Carter Green’s death was merely a blip in the news in New York. A wealthy businessman’s midlife crisis, leading to suicide, wasn’t exactly front-page news. Cole followed the story for the day or two that it was reported on, but he seemed to be the only one.
Five weeks after Cole got back from Costa Rica, they found Jerry’s body in the woods. Jerry’s friends had reported him missing, but Cole was holding out hope that he was simply on the run, that he’d actually gotten away. When they found his body, all Cole wanted to know was if he’d killed himself or if he’d been killed by someone else. He was disgusted by his own relief that Jerry had been killed execution style, in a manner that precluded suicide.
As the days and weeks passed, the old memories persisted. He wanted to get rid of them, but he didn’t know how. He couldn’t ignore them all. The memories that he’d loved for so long were the main thing keeping him from moving on. They didn’t want to be let go. The one person he knew could help him was Dr. Tyson. She had tried to reach him on a few occasions, but he screened her calls and refused to call her back. He would have to do this alone. There wasn’t a doctor in the world that he could trust anymore.
Cole had been taught certain techniques for preserving a memory: meditation exercises, breathing exercises, and mental exercises where he almost violently alternated his brain between memory and reality. Cole decided to try getting rid of old memories by reversing those techniques. After a few days of practice, it seemed to start working. The memories weren’t disappearing entirely, but their power was growing weaker. The only memories whose power Cole couldn’t seem to shake were Meg’s. Instead, as Cole worked to weaken the other memories, Meg’s began to grow stronger. Eventually, Cole was waking up every single morning to more memories of Sam. Meg’s memories seemed to be as tough as she was.
One day while Cole and Ed were working a homicide case and Cole was taking notes as they interviewed people who knew the victim, Cole told his partner he was having trouble making the case personal without the memories. Ed told him that the cases were never meant to be personal to begin with. “It’s a job, Cole,” Ed said. “You’re supposed to work hard and then go home to your life.”
Instead, each day, after he and Ed finished going through the motions on their job, hopefully inching closer to resolving their cases, Cole went home and tried to weaken more of the dead people’s memories while, whenever he could tell the difference, preserving his own. Each day, Cole made progress, making more and more of those memories fade into the corners of his mind. No matter what he did, though, Meg’s memories refused to disappear.
After weeks, Cole finally decided to go speak with Sam. Maybe Meg’s memories were hanging on so tight because he still had loose ends to tie up before his brain would let them go. So instead of going home after his day’s work, Cole walked south toward Sam’s apartment. Once he made it to her neighborhood, Cole began to recognize nearly every building he passed. He knew exactly where he was going. He didn’t need to know the address. He could close his eyes and still find his way there.
When Cole finally arrived at Sam’s building, he stood frozen for a moment in front of the building’s door. He had no memory of the shiny silver wall of apartment buzzers. He realized that it must be new, a superficial safety measure installed after the building’s super murdered one of the tenants’ friends. Because the buzzer system was new, Cole had to stop himself, unable to remember Sam’s apartment number. He closed his eyes, focusing on the memory of the first time Meg visited Sam’s apartment. His heart began to beat faster as the memory of following Sam down the long hallway toward her apartment unfolded in his mind. Sam giggled, turning around toward Meg with her hands linked behind her back. “You promise not to make fun of how messy my apartment is, right? I didn’t have a chance to straighten up.”
“I promise,” Cole remembered Meg saying. Then, Cole could hear her whisper to herself in her head, I promise, I promise, I promise. It didn’t matter what she was promising. Meg would have promised Sam anything. The hallway was skinny and the linoleum tiles on the floor were old and worn. They neared the door.
“Okay,” Sam said again, “don’t judge.” Then she put her key in the lock. Meg looked at the door. It was painted an ugly pale brown. The paint was chipping at the top. Meg’s eyes hit the apartment number. 2B. Sam turned the key and pushed the door open. Cole remembered Meg’s excitement upon first peering inside Sam’s apartment, where Sam lived, where she slept and ate and laughed and cried. Then Cole pulled himself out of the memory. He’d gotten what he needed. He hit the buzzer for 2B.
“What do you want?” a voice came crackling through the intercom system.
“I came to see Sam,” Cole said into the wall of numbers.
“About what?” the voice crackled through again.
“About a note that she left for me on my desk at work a few weeks ago,” Cole answered. He wasn’t even sure if Sam would still want to talk to him.
Cole’s response was met with a long stretch of silence. Then, rather weakly, the voice came through the intercom again. “Okay,” it said, “you can come up.” Cole heard the buzzing sound and the click as the door unlocked for him. A moment later, he was walking up the stairs to the second floor.
Cole could barely breathe as he climbed the stairs. A wave of agony and anticipation swept over him. His stomach churned. Meg’s memories were making him feel like a love-struck teenager. When he reached the top of the first flight, he stepped out of the stairwell and began to once again walk down the hallway that, only a moment ago, he’d walked down inside Meg’s memory. It looked the same. He came almost to the end of the hallway and stopped in front of Sam’s door. He took a deep breath and knocked once.
Sam opened the door before Cole’s knuckles touched it for the second time. She was wearing dark green sweatpants and a loose gray T-shirt. She hadn’t cut her hair, which still stuck out around her head like the halo of an anarchist angel. She was smaller than Cole remembered. Cole should have expected that, since all of his memories of her were from Meg’s perspective, where Sam was bigger than life. He stared at her, drinking her in, unable to speak or move.
“You’re the Memory Detective,” Sam said. Cole didn’t say anything. He couldn’t think of anything to say. “How does this work?” Sam asked. “How do I know that you really have her memories?”
“Ask me a question,” Cole suggested, “one that only Meg would know the answer to.”
Sam thought for a moment, but it didn’t take her very long to decide what to ask. “What were we going to name our dog?” They never had a dog. They never had a chance to get a dog. They’d only talked about it, dreamed about it.
Cole didn’t even need to think before answering. “Mercury,” he said. “After the singer, not the planet or the god. You wanted to name it Freddie, but Meg didn’t like the name Freddie for a girl dog.”
“What took you so long to come?” Sam said, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Cole. Cole could barely believe how good it felt inside her embrace. Cole wanted to hug her back, to cradle her in his arms, but he stopped himself because, as good as it felt, it also felt wrong. Instead of embracing her, Cole gently pushed Sam away.
“Can I come in and sit down?” Cole asked Sam after pushing himself out of her arms.
Sam looked confused and little bit hurt, but she covered it quickly. “Of course,” she said, stepping aside to make enough space so that Cole could walk in. Cole walked over to the couch and sat down. Cole remembered the nights spent on the couch watching movies, reading books, kissing. It wasn’t lost on Sam that Cole sat right in Meg’s spot on the couch.
She started to apologize. “I’m sorry—”
Cole put up his hand. “Don’t apologize. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Sam closed the door and turned back to Cole. “So why did you come now? I left that note over a month ago.”
“I’ve been trying to get rid of all the dead
people’s memories inside my head, and I just can’t seem to shake Meg’s. I thought that maybe if I met you in person, it might help.”
An expression of horror crossed Sam’s face. “Why are you trying to get rid of their memories?” Sam asked, her voice shaking with something that sounded like fear or sadness.
“Because they’re not mine,” Cole said. “Because I shouldn’t have them. I should have my own memories. I shouldn’t be losing myself in other people’s memories.”
Sam violently shook her head. “But if you get rid of them, they’ll be lost. If you hadn’t taken Meg’s memories, they’d be gone.”
“They’re supposed to be gone,” Cole said.
“But if they were gone, I wouldn’t be able to ask you the question that I need to ask.” Sam took a step closer.
“What question do you want to ask?” Cole didn’t want to look at Sam’s face because of the explosive combination of happiness and pain that it would bring him.
“Did she love me?” Sam asked.
Cole relented. He lifted his head and stared into the depths of Sam’s brown eyes, ignoring the agony that came with them. “You have no idea,” he said, speaking barely above a whisper.
Sam stood in the middle of her tiny apartment and began to cry. “I do know.” Her voice was shaking but strong. “I know because I loved her too.”
“I know you did,” Cole assured her. “Meg knew that you did.” He paused. He didn’t know if what he was going to say next would be helpful to Sam or cruel. The only difference, he knew, would be the passage of time. “But you’ll fall in love again. You won’t forget Meg, but the memories will fade and you’ll move on. Meg would want it that way. And then when you’re old, you’ll look back on your time with Meg and smile, but you won’t think much more of it. But for Meg, you were the love of her life. You’re the only one in her memories. You’re the only one there will ever be. Those memories can never change, and now they’re trapped inside my head.”
“And that’s a bad thing?” Sam didn’t wait for an answer. She started shaking her head again, so certain that she already knew the answer. “That’s not a bad thing.” She stared at Cole, looking to see if she could see some of Meg inside him.
“I’m not her,” Cole said to Sam, recognizing that look. “I will never be her.”
“But you are,” Sam said to him. “At least a little bit. I can see it.”
“How?” Cole asked her.
“I don’t know,” Sam admitted. “I just can. Do you remember our trip to the country?”
Cole nodded. “When she made you ride a mountain bike and you fell?” Cole released a small, involuntary laugh at the memory. “I remember.”
“Do you remember our first kiss?”
Cole nodded again. His voice got weak. “I remember all of it.”
“Tell me what you remember.”
Cole shook his head. “There’s too much.”
“Start anywhere,” Sam said. “Please.” She walked to the couch and sat next to Cole. “Losing her the way I did wasn’t fair. At least her memories weren’t lost too. As long as you have her memories, a part of her is still alive.”
“But I can’t be that for everyone,” Cole protested. He couldn’t stop thinking about how they’d used him, how everything he did was cheapened and exploited by the company.
“I don’t care about everyone,” Sam said. “I only care about Meg. I need this.”
So Cole began. He started by telling her what he remembered about their first date. Sam sat, transfixed, here and there filling in some of the blanks in Cole’s memory. When he was done, Cole kept going. Over the next two hours, Cole recalled for Sam as much of Meg’s memory as they had time for. When he was done, she made him promise to come back to tell her more.
Chapter 53
For the next three months, Cole kept every promise he’d made to himself. During that time, he met with Sam on eight different occasions, slowly making his way through Meg’s memories. He made Sam promise to call Meg’s parents, to talk to Annie. Cole thought that maybe Sam could help fill in some of the hole left in their lives by Meg’s death. When he wasn’t meeting with Sam, Cole continued to spend his nights slowly trying to clear his head of other people’s memories. Through his work with Sam, he was even beginning to weaken the power that Meg’s had over him. He was considering calling Allie again, to tell her how things were going, to prove to her that he was really serious this time. Cole felt like he was stepping out of a dense fog, but a fog full of sad and frightened voices calling him to come back to them. He had to fight to not listen to them.
During the day, Cole continued to work his cases with Ed, only they worked them the old-fashioned way. It was slow and methodical, but Cole was adjusting to that too. Then, one morning, while Cole was getting ready for work, his phone rang. Cole immediately recognized the voice on the other end even though he hadn’t heard it in some time. “Cole,” the commissioner said, “I’m glad I caught you. We need your help.”
Cole pretended not to know what he meant. “I’m a cop,” Cole answered. “Tell me what you need.”
“We need you to do another memory transfer.”
Cole paused for a moment—old habits—but he held strong. “I’m out of that game. You know that. I can’t do it anymore.”
“I know that you’re trying to get out.” Cole heard something in the commissioner’s voice that he had rarely heard before: fear. “But this case is different.”
“You can find somebody else. I can work with them,” Cole said. “There’s got to be somebody else you can get to do this.”
“No. There’s not. Not this case. There’s not enough time.”
“What’s the case?” Cole asked before he could stop himself.
“You don’t have your TV on, do you?”
“No,” Cole answered him.
“Turn it on.”
“What channel?” Cole asked.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Cole picked up his remote control. He aimed it at the television and hit the power button. Seconds later, images appeared on the screen. Bodies were strewn on the street. People were wandering around, confused and crying. Rubble and dust were everywhere. “What is this?” Cole’s voice was weak.
“There was a bombing.”
“Where?” The images looked foreign. Tel Aviv, Cole thought, or India maybe.
“A mall in Queens,” the commissioner’s voice rasped. “There are seventeen dead so far. That number will probably grow.”
“What happened?” Cole asked, even though he realized that if they knew what happened, they wouldn’t need him.
“We don’t know much yet. It was a suicide bombing. The thing is we’ve heard chatter about another attack, linked to this one. The next attack is supposed to happen in five days. We don’t know where. So we have five days to figure it out, or this is going to happen again—and soon. That’s why we need you.”
“You have a body in good enough shape for a transfer?” Cole asked, staring at his television.
“We have two,” the commissioner said, “and we’re pretty sure one of them is the bomber.”
“So you want me to take the bomber’s memory.”
“Well, that’s part of the problem,” the commissioner said. “We’re not really sure which one is the bomber.”
“What are you saying?” Cole asked, confused.
“We want you to take them both. It’s the only way.”
Cole could barely believe what he was hearing. “That’s crazy,” Cole said. “It’ll be a mess. It’ll be madness trying to tell the memories apart.”
“We know,” the commissioner said. “That’s why we need you. You’re the only one who has a chance.” Cole didn’t answer. He stared at the carnage on his television. “Five days, Cole. That’s all we have. I’m sorry to ask you, but we don’t have any other viable options.”
Cole walked over to his desk and opened the top drawer. He looked at the small vial of liquid that he
kept there, locked inside a small glass box. The clear liquid shifted in the vial as the drawer bounced open before settling back down again. Cole knew there were people out there, certain interested parties, who would know if he began inheriting murder victims’ memories again. He could try to hide it, but he knew they would find out. Then he looked at the rubble on his television again. It wasn’t going to be easy, especially without Dr. Tyson’s help. “Prep the bodies for the procedure,” Cole said. He had no idea if this was going to work, but some things were simply more important to Cole than his own sanity. “I can be there in an hour.”
To Mr. Berry, the greatest teacher in Sparta High School history. Before you died, you told me to never give up writing. Because of you, I never have.
Acknowledgments
Just a short thanks to my agent, Alexandra Machinist, for her undying loyalty and guidance; to my family for their undying patience; and to all the folks at Random House who helped bring this story to life.
PHOTO: © KEVIN TRAGESER
T. S. NICHOLS was born and raised in New Jersey. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Georgetown University Law Center. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two sons.
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The Memory Detective Page 30