Ivan was very close to Faith when he asked this question. She turned and looked him in the eye. Cole remembered Ivan’s face at that moment. He looked like he was at peace. Then Cole remembered pushing the button. He remembered a flash of immense pain. He remembered seeing everything shoot out of Faith’s body like she was an exploding supernova. He didn’t remember the screaming. Faith’s memory, and her life, ended before the screams reached her.
Cole opened his eyes. If he was willing to remember that, why was he so afraid to remember Faith’s other memories? What could be worse than the bombing? But Cole knew what could be worse: everything that led up to it. He stood and walked over to his stove. He filled his kettle with water and began to heat it so that he could make himself some tea.
After he drank his tea, Cole sat down in the chair next to his sofa. Without meaning to, he leaned back and, once again, fell asleep. He didn’t set an alarm this time. The sun didn’t wake him when it rose and its rays shone in through the window. Cole slept for a long time. For almost all of that time, he dreamt new dreams, dreams that had no right being in his head to begin with.
Chapter 29
TWENTY-ONE HOURS UNTIL THE SECOND BOMBING
Cole woke up in his chair, covered in sweat. His phone was ringing. He finally realized that he had fallen asleep. He had been so tired. While he’d slept, Cole was haunted by horrible dreams. He couldn’t remember them, but he woke with a nameless anxiety that he could feel in his entire body. Even as he sat up, his whole body, from his head to his fingers and feet, felt like it was falling. All he could remember from his dream was that he was hungry, and there was food surrounding him, everywhere he looked, but he couldn’t eat any of it. His stomach growled at him in anger.
His phone was still ringing. He grabbed it off of the table. He didn’t recognize the number, but answered it anyway. What time was it? “This is Cole,” he said.
“Hello, Cole.” He recognized the voice immediately, faster than he should have after only two conversations. “This is Evelyn. Faith’s mom.”
“Of course,” Cole said. He looked at the clock. He’d slept for almost fourteen hours. How could he do that? How could he have let that happen? He’d let so much time slip through his fingers. “It’s good to hear from you.” Trying to hide the panic in his voice, he grabbed a pen and a piece of paper in case he needed to write something down.
“I want to talk to you”—Evelyn paused for a moment and then finished—“without my husband. Can we do that?”
“Yes,” Cole said. “Tell me where to meet you. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“I know. I’m in the city. Can you come to Battery Park?”
Evelyn was sitting on a bench, looking out over the water. It took Cole only fifteen minutes to get to her. He couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d moved faster. When he saw her, he didn’t immediately go to her. Instead, he first watched her from a distance. He hadn’t had a chance to see her like this before, on her own and without pretense. He hoped that this might trigger Faith’s memories. He had to assume that she had strong memories of her mother.
Evelyn didn’t move. She sat with her hands in her lap, watching the water. Battery Park was close to where the Hudson River finally ran out into the ocean; at the moment, it was flowing powerfully out to sea. Evelyn was thin but not frail. She had a strong jaw and large brown eyes. Her hair was graying and the wrinkles around her face betrayed her age. Cole wondered how much of that aging she had done in the last week. He wondered if Faith would even recognize the woman sitting on the bench. Either way, no memories immediately came. But he felt something. He felt drawn to this woman like an animal drawn toward shelter in the rain. He waited another moment. He watched her chest rise and fall with her breath. Still nothing came. So he approached her.
“Mrs. Williams,” Cole announced as he neared her, not wanting to scare her by getting too close. She had seemed so lost in her own thoughts. Cole knew that there must have been plenty of room to get lost in.
Evelyn didn’t budge. She didn’t even look away from the water. “Thank you for meeting me here—” Her voice trailed off as she searched for what name to use.
“You can call me Cole.”
“Okay,” Evelyn said. “I’ve gotten so used to hearing people call you the Memory Detective that I almost forgot your name. You can call me Evelyn.”
“Should I sit or would you like to walk?” Cole asked, motioning to the empty half of the bench.
“Please sit.”
Cole followed Evelyn’s instructions and sat down next to her. Only a couple of feet separated them. “So why did you ask me to meet you?”
Evelyn forced out a small smile. It didn’t make her look happy. If anything, it made her look even sadder. “I know. The clock is ticking,” she said to Cole. “You don’t have time to waste.”
“It’s not that,” Cole tried to assure her. “I mean, the clock is ticking but I was surprised by your call. You and your husband didn’t seem interested in helping me.”
Evelyn’s eyes drifted toward the water again. “My husband is a good man. He was a really good father. It was important to him. He would probably tell you that it was the most important thing in the world to him and he wouldn’t be lying. It’s not that he doesn’t want to help you. He just has to think that you’ve got it wrong, or else the most important thing that he ever did ended up hurting a lot of people. He truly can’t believe that Faith would have done something like this.”
“But you?”
Evelyn turned her gaze back to Cole. “I know it’s a cliché, but daughters are princesses to their fathers and people to their mothers. I knew Faith better than he did or, at least, I knew Faith more deeply than he did.”
“So you think she was the bomber? You believe that she had it in her?”
“Let’s just say that I want to try to help you. Can we leave it at that? I don’t want any more death and destruction.”
“Of course,” Cole agreed.
“So, what do you need me to do?” Evelyn asked, rubbing her hands together in her lap.
Cole wanted to ask her why she believed that her daughter could have become a terrorist. She was right, the clock was ticking. At the same time, he couldn’t afford to chase her away. What he needed, or at least what he thought he needed, were Faith’s memories. Anything that could help unlock her memories would be a good start. “I still haven’t been able to remember any of your daughter’s memories other than from the day of the bombing, and those memories don’t even feel real, at least not like a human being’s memories. They feel like the memories of a machine. I have dreams sometimes, nightmares really, that I think have something to do with Faith’s memories, but they don’t make any sense, and by the time I wake up, I can’t remember them anyway. I need to remember. All the answers are inside your daughter’s memories and those are trapped inside my head and I can’t figure out how to set them free.”
“So how can I help?” Evelyn repeated.
“Tell me a story about your daughter—one that she would remember.”
Evelyn paused. For a fleeting moment, a real smile passed across her face. Cole saw it and felt it in his entire body. It was a bittersweet feeling of sadness and light. Evelyn looked up at Cole and, when she did, the smile faded. “I have so many memories,” she said.
“I know,” Cole commiserated, “but I don’t need your memories. I need a story that she’d remember.”
“Okay.” Evelyn lifted her head up toward the sky in thought. “Faith was eleven years old when we brought her into the city to see her first Broadway show. We had managed to wrangle three tickets to the previews of Wicked. I mean, back then, it wasn’t the big deal that it turned out to be, but we had heard good things. Carl and I were excited because Faith had always loved The Wizard of Oz. She loved the movie first, but she liked the book too. It was a weekday matinee, so we let Faith stay home from school that day. Carl went in to work but was planning on meeting us for lunch before t
he show and had taken the rest of the day off. Faith and I drove into the city together. She had spent the morning rereading parts of the book to make sure she didn’t miss anything. She was really excited.”
As Evelyn spoke, Cole did everything he could to remember. He grasped at every detail, looking for something solid to hold on to. “Faith talked almost the entire drive into the city. She was normally pretty quiet but I couldn’t even get a word in, not that I tried. When your kids reach a certain age, you just get so excited whenever they want to talk to you. It doesn’t even matter what they want to talk about. Faith was mostly quizzing me, testing to see how well I knew The Wizard of Oz. Of course I was getting almost all of her questions wrong, which she thought was hilarious.
“We had time before we had to meet Faith’s dad for lunch, so we did a little bit of shopping. We helped each other pick out shoes. I got a pair of tan wedges and Faith got bright silver tennis shoes. I encouraged her to get something a little bit more grownup. I figured that this was a big day full of firsts, you know, but she didn’t have any interest. I didn’t push. It was her day and I knew there would be plenty of time.
“Then we walked from the store to the restaurant where we were meeting Carl. He was already there when we got there. He couldn’t give a rat’s ass about seeing the show, but he was so excited for Faith. We met at this Thai restaurant on Eighth Avenue. It was about a five-block walk from the shoe store and maybe another seven blocks to the theater.
“So we got to the restaurant and sat down and Carl started asking Faith questions, about how excited she was and how her morning was. And she just shut down. I mean, it was like a different person was there at lunch than had just spent the morning with me. It was particularly strange because even when she wouldn’t talk to me, Faith would usually talk to her father. She wasn’t being mean or rude, just quiet. Carl kept shooting me looks, like, Has she been like this all morning? But all I could do was shrug. Kids are moody, you know? I even encouraged her to quiz Carl like she had quizzed me, but she wasn’t interested. So we all ate lunch, mostly in silence. Faith’s mood picked up a bit as we made our way to the theater. She started to seem excited again.
“We got to the theater and found our seats and the show started. I was half watching the show and half watching Faith watch the show. I don’t think Carl was watching the show at all. He was just staring at his daughter. She seemed really into it, leaning forward the whole time. Then there was the big finale to the first act where the Wicked Witch sings that ‘Defying Gravity’ song and flies into the air for the first time and it was like the whole theater stopped breathing for the entire song, and Faith was right there with everyone else. Then the lights came up for intermission and people started wandering about, heading for the bathrooms and the concession stands. Carl and I both had to go to the bathroom. Faith said she didn’t have to go but asked if she could go to the concession stand to get a snack for the second half. She knew that her dad wouldn’t say no to the money, but we were a little hesitant to let her go by herself. She gave us that look, though, that withering ‘Why can’t you trust me’ look, and we folded. It was just a quick trip to the concession stand. She wasn’t even going to leave the building.
“So Carl and I found our way back to the seats, and Faith wasn’t there yet. I was a little nervous but I told myself that I could trust my daughter. Then the theater lights started blinking, telling everyone to get to their seats because the second act was about to start—and still no Faith. When the show started and she still hadn’t come back, Carl got up to look for her. I got up two songs later.
“By then, Carl already had the theater security scouring the building. They were looking everywhere, in the bathrooms, backstage, everywhere. We didn’t know what to do. We thought that maybe she’d been kidnapped. I mean, that was really the only thing we could think. After security couldn’t locate her, we called the police. They got there really fast, but it was already more than halfway through the second act and we were so worried that once the theater let out, the chaos would make it even harder to find her.”
Cole could hear the panic in Evelyn’s voice, reliving this horrible memory, but still nothing was being triggered for him. “About ten minutes after the police showed up, with their lights flashing right outside the theater, Faith walked in. Carl and I both—we had this combination of relief and anger like I’d never felt before. Carl ran up and caught Faith in his giant hug, and all the while she had this blasé look on her face like she didn’t understand what the big deal was. So I asked her, Where the hell were you? but before she could even answer, Carl asked her if she was okay. She told us she was fine, so I asked her again, Where the hell were you? Then she started crying these raindrop-sized tears and Carl didn’t let her go, but I kept getting angrier so I asked her a third time, Where the hell were you? and she finally answered me.
“Do you remember the homeless man we passed on the way to the restaurant? and I shook my head because I had no idea what she was talking about. So she said to me, The one with the dog? but I still had no idea. I hadn’t even noticed him. Then she finally came clean. I went to give him Dad’s twenty dollars, she said.” Evelyn let out a sad little laugh. “Then I asked her why that took so long and she told us, everyone standing there listening to her—me, Carl, the police, the theater security—He wanted to get something to eat so I told him that I’d watch his dog for him.” Evelyn’s eyes began to well up with tears. “And that’s what she did. She was eleven years old. She stayed with this homeless man’s dog while the man went to the store to get some food with the money that she gave him.
“Then Carl asked her, But what about the show? Like that was even important anymore. All Faith could say in response was, I just couldn’t. Then she told everybody that she was sorry and asked if she could get the soundtrack so she could listen to the second half.
“We used to tell that story all the time. Once the anger wore off, we were so proud of her.” Evelyn lifted her hand to wipe the tears off her cheeks. “She was a good person, Cole, a really kind, good person.”
“Then why did she bomb that mall?”
“I don’t know. She always had such strong feelings. Then she went on this trip last spring and lied to me about where she went. Everything felt different after that. It was like she was only half my daughter.”
“What trip?” Cole asked. “We didn’t see anything about a trip on her Facebook or Instagram pages.”
“I know,” Evelyn said. “At first she told me she was going to Barbados with some of her friends, but her friends actually went to Barbados and took pictures of themselves smiling on the beach and she wasn’t in any of them. When she got back I confronted her about it and she admitted that she hadn’t gone to Barbados.”
“So where did she go?” Cole asked.
“She never told me. It was like she’d run out of the theater on me again, only this time, she wouldn’t even tell me where she went.”
“What were the dates of her trip? We can search the flights and find out where she went. You think this trip is important?” Evelyn nodded.
Cole couldn’t remember if anyone had briefed him about a trip before. He supposed there was no reason why the FBI or any of the other alphabet agencies would have thought a regular vacation, taken months ago, would be important. But Faith’s lying to her mother about it changed that. Besides, something in his head told him this was important. It could have been merely a hunch, but it could have been something in Faith’s memories as well. “I do too,” Cole said.
“It was last spring, in the first half of April. She was gone for two weeks.”
Cole stood up and took out his phone to call Ed.
Chapter 30
SIXTEEN HOURS UNTIL THE SECOND BOMBING
“Read me the names,” Cole said to Ed. The two of them were sitting at a large table in a conference room at the precinct.
“You can read them yourself,” Ed said to Cole, pushing the list of names on it toward Cole.
> Cole shook his head. “No, I need to hear them. If I see them first, everything could get confused. In fact, forget it.” Cole took the sheet away from Ed, thought about it for a second, then pushed the sheet back toward Ed again. “Only read the men’s names. Read each one like you’re introducing yourself to me.” Ed stared at Cole, confused. He’d started to get used to some of Cole’s unusual requests but he hadn’t yet figured out where this was going. “Read it. Say, ‘Hi, I’m…’ and then read the name on the list—but only the men’s names.”
Ed took the sheet back from Cole. He looked it over first. He guessed that more than a hundred men appeared on the list. He hesitated. “Should I start at the top?”
Cole grabbed a pen off the table and slid it to Ed. “Try to mix up the order. Cross out the names once you’ve said them.”
Ed began. “Hi, I’m Stephen Adder.” He waited. Cole sat across from him with his eyes closed.
“Keep going,” Cole ordered. “I’ll stop you if I need you to slow down.”
“Hi, I’m Peter Strook.” Ed paused. When Cole didn’t say anything, he crossed Peter Strook’s name off the list. Then he picked another name. “Hi, I’m Vishal Reddy.” It took Ed about fifteen minutes to get through the names of every man on the flight to India with Faith. Cole didn’t recognize any of them.
Cole grabbed another sheet of paper. This one listed the names of every person who was on the flight back from India with Faith. They’d already run the usual checks. Nobody on either list was publicly connected to Faith in any way. She didn’t work with any of them. She didn’t go to school with any of them. She wasn’t connected to any of them over social media. Her parents didn’t recognize any names. She sat next to different people on both flights. They could have easily been running down a dead end. It was entirely possible that whoever Faith had been working with didn’t fly to or from India with her. They could have been on different flights, or she might have met them after she got back. Cole had a feeling, though. He had a vague memory of talking to someone during a layover. He could remember no more than that, no more than the fact that someone was sitting across from her as she ate her sushi and that they talked. He didn’t know if it was the layover on the way to India or on the way back. He didn’t know if Faith was talking to a man or a woman. He simply had a feeling that this conversation meant something. Besides, short of flying to India to question people there, which they didn’t have time to do, they were out of other leads.
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