The Memory Collector

by Meg Gardiner

  “His memories are not being misplaced. They’re being destroyed before they can become permanent. We can’t reboot his system and call them up. It’s not like flipping a breaker switch and restoring power.”

  Misty looked at Jo and past her shoulder, antsy. She seemed as tense and jagged as a spool of concertina wire. She ran her hands up and down her arms, scratching like she itched.

  “I need air.” She began walking down the hallway.

  “Wait—give me your phone number,” Jo said.

  Misty stopped, found a piece of scratch paper, and scribbled on it. “My new cell number. Call me anytime. Day or night.”

  She turned and rushed down the hall, swerving around an orderly pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair. Jo heard her break into tears.

  She watched her flee, thinking, What the hell? She ran a hand through her hair. Exhaling, she walked back around the corner.

  Simioni was nowhere in sight, but Officer Paterson was at the nurses’ station. She walked over and offered an apologetic smile.

  “On the plane, I may have seemed more concerned about Kanan than about you. Is your elbow all right?” she said.

  “Fine. Thanks.” His baby face looked tired. “It’s time to read Kanan his rights.”

  “You can read him his rights. He’ll understand them. And five minutes later he won’t remember that you’ve done it.”

  “Head injuries can make people violent. He may lash out again. He should be restrained.”

  Next verse, same as the first. “Give me some time—”

  “You’ve had time.”

  She put up her hands, knowing she’d pushed it as far as she could. Beyond Paterson she saw Simioni walking up the hallway. He was carrying a backpack and a package wrapped in bubble wrap.

  He set them on the counter. “Kanan’s carry-on, plus one of the daggers he brought back. Recognize the type?”

  Paterson’s face took on a look of utter incredulity. He shook his head at Jo. “What did you say to me back at the airport—‘How nuts, and what kind?’ Wrong question. It’s who’s nuts. And the answer is you doctors. Kanan should be in a straitjacket.”

  Jo opened her mouth to snark back, and her phone rang. The ringtone consisted of a death-metal lick and a singer screaming, “Psychosocial .” She grabbed it and turned away from Paterson and Simioni’s horrified faces.

  She saw the display, and her face flushed. She answered quietly. “Call you back?”

  Gabe Quintana said, “Day or night. You know how to find me.”

  “Great.” She hung up, heart kicking, and turned back around. “Sorry.”

  Paterson huffed a breath from beneath his form-fitting uniform shirt. “Is Kanan stable?”

  “That’s a relative term,” Simioni said. “But his life is not at risk right now.”

  “I need to place him under arrest.”

  Jo acquiesced. Kanan would have to deal with it. “You’re not taking him to the jail tonight. He’s been admitted to the hospital.”

  “Understood. But I need to go through the formalities.”

  Reluctantly, Jo and Simioni accompanied Paterson to Kanan’s E.R. room. Paterson opened the door.

  Kanan was gone.

  7

  “Damn it.” Paterson grabbed his radio and stalked down the hall.

  Kanan was gone, along with the things that had been on the bedside chair: his jacket, wallet, and passport. Crumpled on the floor by the bed was a blue tartan scarf that matched Misty Kanan’s skirt. Jo picked it up. A bubble-wrapped package sat on the visitors’ chair, ripped open. Simioni hurriedly checked inside.

  “Sword’s here,” he said. “Dagger . . .”

  In the hallway an orderly was passing by. Jo caught him. “Did you see a man leave this room? Rusty hair, pale blue eyes?”

  “Couple minutes ago. He came out, asked me if I’d seen the woman who was here before.”

  “His wife?”

  “Tartan skirt, nice looking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Told him I saw her head that way.” He nodded down the hall.

  The cop had gone the opposite direction. Jo turned to Simioni. “Get Paterson.”

  She rushed down the hall in the direction the orderly had indicated. Kanan couldn’t have gotten far. She silently berated herself. Kanan had repeatedly insisted that he wanted to leave. She shouldn’t have presumed that Simioni and Paterson were watching him.

  What was driving Kanan to split?

  Pop quiz: Business trip, poison, and weaponry—which ones don’t go with “corporate babysitter”?

  She reached the end of the hall and pushed through the double doors. If Kanan got outside, would he wander aimlessly? Did he know the neighborhood?

  She rounded a corner into another hallway. At the far end, near a bank of elevators, she saw him.

  He was walking away from her, his stride measured, his head turning as his gaze swept the hallway.

  Jo headed toward him. “Ian, wait.”

  He turned. His eyes locked onto her like targeting radar, without recognition.

  Where was Officer Paterson? She glanced over her shoulder. No sign of the cop. She approached Kanan slowly, hands out.

  “I’m Dr. Beckett. Please don’t leave. You have a severe brain injury.”

  His gaze ran across her, bit by bit, until he saw the tartan scarf in her hand. His expression tightened as though he’d stepped on a nail.

  “Misty left this in the E.R.,” Jo said. “I found it.”

  He lunged at her.

  She dodged but he was fast. He grabbed her and with shocking ease pulled her through the open door of an elevator. She inhaled to shout and he swung her off her feet, spun her around, and clapped a hand over her mouth.

  She squirmed and raised her knees and tried to kick him. She saw the doors sliding closed, the bright waxed floor and clinical walls and heartless fluorescent lighting in the hallway disappear into a slit, and then gone.

  With his knee, Kanan pressed the stop button.

  “What are you doing with Misty’s scarf?” he said.

  He was lithe and strong, his balance superb, his words clear. Jo raised her foot and tried to kick the alarm button. Kanan lifted her off her feet and carried her to the far corner of the elevator. Her claustrophobia screeched at her. Tight space, violent paranoid.

  “Who are you working for?” Kanan said.

  Writhing, she tried to kick him in the instep.

  “Who?” He pinned her flat against the wall. “If I take my hand off your mouth, will you scream?”

  Abso-frackin-lutely. She shook her head.

  “You’re right, you won’t.” His right hand came up. It held one of the ancient daggers. “You’ll answer me, very quietly.”

  The blade shone under the lights. Within its gleaming steel were weird patterns. Kinked lines, dark, not quite twisting—almost like a circuit board. As the angle of the blade altered, they shimmered like oil.

  It wasn’t a ceremonial seppuku knife. Not Japanese. But old—so old that it had almost certainly done the job before, and more than once.

  She wasn’t going to scream.

  Yet.

  He took his hand off her mouth. “What do you want? Do you have it?”

  “Misty came to see you in the emergency room not fifteen minutes ago. I spoke to her.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You can’t remember. Come back to the E.R. and—”

  “Stop lying to me.”

  Convincing him she was telling the truth was out of the question. Misty hadn’t had to sign in when she came to the hospital. Maybe the cops could tell Kanan that his wife had been there, right after they cuffed him, and holy flaming crap, that blade looked sharp.

  “I’m a psychiatrist. I brought you here in an ambulance from your London flight. You told me you’d been poisoned on your business trip to Africa. You said, ‘They’ll say it was self-inflicted.’”

  Instead of confusion, disbelief and anger rolled across Kanan�
�s face. “Self-inflicted? You don’t get so lucky. And not poisoned. Contaminated.”

  That was something different altogether. Despite her fear, she said, “What with?”

  He put his ear close to hers. “Listen to me.”

  He was breathing hard, thrumming with tension. Jo sensed that he was close to breaking down. If she hadn’t been terrified, she would have felt sorry for him. But she felt like she’d fallen into a pit with a wounded animal.

  “If you’re a shrink, you can be quiet and listen for one minute. Isn’t that what you’re trained to do?”

  The elevator felt like a tin can that could easily crush her. Don’t hyperventilate, she told herself. Just breathe.

  And don’t point that knife at me. She didn’t have a weapon, or a shield, or anything to defend herself with. Her belt, maybe. Her hands.

  “You saying you don’t know what got to me?” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “And you want to know why?”

  “Yes.”

  His lips drew back, revealing white teeth. “Slick. Really. Slick.”

  Her heart sank. “I’m not trying to trick you. You have a serious brain injury. You need help. What were you contaminated with?”

  “Be quiet. I’m going to get them. Where are they?”

  “Who?”

  He knocked her against the wall. “I’m on the job. I’m doing it. But I will get them.”

  On his left arm, just below his elbow, Jo saw black lines on his skin. It was writing. And though she had written memory loss on his right arm, this was something different. These were words she hadn’t written.

  She hated it when words were written on people’s bodies.

  “Are you looking at me?” he said.

  Jo looked. In his ice-chip eyes she saw fury. Behind the fury, the great engine for it, was entropy: chaos, fear, grief. The knife hung in his hand.

  “I know I can’t remember everything. But I’m not crazy. I will finish the job.” He watched her, seemingly to see if she believed him. “You believe that?”

  Of course not. “Of course.”

  “Dig this. I don’t care about the consequences to myself. You’ve already poured down grief on me. And when I rain it back on you, nobody’s going to punish a guy in my shape. What can anybody do to me that’s worse?”

  He held her gaze, eyes no longer diamond-dead but swimming with light. His chest rose and fell against hers. His lips were inches from her ear. He stared at her, maybe searching for confirmation, and relaxed his grip.

  It gave her four inches and a brief second. She threw herself forward against him, brought up her left leg, and kicked at the control panel. She hit the red alarm button.

  A siren scorched the elevator. Angrily, Kanan shoved her away from him. Shaking his head, he punched the open button. The knife hung loose in his hand, seemingly forgotten.

  The door began inching open. Kanan’s gaze fell to the laminated hospital I.D. clipped to Jo’s sweater. He yanked it off.

  Held it up. “I’ll find you.”

  The doors opened. He turned and ran.

  Jo put a hand on the wall. The light seemed intensely bright. Her heart drummed in her ears.

  The doors of the elevator began to slide closed again. She skittered out like a hockey puck, straight past a couple of interns in scrubs. She looked up and down the hall, but Kanan was gone.

  She grabbed one of the interns. “Call security.”

  That message on Kanan’s arm. She didn’t know whether it had been written there when he got off the plane, or whether it had been added at the hospital. Each time she’d seen him, he’d had on his longsleeved shirt.

  The humming in her head increased: joy, anger, relief, an almost giddy sense of excitement at making it out unscathed.

  One of the interns said, “Everything all right?”

  “Elevators,” she said. “Nightmare.”

  The ringing of the alarm bell filled the hallway. But it couldn’t overcome the echo of Kanan’s voice. I’m going to get them. Jo feared what he meant. Because she knew what she’d seen on Kanan’s skin: names. And two words written in ink, running up his arm like a shot of fatality straight into the vein.

  They die.

  8

  Jo downshifted as traffic ahead of her slowed on the rain-slick freeway. Her hair flew around her. She hit the hands-free phone and redialed.

  This time, the call was answered on the first ring. “Jo Beckett. You’re bringing cases with you to the department when you call now?”

  “Wonderful to hear your voice too, Lieutenant.”

  In reply, Jo heard Amy Tang flick her lighter. “No, you light up my days. I sit at my desk reading women’s magazines, waiting for you to call. What wardrobe should I go with this spring—Hollywood elegance or fairy princess?”

  “Black, Amy. Or black.”

  Tang laughed, a brief ha that slipped out despite her best efforts. “Please, doctor. I’m at your disposal. Meet me at that coffee place down the hill from your house. I can give you ten minutes, because I’m a living doll.”

  Tang sounded as though she didn’t need any more caffeine, but Jo said, “I’m on my way.”

  Fifteen minutes later, she managed to find a parking spot two blocks from Java Jones. The coffeehouse sat on a funky side street at the bottom of Russian Hill near Fisherman’s Wharf. Jo wrangled her scarf over her head, turned up the collar on her jean jacket, fed quarters into the meter, and dashed along the sidewalk. The plate-glass windows at Java Jones were steamed over. The lights inside had the amber glow of a fogged-in Parisian café, circa 1870. It looked like a Monet painting. She pushed through the door, half-drenched.

  The come-and-get-it smell of espresso welcomed her. Fall Out Boy was playing on the stereo, “Hum Hallelujah.” Lieutenant Amy Tang stood at the counter, fingers tapping double-time, waiting for her order.

  Tang was a sea urchin, small and prickly. She wore a black peacoat, black slacks, black boots. Spiky black hair. Jo knew that beneath the barbs, she had a heart—a cautious, well-guarded heart. But reaching it could result in cuts and bruises. She liked Tang enormously.

  With chilled fingers, Jo fumbled to remove her sodden scarf. It had gotten wrapped over her hair and half her face.

  Tang eyed her. “You trying out for ninja school?”

  “You auditioning for The Matrix?” Jo unwound the scarf like a mummy removing its wrappings and shook water from her brown curls.

  Behind the counter, Jo’s sister Tina was pouring Tang’s order. “Jo’s into the whole woman warrior, Bushido, take-no-psychic-prisoners thing. Me, I take after our Irish ancestors. We’re poets and musicians.”

  “More like pranksters and subversives.” Jo held up her phone. “You hijacked this. Please delete the ringtone you installed.”

  “But ‘Psychosocial’ is a sick ringtone.”

  “Ironic, I got it. But the screaming scares small children and grown police officers.”

  The ratty day wasn’t denting Tina’s mood. She resembled Jo, minus ten years and a couple of inches, plus enough silver in her ears and on her fingers to be confused for a magnet. She was so effervescent that Jo wondered what would happen if she walked past an open drawer of cutlery on a particularly dynamic day.

  Tina took the phone. “I’ll change it on one condition. Tomorrow night—Jo, don’t give me that look, you’ve been promising for months, and you back out every time. Come on.”

  “If you want me to go on a girls’ night out, you have to give me a hint. What will we be doing? Popsicle-stick crafts? Krav Maga?”

  Tina stuck out her bottom lip and made puppy eyes.

  Jo raised her hands. “Fine, I give up.”

  Tina clapped her fists together like a delighted kid. She handed over Jo’s coffee with a grin.

  Jo laughed. “I just walked into a trap, didn’t I?” She took her coffee. “Thanks. I think.”

  Tang led her to a table. “I talked to the officers from the airport division
. Nasty run-in you had with this Kanan character. You okay?”

  “No harm, no foul. But he said he’s going to find me,” Jo said.

  “How would he do that?”

  “He grabbed my hospital I.D. Let’s say he could take it from there. He seems resourceful.”

  “So he’s a possible stalker. With brain damage. What else?”

  “I think he’s gone out to kill somebody.”

  “How’d you reach that conclusion?”

  “He has a list of names and the words They die scrawled on his forearm.”

  Tang set down her mug. “From the top, please.”

  Jo told Tang the story: the siege on the 747, the Tasering, the seizures. The bizarre MRI results, Kanan’s rage and determination to leave the hospital. His aggression against her in the elevator.

  “He said he’s on the job, and he’ll finish it, and he’s ‘going to get them.’ And he said he has nothing to lose. Add in They die and you’ve got a hit list.”

  “Is he the type to go nuts?” Tang said.

  “Who knows? His brain is being cored like an apple.”

  “What do you think is going on?”

  Jo took a breath. “I hesitate to speculate without more evidence.”

  “SWAG, Beckett.”

  Scientific Wild-Ass Guess. Jo leaned back, tapping her fingers on the wooden tabletop. “Okay. Here’s a working hypothesis.”

  “You mean a hypothesis we should work from. Playing defense.”

  “You got it. Kanan went to southern Africa, supposedly on a business trip. While he was there he was contaminated with a highly dangerous substance that is causing irreparable damage to his short-term memory. He may have been engaged in illegal activity.”

  “Such as?”

  “Stealing something.”

  “Because, if he knows what caused his brain injury, why else would he hold back?”

  “Exactly,” Jo said.

  “You think he was involved in a heist?”

  “Working hypothesis.”