The Memory Killer (Carson Ryder, Book 11)

by J. A. Kerley

  We just couldn’t find him.

  Back at HQ we met up with Roy in his office, frowning into a newly purchased box of cigars as if wondering should he take the elevator down twenty-three floors to go outside and grab a few succulent puffs. When we entered he sighed and slipped them back into a drawer as we filled him in on the latest.

  “Why the change in attack?” he asked. “The added physicality?”

  “Two thoughts, Roy: this was more personal because maybe Donnie knew Brighton, had a history with him. Or …”

  Roy lowered his head into his hands and massaged his temples. “Let me guess. You’re about to tell me the perp’s no longer happy just to shut off their voices and fill their heads with ugly visions, he now needs broken bones?”

  “He may have intended to break a knee and just kept beating, Roy.”

  “You’re saying …”

  I thought back to the thick dressings covering what had once been a man’s legs. In the span of three victims Donnie had moved from sexual torment to explosive physical destruction. I recalled my brother’s words from a long-ago case, describing a perp as being on a reverse diet: “The more you eat, Carson, the hungrier you get.”

  “I think he liked it, Roy,” I said. “I think he liked it a lot.”

  “Can you stop him fast, Carson? Can you get this invisible SOB?”

  I went to the window and looked out for a full minute. It was not a decision to be taken lightly.

  “I want to talk to a specialist,” I finally said, turning. “A guy I know who’s the best at this kind of thing.”

  Roy showed puzzlement. “Better than you?”

  “I learned the Masters-degree material on my own, Roy. But this guy gave me my PhD in Freakology.”

  I jogged back to my office and closed the door. The case was going nowhere. Even though we knew what the perp looked like and every cop in Miami-Dade and surrounding jurisdictions had a copy of his facial composite image, not to mention private security firms, university security, shopping-mall security and even – Gershwin handing out flyers at intersections – school crossing guards, we’d not had a single solid lead, and about seven hundred mushy ones.

  It truly was like Roy had said: the guy was invisible.

  I had no answers. But Jeremy might. I used his advice only sparingly – and when he was in the madness of his incarceration he’d made me pay with pain – but the few times he’d offered an opinion, it had helped solve the case.

  Acting against my better instincts, I pulled my cell from my jacket and dialed his mobile number.

  “I know you’ll hear this at some point,” I said, keeping my voice low against passers-by in the hall. “I need you to call because it concerns a case. I need your input. I won’t ask where you are or what you are doing, who your friends are … I don’t care at the moment, all I care about is nailing a real bad guy. Call me, Brother.”

  I figured I’d send another to his home landline, just to surround him with my need for his expertise. I dialed the number and heard an unfamiliar ringing followed by the connection.

  “The number you dialed is no longer in service,” a recording said.

  I blew out a long breath, stood, and walked to the window to let blue sky temper the darkness gathering in my mind. Were my worst nightmares finally coming true?

  When in the institute, a sort of maximum-security college dorm, Jeremy had prospered in a way, eliciting friendships with hulking, insane murderers and drooling serial rapists, making it his hobby to understand their delusions and motivations, and thereby control them, at least within certain bounds. But it was a two-way street and the madnesses of others began to infect my brother, creating a howling paranoiac who viewed my every contact as a way to control him. He was dangerous to himself and to others.

  It was my greatest fear that the last few years – his calm years, relatively speaking – were only a remission, that the darkness would again rise and pull him into insanity for ever. I also knew that if he was caught and interrogated while beset with demons, he might confess my role in his escape from New York. I would be driven from law enforcement and turned into a pariah among my colleagues.

  If I remained out of prison.

  Nothing of late reassured me about Jeremy’s condition: his joy in cryptic statements, use of other voices, avoidance of my contacts … all signaled a return to past ways. The only thing I hadn’t caught him in was a direct lie, and in the past, almost nothing my brother said had been true. It had all been to further his control.

  I thought for several long moments until recalling that I had eyes in Kentucky, if I wanted to use them to peek in on my brother.

  Did I?

  I checked my phone contact list, mentally crossed my fingers, and made a long-distance call.

  24

  After the call – which might not produce an answer for several days – I had one difficult chore remaining: informing Gary that his brother was growing more violent, and from my experience would only get worse. I suspected Gary harbored hopes of his brother being caught in a soft net and put in some therapeutic environment until gentle mental massage dissuaded him of his rougher instincts.

  Gary was laying in his bed and watching one of the monitors, mouthing something to himself as a warm breeze filtered through the window. A sheet was pulled to his waist, but above it I saw the robe had been replaced with a voluminous coral sweatshirt. On the bedside table sat a plate holding the cores of two apples, a pear, and his water cup.

  “Hello, Detective Ryder.”

  “I hope I’m not disturbing lunch.”

  “Just finished. Can you believe lunch used to be a bucket of chicken and a …” He looked down at himself and grinned. “Yep, bet you can.”

  “You look happy.”

  He pointed to the side room. “Look in there.”

  I saw what appeared to be six feet of rail-sided rubber track melded to the transplanted cockpit of a small jet. “Your treadmill arrived,” I said.

  He smiled proudly. “The first time I did four hundred feet, the second I did eight. It was tough, but I made it. Look –” He flipped off the sheet, displaying sweat pants the same color as the top, on his feet a huge pair of shoes, neon yellow with green pinstriping.

  “Orthopedic running shoes,” he said. “Custom made.”

  “I expect I’ll see you in a marathon one of these days.”

  “Ha! Half, maybe.”

  I pulled the chair to his bedside. One of the monitors was dark, the other paused on something called Yabla.

  “Yabla?” I said.

  “It’s a language program. I’m learning Portuguese.”

  “For Rio, or course.”

  He grinned. “Sim senhor, eu sou.”

  “Nice.”

  “Here’s another I’ll be using: ‘Qual o caminho para a praia?’”

  “Got me, amigo.”

  “Which way to the beach?”

  I sighed, hating to be the bearer of bad tidings. “Listen, Gary, another victim showed up. It’s not good. Donnie hurt him pretty bad.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean, ‘hurt him bad’?”

  “He smashed the victim’s legs. One has to be amputated. The guy was a dancer, emphasis on was.”

  Gary stared. It was like my words had to take shape in his head. “He … injured him. Physically? But wasn’t Donnie just sort of messing with their minds, not really hurting them?”

  It took a second to realize Gary didn’t fully conceive of being raped while hallucinating as an injury. It made me wonder what he’d seen as a child if he could think that way.

  “If by messing with their minds you mean several days of hallucinations and sexual violence, yes. Something’s happening in your brother’s head, Gary. I think he’s coming out.”

  “He? What do you mean?”

  “Whatever Donnie’s urges, he’s been controlling them. But the wrappings are coming off, Gary. Donnie’s probably decompensating, to use the jargon.”

  “What
does that mean?”

  I crossed to the window and saw the unmarked cruiser a half-block distant. “Right now it means I’m adding extra security here. I think you’re in more danger than even I figured.”

  He swung his legs from the bed and began walking and muttering to himself. “It’s not supposed to … this is …”

  “What?”

  He wheeled to me, his face a mix of anger and confusion. “It’s not supposed to be like this.”

  “What’s not supposed to be like this?”

  He balled his hands into fists and stomped the floor like an angry child.

  “I just want to go to Carnevale!” He was near weeping.

  “You can’t let this knock you down, Gary,” I said. “You’ve got to stay strong. Keep to the regimen.”

  “He’s hurting people. Donnie’s actually hurting them!”

  “He’s been hurting people.”

  “Not like this. He took away a boy’s dancing!”

  It seemed odd that Gary Ocampo was making such a differentiation between Donnie’s abductions and druggings and the physical violence, as if the former was but a pale shade of the latter, but it was a compensation mechanism: If the victims could walk away from their encounters with only a head full of horrific memories, how bad could Donnie really be? Not like a murderer, certainly … miles from that. He was only a misguided child, sadly wayward.

  But now the twin had wreaked permanent physical damage to a victim. Gary Ocampo, his face pale and confused, padded to the window and looked out on a world that had just turned darker.

  25

  I went from Ocampo’s to the office to do paperwork with Gershwin. It was late Saturday when we broke up after a six-hour day, making a pact to use Sunday for sleep. I fetched Mix-up from my neighbor, Dubois Burnside (who loved dog-sitting my huge pooch when I was out of town), and ended up wandering my yard with a machete, chopping brush as Mix-up splashed in the cove. I needed honest sweat, the kind from physical labor and not from the gut-wrenching suspicion that Donnie Ocampo might strike at any moment or that my brother was again surrendering to his base impulses.

  I made over two dozen calls to my brother’s cell, nothing acknowledged or returned, like he’d decided to live in another dimension and communicate when it suited him. I expended the anger through my machete.

  When Monday came, I slept in until eight and was almost to the department when my car started talking. Gershwin had Bluetoothed my phone to the speakers and a voice in the dash said, “Call from Vince Delmara.”

  “Yes … what? Hello?” I yelled, having never dealt with a talking car before.

  “Got something might fall into what you’re looking for, Carson,” Vince said, sounding like he was behind my dashboard. “That’s might, like I don’t know.”

  “I’ll take anything, Vince.”

  “About midnight last night some uniforms were called to a disturbance off Biscayne Boulevard, white male, twenty-eight, was staggering in circles, pausing every few feet to puke. He had some fight in him and it took a Taser to knock him down. When he tried to talk he just kind of barked.”

  “Sounds like a typical night in Miami, Vince. How’s it looking like my thing?”

  “His head is clearer this morning and he’s talking about things that might interest you. Says somebody spiked his drink and tried to kidnap him.”

  Within an eyeblink I felt my heart begin racing with the adrenalin rush and I think I raced to MPD just a little under the speed of sound.

  The guy was named Derek Scott and it looked like all five-nine or so of him had been run through a wringer. Two wringers, maybe: a big knot on his forehead and torn shirt. His short blond hair was matted and his jeans were dirty from crawling on his knees. He sat in the interrogation room with his head in his hands. He was pale-skinned to begin with, and looked perilously close to gray.

  “I’m Detective Carson Ryder, Mr Scott,” I said, pulling out a chair across the table from Scott. “With the FCLE.”

  “I didn’t d-do anything wrong, I swear. I had a couple beers, that’s all.”

  “A couple beers usually make you wander the streets screaming at people?”

  He looked up, his eyes red. “It wasn’t the b-beer. Somebody put suh-something in it.”

  He had a slight stammer and I wondered if it was normal or an effect of the drugs.

  “You’re sure?”

  “It had to be. I’m not a d-drinker, not much anyway.”

  “How about you tell me what happened. Everything. The truth, please, because it could be very important.”

  “I went out for a couple drinks. I went to Twilight Time, a bar off Biscayne …”

  “Excuse me, but is it a gay bar? It’s also important.”

  He looked at me evenly and nodded. “I d-drank one beer over maybe a half-hour, ordered another. I started fuh-feeling sick, like the flu or something. When I got up to leave, my legs didn’t work right. I went outside to catch a breath of air and … cuh-couldn’t find my car.”

  “You forgot where you put it?”

  “I knew exactly where I put it, the lot on the corner. But – and this I s-s-swear – the lot wasn’t there any more.”

  “Wasn’t there?”

  “It … it had turned into a suh-swimming pool.”

  I looked at Vince, standing against the wall with his arms crossed. He raised an eyebrow.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “I think … I remember a car pulling up next to me. It made a sound like a jet landing … rrrrroooosh! Like that. A man’s head leaned out the w-window and asked if I needed help. It sounded like he was talking from the bottom of a well. I said that my car was in a swimming pool. He knew where it was and told me to get in. The next thing I know is we’re fighting and then I’m in the s-street.”

  “You jumped from the car? Fell?”

  “I don’t know. The street just appeared. And … I think that’s all I remember until I wuh-woke up this morning.”

  “You don’t remember screaming? The confrontation with the cops?”

  “Nothing. I know you must hear this a lot, but I’m sure I only had t-t-two beers.”

  Vince had checked deeper and found the guy was a veterinarian’s assistant, no criminal record.

  “The man whose car you entered, do you think you’d recognize him?”

  “I-I honestly don’t know. Everything in here—” he pointed to his temple “—is all jumbled up.”

  I retrieved a sheet of Donnie’s retouched photos from my briefcase. Scott leaned forward and turned grayer.

  “It was that one, the one in the corner.”

  Not noting the faces were variations on a theme, Scott had picked the photo retouched to show Gary Ocampo’s face adjusted to normal size, given neatly parted brown hair, and outfitted with glasses, pencil mustache and pointed goatee. He looked politely evil, like one of Hell’s sales staff.

  “You’re sure, Mr Scott? As sure as you can be, given the circumstances?”

  “Uh … it’s hard to explain, but yes.”

  “Why hard?”

  “It’s like … like my eyes aren’t sure it’s him, but suh-something inside my body is screaming, That’s the guy.”

  I liked the answer, figuring Scott’s subconscious held the truest picture of Ocampo. I nodded to Vince, meaning, the guy is the real deal. I turned off my interrogator voice and went to empathy, what I felt now that Scott’s story jived with everything we knew thus far.

  “We’re going to transport you to the hospital, Mr Scott. There’s no reason for alarm, but I you’ve probably been dosed with a powerful hallucinogen.”

  “Hallucin … you mean like LSD?”

  “Kind of. Plus other things to make you easier to abduct. Anything else you remember?”

  “It’s an exploded jigsaw puzzle in my head,” he said plaintively. “Pieces of pictures.”

  I told him I’d be in touch, but to call if any of the puzzle pieces started to fit together. It was a major break in t
he case and I waited until an ambulance came to take him to the hospital, then called Morningstar.

  “I have a forensic tech heading to the hospital,” I said. “Scott recalled having a fight with his would-be abductor.”

  “I’ll make sure the tech gets under-nail samples. And I’ll bag his clothes for analysis.”

  Scratching at an assailant’s flesh could pick up DNA, even if the skin wasn’t broken. And a single blood smear from a scratch could make a case stick. When it came to forensic evidence against Ocampo, we needed all we could get.

  I was returning to the department when I remembered my cell phone was switched off for the hospital. I pulled into a small city park, passing a couple kids on skateboards and one big guy lazily pedaling a plump-tire bicycle. I stopped beside a picnic bench, enticed by the sun on my windshield and thinking a few minutes of fresh breeze might clear the antiseptic air of the hospital from my lungs.

  I sat on the bench and activated my phone. It buzzed and I squinted to see the messages displayed on the screen: Missed Call. Voicemail. It was from Jeremy.

  Heart rate rising, I pressed my VM button. “One new voicemail,” the nice lady’s voice said. My brother’s message had arrived a half-hour ago.

  “Stop filling my voicemail box,” Jeremy intoned. “I need the space for important messages.”

  His message repeated. And then again. And again.

  I listened to the same eleven words for three minutes until I got the point.

  26

  The rest of the day passed with no contact from my brother, and I added nothing to his voicemail. Not only did I lack inclination, I had zero time: the day contained two meetings with Roy, two with the pool investigators, one with the day-watch commander at Miami-Dade PD, one with Vince Delmara. Snitches were contacted. Bartenders re-interviewed. Recent parolees with a sexual history were reexamined for a third time. An updated sheet of Donnie-reconstructions was created and released.

  On the positive side, Brian was released (although the recommendation was for another day’s stay). Announcing that “The show must go on”, he was wheeled across the hospital lobby surrounded by cheering friends, one of whom had brought Brianna a screamingly red wig ratted so high the attendant had to lean sideways to guide the chair.