“Why do you want to know?”
“Because I’m afraid of what her memories might do to me if I set them free inside my head. I’m afraid they’ll make me hate like she did.”
“Do you remember hate?” April asked Cole. She looked up at him, squinting through the sunlight. He needed to keep her eyes on him. He stepped to the side so that he was blocking the sun for her. His shadow covered her face.
“No,” he said. “I don’t remember hate, but why else would she do it? What else would drive someone to kill innocent people, innocent children?”
“Love,” April whispered. It didn’t sound like she had the strength to say it louder.
“I don’t understand.” Cole shook his head. “Why would love make you kill? What happened to the two of you in India?”
“We went to India to meet with a famous guru we’d taken online classes with.”
“What type of guru? Buddhist? Hindu? Muslim? Is this about religion?”
“I think he was a Buddhist. I don’t think he’d call himself that anymore. I’m not sure it matters. It’s not about religion.”
“Then what did he do to you?”
“He showed us the truth, a truth that we both already suspected. Do you want to know how I met Faith? I met her in a subway station. It was late at night. She was sitting on the floor crying. When I asked her what was wrong, all she could tell me was the music. An old man was playing the violin on the subway platform. That’s all it took to break her. All the beauty and all the pain. The world is too much and too little at the same time. We knew that.”
“Everyone thought she was so happy.”
“She was. They’re all happy too.” April looked across the park. Cole stepped in front of her gaze.
“What are you telling me?”
“Can’t you feel the world’s pain? Faith could. It was all those happy memories that led her to it.” Cole could feel something, a ball of sadness swirling in his stomach. He didn’t want it to overtake him. He needed to stay focused. He couldn’t let himself get distracted, but he also wanted answers.
“I’ve felt things but the memories still wouldn’t come.” Cole crouched down and put his face close to April’s. He completely forgot about the little red button in her hand. “What did the guru do to you?”
“The reason Faith’s memories are so fractured is that you didn’t inherit only her memories. He gave us more memories, memories that would have been lost without us, true memories.”
“Whose memories?” Cole asked.
“The street children who never had a chance to grow old. He collects the memories of those poor dead children and tries to find homes for them. He preaches that we need to try to absorb the world’s sadness. That’s why we went there. We no longer wanted to be separated from the world’s suffering. We couldn’t do it anymore.”
“He injected you and Faith with the memories of Indian orphans who died on the streets?” April nodded. Good God, Cole thought, those memories could drive anyone insane. Then he remembered that those memories were in his head now too. “But why this?” Cole asked, staring down at the button in her hand. “Why choose to blow things up if you’re supposed to absorb the world’s sadness?”
“Because Faith and I realized that we could stop the sadness before it happens. I told you it was about love. We’re saving these children from the sadness before it eats them alive. They are innocent now, and perfect. They are who we were. We were perfect once too. Then you grow too old to be blind to pain and suffering anymore, but there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s all too much.”
“And the grown-ups?”
April looked down into her lap. “They deserve to die. How can they be so happy when they know about all the suffering that surrounds them? They don’t absorb sadness. They amplify it by doing nothing, by ignoring it.” She lifted her hand up into the air.
“Wait!” Cole said urgently, as much to the men with guns in the sky listening to his conversation as to April. If they shot her, the bomb would go off and dozens of people would die. “Aren’t there better ways to stop the sadness? Instead of stopping children from ever being sad, couldn’t you try to help the children that are suffering?”
April looked up at Cole again with tears gathering in her dark blue eyes. “You have no idea what I can remember, the loneliness, the fear. I remember merely wanting one person to stop and love me, one person to simply act like they cared. No one did. I only have one memory. There are millions more like the one in my head. Even if the sadness went away, it would only be for a moment or two, and then it would come roaring back, if not for that one child then for dozens of others.”
“But maybe that moment or two would be worth it. No one person can absorb all of the world’s pain but maybe, for a few moments, you can lessen it, even if by the smallest amount. Instead, you’re going to make it worse.”
“Tell me what it means. Explain to me why the world is the way it is and I will keep my finger on this button. Tell me why the world is so cruel and unfair.”
“Fuck if I know,” Cole admitted. “Do you know who I am?” he asked as gently as he could.
“Of course,” April admitted in return. “You’re the Memory Detective. If I thought you were just a regular person, I would have blown us both up as soon as you started talking to me. I thought that maybe, with all those memories in your head, you might have some wisdom you could provide to me.”
“The memories that I have in my head, they’re not from Indian street urchins, but they are not people who won life’s lottery. They are murder victims who died with no family or friends around them, with no one who wanted to take their memories. And still their memories contain some of the most beautiful moments.” Cole’s voice cracked as the images raced through his head. “I can’t even begin to describe their beauty.” Memory after memory flashed through his brain, each one as exquisite as the one before it.
“But what does it all mean when there’s so much suffering around us?”
“You simply have to decide if the beauty is worth the suffering. But you only have the right to make that decision for yourself. Generation after generation of people before us have already made that decision and the human race keeps marching on. This life has never been easy for most people. And with each generation that you go back, life gets harder and harder, but they pressed on with hope, even if their hope was pointless. And you, things won’t be easy for your generation. The world is burning up and everything is changing so fast and bad people seem to have far too much power”—Cole paused for a second—“but you can’t complain the world has too many problems and that life has no meaning. You have to pick one.”
“Why?”
“Because if you believe that the world has too many problems, then solving even one of them should be meaning enough.”
“Meaning enough for what?”
Cole paused. He could still feel the sadness bubbling up inside him but he pushed it down. “Meaning enough to try to make it until tomorrow.”
“Do you believe that?” April asked Cole. He could hear the desperation in her voice. He could finally hear the doubt.
He shrugged. “The orphan’s memories in your head: Are they a boy’s or a girl’s?”
“A girl’s,” April told him.
“If you blow yourself up, you understand that her memories die forever too? No one is going to take them, not this time.” There were still a good number of people around them. Not as many as before but Cole could still hear the voices of the adults and the children playing in the park. He knew that the police probably wouldn’t be able to get any more people out. The ones who remained were, without even knowing it, living on the knife edge of death. “Why don’t you just try to make it until tomorrow? Give me your hand. Let me hold that button down with you.”
Cole knew what was going to happen if April gave him her hand. He knew that he had to do it, though. There were still too many people surrounding them. Maybe he could have stalled her long e
nough for them to clear everyone out, but he had the moment now. He had to try. He extended his hand for her.
April stared up at him. He could see the pain in her eyes. She could remember more than she was equipped to handle, more than most people would be equipped to handle. Cole knew better than anyone how real those memories are. “If you stop me from doing this, then all of this sadness will be yours,” she said to him.
“All of the sadness in your head?” Cole asked.
“No, all the sadness that eventually grows inside these children. You’ll own it. It will be on you.”
“Give me your hand,” Cole repeated, stretching his hand out toward hers. She was an aspiring murderer and terrorist, he kept telling himself, but he still felt a strange pity for her.
“The sadness in my head needs to be set free,” April said to Cole as she placed her hand into his.
Her skin was soft. Cole slipped his thumb on top of hers, joining her in pressing her thumb down on the little red button. Cole could feel her pulse. He held her whole hand gently. “Do you have doubts?” he asked her again.
“No,” April said, lifting her head toward the sky. The sounds of the gunshots and the screams were almost simultaneous. The bullets hit her head from two different directions at the same time, leaving very little of it behind. Cole squeezed her hand in his as hard as he could, so that it wouldn’t get pulled away from him as her body jerked with the bullets. Undercover officers immediately started pushing people away from Cole and April’s body. With extreme care, Cole slipped her now lifeless thumb off of the button, replacing it with his own. He couldn’t walk away, though. The wire running from the detonator to the bomb ran up her sleeve, and the bomb was still strapped to her chest. He would have to wait there until they came and defused the bomb. He sat down on the grass next to her body. People around them were screaming and crying, aghast. They didn’t know that what they had seen was only a small fraction of what might have been.
With his free hand, Cole almost unconsciously began to rub April’s back. He did his best to avoid looking at the blood. He had memories in his head of her friendship with Faith, and even though few had come to him coherently, he could still feel the kinship now that all of the drama had ended. Cole closed his eyes, wondering when the memories that had destroyed these two women would come to him. He knew that it was only a matter of time. He had no idea what it might do to him.
Chapter 33
FOUR HOURS AFTER STOPPING THE SECOND BOMBING
Cole was exhausted, completely spent. He trudged home, barely able to keep April’s words, and the feeling of her hand beneath his as she was shot dead, out of his mind. He wanted to rest. But he had only been back at his apartment for less than five minutes when there was a knock at his door. For some reason he couldn’t explain, he opened the door without asking who was there. After the day he’d had, he expected it to be someone who’d congratulate him, offer him a beer for a job well done. He was trying so hard to wrap his head around this afternoon’s events that he’d forgotten much of what had happened in the days before. When he swung the door open, Fergus stood before him.
“Cole.” Fergus sneered through the open doorway. Cole considered slamming the door in his face but realized that doing so would be pointless. “I see we stopped the bombing,” Fergus said with no joy. “Huzzah for us. I told you it would work. Now let’s talk about the fact that you let fourteen million dollars walk out on me and what we’re going to do about that.”
“I—” Cole began, trying to think up a lie.
Fergus shook his head. “I have you on video, you ungrateful prick. Now, why don’t you invite me inside?”
Cole looked behind Fergus, wondering if he’d brought anyone else with him. The hallway was empty. Somehow that didn’t make Cole any more comfortable. “Come in,” Cole said, stepping aside so that Fergus could walk past him. Fergus’s broad shoulders brushed against Cole as he entered the apartment.
Fergus looked around. It was a small, messy apartment, little more than a single room with a kitchen on one side and a couch and bed on the other. “I was hoping you’d have a nicer place,” he said, each word dripping with sarcasm, “because from the looks of your apartment, it doesn’t seem like you’re going to be able to repay my fourteen million dollars.” Fergus walked over to the couch and sat down. “We really should pay our police officers better. Do you have fourteen million dollars, Cole?”
“You shouldn’t have let me see him.” Cole chose not to sit down. “I’m a cop. I couldn’t just let you kill him.”
Fergus began to run both his hands over his bald head. “We were on the same team, Cole,” Fergus shouted. “We were fighting the real bad guys together. And then you went and fucked me! Bernard made a deal. Can’t anybody just honor a fucking deal anymore? What is going on with this world?”
“I’m not sorry,” Cole answered him.
Fergus put his hands back down between his knees and aimed a vicious stare at Cole. “You have no idea how sorry you’re going to be.”
“Is that a threat?” Cole asked him.
Fergus began to laugh, quietly at first, but more loudly with each breath. He spoke through his laughter. “I thought you knew me better than that, Cole. I don’t make threats.” Fergus stopped laughing. Then he stood. “I make deals—fair deals—and then I enforce them. That’s what I do.”
“You think I broke a deal with you.”
Fergus took two steps closer to Cole. They were little more than an arm’s length apart. “We were partners. You asked me for help.”
“If you do anything to me, they’ll come after you. You know that. You can’t go around killing cops.”
“I don’t need to kill you,” Fergus answered Cole. “You’re going to do it to yourself.” Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small vial of liquid. Cole’s heart began to race. He knew what was inside it. He dreaded what was inside it. “Are you afraid, Cole?” Fergus asked when he saw the look on Cole’s face. “You should be. One drop would be enough.”
Ever since Fergus told Cole that they’d inserted the trigger in his brain, Cole had searched for it, the way that he would search for other memories. He thought that if he could find it, maybe he could ease out whatever they’d put in his head in a way that would keep him from going mad. He hadn’t had any luck. Whatever they had buried in his brain was too deep for him to find, too deep for him to even feel. Even when Cole was having trouble reaching Faith’s memories, he knew they were there. He felt the weight of them. He remembered them in flashes. Whatever horrors Fergus had implanted in Cole’s brain didn’t feel like that. He couldn’t feel them at all. But Cole knew what powerful memory triggers scents could be. How the smell of freshly baked cookies could bring you right back to childhood. How the smell of a particular type of perfume could make you think of an old lover that you hadn’t thought of in years. That’s what made Fergus’s system so ingenious. The vial contained a scent, unlike any other scent in the world, that would trigger memories that would devastate Cole to the point of suicide or madness. Cole wasn’t afraid of dying but he was afraid of the liquid in that small vial in Fergus’s hand. “Why are you doing this?”
“I already told you. Because you stole from me. Because I can’t trust you. I probably should have done this months ago, but I thought you’d come around. I thought that you, of all people, would eventually understand what we are doing here.”
“You mean murdering people?”
“I mean making people’s lives worth living, then giving them the closest thing to immortality by passing their memories on to people who will cherish them the way only a collector can. Then you came to me, asking me for help, help which I provided, and you betrayed me.”
“I couldn’t just let him die.” Cole couldn’t take his eyes off the vial.
“You think you saved him?”
Cole shrugged. “You’ve got money and power. I’m sure you’ll chase him. I don’t know if I saved him. But I do know that I didn’
t just let him die.” Cole looked around the apartment, trying to see if there was some way for him to run. It wasn’t possible. Even if he went for the door or the fire escape, all Fergus had to do was uncork the liquid and toss it in his direction. Cole knew how little of the scent it would take, how only a few drops was enough. He didn’t want to die like that. He didn’t want his last moments to be full of fear and despair and sadness and hate and whatever else Fergus’s henchmen had injected into his head.
“Why not just do it, then?” Cole asked. “Why not just spill the vial on my counter and let me smell it? Why taunt me with it? I never thought of you as a cruel man, Fergus. I thought it was all business.”
“It is,” Fergus answered him. “I’m not taunting you, Cole. I came to give you one more chance.”
“What do I need to do?” Cole asked. He was ready to do whatever was needed.
“It’s simple,” Fergus answered Cole. “Tell me where he is. You spoke to him. I saw you. Tell me where he went.”
“I didn’t talk to him, Fergus. There wasn’t time. I just unlocked his door.”
“Don’t lie to me. I saw the two of you talking. What did you say?”
“I told him to wait an hour before going out, and he thanked me.”
“You son of a bitch. You knew that we would all be distracted then by your procedure.”
Cole nodded. “Yeah. I don’t know where he went. Tell me something else I can do. There has to be something else. More research. You can study me directly.”
“You don’t understand, Cole. You seem to think that I make all of the decisions. I don’t. Sometimes they take my advice. But do you want to know the last time they took my advice? Helping you stop the bomber. They didn’t want to do it. I had to talk them into it, and look at what it cost us. So you see, there’s only one way out of this for you. Tell me where our runner went or I don’t have much choice. Even if I wanted to let you live, as long as our asset is on the run, they wouldn’t let me.”
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