The Memory Detective

by T. S. Nichols

  Cole kept walking. Another memory came. A kiss. A first kiss. Soft lips on soft lips. Cole was getting close. He was walking steadier now. He tried to ignore the intense rush that he felt from the memories. He’d have time to bask in that rush later, after he’d solved the murder. That was his quid pro quo. That was the trade he made with himself. Solve their murders and then you can get off on their memories guilt free.

  When Cole was only a couple blocks from Sam’s apartment he began to recognize the neighborhood. There was the corner store where Sam would buy herself and Meg ice cream for their movie nights together. There was the street where they first held hands. Cole could feel Sam squeeze Meg’s hand so that she couldn’t let go even if she wanted to. There was the alley. Why did he remember the alley?

  Cole stopped walking. He stared into the empty alley. Then he saw it. At the end of the alleyway, propped up against the brick wall, was Tony’s powder-blue Schwinn ten-speed bike. Cole was still two blocks from Sam’s apartment. He wondered if he was seeing things, if the memories were playing tricks on him. “You’re sure?” Cole remembered Meg asking Tony as Cole stared at the bike at the end of the alley. They were in Tony’s apartment with Bon and Matt.

  “I’m sure,” Tony said to Meg. “I never use it, anyway. Might as well go to someone who’s going to ride it. Just bring it back when you’re done with it.”

  “You’re sure?” Meg asked again as if she didn’t believe his answer.

  “I’m sure,” Tony said louder. “Don’t get too excited. It’s a pretty old bike.”

  “I’m going to go ride it now,” Meg said, her voice full of joy.

  “Right now?” Tony said. “It’s dark out.”

  “I don’t care,” Meg said through an irrepressible smile. “I want to ride it right now.”

  “I don’t have any lights on it.”

  “I don’t care,” Meg insisted, lifting the bike up onto her shoulder.

  “Here, at least take a helmet.” Tony reached down and grabbed his old helmet and tossed it to Meg. “It might be a little big on you, but it’s better than nothing.” Meg caught the helmet with her free hand. “And don’t get yourself killed,” Tony said without a hint of irony. “I don’t need that on my conscience.”

  “Thanks,” Meg said to Tony, waving the helmet at him. Cole could feel the irrepressible joy Meg had felt. She hadn’t even realized how much she missed riding her bike. Just riding a bike, any bike, would be a little like being home again and young again and innocent again.

  Meg carried the bike down all three flights of stairs and out onto the street. She put Tony’s bike helmet on her head and tightened it as much as she could. It got just snug enough to stay on her head without falling off. She adjusted the bike seat and looked down the street. No cars were coming, so she stood up on the pedals, giving them a few quick pushes. Then she was off.

  The streets around her were different. Everything was different now. Everything flew by her like it couldn’t touch her. With every few pumps of her legs, she was on a new block and, with each new block, the world around her changed. She felt so far away from Wichita, almost like she was on another planet, but still she felt a little bit like she was back home again. She sped by a Jewish neighborhood, then an Italian one and then a Chinese one. She rode south and she rode exhilaratingly fast. The wind blew by her, and the lights of every color and brightness moved by in a fantastic blur, like she was in a Star Wars movie going warp speed. Meg felt a chill as she rode, and the wind caressed her skin and she loved that too.

  Meg didn’t know where she was going. She only knew that she didn’t plan on stopping until she couldn’t ride any farther. When she saw a sign for the Brooklyn Bridge, she rode toward it. Soon, she was riding over the wooden slats on the bridge, watching the cars drive by beneath her. She’d never been on the Brooklyn Bridge before, and she barely believed that it was real. It looked to her more like something out of a steampunk novel than real life, with Manhattan tall and lit up behind her and Brooklyn vast and lit up in front of her. She flew by a few people walking over the bridge, passing them as if they were standing still. The only thing that could keep up with Meg was her own shadow, which always seemed like it was about to pass her but never did.

  When the bridge ended, Meg kept going. She was almost flying. As Meg rode, Cole nearly got lost in layers upon layers of memories. Cole remembered riding Tony’s powder-blue bike down Ocean Avenue in the dark as Meg remembered riding her red dirt bike over trails and through cornfields at her grandmother’s farm, getting lost and riding for hours before finally following the smell of fried chicken back home. She remembered her father teaching her how to ride. She remembered riding through the streets of Wichita with her best friends. People she no longer spoke to.

  Then the city came to an end. It was just before dawn when Meg made it to Coney Island. She rode once down the boardwalk. Then she took off her shoes and picked up the bike and carried it onto the beach. Cole could feel the cold sand crumble between Meg’s toes. The ocean sprawled out in front of Meg like it was the end of the earth. When Meg was younger, she would sometimes wake up early with her father and they would watch the sun rise over the plains, but that was nothing like this. The beauty of the sunrise over the ocean startled Meg. She wasn’t expecting it, never could have even dreamed of it. She wondered how something this beautiful could happen every day without hordes of people coming out to watch it. How could so many people miss this? She watched until the sun hung low in the sky, and then the memory ended.

  When it was over Cole was still standing at the opening of the alleyway, staring at the bike. He’d decided that it was real. He wasn’t imagining it. What is the bike doing here? Cole wondered. He took a few slow steps into the alleyway. Something in the back of his head was screaming at him to be careful.

  Cole stared down the narrow alleyway as he walked. It was only a touch wider than the bike was long. The brick walls on either side rose high into the sky. No windows faced the alley. Claustrophobia began creeping in on Cole, like it was whispering to him that he was walking into a trap. As he stepped near the bike, he noticed a door on his left leading into one of the buildings. The sight of the door filled Cole with an almost overwhelming sense of dread. Cole knew that feeling. He’d felt it before. It meant that he was getting closer to the truth.

  “Hello,” Cole called out as he stepped toward the back of the alley. He reached under his jacket and ran his fingers over the butt of his gun. He undid the snap holding the gun inside his shoulder holster so that he could pull it quickly if he had to. “Hello,” Cole called out again. Again, only his own echo answered him.

  Cole took another glance at the door to his left. There was something terrible about that door. For a moment, he considered walking away, or going to get Ed, but he had an aching desire to get closer to that bike. He wanted to touch it. Hell, he had to fight the urge to walk up and ride it. With each step closer to the bike, Cole searched his mind for any new memories, for anything that might help him. He had a memory of this alley somewhere, but he couldn’t find it. It was buried. He understood what was happening. It was a defense mechanism. His brain was trying to suppress the memory. His own mind was trying to protect him, to keep him sane, and he was fighting it. Then, before anything became any clearer to him, he was standing next to the bike.

  Cole reached down and grabbed the bike by its frame. He held on, waiting for that electric shock, for that surge of memories. It didn’t come. Nothing came. Maybe it wasn’t the right bike after all. Maybe it only looked like Meg’s bike from a distance. Cole knelt down next to the bike to inspect it. He ran his hand over the places on the bike’s frame where the paint had chipped. He could have closed his eyes and found those nicks and dents blind. This was Meg’s bike, but the memories were still hiding from him.

  Cole stood up again. All of Meg’s memories seemed to be leaving him now, running from him. He looked back out through the alley toward the street. The street suddenly looked very far
away. Cars moved past, but Cole could barely hear them. Then he turned back toward the door. The dread came back to him in such a rush that his stomach almost turned. Meg’s memories weren’t running from him. They were running from the door, hiding from whatever was on the other side.

  Cole stepped closer to the door. He felt something pushing him back, like he was walking into a strong wind, but there was nothing there. Cole pressed forward. The door was an old wooden door. Cole could see that it had once been painted green but almost all the green paint had either chipped off or faded away. Now all that was visible was the weathered gray wood surrounding slim strips of old paint. Cole checked his gun again. Then he reached out and knocked on the door. He gave the door three light raps at first. The old wood gave a little under the force of his knuckles. No answer. He knocked harder, three more times—still no answer. He called out again. “Hello?” He stood, waiting a moment or two after his call, listening for the sound of any movement from either of the buildings or from behind the door. Everything was quiet. Cole reached down and grabbed the doorknob. He hesitated before turning it. He took a deep breath. The knob turned. The door gave. It was unlocked.

  The door let out a low creaking sound as Cole pushed it open. It sounded something like the cry of a frightened animal. It was dark behind the door. No lights were on inside. Standing outside in the light and staring into the darkness, Cole couldn’t see a thing. His eyes had no chance of adjusting as long as he stood outside. If he wanted to know what was behind the door, he’d have to step inside. “Okay, Meg,” Cole whispered to himself before stepping over the threshold, “now’s your chance to tell me what happened.” Then he stepped out of the light and into the darkness.

  The odor hit Cole first, even before he could see anything. It was a stale, musty odor, the scent of neglect. Smells were often the strongest memory trigger. Cole knew how quickly the smell of freshly baked cookies could pull someone back to a childhood Christmas, or how the smell of freshly cut grass could remind them of playing baseball as a kid. He also knew with more familiarity than he liked the types of memories that were triggered by the smell of blood or of burning flesh. He inhaled, sucking in the air around him. He’d come here to remember, no matter how horrible it would be. And still nothing came to him. Then, without even realizing what he was doing, Cole instinctively took four steps forward into the darkness and two to his right. Then he reached his hand into the air and, as if conjuring it out of nothing, pulled on a string attached to a naked lightbulb. The bulb gave off a soft yellow light that seemed to die even before it could reach all the corners of the room.

  The windowless room had a concrete floor, a low ceiling, and what appeared to be thick brick walls. A long, wooden table stood in front of Cole. It looked like a thin picnic table, long enough and wide enough for somebody to lie on top of it without falling off. Cole walked over to the empty table. He ran his fingers across it. He leaned on it, pushing his palms down on its surface to see how strong it was, to see if it could take his weight. It was sturdy enough.

  Cole listened to make sure he couldn’t hear anyone coming. It was quiet. Then he got up on the table and rolled over onto his stomach. He looked around the room. The perspective was familiar, but it still didn’t trigger any new memories. All he was doing now was remembering his own memory of Meg’s memory. It wasn’t alive for him. He still couldn’t see the killer’s face. Cole decided to ramp up his technique. Still lying on his stomach, he placed his hands behind his back, lining up his wrists to mimic what it would be like if they were tied together. He moved into the exact position that Meg had been in when she was murdered. He could only see parts of the room now because it was so much harder to lift his head. He struggled, his wrists pinned together, trying to remember the feeling of the rope as it dug into Meg’s skin. Then, suddenly, Cole lost the ability to pull his hands apart. He started to struggle, to flop and to twist his hands. He began flailing, pulling his arms back and forth, but they wouldn’t give. He began to sweat. The hammer would come soon. Sweat began to trickle down his forehead. Panic began to rise inside him and still nothing new was coming to him. All he remembered was fear and he didn’t learn anything from fear. Cole took a deep breath to calm himself. He lay still for a moment. Then he pulled his hands apart. Memory control. He’d inherited at least five dead men’s memories before he learned how to do that.

  Cole swung his feet off the table. He stood up again. He walked toward the workbench at the other end of the room. This was where the killer had been standing in Meg’s memory. Cole looked at the tools on the bench. The first tool he saw was a hammer. It lay out in the open in front of him. The metal shone under the pale light. It was new, with a bright silver head and a soft black grip. There were other tools around him too. He grabbed a wrench and two screwdrivers, a flat head and a Phillips head, and reached for a pair of pliers. Except for the hammer, all the tools were old. Most showed some rust. All were part of a set. All that was missing from the set was the hammer. Cole knew where the hammer was. He’d seen it, first in an evidence bag at the police station and then in a memory. She had been murdered in this room, on that table, but Meg’s memories wouldn’t come to him. Cole understood. If he weren’t trying to solve a murder, those memories were the last thing that he’d want to see too.

  Then Cole froze. He heard something. It was faint at first, and he was unsure of where it was coming from. It was a song, a strange, melancholy melody floating toward him. Then the door at the top of the stairs opened, the song got louder, and the memories finally came. The bike. He had offered to fix the bike. Meg had been riding to Sam’s and somebody stepped into the bike lane from between cars, looking in the wrong direction. Meg swerved to avoid hitting them and crashed into a light post. The asshole who got in her way never even stopped to apologize. Meg was fine, but the rim on the bike’s front wheel had bent out of shape. She had no money to get a new wheel or to get the existing wheel fixed, and the only way she had to make money was as a bike messenger. She needed a bike to be able to do that. She almost started to cry, staring at the now-useless front tire, but she stopped herself. She was close to Sam’s place, and Sam would at least make her feel better. Meg walked the bike to Sam’s building. When she got there, the super was standing out front, sweeping cigarette butts off the sidewalk. He was a tall, skinny man who had always been nice to Meg, nicer than a lot of people, even if he was a little bit creepy. His clothes were a bit too big on him, and he was always whistling the same sad song.

  “What happened to your bike?” the super asked Meg as she walked the bike toward the apartment entrance.

  “Nothing,” Meg said, but then the midwesterner inside her told her to be polite. “I just had a little crash and bent the front rim.”

  The super looked down at the tire. His face was old and wrinkled, his eyes sad and hungry. “I can fix that,” he said to Meg. Meg’s heart instantly leapt. That would solve so many of her problems.

  “How?” she asked.

  “I’ve got tools down in the basement of one of my other buildings. It’s just a couple blocks away.”

  “I don’t have much money to pay you,” Meg admitted.

  The super waved her comment off with his hand. “Ah, don’t worry about it,” he said. Then he lifted up his eyes and stared into her face. It might have been the first time that they ever really made eye contact. When it happened, Meg’s fear hit Cole like a splash of ice water. Her instincts were telling her to be afraid, but she shrugged them off. She was used to shrugging off fear. Besides, the prospect of getting the bike fixed for free was too good to pass up. “I can do it now. It’ll only take about ten minutes. Why don’t you come with me and I’ll show you how to do it?”

  Meg didn’t want to go, but how could she say no? It would be too rude to ask him to simply fix it and bring it back to her. “Okay,” she said, doing her best to hide her concern. “Can I go up and tell Sam first?”

  The super looked at his watch. “Listen, I’m off duty in ten
minutes. If we don’t do it now, you’ll have to wait until Monday.”

  Meg couldn’t wait. Sam would understand if she were a few minutes late.

  Cole heard footsteps on the stairs. The super was coming down. Cole stood silently, but he knew it would only be a moment before the super remembered that he hadn’t left the basement light on. Cole didn’t turn around. Instead, he reached under his jacket and pulled out his gun. He placed the gun down on the workbench in front of him. “Is somebody down there?” the super called out once he was about a third of the way down the steps.

  Again, moving as little as possible, Cole took out his phone. He typed a text to Ed. It read simply: sam’s super did it. He hit send. The text didn’t go through. Cole had no reception inside the basement. He debated making a run for it, dashing for the door just to get reception. He knew better than to run with his back to a killer, though. He still had his gun. If he had to, he could threaten the super with it. The super didn’t know that it had been years since Cole carried a loaded gun. Only Cole knew that. So instead of running, Cole simply tossed his phone out the still-open door to the alley, hoping that it would send the message once it was outside.

  The super must have seen the movement because Cole heard him rush down the last four or five steps. “What are you doing in here?” he called out when he reached the last step. He didn’t come any closer to Cole than that, not yet, anyway.

  Cole stared into the face of Meg’s killer. He left the gun on the table behind him but in a place where he could reach it quickly. Cole tried to remain calm. “I was walking by and I saw the bike outside. I had a friend who lost a bike just like that. I thought that bike might actually be hers and was hoping to find somebody who could tell me where that bike came from. I knocked first but no one answered, and when I tried the door, it was unlocked. Any idea why someone would leave a bike out there like that?”