Cole was still sitting in the waiting room when Dr. Tyson came out. He was alone. People don’t generally come out to support anonymous corpses. When you can’t identify a body, things like surgeries and funerals become awfully lonely affairs. When he saw Dr. Tyson, Cole nearly jumped to his feet. He could see how tired she looked. “So?” was all that he said to her.
Dr. Tyson nodded to Cole. “You were right,” she said to him. “Somebody beat us to the memories.”
Even though he knew it wasn’t something to be excited about, Cole felt his heart leap in his chest. He fully understood what this meant: that there was a monster out there stealing people’s memories, but also that there was nothing wrong with him. It meant that he would still be able to inherit other people’s memories. It meant that he didn’t have to give up his addiction. “That’s horrid,” he said to Dr. Tyson, but she knew how he really felt. She could hear it in his voice. “Would it still be possible to check the body in New York, just to make sure?”
Dr. Tyson did the math in her head. “It depends on what they did with the body,” she told Cole, “but probably.”
“We should go there. We should confirm what’s happening,” Cole said.
“We should,” Dr. Tyson agreed. Then she walked past him. “But right now, I’m going to go to a hotel and get some sleep,” she said.
“Can we talk later?” Cole asked her.
Dr. Tyson nodded. She felt more than tired. She felt drained. Every muscle in her body ached. “I’ll call you on your cell phone when I wake up,” she said to Cole. Then she pushed through the doors and disappeared.
Cole stood motionless for a minute. He knew he should probably go somewhere to try to get some sleep too, but he also knew how impossible that was going to be. He was too excited. Knowing sleep was a near impossibility, he threw himself into the one thing that he could, his new case. It was going to be a different kind of case for him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d tried to solve a murder without using the memories of the victim. For the first time in a long time, Cole would have to do some real police work. Then he realized where he needed to start. He almost felt foolish for not having thought of it before. He needed to get back to New York. There was a memory there that he wanted to explore. Only this time, it was still inside its owner’s head.
Chapter 34
Cole decided to take the train back to New York. A plane or even a bus would have been faster, but Cole figured that he could use the time to rest his mind and think.
The train from Montreal to New York took a little over ten hours, twisting and turning through the countryside of Quebec and upstate New York. It was autumn, and Cole enjoyed seeing the leaves on the trees as they changed color, withering and dying in their own spectacular fashion. If only we could all go out with one final, triumphant show of brilliance, Cole thought. But human lives don’t work that way. Cole knew better than most that we don’t suddenly become beautiful before we pass away. In fact, the passing away is usually the ugliest part.
The train didn’t leave Montreal until ten in the morning the day after Dr. Tyson confirmed Cole’s theory. Even so, he was already over the border and well into upstate New York by the time he heard from the doctor. Cole had been ignoring every other call, letting them all go to voicemail, but he answered immediately when he saw that it was Dr. Tyson. Her voice sounded strained.
“They still have the body,” Dr. Tyson assured Cole. “I’ve arranged to be included in the procedure via video link. It should be relatively easy to confirm that the body went through the same procedure as the one in Montreal. We’re going to do it today.”
“You’re not going to New York to do it yourself?” Cole asked, a bit disappointed. The fewer people who knew about any of this, the better.
“I can’t, Cole. I’ve already been away for too long. I have other patients who need me. The procedure is simple. The doctors in New York can do it. I’ll be patched in to help them if they need me.”
“But you’ve explained to them what you found, what they’re looking for?” Cole asked.
“Of course,” Dr. Tyson said.
“And they all understand that they need to keep this a secret, right? We don’t want any information leaking out.”
“They know, Cole. They understand the significance of what’s happening here. Where are you?”
“I’m on a train headed back to New York,” Cole told her. “I have a lead that I want to follow up on.”
“How can you already have a lead?” Dr. Tyson sounded more than a little surprised.
“There’s a kid in Meg’s memories—” Cole started.
“That’s the girl who was killed with the hammer?” she interrupted.
“Yes,” Cole confirmed. “Anyway, there’s a kid in her memories who I think might know something.” He didn’t go into any more detail.
“Something about this kid made you think that the memories might have already been taken?”
“Yes,” Cole confirmed.
“Could he be the killer?” Dr. Tyson asked.
“I don’t think so,” Cole said. “But he may be able to lead me to the killer.”
“Do you really think that it could be that easy?” Dr. Tyson asked.
“Probably not,” Cole conceded. “It rarely is. I have to start somewhere, though.”
Dr. Tyson called him again only three hours later. The doctors in New York had examined the second body. They found two tiny holes in the back of his throat, pinhole-sized entrances to tunnels that led directly into the dead man’s brain. “That settles it, then,” Cole said. “Somebody’s killing people and stealing their memories.”
“Not exactly,” Dr. Tyson said after a short pause.
“What do you mean? What else could it mean?” Cole stared out the window of the train at the many-colored leaves, wondering if he had missed something.
“They didn’t have only memory surgeons examine the body. They also brought in a forensic pathologist to study the wounds. They did it on their own. It was smart. I wouldn’t have thought to do it.” She stopped as if she didn’t want to finish.
“And?” Cole prodded her.
“They studied the wounds and saw evidence of healing. Not a lot, but some.”
“What does that mean?” Cole could have guessed, but he didn’t want to.
“Dead men don’t heal, Cole. What they found means that whoever is doing this isn’t killing people and then stealing their memories. The killer is extracting their memories while the victims are still alive.”
“That’s insane,” Cole said. “Why would he do that?” But Cole knew why and, even as he spoke, he had to suppress his jealous instinct. Dr. Tyson would catch it if it slipped into his voice.
“Fresher memories,” Dr. Tyson said, matching Cole’s thoughts exactly. “No deterioration. Don’t pretend you don’t understand that motivation, Cole. I know you do. You don’t know anything about this killer, and you already understand him better than anyone else will be able to.”
“Do they simply die without their memories?”
“I have no idea,” Dr. Tyson answered him. “There’s no humane way to test that.” Cole had no response for her, nothing more to say, so they said their goodbyes and hung up.
After his conversation with Dr. Tyson, Cole wanted nothing more than to stare out the window and stop thinking. It didn’t take long before the memories started to come. He’d known they would.
First came all the memories that Cole expected, triggered by the sight of autumn, old memories of trick-or-treating, of leaping into giant piles of leaves, of football games and raging orange bonfires, reaching up into the sky. A memory came of a dirt road that led to a dirty house, full of dirty rooms and dirty people, but Cole pushed that memory aside, the way that only he could. He did the same to a memory of empty liquor bottles piled high in a garbage can on Sunday afternoon after Daddy’s team lost again. Then a new memory came. Cole let himself sink into it and soon was careening down a hill. He wa
s on a bike again but in the woods this time, surrounded by trees, screaming for joy. If it were possible to go any faster, Meg would have, no matter how dangerous. Cole could remember the bike bucking beneath her as it rolled over rocks and ditches. Then she squeezed the brakes and turned the wheel, kicking up dirt as she skidded to a stop. She wasn’t young. At least, she wasn’t a little kid. She was close to as old as she would ever get. She looked back up the hill. Sam sat astride a rented mountain bike at the top of the hill. She’d become small by the distance between them, a distance Meg had covered in mere seconds. Sam’s hair was contained by a bike helmet and still Cole recognized her, her round cheeks and pert nose. “You’re crazy!” Sam yelled down the hill to Meg.
Cole could still remember the spike of adrenaline from that quick ride. “Come on!” Meg shouted back at Sam. “You can do it. It’s awesome!”
“I thought we were coming here for a relaxing weekend in the country. I don’t know how I let you talk me into this.” Meg knew how. Sam wanted to do the Hudson Valley Wine Trail, but she’d forgotten that Meg was only nineteen and that this wasn’t the Lower East Side. Since they couldn’t do the wine trail, Meg got to pick what they did. It was Sam’s first time on a mountain bike. “What do I do?” she yelled down. Meg could hear the fear in her voice.
“Just let go,” Meg called back to her. “You don’t have to go fast.” The woods smelled beautiful, like everything around her was as alive as she was. Meg had never been in a forest like this before. Kansas didn’t have forests. Kansas was full of flat, open spaces. Trees stood alone on horizons, subtle reminders to Meg, even when she was a child, that the world was full of more than corn and grass.
“If I die, I’m going to haunt you forever,” Sam shouted down the rocky hill.
God, I hope so, Meg thought. “You’ll be fine,” she said instead. Sam made it halfway down the hill, slowly and tentatively, before hitting a rock and tumbling over her handlebars. Meg leapt off her bike and began to run up the hill toward Sam. Cole remembered a moment of fear. Then Sam came back up, lifting her head in a fit of laughter. Before Meg even reached her, Meg was laughing too. Then Meg sat down on the rocks next to Sam and they laughed together. Then they kissed. How many kisses does it take before each one no longer feels like a first kiss? However many it was, Meg and Sam weren’t there yet.
Cole fell asleep to that memory, resting his head against the window next to him. He slept for almost an hour. Then he was woken up with a start by one of the handful of memories in his head that he still had no control over, the memory of a hammer coming down at him.
Chapter 35
Cole, back in New York, banged hard on the apartment door with his fist. It wasn’t the first time he could remember knocking on this door. He’d done it once before himself and at least a dozen times in Meg’s memories. At first nobody answered, so Cole pounded again. After the second knock, Cole heard footsteps coming toward the door. “Hold on,” he heard a voice shout from inside the apartment. Then he heard someone fiddling with the chain lock before the door swung open.
“Tony,” Cole said to the man standing on the other side of the now-open door. It was almost noon, but Tony looked like he’d just woken up.
Tony looked at Cole. People tended not to forget Cole. “What do you want now?” Tony asked without bothering to say hello. “Did something happen to Meg’s killer? That dude’s going to jail, right?”
“Yeah. He’s going to jail,” Cole confirmed. “Don’t worry. I’m not here about Meg’s case.”
Despite Cole’s reassurances, worry spread across Tony’s face. “Then what are you here for?” he asked.
“I need to talk to your friend Jerry. I thought you could help me find him.”
“Jerry?” Tony said with genuine surprise. “What the fuck did he do now? Listen,” Tony explained, “that kid is harmless. He talks a big game but that’s it.”
“He’s not in trouble,” Cole lied. “I just want to talk to him.”
“What could you possibly want to talk to Jerry about?”
“It doesn’t matter. Just tell me where I can find him.”
Cole could almost see the idea dawn on Tony as he stood there. “You’re not going to talk to him about that bullshit he’s always going on about, are you? Because you know it’s bullshit, right?”
“You tell me where to find him, and I’ll worry about separating truth from bullshit.”
Tony shook his head. “I can’t do it.”
“Tony, I’m going to find him eventually,” Cole began his final pitch. “I won’t tell him that it was you who told me how to find him, but it’s important that I talk to him.”
“No, it’s not that. I’d tell you if I knew. It’s just that I have no idea how to find Jerry. I don’t know where he lives or what he does. I don’t think anybody knows. He just started showing up at our parties and since he’s from Kansas, nobody ever kicked him out. Besides, we get a kick out of him sometimes, you know?”
“You don’t have any idea where I can find him?”
“Nope,” Tony confirmed. “But here’s the thing, if it’s about the urban legend he’s always going on about, there’s someone else you can talk to.”
Cole’s ears perked up. Maybe this trip wouldn’t be a total loss. “Who’s that?”
“Bon,” Tony said.
Cole recognized the name from Meg’s memories. Bon had been there at the first party. He was the big, ruddy-faced guy who showed Matt and Meg around when they first arrived. “The big guy?” Cole asked.
Tony laughed. “Yeah, that’s Bon. You should go talk to him.”
“Why?” Cole asked.
“Because Bon’s the only one who ever listened to Jerry.” Tony’s voice descended into a guarded whisper. “Jerry apparently even set Bon up on some sort of interview.”
“What happened?”
Tony shrugged. “Nothing. It’s bullshit, remember? Bon was so embarrassed by the whole thing that he refused to talk about it with anybody.”
Cole wasn’t sure that it was embarrassment that kept Bon quiet. “Then where can I find Bon?” Cole asked.
“I don’t know where he lives, but he bar-backs five nights a week at some shitty Irish pub in Queens. It’s called the Brown Penny. He’s there every night but Monday and Thursday.”
“Thanks,” Cole said to Tony. “And do me a favor, don’t tell anyone I was here. It wouldn’t be good for either of us.”
Chapter 36
With each passing day, Carter was finding it harder to locate new memories. The trip to Montauk had worked, but he burned through those memories almost as quickly as he had burned through the ones before them. Even though he was sure there were still new memories in his head, Carter was growing tired of having to work so hard to pull them out. He wanted it to be easy again, like it had been in the beginning. He wanted that flash of brilliance when every memory came to him like it wanted to be remembered, like those first few memories of surfing giant waves and wild drug-fueled orgies. He reached out to Fergus. Fergus told him that he should be patient, but he also told him that he was still hitting new memories at a faster rate than most people. Carter didn’t care. He wasn’t most people. He’d never been most people.
After almost a week in Montauk, Carter traveled back to his apartment in Manhattan. Once home, Carter thought about what else he could do to make more memories come. He sat in his living room, facing the window and staring out over half of Manhattan. He knew that Montauk had never been anything more than a proxy. The surfer had never been to Montauk. Finding a proxy was what the catalogues had told him to do. Carter knew he had the means to do better. Fuck proxies—he could actually go to the places where the memories had happened. He could hear the actual sounds and smell the actual aromas. He could run his fingers over the same places that the surfer had touched. If that didn’t spark more memories, Carter didn’t believe anything would. At the very least, it was certain to add new nuances to the memories Carter had already remembered. Maybe it
would even make those memories feel new again. Maybe he could immerse himself in them one more time.
Carter could think of one other option. He could also get more memories, brand-new memories. He remembered the details in the Company’s catalogue. He could try somebody completely different.
Carter opened up his computer. He checked on his dwindling but still substantial investment portfolio. He checked all his accounts. He would have to liquidate a few things, move some money around. He didn’t care. His wealth was worth nothing compared to what those memories did to him. They made him feel more alive than money ever had. He sure as hell didn’t have any of his own memories that did that for him.
Chapter 37
The night after speaking with Tony, Cole went to pay Bon a visit. It was a Tuesday night, not the busiest night for bars.
Cole stepped out of the subway in Queens beneath dark skies and bright lights. Cole had plenty of memories of Queens, memories of whole neighborhoods he’d never even been to. The benefit was that, no matter where in Queens Cole ended up, he always knew his way around. It wasn’t a long walk from the subway to the Brown Penny, but it was long enough to get away from some of the traffic and the noise. The bar was on an otherwise quiet street. It was painted green with gold trim, its name scrawled across the top in old English lettering.
Cole didn’t recognize the Brown Penny. He had memories of plenty of New York bars, but this wasn’t one of them. Two men were sitting at the bar when Cole walked in. Three empty bar stools stood between them. The men were both sitting in silence, staring down into their pints of beer. Cole went and sat between them. He made sure to leave an empty stool between him and each of them, guessing they were about as eager to be disturbed as he was. Cole didn’t see Bon at first. A square-jawed, freckled, middle-aged woman was tending bar. She walked over to Cole. “What’re you drinkin’?” she asked with a New York Irish accent.
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