The Memory Collector

by Meg Gardiner

  Why was he standing in the pool shed? He didn’t remember coming in. Obviously he had a reason, but . . .

  The circuit breaker box was open. That was weird.

  He looked inside at the switches. Four of them, three for the circuits on the gaudy garden lights that illuminated the gardenias and rhododendrons, and one in the center for the underwater pool lights. That breaker was flipped to off.

  Jared must have asked him to come in and flip it on. Jared must want to go swimming. What time was it?

  He looked at his watch. “Shit.”

  Ten o’clock? Man, he was so tired he was completely losing track of time. Jared must want to swim in his beautiful pool in the dark, pretending he was a dolphin swimming in the deep. Maybe Jared even had a date. And the guy couldn’t manage to come flip the switch himself.

  He reached out for the breaker box. Stopped himself.

  Something felt wrong.

  Jared. Lazy genius. Grew up in a heated shack near 280 and was now too precious to turn the lights on in his own pool. Was that it?

  His hand lingered in the air. Man, he needed a new job.

  Then he shook himself. He was being ridiculous. This was work. He was just jet-lagged. He had a cushy job. He was in the cream.

  Jared wasn’t a bad kid. Gingrich had, if anything, encouraged the guy to let him take care of everything. How else did you make yourself indispensable?

  He turned on his iPod. The Who, that was the ticket. “Teenage Wasteland”—he hadn’t heard it in ages.

  He flipped the big breaker. Wiped his forehead. It was hot in this shed, stuffier than hell. Moths were flying around. The pumps were so noisy, really annoying.

  He shut the breaker box, turned off the light, stepped outside, and shut the door. It was fully dark outside. The night was loud. The music pounded in his ears, Daltrey wailing. The party was really hopping. Some of that new music the younger generation liked—what did they call it, emo? Screamo. That was it. Heart-rending teenage songs, overlaid with a pouty singer screaming into the mike. And around the corner by the pool, it seemed like Jared’s friends were singing along.

  He didn’t get that music. It wasn’t like the Dead, not classic stuff. The night was cool, but he felt like he’d been standing next to a dusty furnace for hours. He wiped sweat from his brow.

  The people at the party, the game designers and screamo fans, they weren’t his people. He needed to get home and crash. And tonight he needed it bad, with this unbelievable jet lag. By the pool the lights were off, but in the light of the tiki torches everybody was running around. Jared was having another crazy party. These kids. Playing tag around the pool even though they were adults. But he guessed that was what you did when you sold games for a living.

  He walked around the side of the house. His flip-flops slapped on the sidewalk. He had a beer in his hand. He popped the top and drank. Ah, that was better.

  He decided not to interrupt the party. He didn’t need to say good-bye. He just needed to get home. The boss would understand.

  He unlatched the gate and walked out to the driveway and ambled on down to the street. In the night, the stars were pinpoint-clear. He stretched his hands over his head and glanced back at the house. The front door was open. He saw people inside, racing around. They were yelling, running in and out, some of them in swimsuits. One of them sprinted past him down the street, shouting at the top of his lungs.

  Gamers. Playing capture the flag, maybe. He looked to see where the guy was going.

  What do you know? A fire truck was screaming up the street.

  Blue and red lights lit up the hillside, and the sirens blared. More people ran out of Jared’s house. It was a regular circus.

  11

  Arattling wind woke Jo. She opened her eyes to see an acrylic blue sky flying high above the skylight. It was six A.M.

  In her teens, Jo would have sold her baby sister to a traveling carnival for an extra hour of sleep in the morning. But medical school had reset her body clock. By her second year, she’d been able to ride across the Stanford campus in the dark, with her lab notes in one hand and a coffee mug in the other. She’d done it once at five thirty A.M., in a white coat and pajamas. Now she rarely slept past seven.

  For a minute she hunkered beneath the covers. Her bedroom was full of hot colors that fought against the city’s chilly weather. The bed had a lacquered black Japanese frame and a red comforter. Gold and orange pillows were heaped around her. Coral-colored orchids were blooming on the dresser.

  She wondered where Ian Kanan was—in a hotel, or huddled in a downtown doorway, or wandering the streets. She wondered whether Misty Kanan had told their son that Ian was injured and missing. Misty struck her as defensive, quick to see her and Amy Tang as threats. Maybe Tang was right and Misty was covering up Ian’s part in a botched heist. Something about the mood in the Kanans’ home certainly seemed off balance. Or maybe, faced with catastrophe, Misty was simply trying to protect her own sanity.

  Jo also wondered about Chira-Sayf’s nanotechnology work. For all its promise, nanotech had a spooky edge. If Kanan had been poisoned, nanoparticle contamination rated investigation.

  It was too early to reach anybody at Chira-Sayf. She’d left multiple messages for Kanan’s boss, Riva Calder, and would try again at a civilized hour, but right then she was wide awake and buzzing. She threw back the covers, put on workout gear, and drove to the climbing gym.

  Mission Cliffs filled a converted warehouse in the Mission District. The gym was a maze of artificial rock walls that soared to the ceiling, an indoor playground for grown-ups. Jo signed the lead climbers’ log, stretched, and put on her climbing shoes, harness, and chalk bag. Another early bird offered to be her belay partner. She took out her lead rope and approached the head wall. It was fifty feet high, the color of the rocks in Monument Valley, studded with artificial holds in Play-Doh colors. And, in the early morning sunshine coming through the skylights, it was all hers.

  Nothing topped the purity and challenge of rock climbing to pump her up, clear her head, make her feel alive. Except for sex, on a good day. On a pitch, it was all physics and courage: thinking through the route to the top; judging force, leverage, angles, and her limits. It came down to guts and gravity.

  Climbing the wall took about two minutes. She did laps up and down via different routes. She finished above it all, in the air. With nothing but a thin rope and her own strength holding her to the wall, surrounded by space and light, she felt exhilarated.

  Why would anybody want to fly in an aircraft, strapped in an aluminum can, when they could climb?

  When she left the gym, the city was gleaming. In San Francisco, daylight shines white. It reflects from the walls of Victorian houses that cover the hills like cards. It tingles from dissipating mist and leaps like fish off whitecaps on the bay. Jo put on her sunglasses and drove up the road to find coffee.

  After a block she changed her mind and headed to Noe Valley.

  Gabe’s 4Runner was parked outside a craftsman house overhung with live oaks. He answered the door barefoot in jeans and a USF T-shirt. His hair was confused. His bronze skin shone in the sun.

  Who needed caffeine? “Morning, Sergeant.”

  He paused a beat. Usually he’d reply with “Doctor Beckett” or “Ms. Deadshrinker,” but he just stepped aside and let her in. “You look revved up.”

  “I wondered if you’ve gotten a line on Ian Kanan’s background.”

  “That brought you here at seven thirty A.M.?”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “No.”

  She pushed him against the wall and kissed him.

  His eyes widened. “You switch from orange juice to high-octane today?”

  “Got a match?”

  From the kitchen, a child called, “Dad, the eggs are burning.”

  For a second Jo held him there. She heard a sizzle from a pan in the kitchen and the morning news on the television. Gabe’s face turned rueful.

  “Take it off the burne
r, honey,” he called.

  Jo exhaled and stepped back. Gabe’s nine-year-old daughter, Sophie, poked her head around the kitchen doorway.

  “Hey, Jo.”

  “Hey, kiddo.”

  Sophie had a bashful smile and a long braid the color of Hershey’s Kisses. She was wearing a blue and gray parochial school uniform.

  “We’re learning about ancient Egypt in history. Did you know King Tut was buried without his brain?” she said.

  “That’s the way they did it back then.”

  “Gross. But cool. I’m hungry.” She twirled like a ballerina and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Gabe lowered his voice. “She catches the school bus at eight. I have to get rolling.”

  Jo swiped her hair back from her face. “Never mind. It’ll take me longer than that to stop thinking about Catholic school uniforms.”

  He raised his hands. “No. Don’t put that image in my head—I do not picture you in a parochial uniform.”

  “But I remember wearing one, and now all I can hear is Sister Dominica leading the girls’ choir in ‘Holy Virgin, by God’s Decree.’” She brushed a fingertip across his lips. “I gotta go.”

  “About Kanan—I have a call in to an air force buddy. He knows the people who should know.”

  “Great. You know how to find me.”

  “It’s my job, girl.”

  Still smiling, she turned toward the door. In the kitchen, the local news came on.

  “. . . have not released the names of the victims, but witnesses confirm that fire and rescue units were called to the home of Jared Ely, CEO of the computer gaming company Elyctrica, and that Ely may be one of the three people killed in this bizarre accident.”

  Jo had her hand on the door. She stopped.

  “Accident investigators declined to comment on how the swimming pool came to be electrified, but there is speculation that wiring from repair work may inadvertently have been live.”

  Jo dug in her satchel for her phone. By the time she found it, it was ringing.

  Lieutenant Amy Tang turned, phone to her ear, and surveyed the terrace outside Jared Ely’s home. It overlooked the bay from a hillside near the Presidio. The house was fabulous and cool and the tiny swimming pool, which had probably added a hundred grand to the price of the place, was now empty of bodies.

  “Beckett?” she said. “You know how I wasn’t officially involved in your memory man’s case? I am now.”

  Jo stepped outside so Sophie wouldn’t hear. “Jared Ely’s dead?”

  “Along with two of his guests. Somehow, last night’s cocktail hour turned into an electrocution.”

  “What happened?”

  “From what I can sift out of the panic and confusion, apparently one of his employees flipped a switch he shouldn’t have. An unshielded cable went live and turned the swimming pool into a deep fryer. I presume the name Ron Gingrich will ring a bell.”

  Jo seemed to have tunnel vision. Her fingers felt cold. “Is this a courtesy call?”

  “No. You need to talk to Gingrich and find out why he seems to have no memory of the event.”

  Traffic on Lincoln Boulevard rushed past Ian Kanan, anonymous, fast, sunlight winking off car windshields. He walked uphill in the bike lane. Below him, surf pounded the sand on China Beach. He had a piece of paper in his hand.

  Car, it said.

  An urban forest of Monterey pines and peeling eucalyptus trees towered along the eastern flank of the road. This corner of San Francisco was a boondocks of green shadow and damp chill. The Presidio had once been a plum posting in the U.S. Army. The decommissioned base was now part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It was a ghost place, beautiful and empty. Get away from the road, cross a deep gully or two, and the sounds of traffic faded; the land filled with the smell of pine needles and deep grass and dirt.

  The Presidio was a fourteen-hundred-acre wilderness on the shoulder of a big city. And it was pocked with abandoned buildings, such as the crumbling barracks where he had spent the night.

  He knew he’d slept in the barracks because he had a photo of the building on his phone. He didn’t remember it. Now he was walking toward a neighborhood of multimillion-dollar homes atop a cliff in the distance. He was on a hunt. The rules were simple. Get a vehicle. Get weapons. Find Alec. Then the others.

  On his left forearm, where his cuff was rolled up, the end of the message was visible. Written with the black ink of a Sharpie, the words seemed to shout at him.

  They die.

  The day was cold. The wind was scattering the mist, but the morning sunlight did nothing to warm him. He felt as if he had been sliced open with the knife known as fear, and grief, and finality.

  He was tired and needed a shower. He ran a hand over his face. And a shave. He felt as though he’d spent a week in the back row of a jumbo jet. He felt lost. But above all, he felt empty.

  He wanted to see his family but couldn’t unless he got this thing done. He couldn’t go home. They were watching his house. He wanted his life back, but that wasn’t going to happen. Too much had gone wrong.

  Everything had been stolen, including his recent memories. He remembered Africa. He remembered the river, remembered the flask. He saw the scabby gouges on his forearm and remembered the bald panic on Chuck Lesniak’s face.

  He remembered nothing since.

  But he knew the job was blown. He was out here in the cold, on his own, empty-handed. He had not delivered the stuff. He’d been screwed six ways from Sunday, starting when Lesniak decided to cut, run, and sell the stuff to a higher bidder. Now, to finish the job, Kanan had to go to his fallback plan.

  At the thought of confronting Alec, dread filled him like wet sand.

  Kanan forced the thought away and tried to focus. He was aware that when he let his mind wander, things simply . . . faded. And when he tried to remember what he’d been thinking of, he lost touch with what he was supposed to be doing. He couldn’t form new memories; he could barely keep track of where he was. He couldn’t let himself get distracted. He had to focus on the goal.

  But without volition, he seemed to hear Misty laughing. He saw her sweep through the living room, jerk a thumb over her shoulder, and tell Seth, “Put down your ax and do your homework, sport.”

  Seth had looked at her with surprise. “Mom, where’d you learn to call a guitar an ax?”

  Misty nodded like a head banger and gave him the heavy-metal devil horns.

  Seth put his hands to his forehead and moaned, “I have no mother.”

  Kanan had laughed out loud. The things kids didn’t know about their parents.

  Now he fought not to cry.

  He looked up. To his surprise, he was hiking through the Presidio along Lincoln Boulevard, heading for the expensive homes above China Beach. He was holding a piece of paper in his right hand.

  Car, it said.

  First get transportation, then weapons, then go down the list. He saw their names written on his arm, and They die.

  That was a no-shit plan.

  When he climbed the hill into the neighborhood, the sun had burned the mist away. Though the homes screamed of wealth, the streets were quiet. The occasional BMW hushed its way along the manicured roads, but apart from him nobody was out. This time of morning, the only people on foot around here were maids walking to work from the bus stop.

  He strolled up the street, casually, hands in his jeans pockets. Ahead, parked in the driveway of a Spanish-style mansion, was a Ford Navigator, the color of dried blood, tricked out as if the owner were planning an expedition across the surface of Mars. Bull bar, hunting lights, luggage rack. Tinted windows. Everything but a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on the roof.

  Kanan sauntered toward it, checking the front windows of the house in his peripheral vision. The house was dark and still.

  He walked up the driveway, staying close to the flank of the Navigator. By the front wheel he crouched down and ran his hand under the lip of the wheel well. He felt arou
nd and—what do you know. He found the magnetized case holding the spare key. The wheel well was an old-school hiding place and on the surface not such a bright idea. But it was good luck for him. In the case were a key and a fob with a remote for the alarm/immobilizer. Kanan knew that he couldn’t just stick this key in the lock or even punch the remote and then slide the key in the ignition. There was a special sequence for this particular vehicle. Get it wrong, and you were hosed, LoJacked, flat on the road with your legs spread and your hands locked behind your head and the barrel of a cop’s weapon pointing at your center of mass.

  Kanan slid the key halfway into the door lock, carefully, until he felt a tiny click. He flicked the remote and saw the lights flash. He eased the key the rest of the way in, flicked the remote again. The Navigator chirped.

  He opened the driver’s door, climbed in, and fired up the engine. The heater and radio came on, full blast. REM, “Everybody Hurts.” He could have predicted it. The irony felt as thick as bile in his mouth. Everybody hurts . . . Not the man who owned this house, drove this SUV, lived this insulated, charmed life. He reached over and turned down the stereo.

  When he did, he saw the writing on his arm.

  For a moment he sat helpless, as though his throat had been sliced through. He opened his mouth but could draw no air.

  All across the city, people were getting ready for the day. Kids were eating breakfast and packing their school lunches. They were waving good-bye to their dads. But not Seth. Wives were kissing their husbands before heading to work. But not Misty.

  He couldn’t inhale. What if he never saw them again? What if he saw them again but couldn’t remember? He put down the window, but even with the wind and blue sky and the endless ocean right there, he couldn’t get a breath.

  He couldn’t go home, couldn’t call, couldn’t reach them. Did his family think he had abandoned them?