The Memory Collector

by Meg Gardiner

  He drove his arm forward, at the last gray point of daylight in the center of his vision.

  The blade struck through cloth and skin, through fat and fascia and muscle, to the core. With a gush, the water warmed around Kanan’s hand. The fat man relinquished his grip around his throat.

  Warmth spread in the water. Kanan pulled the knife out and pushed the man away and kicked for the surface. The sun above was a dim pinprick.

  The pain in his lungs was intense. Unable to fight it any longer, he breathed. And his lips, his nose, his eyes crested the surface. Gasping, he sank back beneath the water. Kicked. This time he came up and stayed up, gulping oxygen. The slate gray hole at the end of the tunnel brightened and expanded to dark water and the gleaming white hull of the boat. He grabbed the mooring line.

  A plume of blood was muddying the water.

  No bubbles. The breath had already been expelled from the man’s lungs and rolled upward to rejoin the atmosphere.

  Kanan hung on the line. The blood spread around him in luxuriant swirls. He needed to get away.

  Letting go of the mooring line, he swam through the frigid water to the far side of the sailboat. He dunked himself, again and again, washing off the fat man’s blood. He climbed up the fixed ladder. On the deck he found his denim shirt. His phone and a pistol were wrapped inside.

  He put on the shirt and stuck his phone in the shirt pocket. He worked the gun into the small of his back. He slid the knife back into the edge of his boot.

  He hopped to the dock and walked, shivering, away from the sailboat. In the parking lot he saw a red Navigator. He had a set of keys in his pocket, and they opened the doors.

  Teeth chattering, he stood by the Navigator and pulled off his denim shirt and the soaked Fade to Clear T-shirt beneath. His arms were covered with writing. Some of the ink had run. He found a Sharpie in the glove compartment and copied over every letter, slowly, until each word and name was vivid and sharp and black.

  D. i. e.

  He stared at the word. If he ever saw his family again, would they understand? Would “I did this for you” keep him from being ruined in their eyes?

  He had a vehicle. He had a knife and a handgun. He wished to fuck he had any information.

  He got in the Navigator and started the engine.

  13

  Phone to her ear, Jo paced the hallway in the radiology department at San Francisco General. Tang paced the other way, chewing her thumbnail. Ron Gingrich’s girlfriend, Clare, leaned against the wall and watched them go back and forth like dots in a game of Pong.

  Jo hung up her phone. “Still can’t get hold of anybody knowledgeable at Chira-Sayf. I’m going down there.”

  Tang’s face looked like a closed fist. “Take it to them. Find out what they’re cooking up in their lab and whether Kanan is sprinkling it around. Don’t take no for an answer. Attack, attack, attack.”

  “If you get any news about the MRI, call me.”

  Clare clutched herself tightly, like a little kid. “What’s wrong with Ron?”

  “I can’t say for certain. Let’s hope it’s nothing serious,” Jo said.

  She left, feeling like a liar.

  Forty minutes later she pulled the Tacoma into the headquarters of Chira-Sayf Incorporated. The company occupied a quad of sandstone-and-smoked-glass buildings in a Santa Clara business park. The birches were just beginning to leaf out. The parking lot was full of sleek new cars. CHIRA-SAYF was chiseled in a block of stone on the landscaped lawn. That spoke of permanence, or of a CEO with hubris and excess cash on hand.

  Inside the main building, the atmosphere was cool, quiet, and minimalist. The receptionist told her to wait.

  Jo looked around. No chairs, no place to sit. No plants, just an eso terically arranged rock garden. The only thing that offered hospitality was a rack of brochures: stiff, glossy promotional material about the company. Her Chinese acquaintances would have a field day with the feng shui of the place.

  Jo paced. The air-conditioning hummed like a mantra. After ten minutes, she took a brochure from the display. Maybe she could fold origami while she waited. Create a paper menagerie of swans and field mice and nanobots.

  “Dr. Beckett.”

  At the sound of clicking heels, Jo looked up. A woman in her forties walked into the lobby, hands clasped. She had a square face, square figure, flyaway blond hair. And a look in her eyes like a beachcomber watching a rogue wave roll toward her.

  Jo knew that when she told people, “Hi, I’m performing a psychiatric evaluation on your employee who’s wanted by the police,” it went down like a glass of nails. She smiled and extended her hand. “Ms. Calder?”

  The woman shook, briefly, with just her fingers. “I believe my admin told you to speak to our H.R. representative.”

  Calder’s voice sounded thin in person, and Jo caught the undertone of a Southern drawl. Jo put a note of bright certainty into her reply.

  “It’s better to go straight to the source, and Misty Kanan assures me you’re it. I can talk to H.R. later.”

  Calder paused, seemingly baffled that she hadn’t shooed Jo off. She cleared her throat. “Right.” To the receptionist, she said, “She’s with me, Jenny. Sign her in. No calls.”

  The receptionist eyed Calder sharply. Jo clipped a visitor’s badge to her blue blouse and followed Calder down the hallway to a conference room. Calder closed the door and gestured for Jo to take a seat at the conference table.

  “Ian Kanan isn’t employed by Chira-Sayf,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  Calder sat across from Jo and laid her hands flat on the mahogany tabletop. “He’s an independent contractor. Chira-Sayf uses his services on a per-diem basis. Technically, he’s self-employed.”

  The zipping noise in her head, Jo thought, was the sound of Calder pulling on a fireproof suit. One that would cover her ass.

  “Ms. Calder, I’m not here to interrogate you. Ian Kanan is missing and critically ill. I’m trying to find him.”

  “You’re working for the police. I presume you’re gathering information to use if you testify in court.”

  Against the company, she meant. She was skittish about liability, bad publicity, or something worse.

  “And even if he were an employee, privacy laws forbid me from releasing personnel records without a subpoena,” Calder said.

  “I don’t need his personnel records. I need to talk to people who know him and find out where he may have gone.”

  “The police warned us that Kanan might be violent. We’re having to institute new security protocols, bring in protection for the office and senior executives.” Her eyes were narrow in her square face. She wouldn’t quite look at Jo. “We don’t know what Kanan might do. People are afraid.”

  “I understand. But I’m on your side. I’m trying to get Kanan off the street.”

  Calder pressed her hands against the tabletop and stared at the air around Jo’s head as if seeing a halo or fluttering wings. “I don’t think anyone’s going to talk to you.”

  “No? Then let’s talk about the company.” Jo opened the corporate brochure. “What kind of nanotechnology work does Chira-Sayf do?”

  “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

  “Chip design? Medical applications?”

  She flipped through the brochure. There were photos of techs in clean-suits working in sterile manufacturing conditions. Scientists in white coats. The CEO, Alec Shepard, posing on the corner of his desk. He was an expansively sized man in his late forties, with a penetrating gaze, a red beard going gray, and a master-of-the-universe smile.

  The next page showed a laboratory someplace—red dirt, hot climate. Lions. Jo frowned.

  Calder said, “I’m sorry, I can’t reveal proprietary information.”

  Jo looked up casually. “Ian may have been poisoned. I need to know if he could have been contaminated in the course of his work for Chira-Sayf.”

  “Contaminated? He couldn’t—that’s not possib
le. Not because of work. He hasn’t been in the office for almost two weeks.”

  “I know. He’s been on a business trip to the Middle East and Africa. And I’m trying to retrace his steps to find out where and how he came in contact with a poisonous substance.”

  “But that could be anywhere. The world is dangerous. People want to steal our intellectual property. They want to steal the very materials we work with. One of our labs, people broke in and ripped the copper wiring out of the walls. Just hacked away at the drywall with crowbars and tore out the phone lines.”

  “Was that the lab in South Africa—this one?” She turned the brochure. “Have there been other thefts?”

  Calder stared wide-eyed at the brochure. Jo kept a pleasant expression on her face, wondering what had set Calder clicking like a Geiger counter.

  “It’s irrelevant. That brochure’s out of date.” Calder held out her hand. “Here, I’ll take it and get you some more current information.”

  “That’s all right.” Jo put it in her satchel. “Is Ian happy here at Chira-Sayf? Has he had any problems?”

  Calder looked at the satchel like Gollum eyeing the Precious. “I’m sorry. I just can’t tell you anything. Ian’s unexceptional. I don’t see him that often.”

  “I thought you were his supervisor.”

  Calder frowned as though she’d just tripped over a crack in the pavement. “Not his direct supervisor. As I explained, he’s an independent contractor. He doesn’t fit into our corporate structure.”

  “He’s a lone wolf.”

  Her cheek twitched. “Kind of.”

  “Who did he work for before he came to Chira-Sayf?”

  “I’d have to look that up.”

  Jo felt her blood pressure rising. “Ms. Calder. Did Ian’s trip to South Africa last week put him in any dangerous situations?”

  “I can’t tell you anything about that. I don’t supervise his trips overseas.”

  “Who does? Who should I speak to? The travel department? Engineering?”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

  Jo lay her hands flat on the table and counted to ten, slowly. “In that case, I’d like to speak to Alec Shepard.”

  Calder stood up like she’d been goosed. “That’s not possible. He’s out of the office.”

  “Then I’ll wait for him to get in.”

  “Dr. Beckett, you’re wasting your time. You need to talk to Ian’s friends and family to figure out what’s . . . made him unbalanced. There’s nothing more I can help you with.” She walked to the door and opened it. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too.”

  Calder escorted Jo out. When she got in the truck, Jo looked back at the building. Behind the blue glass Calder stood gripping her hands tightly in front of her, like a funeral director.

  Jo found her phone and punched a number.

  “Chira-Sayf,” the receptionist said.

  “Alec Shepard, please.”

  The receptionist transferred the call. Shepard’s secretary picked up. Jo identified herself and asked to speak to him.

  “He isn’t in the office today. May I ask what this is regarding?”

  “It’s an emergency. I’m conducting a psychiatric evaluation for the San Francisco Police Department. It’s about Ian Kanan.”

  Pause. “Let me transfer you to our legal department.”

  Snap. Jo heard the sound of another Chira-Sayf employee wriggling into a girdle of flame-resistant, ass-covering spandex.

  “Tell Mr. Shepard I’m investigating whether Kanan might try to kill him. Have him call me.”

  Longer pause. The secretary took Jo’s number.

  “Thank you.”

  She hung up, put her hand on the ignition, and hesitated, staring at the company’s chic buildings. From her satchel she took the Chira-Sayf brochure.

  She flipped through it, wondering why Riva Calder had gotten so nervous about her reading it. The brochure was blurby. Nanotechnology is our future. Buckyballs of the world unite. There were photos of happy, smiling Chira-Sayf employees, industrious people at work, building the magic of the twenty-first century.

  She stopped, staring at a photo of several people. Their names were listed from left to right. “Damn it.”

  The heat of anger climbed up her chest. She got her phone again. This time, when she phoned Chira-Sayf, she got Calder’s voice mail. She hung up and called back.

  “Ruth Fischer, please,” she said.

  The call was transferred and a woman picked up. “This is Ruth Fischer.”

  Jo heard her Southern accent. “It’s Jo Beckett. Here are your choices. I can go back to the lobby and request to see your boss, or you can wait for me to bring the cops to talk to you, or you can meet me up the road in the shopping center. There’s a Taco Bell.”

  After a stricken pause, Fischer said, “Taco Bell.”

  Maybe they’d serve crow. In sizzling, red-hot portions.

  Kanan stared out the Navigator’s windshield at Chira-Sayf’s head-quarters. Parked a block away, he had a good view of the entrance. The birches on the lawn were coming into leaf, spring green in the sunshine.

  He was achy and bruised. He felt as though he had been in a fight. He touched his lip. It was split, but he didn’t remember being hit in the mouth. He was wearing brand-new clothes—a jean jacket, gray flannel shirt, T-shirt, jeans, boxers, socks. His old clothes were on the floor in a bag from Target, soaking wet, like his boots. On the passenger seat, in another Target bag, were Post-its, indelible markers, disposable cameras. He didn’t remember shopping at Target.

  Among the Post-it notes stuck to the dashboard, one read, Find Alec.

  Obviously he was deep in Fuckupistan. He hadn’t delivered the stuff. He couldn’t, because he didn’t have it. So he was working the fallback plan, going after Alec.

  He checked his watch. Ten thirty A.M. That was news to him.

  He knew he had a problem. He couldn’t rely on himself to know how much time had passed. He realized that he was forgetting almost everything. Having this memory glitch felt like being detached from time, existing in a bubble that floated from moment to moment. The world was vivid, but he had no sense of past or future, only a sense of now. He felt wide awake, extremely clear, and yet adrift.

  He scratched at the scabbed-over gouges on his arm. On his skin, in fresh black marker, he saw his own handwriting.

  His heart took a stumbling beat and his stomach clenched. He opened the glove compartment. A pair of binoculars was inside. He put them to his eyes and focused on the Chira-Sayf buildings.

  There should be a silver Benz parked near the entrance. Not too close, not too far away. Just the right distance to let the worker bees feel that the boss hadn’t lost touch with the hive. Alec should be in the office, holding court. People came to see him, right? He didn’t need to go out. Except for meeting with Pentagon types in D.C. Or sailing that boat of his, Somebody’s Baby. Or flying to Johannesburg when Chira-Sayf pulled the plug on the research.

  Kanan didn’t see the car.

  And what in hell was he going to say to Alec when he found him? Would it turn into a grief-fest, a screaming match about betrayal? Would anything be rectified?

  The stuttering heart tripped him up again. His family. His beautiful, feisty Misty. His big-hearted Seth. He had been poisoned, and with it his whole life.

  His eyes stung. He let the tears well. He felt, hot against his leg, the steel of the blade.

  At Chira-Sayf, a woman walked out of the main building. She was young, dressed down, had loose brown curls that swirled in the wind. He looked at the dashboard. Beside the Post-it notes, a laminated photo I.D. was clipped to a heater vent. He checked. It was the same woman. JOHANNA BECKETT, M.D.

  The doctor got in a Toyota pickup, pulled out, and drove past him. He followed.

  Across the Formica-topped table, the woman who had called herself Riva Calder grabbed a taco and bit down. The tortilla shell snapped and crumbled. Ground meat and cheese and lettuc
e spewed out.

  “Anytime,” Jo said.

  She wiped her mouth. “She would have fired me. Thrown my ass out.”

  “Are you saying that’s why you lied to me, Ms. Fischer?”

  The woman killed the rest of her taco, grabbed a box of popcorn chicken, and popped three bites in her mouth. She washed them down with a swig of Diet Pepsi and eyed Jo.

  “You don’t act surprised. Or is that your shrink demeanor?” she said.

  “I’m not surprised. I’m seriously pissed off.”

  Fischer looked down. “I don’t know why I went along with it. It was stupid. As soon as I saw you with the brochure I knew it wouldn’t work.”

  She dug into the popcorn chicken as though it was aspirin. Or Valium. Jo let her worry.

  “Things are about to go very badly for you, workwise at a minimum. Copwise at maximum. I recommend that you tell me everything,” Jo said.

  Fischer sighed so hard her entire body sagged. “Yeah. Fine.”

  “What were you trying to accomplish?” Jo said.

  “To give you the brush-off, obviously.”

  “Why wouldn’t Riva Calder actually see me?”

  “I don’t know. She isn’t even in the office. Hasn’t been in for days. She phoned and asked me to do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why did she ask me to impersonate her? I’m a temp.” She spread her hands. “Look at me. Who’s the slowest, fattest target?” She slumped. “And now she’s going to can my sorry butt.”

  “Go through it from the beginning.”

  “I was at my desk when Riva’s secretary came running down the hall. I mean running. She put me through to Riva, who said I had to do this thing.”

  “What did she want you to do? Particularly?”

  “Placate you. Keep it vague, make you think there was nothing to find out. Get you to go away.”

  Jo felt a thorny anger poking at her. She felt insulted. And irate. And, possibly, willing to restrain herself from throwing an entire bur rito supreme at Ruth Fischer, depending on what the woman told her now.