“Hell, yeah,” Bon said.
“Even if it were just in a picture?”
“I think so,” Bon said with only slightly less confidence.
“Okay, you met the guy and then what happened?” Cole said, finally sitting down in the chair across from Bon. He wanted to be able to look Bon straight in the eyes.
“I could tell right off the bat that he was a little disappointed when he saw me. I don’t know what Jerry said about me but with what he did to my bio and my picture, I had a feeling that he maybe oversold me a bit, you know? Still, he sat me down in a chair across from his desk and started asking me questions. I thought if I answered the questions right, then maybe I could still save it. I figured all I had to do was win the guy over. He was taking notes on his computer the whole time. He barely ever stopped typing. Oh, and I’m pretty sure he was videotaping the whole thing.”
If he videotaped Bon, maybe he videotaped the others too, Cole thought. Maybe the killer videotapes all of his victims. “What did he ask you?” Cole asked Bon.
“What didn’t he ask me?” Bon answered. “I told you, I was there for four hours. I don’t even remember most of what we talked about. It was mind-numbing.”
“I need specifics,” Cole pressed.
Bon paused before answering. “He started out by asking me what I do now: where I live; how I make money; what I do for fun; who I hang out with.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Mostly the truth. I only embellished it a little bit.”
“Only a little?”
“Maybe a little more than that,” Bon conceded. “All I’d been told was that they were looking for somebody with a sense of adventure, so I tried to make my life sound more exciting than it is, that’s all.”
“And then?”
“Every time I began to veer from the truth, he caught me. He told me that he needed me to tell him the truth. If I was going to lie to him, I could just go home. So I started staying closer to the truth because I really wanted a chance.”
Of course he wanted the truth, Cole thought. He wanted to make sure the memories were worth the effort, worth the risk. You don’t want to kill someone for a bunch of crappy memories. Cole stared at Bon, at his slumped shoulders and his lack of confidence. Cole began to think about how lucky Bon was that his life wasn’t more exciting. If Bon’s life had been more exciting, it might already be over. “Then what?”
“Then he started asking me questions about my childhood, like where I grew up and what it was like. He asked me what my relationship with my parents was like. I thought this part was a little bit strange, but I went with it.”
Cole began to imagine what it must be like to be able to pick and choose whose memories you inherit. He had to fight off another bout of jealousy. “So what did you tell him?”
Bon shrugged. “I didn’t even know how to lie about this part. I didn’t know what he would want. So I told him the truth. I grew up in a shitty little town in central Jersey. My dad was a cop, but he’d been in a car accident so he didn’t work much. Instead, he stayed home, collecting disability and mixing painkillers and alcohol. He didn’t beat me or anything. He just kind of forgot I was there.”
“And your mother?”
“My mother forgot about all of us. Technically, she still lived with us, but there weren’t too many mornings when she’d be home when I woke up. Everybody’s got their own ways to self-medicate, right?” Bon smiled weakly. It was a mask meant to cover his sadness. “So, as soon as I could get out of there, I came here. New York City. The promised land.” Bon waved his hand sarcastically around his apartment.
“No siblings?” Cole asked, still trying to put himself in the killer’s shoes, trying to imagine what questions he might ask. What would he be looking for in a fresh set of memories?
“I have a sister. She’s four years older. When she was eighteen, my mom slept with one of her boyfriends and my sister took off. She headed for Los Angeles. She was going to be an actress. Hollywood, you know. After that, we spoke maybe once a year. She called me on my birthday but that was it. Since I came to the city, we’ve spoken even less. We email maybe twice a year.”
“Do you miss her?”
Bon laughed. “That’s funny,” he said. “The guy was interviewing me asked me the same thing.”
“Tell me what you told him.”
“No. I don’t miss her. We were never that close to begin with. She didn’t really know how to act with me. Our mom never taught us how to be nurturing. Angie lives in New Mexico now. She’s married and has a couple of kids of her own. I see pictures on Facebook. She looks happy. I think she figured out how to be a better mom than she was a big sister.”
“Did the man ask you about your friends from growing up? Did he ask you what you did for fun?”
Bon shot Cole a confused glance. “Look, if you already know what he asked me, what do you need me for?”
“Relax, Bon, I’m just asking the obvious. I’m trying to figure out what he was looking for.”
“Yeah, he asked me about my friends from growing up and what I did for fun.”
“And what did you tell him?”
Bon shrugged again. “I told him that I had friends just like everybody else. We hung out, rode bikes, lit fireworks when we could get our hands on them. We played football. I don’t know, you know. Other than the fucked-up parents, I think it was a pretty normal childhood.”
“And when you came here, did you stay in touch with any of them?”
“No.” Bon shook his head. “When I left, I didn’t want to have any more connection to home. If I could have burned the Verrazano Bridge after I got into this city, it would be heap of ashes sitting at the bottom of the Hudson River right now.”
You lucky little shit, Cole thought while staring at Bon. Who in their right mind would want your memories? “So, when you were done, what did he say to you?”
“We weren’t done yet,” Bon said. “We were only like halfway finished.”
Cole sat back, wondering what else the killer could possibly want to know. “He asked you more questions?”
“Yeah, a lot more.”
“Like what?”
“He asked me what I would do if I had all the money in the world.”
“Why would he ask that?” Cole asked, barely realizing that he was asking the question out loud.
“Hell if I know.” Bon swallowed. He stood up. “I’m going to grab a beer. Do you want a beer?” Bon didn’t wait for Cole to answer. He reached into the fridge and pulled out two cans of beer. He carried them back to the table and handed one to Cole. Then he sat back down. The cans made popping sounds as Bon and Cole opened them. Bon went on. “I don’t know why he asked any of the questions. He wouldn’t take any pat answers, though. He wanted specifics. I told him that I’d buy a big house in the mountains, that I’d grow a beard and get fat.” Bon smiled and this time, most of the sadness was gone. “He wanted more. He kept pressing me to stop censoring myself. He told me not to hold back. I couldn’t tell if it was a trick or not. I tried to tell him what he wanted to hear, but I’m not sure he bought it. The truth is that I really think I’d just buy a big house in the mountains, grow a beard, and get fat.”
“Was that it?”
Bon shook his head. “No. For the last hour, we did these weird psychological tests. You know, like word association and shit like that. There were these puzzles that I had to try to solve. It was really strange.”
“Puzzles?” Cole asked.
“Yeah,” Bon confirmed. “And he timed me when I did them.”
“What type of puzzles?”
“I don’t know, think on your feet type of stuff. Pick out the thing that doesn’t belong. What should be next in this pattern? That sort of thing.”
Cole couldn’t even fathom what the puzzles might be for. He made a mental note to ask Dr. Tyson about them. “So how did it end?”
“After almost four hours on the nose, the man closed his laptop an
d stood up. He shook my hand and told me that he wasn’t going to pick me. It didn’t surprise me. I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get it as soon as I walked in, and nothing happened during the interview to change that. I did ask him why, though.” Bon’s voice was a little shaky. Cole could still hear the disappointment in it. “He just told me that I wasn’t quite what he was looking for.”
“What was he looking for?” Cole asked.
Bon nodded. “That’s what I asked. So he told me that he wasn’t looking for one specific profile. He was open to a lot of things, to people with all sorts of backgrounds, but that he just needed a little more than what I had to offer. I didn’t have the heart to ask him what he meant. I know how much less I am, how much less I’ve always been. I didn’t need him to explain it to me. I just wanted to leave.”
“But he stopped you?”
“Yeah,” Bon said. “He stopped me before I was even two steps away.”
“What did he say?”
“He pulled an envelope out of his desk and handed it to me. He told me to open it. I’d never seen that much cash before. ‘There’s five thousand dollars in there,’ he told me. ‘That’s to thank you for coming in and to thank you for not talking to anybody about what went on here.’ Then he said, ‘You’re not going to talk about anything that went on here, are you?’ I looked down at the big wad of money he just handed me and said, ‘No, sir.’ And then he hit a button on the video camera and said, ‘Good, because if you do, I’m going to have to take back a lot more than my money. Not a word to anyone. Not even your friends.’ I said okay. The way he said those words, I could tell he really meant it. So I never told anybody anything. I didn’t even tell Jerry.”
“Until now,” Cole said.
“Until now,” Bon agreed, looking exhausted. “That’s why nobody can know about our conversation. That guy really meant business.”
You don’t even know the half of it, Cole thought. “Do you know where to find Jerry?” Cole asked.
Bon looked at Cole as if Cole just asked him if he knew where to find the Holy Grail. “Nobody knows how to find Jerry,” Bon said. “Jerry just finds you when he needs you. Promise me that you’re not going to tell anyone about this conversation.”
“I promise,” Cole said. He stood up. “I’m going to go. I’ll let you get some sleep. I may come back, though. I may need you to look at some pictures to see if you can identify the man who interviewed you.”
“Okay,” Bon agreed. “What is this all about, anyway?” Bon finally asked Cole. “Does this have something to do with Meg’s murder?”
Cole looked at Bon. He was already scared shitless, and Cole knew the truth would scare him even more. Cole figured the kid had already been through enough. “No, this doesn’t have anything to do with Meg’s murder. I’m just following up on some leads in another case.”
Bon began to fidget with his fingers. He lifted one hand to his face and began to chew on the side of a thumbnail. “What type of case?”
“You don’t need to know.”
“Fuck, I wish I never went on that interview. As soon as they gave me the money, I knew something really weird was going on, but what could I do? It was already too late. It’s always fucking too late.”
Cole dropped his card on the table in front of Bon. “I’ll get back in touch with you tomorrow. In the meantime, call me if you need anything or if you remember anything else.”
Bon picked up Cole’s card. He stared at it. “I will,” Bon promised. He sounded hopeful when he said it.
Chapter 38
Carter stood frozen in the bedroom of his apartment trying to figure out the best way to pack his bags. He was planning on being away for four weeks, so he estimated he’d need two suitcases. He’d traveled before, on business trips that lasted four weeks or longer. The complication was that Carter’s travels had always been for business, and he didn’t have a wardrobe appropriate for his current destination. He got half of one bag full and then simply stood there, staring at it. Maybe that was it. He’d have to buy more appropriate clothes when he got there, shorts and short-sleeved shirts, or at least clothes a little less formal than what he was used to. He picked four weeks because that’s how long the Company estimated it would take to arrange another memory transfer for him. He selected the jazz musician this time, the trumpet player who’d traveled the world playing exclusive, private late-night parties. He’d never cared much for jazz, but he wanted something different, something novel, something that would stretch his mind as much as the surfer’s memories had. He didn’t care about the expense. He didn’t even care if it emptied his bank accounts. He only cared about getting new memories. Until then, he would use his time to try to unlock the rest of the surfer’s memories. Carter was confident that in Montauk he’d only scratched the surface of what was still left for him to explore.
He eventually decided to take only one suitcase, and even that was less than full. He brought the suitcase down in the elevator himself. When the doors opened, he stepped into the lobby and pulled the suitcase behind him over the shiny black marble floor. “Mr. Green,” the man standing behind the front desk said, “your car is here.” Carter walked past him and toward the door. “Where are you traveling to this time, Mr. Green?” the man asked, expecting the answer to be London, Chicago, Paris, Hong Kong, or some other business center.
“Costa Rica,” Carter answered. The surfer had been virtually everywhere in the world. Carter didn’t even recognize half of the places that he remembered. Sometimes he figured out from clues inside the memories. He had remembered jungles and beaches in Asia. He had remembered Zanzibar and swimming with sharks off the coast of Africa. He had remembered surfing the Great Barrier Reef and hiking through the Outback. He had remembered crazy parties in South America and eastern Europe. Then he remembered adventures in spots he couldn’t place, locations that, if he hadn’t remembered them, he would have guessed didn’t really exist. Through all of it, in between wild adventures, the surfer always went back to the same place. He always returned to Costa Rica. Carter didn’t know exactly where in Costa Rica. He was sure that he’d recognize it when he saw it, though, and probably even before then. He expected the memories to pour out of him when he found it. He had no problem exploring a little bit, imagining what it would be like when he found it. “I will be back in four weeks,” Carter told the doorman as he walked through the open doors toward his waiting car.
Chapter 39
Cole was still in bed when he heard the knock. He didn’t move at first. He didn’t want to be disturbed. Moments earlier he had fallen into a memory—one that he hadn’t experienced before of Meg as a young girl, playing in the snow in Wichita with her father.
Cole remembered walking down the street, decked out in a brown winter coat and bright pink snow boots. Meg had gotten the boots from a well-meaning aunt for Christmas. Cole could remember Meg’s revulsion. It came back every time she looked down and caught a glimpse of the boots. Her hatred of those boots was so pure and so honest that it tickled Cole to no end. Meg tolerated the pink travesties on her feet only because her parents wouldn’t let her go out in the snow without them, and nothing could keep her from going out in the snow.
Meg’s father was walking about ten feet in front of her. Cole didn’t know how old Meg was in the memory, but her father still seemed like a giant, towering over her. Cole could remember how much Meg loved him when she was a little girl. Her love for her father even surpassed her hatred of her pink snow boots. They were playing one of Meg’s favorite games. All winter, she waited for it to snow so that she and her father could go outside and play it.
Cole remembered Meg’s father. Even though she had to wear a snow hat, he wore a cowboy hat. He had his hands jammed into the front pockets of his jean jacket. As they walked along the side of the road, Meg focused on his feet. Meg was insanely jealous of her father’s camel-colored work boots. She wasn’t merely watching her father’s feet because she was jealous, though. She had another
purpose. Cole could feel Meg’s anticipation grow each time those work boots got close to the snowy edge of the plowed street. Then she’d hear his voice, deep, calm, and resonant. “Here’s one, sweetie,” he’d say in a loving drawl. Cole could hardly reconcile the voice of Meg’s father in this memory with the voice of the man he had met in the days following Meg’s murder. Time had not been kind to him. Time isn’t kind to most people. Eventually, it’s the enemy of us all. Memories have the power to erase all that. In this memory, Meg’s father’s voice was still deep and sonorous. It sounded like happiness. Once her dad said those words, Meg would stop and watch as he walked over toward the snow. Then, with the toe of his work boot, he’d dig out a ball of snow and ice left behind by the plow and, with a tiny flick of his toe, he’d send the ball spiraling into the street.
Meg made herself wait. She wanted to run right away each time, but she made herself wait until the tiny ball of snow stopped spinning. Then, as soon as it came to rest, Meg aimed and started her charge. She ran, the cold air pinching at her skin, and then she jumped as high as she could and as far as she could. Cole remembered feeling like he was leaping across a giant chasm of space. Meg aimed her pink boots at the ball of snow below her. Whether she aimed one boot or two depended on the size of the snowball that her father had freed. For the big ones, she landed with both her feet side by side. Cole remembered the satisfying crunch the snow made beneath Meg’s feet as the ball of ice and snow exploded into a million tiny flakes and shards of ice. The remains of the snowball scattered all over the street. Dear God, that pent-up release felt good. On the really good jumps, there would be nothing left beneath her feet. Sometimes, when the ball was particularly icy or hard packed, she would have to jump on it again in order to obliterate it. She performed the second jumps with almost as much relish as the first.
Cole remembered the sound of Meg’s father’s laughter as he watched his daughter obliterate the balls of snow. She looked up at her father, smiling, proud of the carnage she’d created. “See, sweetheart,” he said to her lovingly, “the pink boots ain’t so bad, huh?” The joy left Meg’s face. “I’m just teasing, kiddo. You’ll outgrow ’em. I’ll get you black ones next winter before Aunt Dell has a chance to do any Christmas shopping.” And with those simple words, Meg didn’t hate her pink boots so much anymore. Now that she knew she would escape them one day, she still hated them, but she hated them a little bit less.
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