounded by the bonelike bare two-by-fours. He stood up the stud in his hand, about eighteen inches from the corner. Once upright, the stud was about two feet taller than Cole. He lined up the bottom of the wood with the pencil marking that he’d made on the floorboard earlier and placed his work boot against one side of the bottom. Then he reached into his tool belt and pulled out a few nails. He held one in his hand and popped the other two in his mouth, sharp side out. He lined up the first nail, aiming it diagonally into the bottom of the stud. The better he swung, the less he would have to swing. Holding the nail with his left hand, he tapped it twice to set it. Then he let the nail go and lifted the hammer again. This time he swung hard. The nail went about two-thirds of the way in on the first swing. Before the pain could even register, Ivan swung the hammer two more times until the nail was flush with the wood.

  It hurt. Cole could feel it, sharp and throbbing at the same time. Ivan took another nail out of his mouth and went through all the steps again. He looked around the bare room. He eyed the pencil markings, each one awaiting its own stud, each signaling fifteen to twenty more swings of the hammer. Cole tried to do the math. What was that? Another five hundred swings? Ivan swallowed what was left of the aspirin paste that he was still holding in his cheek. Then he walked over and grabbed another two-by-four.

  From the skeletal room Ivan was standing in, Cole could remember looking out onto the tree-lined Brooklyn street on which the house sat. Somebody rode by on a bicycle, but otherwise the street was mostly empty. In about two hours, kids would start walking home from the school a few blocks away. Cole could remember their voices, every single day excited to be free again for a few hours. Ivan walked over and lifted another two-by-four. Cole remembered Ivan looking up on his phone how much the new buyers had paid for the brownstone, and regretting that he ever did it. Over two million dollars just for the shell and the tiny plot of land, and now they were paying to have the whole thing torn up from the inside and rebuilt. Cole could remember Ivan trying to do the math, trying to figure out how many hours he would have had to work rebuilding the house in order to buy the house. He gave up when the number got depressingly high. He never got an answer.

  Cole could still feel his own hand throbbing. The memory was still going. Cole could have stayed in it but he’d had enough. The memory didn’t seem to be going anywhere, at least nowhere useful. What about the bombing? He whispered to himself inside his head, hoping that it might bleed out something useful. Instead, Ivan took another handful of nails out of the pouch in his tool belt and placed two in his mouth. Cole pulled himself out of the memory. He simply didn’t have enough time.

  Ed was still standing in front of Cole, staring at him. Cole nearly jumped when he came out of the memory, seeing Ed’s eyes piercing into him. “Anything?” Ed asked.

  “Yeah,” Cole answered glumly. “He hated his job.”

  “That’s it?” Ed asked.

  “That’s all I got.”

  “Fuck,” Ed muttered to the floor. “I thought we’d get something there
for sure. Nothing about building the bomb? About building the vest? Jesus, Cole, everybody hates their job.”

  “Nothing else,” Cole told him, shaking his head. “Not yet anyway.”

  “What about the screws?”

  “What screws?” Cole asked.

  “The screws that the bomber used in the vest to try to do as much human damage as possible. Did you see anything about them?”

  The screws? Cole thought. He hadn’t even remembered to look. The memory had been so common. “No,” he said, a little unsure of himself this time. He was still wearing the tool belt, though. He looked into the pocket that Ivan had been pulling nails from. Cole pushed the nails aside to see if there was anything under them. At the bottom of the pocket were about a dozen small black screws. Cole reached in and picked one up. He held it in front of Ed. “Could this be it?” he asked. He stared at it for a moment, testing to see if it would push some horrific memory out of him, the memory of building the bomb or maybe even the split second of the bomb exploding and the screws shooting away from the bomber before the lights went out forever. He breathed a deep breath as he stared. Nothing came.

  “I don’t know,” Ed said. “I think they probably would have made the connection the first time they searched the apartment, but you never know. Here, let me take a picture and send it in.” He held out his hand.

  Cole took another deep breath. Then he dropped the screw into Ed’s outstretched hand. He wondered how many people died because of the screws. How many people were torn to shreds by them? How many more people would have lived if it had only been the explosion? Ed took the screw and walked back toward the kitchen so that he could take a clear picture of the screw on the white Formica countertop.

  Cole looked back down into the tool belt pocket. There were more screws at the bottom. He reached in and grabbed two more. As he lifted them, his fingers brushed against something jammed deep in the corner of the pocket. Cole looked more closely and saw the plastic aspirin bottle. He took the two screws and the aspirin bottle out of the tool belt and put them in his pocket, hoping that they might come in handy later.

  A moment later, Ed was back in the room. “We got to go, Cole,” he said, looking at the time on his phone.

  “Why?”

  “You said that you wanted to meet the girl, Faith’s, parents, right? As soon as possible?”

  “Yeah,” Cole confirmed.

  “Then we have an hour and a half to get to Jersey.”

  Cole looked around the tiny apartment. He felt like they’d accomplished nothing and time was still ticking away. He had to remind himself that there might simply be nothing to accomplish. Ivan might have just been another victim. “We can come back here,” Ed assured Cole when he saw the expression on Cole’s face. “Faith’s parents aren’t too excited about meeting you, but they agreed. I don’t think we should keep them waiting.”

  “Okay,” Cole said. He wasn’t looking forward to meeting the woman’s parents, using them to search his memories for clues that their daughter might be a killer. “Let’s go.”

  Ed led the way toward the door. Cole followed him out to the thin, sparse hallway that they had come through earlier. They were up one flight of stairs; their car was parked on the street out front. Ed moved quickly and was already halfway down the hall toward the stairs before he realized that Cole wasn’t behind him. He turned around and looked back.

  Cole was standing in front of the door at the end of the hall, two down from Ivan’s. Cole hadn’t noticed it when he and Ed first walked in, but that was before he’d remembered anything. As he stepped back out of Ivan’s door, he was drawn to it. He didn’t know why. “Cole?” Ed called from the other end of the hallway. Cole didn’t answer. He stood staring, waiting for memories that wouldn’t come. He reached out and ran his fingers over the door. “Cole?” Ed said again, a bit slower this time.

  “One minute, Ed,” Cole answered him, his voice only a register or two above a whisper. Ed watched Cole without another word.

  Cole saw that the name “Chang” was written below the doorbell. Still, he didn’t remember anything. He simply felt the pull. He made a fist with his right hand, thankful that he felt no pain. Then he reached out and rapped his knuckles on the door: four solid knocks. Then he waited. The knock echoed through the hallway but was answered only by silence. He listened for anything, concentrating in case he got sucked into a memory. He wanted to be ready for the immersion. Cole knocked again, harder this time. The silent response seemed even more pervasive by comparison. “Hello!” Cole finally called out.

  “Cole, we really have to go,” Ed reminded him. He’d been quietly stepping closer to Cole. Now he was only a few feet behind him, staring past Cole at the closed door. “Don’t forget that we’ve got two suspects here.”

  “You’re right,” Cole agreed. He reminded himself that this could be over as soon as he met Faith’s parents.

  They made their way back to the street and to the car. Cole wasn’t even trying to remember anything now. He had to try to clear his head. He wanted to come at Faith’s memories as cleanly as possible.

  Ed climbed into the driver’s seat while Cole got in on the passenger side. They sat quietly for a moment as Ed started the car and pulled out into the street. “Can we put the radio on or something?” Cole asked.

  “Sure,” Ed said, looking over at his partner. It was an odd request. Cole usually liked to ride in silence, so he could focus. “You okay? Did you remember something back there?”

  “I’m okay,” Cole said back to him. “I’m just trying to clear my head. I need the distraction. I need to not think for a couple of minutes.”

  Ed turned on the radio. Whoever had used it last had it preset to one of the talk news stations. They were discussing the bombing. Of course they were. What else was there to talk about?

  “So what do we know about the bomber?” a female radio host asked her guest in her competent, silky smooth radio voice.

  “I’m afraid that we don’t know anything yet,” answered the guest in his assured academic voice.

  “That’s unusual, isn’t it?” The host seemed to pick out a single word in each of her questions to particularly emphasize, making it almost impossible not to focus on the question as you listened. It made you want to know what was coming next.

  “Yes,” the guest answered, his voice betraying excitement about how unusual this case was. “The police have not yet released any information about the bomber at this stage, which is very unusual. In addition, we would usually see some group taking credit for the bombing or, in the case of a lone wolf, some sort of manifesto.”

  “But we’ve seen nothing like that in this case, have we?” The word nothing echoed through the car as the radio host enunciated it.

  “That’s right. Unless the police are keeping certain information under wraps, we have no idea why this bombing took place.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Edmund,” the radio host said. “That was Dr. Avery Edmund, professor of criminal justice at Columbia University and author of the book Dying to Kill, a modern investigation into suicide killings, talking to us about what might have motivated whoever suicide-bombed a mall in Queens yesterday, killing, at last count, twenty-one people.”

  Cole reached forward and turned the radio off. Two more people had died from their injuries. “Maybe silence is better,” he said to Ed. Their car was entering the muted darkness of the Midtown Tunnel, traveling under the East River from Queens to Manhattan. Cole looked out his window at the line of cars next to them, in front of them, behind them. “This would be a hell of a place for a bomb, right? In the tunnel? Hell, in any tunnel. How many do we have here? Midtown, Lincoln, Holland—and the bridges? Fuck, this whole city is a disaster waiting to happen.”

  “You sure you’re okay?” Ed asked again. “Because we need you to be okay.”

  Cole took in a deep breath. “I’ve just never done anything like this before.”

  “Sure you have,” Ed said. “I’ve seen it
. Those memories, they’re like a superpower.”

  Cole shook his head. “That was always one person’s memory. One at a time, anyway. No matter what I remembered, I could be sure that it was going to help. This time, I don’t know. Anything I remember could be a waste of time. You want to know what I remembered back there?”

  “Yeah.” Cole could hear the truth pouring out of the word.

  “I remembered a kid’s baseball game and a couple hours on a construction job. There was nothing about a bomb.”

  “Maybe that’s because he didn’t do it,” Ed said.

  “Maybe,” Cole conceded, “or maybe he did and those memories are buried somewhere deeper down because they’re ugly and unpleasant, but as soon as I start digging, I have to stop and drive out to New Jersey because I’ve got a whole other set of memories I need to remember. And maybe what I’ll learn from those memories is that this Faith woman liked reading mystery novels and hated bowling and by the time I start to reach anything of depth in her memories, I’ll have to come back to Queens and start all over again. Maybe this was a giant mistake. Maybe they should have given me one memory and the other memory to somebody else.”

  “Who?” Ed said as his phone buzzed. He reached down with his right hand and tapped the screen with his thumb. He looked back up to make sure there was a safe distance between him and the car in front of him. Then he looked back down at his phone and grimaced. “What is it?” Cole asked in response to the look on Ed’s face.

  “The screws from Ivan’s tool belt,” Ed said, “they’re not the same as the ones in the vest.”