“What do you mean, sir?” Fergus answered.
“Everybody has bad memories,” Carter said. “Nobody gets through life without them, right? So do I get those too?”
Fergus nodded. “Sure. Not every single memory is”—he paused, looking for the right word—“enviable,” he finished. “You have to take some of the bad with the good. But in our experience, with our product, the good so far outweighs the bad that we never get complaints. Also, we do what we can to weaken the memories of our volunteers from the days before they started working with us. I don’t want to trouble my clients with those memories.” God knows that’s not what they paid for, Fergus thought but didn’t say out loud.
“How do you do that?” Carter asked.
“It’s a relatively simple procedure,” Fergus said. “We give them a protein blocker and ask them to think of their most painful memories. We do this over a period of weeks. Every time they pull that memory back up while under the influence of the protein blocker, the memory gets a little weaker. By the time they start on their desired lives, everything before that moment is a mere shadow in their heads. You might remember some of it,” Fergus told Carter, “but it will be fleeting and weak and then”—Fergus chuckled a knowing chuckle—“you’ll have plenty of other, stronger, wilder, more outrageous memories to help wash those away. We’ve never had an unsatisfied customer,” Fergus assured him. Fergus knew how to answer the question. Most of his clients asked it. It made sense. They were paying a considerable amount of money for the extraordinary memories. The last thing they would want was some poor kid’s sad memories trapped inside their brains.
“Okay,” Carter had said, accepting Fergus’s answer. He was accepting so much on faith already, anyway.
“You can get undressed now,” the beautiful nurse said to him. “There is a robe behind you. You can put that on.”
Carter turned, expecting a flimsy hospital gown. Instead, he found a black robe made of fine silk. As he undressed he thought about the rest of the catalogue. After the various product descriptions came the testimonials. Each one was anonymous. Instead of a name, the catalogue listed a description.
“Worth every penny.”—Fortune 500 CEO
“The best money I’ve ever spent.”—Venture capitalist
“To say it changed my life would be an understatement.”—Chairman of a leading investment bank
“You won’t regret it. You’ll only regret not doing it sooner.”—Real estate mogul
The last ten pages of the catalogue were all about the science, about how they were constantly studying and making new breakthroughs that would make their customers’ experiences even better. Near the end, the catalogue discussed recent breakthroughs in repeat transferees. “Because why remember only one amazing life, when you can remember so much more?” The bottom of that page had a picture of a New York City homicide detective called the Memory Detective. The catalogue noted that he’d had more than a dozen transfers with no ill effects, and that the Company was continuing to monitor and study him so they could learn how to provide an even better experience to their customers. Carter looked at his picture. The man had a strange look to him, with his dark eyes and white hair. Carter thought that maybe he’d heard about this Memory Detective before, but he couldn’t be sure. He would remember this time, though.
Carter slipped the black silk robe over his shoulders. He was ready to go. One new set of memories was enough for him now, but those final pages of the catalogue would stick with him. They would mean something to him one day not so far in the future. Of course, the Company had planned it that way.
Shortly after he tied the robe around his waist, he heard a knock on the door. “Yes,” Carter said. “Come in.”
A small surgical team came into the room with a gurney and some other medical equipment. “We’ll need you to lie down,” one of the team members said, motioning toward the gurney. Carter pushed his way on top of it. “We’re going to take you down the hall to another room,” the same team member said. “There, we’ll give you some drugs to get you to sleep.” The man then looked straight into Carter’s eyes. “When you wake up,” the man said with a flourish, “everything will be different.” Then they pushed the gurney through the open door and into the hallway, with Carter riding silently on it, waiting for his life to change.
Chapter 12
Cole gave Ed the job of calling the family. Ed had daughters. He wore his empathy on his sleeve. Cole guessed that if they talked to Ed, they’d want to come. Cole was right. Ed spoke to Meg’s mom. He didn’t give her any of the details, only telling her that they had information about their daughter. “What is it?” the mother asked.
Ed, under Cole’s direction, had to bite his tongue. “We want to fly you to New York so that we can go over everything in person,” he said. “All three of you. We’ll arrange for the plane tickets. You don’t have to worry about the costs.”
“Okay,” Meg’s mother said numbly, blind to how much information Ed was holding back. “Is that normal?”
“Not entirely,” Ed told her. Nothing about Cole and his cases was normal, he thought. “We think you might be able to help us with the case.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Meg’s mother pressed.
Jesus Christ, Ed thought, we’re torturing them. “Please trust us,” Ed said to her, even though, at that moment, he barely trusted himself. “This is important.”
The three of them got on a plane the morning after Ed’s call. When they landed they were brought straight to the police station; Ed and Cole were summoned upon their arrival. Cole moved quickly. He had the whole family moved into one of the interrogation rooms, equipped with a one-way mirror so that other cops and prosecutors could observe the interrogation. Cole was staring through the mirror at the family when Ed arrived and saw what his partner had done.
“What the fuck are they doing in an interrogation room?” Ed shouted, loudly enough that everyone around him could hear. He didn’t care. “They’re not suspects, Cole. You said so yourself. Their daughter was murdered, for Christ’s sake.” Cole barely looked at Ed. He stood there, watching the family through the one-way glass, holding his hand near his mouth. “I’m going to get them out.”
Cole stopped him. “Ed, I know they’re not suspects, but I wanted to be able to watch them, to get a good look at them in person. I need to spark more memories, Ed. This is how it has to be done.”
Ed’s face contorted into a look of thinly veiled disgust and confusion. “But why? There’s got to be a better way.”
Cole didn’t look at Ed. He didn’t take his eyes off Meg’s family. “I wish there was,” Cole said, “but this is the best way that I know right now.” Cole finally turned toward his partner. His face was completely white, even paler than normal, void of any color. Ed could see the sadness in it, an immensity of sadness that he wished he’d never seen. He had to let it go. Whatever Cole was doing, he wasn’t doing it for his own enjoyment. “I’d like you to go in and ask them some questions. Nothing serious. Ask them how their flight was. Then I want you to walk the little one, Annie, out of the room so that you can tell her parents what happened to Meg.”
“You don’t want to talk to them? Isn’t that the whole reason we flew them out here?” Ed asked.
Cole shook his head. “I can’t. Not yet. Will you go in and talk to them, please?”
“Okay,” Ed said, forcing himself to believe this was all for the good of the case. He took a moment to steady himself before going inside. Cole kept watching through the one-way mirror.
Ed gave a slight knock before opening the door, but he didn’t wait for an invitation. Ed was the right person for this job. Cole could see that as soon as he walked through the door. His portly form and friendly face almost immediately put the family at as much ease as was possible under the circumstances. “Hello,” Ed said to the family. He went to one of the chairs and sat down. “Thank you all for coming all the way out here.”
“
We spoke on the phone, didn’t we?” Meg’s mother asked after hearing his voice.
“Yes,” Ed told her. “That was me. How was your flight?”
“It was fine,” Meg’s father answered. Ed could hear the strain in his voice. His patience was beginning to wear thin.
“Did you hit much traffic coming in from the airport?” Ed asked, feeling ridiculous even as he asked the questions, glancing periodically at the mirror, wondering how he’d know when he’d given Cole enough.
“Traffic was fine,” the father replied tersely. Ed felt lucky that they were from the Midwest. People with less patience would have ripped him to shreds already.
All the while, Cole watched them closely, his eyes moving from one person to the next. He let the memories pass over him like waves. He didn’t try to make sense of them. He would have time for that later. For now, it was all flashing images, a wild montage of memories of first days of school, Christmas mornings, birthday parties, softball games, and camping trips. There were bad memories too, unhappy moments littered among the good days and the dull days.
“Good,” Ed said. “We’ve got a hotel room for you tonight.”
The mother broke first. She leaned across the table toward Ed. “Can you please tell us what’s going on?” she pleaded.
That was enough. Ed made the call. He couldn’t hold back the wall anymore. “Maybe we should let Annie go outside for a bit,” Ed said to Meg’s parents, relieved that one of Cole’s requests finally seemed reasonable. “Then I can tell you what we know.”
“Is that okay with you, Annie?” Meg’s mother asked.
“Sure,” Annie said uncertainly.
“I’ll walk you out,” Ed said. He led her out of the room and handed her off to one of the other cops, who took her to a quieter part of the station where she could sit alone. She wasn’t alone for very long, though. Cole was following her. He left Meg’s parents in Ed’s hands. He wanted to talk to Annie and only gave her a minute or two to settle in. She sat in a chair and took a book out of her backpack. Cole approached her.
“Can I sit next to you?” Cole asked when he had gotten close enough to her to talk in a low, almost whispering tone.
Annie’s hair was straight and auburn with random streaks of blond. She was in her early teens, but when Cole looked at her, he had trouble seeing anyone other than the little girl from Meg’s memories, the little girl from the late nights in their shared bedroom, the little girl Meg used to push on the swings. The memories did that sometimes. They froze people in time in ways that Cole couldn’t control. “Okay,” Annie said with indifference, barely looking up at Cole.
Annie’s indifference hurt Cole a little bit. It shouldn’t have. Annie didn’t know him. But he knew Annie. He wanted to reach out and hug her. He wanted to embrace her and tell her how much Meg loved her. And because Meg loved her, Cole loved her too. That’s another thing that other people’s memories did to you. They made you love people. They made you fall in love with strangers. Cole’s love for Annie wasn’t the only reason he wanted to talk to her in person, though. Cole was also sure that Annie knew something, something that could crack the whole case open, something that she would only divulge in person, to him. “What are you reading?” Cole asked her.
Annie looked up from her book. “It’s for school,” she said, holding up the book to show him the cover: Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens. “Have you read it?”
Cole searched his brain. He had vague memories of the book, but he had no idea whose memories they were. “I think so,” Cole said to Annie, “but I don’t remember much of it.”
“That good, huh?” Annie said sarcastically.
“You’re here about your sister, right?” Cole asked her.
Annie looked back down at the pages of her open book. “Yeah,” she said. “Do you know anything about what happened? They won’t tell me anything.”
Cole nodded. “I’m one of the people working on your sister’s case. If you really want to know what happened, I can tell you.”
Annie shook her head. She didn’t want to know—but she needed to know. “She’s dead, isn’t she? That’s why everyone’s making such a big deal about this.” Tears began welling up in Annie’s eyes. She’d always been a smart kid. Cole remembered that too. Cole wanted to reach out and comfort her, but he knew that he couldn’t. It would only scare her away.
“Yes,” Cole confirmed Annie’s greatest fear. Now Annie had to deal with losing her older sister for a second time. “She was murdered. We don’t know who did it yet, but we’re going to find him.”
“What happened?” Annie asked.
“We’re still working on that,” Cole said, leaving out the details about the basement and the rope and the hammer. “Did you miss your sister when she left?” Cole asked, even though he already knew that she did.
“Of course,” Annie said, her voice only cracking slightly. “She was my best friend.”
“She missed you too,” Cole told her. “She loved you so much. She felt very guilty leaving you behind.”
Annie looked up at Cole, into the swirling dark seas that were his eyes. She looked so lost and so sad. “How do you know that?” she asked, though she didn’t doubt him for a moment.
“I know things,” Cole replied without elaboration. “You knew she was here in New York, didn’t you?” He could have sat talking to Annie all day. Even as he sat there, more memories came to him and he had to fight off wave after wave of onrushing immersions. All the memories were of Kansas, and the answers that Cole needed weren’t in Kansas, not if he wanted to solve Meg’s murder. The memories that he needed were in New York. Cole knew that Annie couldn’t give him those memories, but he thought she might have the key that he needed to unlock them. So he decided to seize the opening and go for it. He wasn’t sure how Annie was going to react to his secret, but Meg’s memories gave him confidence that she could handle it. He had to try. After all, that’s why he’d flown her to New York in the first place. “I have her memories,” Cole said to Annie slowly and deliberately, trying to make sure she understood. He wanted Annie to see Meg inside him. He needed Annie to trust him. “They’re coming a bit slowly to me, but I remember a lot about you. You’re at the middle of so many of her most precious memories. All she ever wanted was for you to be happy. She worried about you all the time.”
“How did you get her memories?” Annie asked, ignoring Cole’s pleasantries.
“When they brought her body in, we couldn’t identify her. Without anyone else to inherit the memories, I volunteered. That’s how we found you and your family. I remembered you.”
“If you have her memories, can’t you just remember who killed her?”
“I wish it was that simple,” Cole said. “When someone dies, their memories get scattered. The memories that are most special often come first. So far, most of your sister’s memories have been about you. But,” Cole went for it, “if you tell me where you sent the letters you wrote to your sister, I’ll be one step closer to finding her killer.”
Annie shook her head. “It was our secret,” she said in a near whisper.
“She’s gone,” Cole said to Annie. It was harsh but true. Meg never hid the truth from her sister. “She has no secrets anymore. All that’s left of her is inside me.” Cole gave Annie a moment to consider what he’d said. When she didn’t look convinced, he inched closer to her. “Do you remember sneaking off and lighting off those fireworks in Grandma’s cornfields?” A small smile crossed Annie’s lips. “Do you remember that time you punched Tommy Harper in the face? You gave him two bloody lips with one punch, and he was so embarrassed, he wouldn’t tell anybody what happened, so you didn’t even get in trouble for it.”
Annie laughed. “He thought he was so tough,” she said, “but he had no idea how to fight.”
“But you did,” Cole said, egging her on into the memory.
“Well, I learned how to punch fighting you,” Annie said, catching the “you” in her mouth just after
she’d said it, remembering suddenly that she wasn’t talking to her sister but to a strange older man that she’d never met before. It was almost cruel how easily Cole played her. He’d been through this before. Annie hadn’t.
“Tell me where you sent Meg’s letters. I’ll keep it a secret. Meg’s secrets are my secrets now. I won’t tell your parents.”
“You promise?” Annie asked.
“I promise, on your sister’s memories.”
Annie paused for only another second. Off the top of her head, she recited the address of an apartment on the Lower East Side. As she rattled it off, Cole found a pen and wrote it down. Annie told Cole that she’d sent three letters to that address, and she knew that her sister had gotten each one. “Thank you,” Cole said, standing up, resisting the urge to lean over and kiss her on her forehead. He started to walk away. He wanted to go back and get Ed. He wanted to get to the Lower East Side as quickly as possible. He didn’t want to waste any more time.
“Wait,” Annie said as Cole walked away from her. Cole stopped. “In the letters Meg sent me, she told me she was happy. Was she happy?”
Cole considered lying. He thought that would have probably been the right thing to do. The problem was, he couldn’t bring himself to lie to Annie. “I don’t know yet,” Cole told her. “I still have a lot to remember.”
Annie nodded. She seemed to understand. “But will you tell me?” Annie asked. “When you remember, will you tell me?”
“I will,” Cole promised and then hurried off to find Ed.
Ed was still in the interrogation room with Meg’s parents, trying his best to answer questions that had no answers, at least none that Meg’s parents wanted to hear.
Cole didn’t bother to knock before barging inside. “I’ve got it,” Cole said to Ed when he was barely through the door. “Let’s go.” Ed looked at Cole like he was insane. Ed wasn’t sure that Cole wasn’t insane. He seemed pretty crazy.
The Memory Detective Page 6