by Meg Gardiner
Maybe she was a tough cookie, but she looked exhausted and on edge. She sat in an easy chair, hands clenched on her knees.
Jo sat across from her on the sofa. “Has Ian phoned you since he left the hospital?”
“No.”
“Could I listen to the messages he left after his flight landed?”
“I erased them,” Misty said.
Damn it. Jo kept her expression neutral. “Why?”
“Forty-nine messages? ‘Misty, I just landed.’ ‘Misty, I’m on my way.’ ‘Misty, please pick up.’ Same tone, same confusion. It was, like, replay.” She scraped her fingernails over her tartan skirt as if she had a dreadful itch. “I couldn’t take it.”
Tang pricked up her ears, like a Jack Russell terrier that had heard a squirrel in the bushes. “Mrs. Kanan, after you left the hospital your husband assaulted Dr. Beckett.”
“What are you talking about?” Misty said.
“He dragged her into an elevator, pulled a knife, and pinned her to the wall.”
Misty gaped at Jo. Her anger was immediate and hot. “He pinned you? That makes no sense. I don’t believe it.”
“And he made threats,” Tang said. “Against what I’m assuming is a list of people.”
“That’s not possible.” She glanced back and forth between Tang and Jo. “Where are you coming up with this? Threats? Ian is severely ill.”
Jo clasped her hands in her lap. “I know. Ian may have been contaminated with a substance that has caused his brain injury.”
“Contaminated? Where’d you get that?” Misty said.
“From your husband. Do you have any idea how he could have been poisoned?”
“No.”
Tang took out her notebook. “He was on a business trip to the Middle East and Africa. What was he doing?”
“What he always does. Corporate security.”
“Specifically?”
“Ian doesn’t discuss his work with me. It’s a matter of corporate confidentiality.”
“Is Ian’s job dangerous?” Jo said.
“No.”
“Overseas security for a high-tech firm? Never?”
“He makes sure that the people he escorts don’t get into trouble. He keeps them miles away from dangerous situations.”
“What does Chira-Sayf do?” Jo said.
“Materials research.” Misty tried leaving it there, but Jo and Tang both stared at her until she added, “Nanotechnology.”
Jo nodded blandly. But in the back of her mind, a red flag went up. “What’s his background and training?”
“Why?” Misty said.
“I need to gather as much information as I can.”
Misty crossed her knees. Her foot jittered in the chunky boot. “Ten years in the army. Came out and found a career where his skills were valued.”
“Which skills?”
Misty eyed her closely. “You been in the military?”
“No. Why?”
“Some civilians just think: army. Shoot ’em up. Camouflage and yessir, nosir. There are dozens of specialties within the armed forces. Ian was in reconnaissance.”
Tang wrote it down. In the quiet of the house, her pen strokes were audible.
Jo glanced at a framed photo on a bookshelf. “Is that your son?”
“Seth,” Misty said.
The boy in the photo had Kanan’s coppery hair and frosty blue eyes behind his glasses. His smile had a cocky edge chipped into it. The joke’s on them. The smile reeked of adolescence but seemed impish rather than sarcastic. Seth was sitting cross-legged on the lawn, playing a guitar. A big dog, with an Irish setter’s coloring and a Labrador’s goofy hopefulness, was poking his nose against his shoulder.
“Nice-looking boy. How old is he?”
“Fourteen.”
Jo waited for her to say more. In this situation some people would ask her questions or blurt emotional revelations. Others clenched everything in, defending their preconceptions, their hopes or myths about their loved ones. She waited to see whether Misty would say anything about her son. She didn’t.
“Have you told him?” Jo said.
“Not yet.” Misty’s foot continued jittering.
Jo wanted to ask, Everything all right with the family? But tough cookie was turning out to mean stubborn, defiant, defensive. So she played it in a lower key.
“The psychological evaluation requires me to map the victim’s life. I investigate the victim’s entire history, meaning medical, psychological, and emotional—family, relationships, marriage . . .”
The blush started at the base of Misty’s neck and rose up her cheeks. “You want me to talk about our sex life?”
Jo put up a hand. “I’m just saying, relationships are something I ask about.”
Misty licked her lips. “No, it’s fine. Ian and I are close. We always have been. It was chemistry at first sight.”
The blush was so hot it was practically pulsing. Jo thought that if they turned off the lights, it might bathe the room in a scarlet glow.
“He’s my soul mate. I could forget myself in him. I could . . .” She stopped, realizing she’d used the word forget. Her eyes looked flash-bulb hot. “Great, a Freudian slip.”
Maybe so.
“I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Psychiatrists note things like that, Misty. But we don’t judge.”
Misty worked her jaw back and forth, as though saying, Sure. “We’re happy in bed. How’s that?”
“That’s fine.”
Misty’s foot continued jittering. She looked at the floor. When she looked up again, her eyes were bright with tears.
“What’s he going to be like from now on? Is he going to forget me?”
Jo paused, working out how much she could say and with what certainty.
“I’m his wife. And I’m a school nurse. You can tell me anything.”
“His memories before the injury should remain intact,” Jo said.
“So there’s no way he’s going to forget his own name, where he grew up, what he does for a living, that kind of thing.”
“No.”
“How about our marriage?”
“He’ll remember. His amnesia isn’t the kind you see portrayed in most movies. Anterograde amnesia means he can’t form new memories.”
“So when he sees me, he’ll know who I am. He’ll come home and know this is our house.”
“Yes.”
Misty’s knuckles, clutching her knee, were white. “And over time, he’ll improve?”
“We don’t know for certain, but it’s unlikely.”
Misty’s eyes flashed like a strobe, white and cold. Just as quick, the look was gone. “You don’t really know what happens to the brain, do you? You’re a shrink. You deal with emotions, not medicine. Breakthroughs happen every week.”
And she was a nurse? “Not with this, I’m afraid.”
Misty looked at Jo as though taking her photo with a crime scene camera. “Let me tell you one thing for certain. This is a lock. Ian and I love each other. From the day I first set eyes on him I knew he was the man I wanted. I still know it, and I’m not going to let him slip away. I will fight to help him.”
Her stare lost its chill and seemed to throb, as though she were daring Jo to contradict her. It was as if she’d let a crack open in her armor and had poured out words she had kept dammed inside for so long that they had nearly turned to rust.
Tang said, “Why would he bring back two daggers and a scimitar from the Middle East?”
Misty’s eyes lit briefly, a dull flash, as if from the weird steel of the knife Jo had seen hanging from Kanan’s hand. “He works for some strange and egocentric people. They probably want to hang that stuff on their walls like trophies.”
Her cheeks were mottled with white patches. Jo took it as a sign of stress. It was the pale pepper of humiliation.
“These guys at Chira-Sayf, they’re all about who swings the biggest dick. But did they get those swords themselv
es? No, they had Ian do it.” Her face was sour. “They’re a bunch of empty jockstraps.”
“We need to speak to his boss,” Jo said. “Which empty jockstrap would that be?”
Misty stood up. “Riva Calder. I’ll get you the phone number.”
She walked to the kitchen island, tore off a piece of scratch paper, wrote down a number, and gave it to Jo.
Tang scooted forward on the sofa. “Who’s Alec?”
Misty nearly did a double take, like they’d head-faked her. “Alec?”
Tang looked up. “Yes.”
Misty hesitated. “Maybe it’s Alec Shepard. He’s the CEO of Chira-Sayf.”
Tang wrote it down. “Does Ian have a beef with Shepard?”
“No. Of course not. What are you getting at?”
“When your husband attacked Dr. Beckett, she saw a list of names written on his arm, including ‘Alec.’” Tang underlined a word in her notebook. “And ‘They die.’”
Misty stood stone still. Her face paled to the color of potato paste. “Hold on. You think he wrote a hit list on his own arm? No way.”
Tang clicked her pen. “Can you offer another explanation?”
Misty put up a hand, like a traffic cop. “Why are you attacking Ian like this? What are you trying to prove?”
“We’re trying to find out what he’s doing,” Tang said.
“You have an agenda, and it isn’t to help him.” Her voice rose. “You think he’s on a vendetta? That’s paranoid. It’s ridiculous.”
Jo said, “If you know what else it could be, please tell us.”
“I have no idea. Maybe Ian’s worried about those people. Or desperate to contact them.”
“But not to contact you?”
Jo might have slapped her. She winced. “Why are you attacking me? My God, Ian has a memory problem. Of course he wrote things down.”
“‘They die’?”
“Jesus, I don’t believe this. He’s in trouble. He’s sick. The longer he’s missing the more danger he’s in. And you come here and tell me he’s the problem?”
Tang clicked her pen. “Who has he gone out to kill?”
“He hasn’t.”
“Do you know that for certain?” Tang said.
Misty clenched her fists. “How dare you? You think you can get inside Ian’s head deeper than I can?” She turned to Jo. “You think you can know him better than me? Why—because he pinned you against a wall for five seconds?”
Tang said, “Is Ian happy at work?”
“Very.”
“Have you heard anything about thefts from the company?”
“Now you’re insinuating that he’s a thief?” Misty’s gaze didn’t heat so much as distill to a clean, frozen sheet of glass. “Ian is an honest man. He would never steal from anybody. Never. And I’m done talking to you.”
Tang held on a moment, as though considering whether to press her weight. Then she closed her notebook and stood up. “We’re trying to get at the truth, Mrs. Kanan. We’ll talk again.”
Jo followed Tang to the door. Misty held it open. She didn’t say a word to the lieutenant, but as Jo passed by, she put a hand on her arm.
“All I want is Ian.” Her tears looked hot. “Find him.”
At the curb, in the damp wind of sunset, Tang pulled out her cigarettes. “Playing good shrink, bad cop with you is a blast. That was illuminating.”
“That was painful,” Jo said.
“She knows more than she’s telling. Even odds her husband is crooked, and she’s covering for him.” She lit a cigarette, inhaled, and squinted at Jo. “We need to find out what he stole, and from who. Add it to your to-do list.”
10
Ron Gingrich carried the last two bags of crushed ice to the aluminum bucket on the terrace near the pool. He split them open and dumped them in.
From the house, Jared called, “Don’t forget to light the tiki torches.”
Gingrich sent him a salute. Since getting off the flight from London he hadn’t had two minutes to himself. He strolled to the garage, flip-flops slapping, got a case of Stella Artois from the stack, and schlepped it back to the terrace. His ponytail batted in the wind. The clouds had blown off and the evening was chilly and sparkling clear.
He pushed his fists into the small of his back. And he wondered yet again how he’d ended up working as a gofer for a twenty-six-year-old kid, a boy genius computer game designer who considered himself a rock star for the twenty-first century.
Ron shoved beer bottles into the ice in the king-size bucket. The previous day and a half seemed like a blur. Jet lag really was a bitch, especially at his age. Sure, he knew how to make things happen on the road and off. He’d managed tours for heavy metal bands for twenty years, gone on the road once with the Grateful Dead, before coming over to Jared’s Silicon Valley start-up as a jack-of-all-trades, the get-it-done guy. Buy the boss twenty black T-shirts, and the right brand saggy jeans, and Crocs to match whatever color the cool CEOs were wearing down the road in Sunnyvale.
He was willing to put up with plenty of shit. He wasn’t too proud to work hard, he liked to tell people.
He gazed past the pool and down the hill past the cypresses, toward the bay. From up here in this ten-million-dollar neighborhood, the water was an iridescent gray-blue in the sunset. The Sausalito ferry chugged for harbor. He could see planes taking off from SFO. From this distance they looked like silver ants crawling the sky.
What was he supposed to be doing?
He looked at his hands. He was holding two warm beers.
Ice bucket. The party. Right. He stuck the beers in the pail.
From the house came voices. People were arriving. Young tech hipsters—the guest list was mostly game designers, overgrown teenage boys who’d hit the jackpot and found a way to rake in the bucks playing video games. Plus some of the venture capitalists who funded them. And a few people from the CGI end of the film industry. Maybe even one or two folks from Industrial Light & Magic.
Jared stuck his head out the patio door. “Ron, the tiki torches. And get rid of that stack of tools by the pool shed. Somebody might trip over it, and I have lawyers coming.”
“Sure, boss.”
“And don’t call me boss.”
“Sure.” Ass.
Jared shouldn’t mind being called boss. Jerry Garcia hadn’t minded when Ron called him boss. God, he missed the Dead.
He took his iPod from his pocket, stuck in the earbuds, and scrolled through his playlist. When “Attics of My Life” rolled into his ears, he smiled.
He got his lighter and lit the tiki torches around the pool. A chilly wind was blowing, but the boss wanted atmosphere. His gaze wandered and he saw jets taking off from SFO.
That guy going nuts on the flight from London—talk about a freak-out. When the man ran up the aisle to the emergency exit, Gingrich thought for a second that the plane was on fire. But the flames were only in the dude’s head. Gingrich had watched him, thinking, WTF? Then he and Jared looked at each other and knew that if they didn’t do something, it wouldn’t get done. They jumped up and wrestled the wacko away from the emergency exit.
He rubbed the cut on his arm where the man’s belt buckle had scratched him in the scuffle.
“Ron?”
Jared sounded perplexed. Gingrich turned.
The sun was down, the tiki torches flickering on the terrace. The noise from the party was bombastic.
“Where have you been?” Jared said.
“Going to put away those tools, like you asked.”
Jared looked at him cockeyed. “And lock up the pool shed. The electricians didn’t finish with the pool lights. There’s live wiring going to the pool. We have to keep the power off. I don’t want anybody accidentally mistaking the garden lighting switches for the pool.”
“Sure.”
Jared continued looking at him strangely. “You all right, Ron?”
“Tired. The London trip kicked my butt.”
Jared nodded, let his
gaze linger a bit longer, and headed back to his guests.
Gingrich wasn’t tired. He was bloody exhausted, as the Brits would say. His legs felt stiff, as if he’d been standing there by the side of the house for hours. For . . . crap, he was cold. When had the sun gone down?
He glanced at his watch. “Whoa.”
Eight P.M. How had an hour slipped away?
He ran a hand over his goatee and slapped his cheeks to wake himself up. The pool shed. Get the tools inside. Yes, boss. Then he could finally go home and hit the sack. He walked around the side of the garage.
The pool shed was toasty inside. Jared kept the pool heated like a hot spring, because he had grown up in some dusty house by the freeway in Daly City and hated dirt and loved the clean, chlorinated smell of pool water. Jared swam every day, wallowing in his wealth and just maybe, Gingrich thought, washing off the stench that stuck to him from his computer games. Stuff designed for people who were bored with Grand Theft Auto and needed something a bit more stimulating. Marketed to eighth grade kids, too.
Gingrich turned on the light. It was harsh, a single bulb overhead. Moths flew around his head. The heater and pumps and filter motors chugged away.
That flight from London—what had been wrong with the wack job? The shrink who came aboard didn’t think the guy was crazy. Gingrich had seen him on the floor after the cop Tasered him, in some sort of trance, turning like he was being spit-roasted. The memory made him shudder.
He could hear noise behind him at the party. Fifty party-hearty, greedy, talented, demanding guests, drinking beer and talking deals and celebrating the release of Jared’s new game. It was so hot in this shed. He stared at the circuit breakers on the wall.
The pumps hummed almost hypnotically. He blinked.
Man, his legs felt stiff. He felt like he’d been standing forever. He looked at his watch. It was nine thirty P.M. People would want to swim. He should go light the tiki torches. Get some beers from the garage and pack them in ice in that big aluminum pail.
Jared would want the pool perfect. He always swam, every day. Gingrich looked at the machinery in the shed. The door had swung shut behind him. It was damned hot and musty in here. He heard the humming of the pumps, and “Brokedown Palace” in his earphones.
