The Memory Collector

by Meg Gardiner

  Riva punched in a phone number and put the phone to her ear. She raised a finger, demanding silence. Murdock, sitting across the back seat from Jo, simply looked her way and adjusted the barrel of the gun to point in her general vicinity.

  “New schedule,” Riva said. “The bidding is now open.”

  She was silent for a minute, listening. Without saying good-bye, she put the phone away.

  “Slow down,” she said to Vance. “Campuses are speed traps. The cops are always out to get you.” She turned on him. “I said slow down, you stupid son of a bitch.”

  Shrugging away from her like a scolded dog, Vance slowed again. They drove toward the end of Palm Drive. The trees gave way and the vista opened wide. The road split into a loop that curved up to the front steps of the quad and circled back. The landscaped lawns and flower beds in the oval’s center were black in the night.

  Vance crept along. There were parking slots along either curb, mostly empty this time of night. Just off the right edge of the road, a curtain of oaks camouflaged academic buildings.

  “Slow,” Calder said, leaning forward and peering out. “This is reconnaissance.”

  Jo glanced at her watch. Nineteen minutes to the rendezvous. She thought of Alec Shepard, struggling to stay above the surface of Stow Lake. She thought of his strength ebbing with every breath.

  “Please, call in a rescue for Alec. You can’t possibly count on him treading water for an hour with just his arms. Find a pay phone and do it anonymously.”

  “No,” Calder said.

  Jo clenched and unclenched her hands. She saw no sign of the police. And they were running out of time to pick up Misty and Seth.

  “Make a loop,” Calder said.

  “What’s Ian going to do when he sees you?” Jo said.

  She threw out the question as bait. Information, especially information that included unconscious self-revelation, was power. She needed to learn as much as she could. Calder could not rationally imagine that she was about to win Kanan’s love. But when it came to Kanan, Calder was not rational.

  “What’s Kanan going to do?” she said again.

  “What makes you think he’s even going to see me here?” Calder said.

  “He doesn’t know you’re behind all this, does he?” Jo said.

  “You’re a nosy bitch, you know?”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  Calder snorted. Jo decided it was as much respect as she’d ever get from the woman.

  “How did you do it?” Jo said. “Did Murdock and Vance deliver the threat to him? Text, video, digital photos of Seth and Misty held prisoner? Did you talk to him at all before he took off to get Slick back and bring it to you?”

  “None of your business.”

  Calder had stayed in the background, Jo thought. Delivered the threats via proxy.

  “Who are these guys, anyway? Your cousins? Your puppets?” Jo said.

  No reply.

  “Who was Ken Meiring?” Jo said.

  Around her, they all squirmed.

  “How do you plan to conduct the exchange? I need to know, so I don’t blow it or scare you into doing something rash. When Ian arrives with the stuff, do we just get out?”

  “You get to climb out when Murdock has the stuff in his hands. You get out when I see Ian with my own eyes. None of this bullshit about talking to this Gabe person.”

  Murdock eyed her. “Why did you even have Gabe’s first name in your phone?”

  “I’m a psychiatrist. I have to protect the privacy of clients and contacts. I never put people’s last names in my phone. Ever.”

  And she thought, wow, that was a good idea. She should implement it.

  “When are we going to get Misty and Seth?” she said.

  “Don’t worry about them.”

  “Isn’t it time to pick them up?”

  “No.” Calder glanced at her. “I’m renegotiating the terms of the exchange. If you and the folks on the phone were telling the truth, and Ian’s really bringing Slick to the rendezvous, we’ll go get them. If not ...”

  Oh, shit. Dread coursed through her. Calder had no intention of bringing the Kanans here.

  Calder made a looping motion with her hand. “Go around again.” She glanced back at Jo. “You can’t trust anybody.”

  Officer Frank Liu circled the block and returned to the lieutenant’s unmarked car. She wasn’t there. She hadn’t been at their meeting point or at his patrol car, either. He walked back to the alley. There was no sign of her. He got on the radio.

  The clerk behind the lost and found counter handed Kanan his backpack. “Here you go, sir.”

  “Thanks.”

  He signed for it, slung it over his shoulder, and turned to go. Nico Diaz was standing there.

  He smiled. Diaz—large as life, out of the blue, and just the man he needed.

  He clapped a hand on Diaz’s shoulder and together they strode along a hallway.

  “Glad the pack was here all along,” Diaz said. “You obviously got separated from your belongings when you came in. Good thing nobody else took it home with them.”

  Diaz was cool as an ice rink, but Kanan’s nerves ginned up. They crossed a quiet lobby and walked out a set of automatic doors. It was a foggy night. Kanan looked back. The sign over the doors said SAN FRANCISCO GENERAL HOSPITAL.

  Diaz had parked his pickup truck in the ten-minute zone. The dashboard was cluttered with cheap plastic toys and religious memorabilia. They got in and Diaz fired up the engine.

  “What are we doing?” Kanan said.

  Diaz reached over and pulled up Kanan’s sleeve, showing him the words Saturday they die.

  “We’re going to the meet. Is the stuff in the backpack?” he said.

  Kanan unzipped the pack and took out the battery from his laptop computer.

  “That’s it?” Diaz said.

  To casual examination, the battery looked completely normal. But in Zambia, he had disassembled it and junked the actual battery. Then he had filled the plastic battery casing with the gel from the flask, screwed its two halves back together, and sealed the joints with superglue. The plastic felt warm in his hands, and there was some softening near the seal. It was holding but wouldn’t forever.

  But the kidnappers could deal with that. Fuck ’em.

  “You cool with what we’re doing?” Diaz said.

  Kanan looked at him. “This memory thing freaking you out?”

  “I’m past it now.”

  “I don’t matter, Nico. Only Seth and Misty.”

  Diaz gave him a slow nod. He glanced at the battery. “That stuff’s valuable?”

  “It’s my family’s freedom. It’s priceless.” Kanan pointed at the road. “Drive.”

  32

  Gabe crept through the trees toward the Oval, treading carefully so his feet wouldn’t crunch on fallen oak leaves. He had a crowbar in his hand. He had a folded Buck knife in his back pocket. His 4Runner was parked two hundred yards back, on a cross road, aimed straight at Palm Drive so that he could cut off any vehicles leaving the Oval. In the chilly air, the quad was gloriously lit. The road was quiet. The lawn and garden in the center of the Oval were dark and empty, except for a lone cyclist pedaling furiously toward the chemistry department.

  Keeping to the trees, he ran counterclockwise up the right side of the Oval, in the same direction as the one-way traffic around the loop. He stopped at a vantage point seventy yards before the pickup zone, which was near the plaza and steps leading to the quad at the top of the loop. That put him behind anybody who stopped there. And people who stopped in the pickup zone would likely be busy looking ahead or toward the quad, not watching their backs. He ducked behind the trunk of a live oak and blended into the shifting shadows.

  He checked the time. The illuminated blue dial of his diver’s watch read eight forty-five P.M.

  Jo knew Stanford inside and out. After four years at the medical school, she could probably scramble from one side of campus to the
other via rooftops and steam tunnels. He knew the campus too, but not nearly as well. And he didn’t know what kind of vehicle the hostage-takers were driving.

  He checked his phone. No messages from Tang. No sign of any law enforcement. He didn’t know whether the lieutenant was sending the Stanford Police, Palo Alto P.D., Santa Clara County SWAT, or a combination of the three.

  But he wanted her to send somebody, and now. She had told him she was taking point on this, and he believed her—but he also wanted confirmation. He called her cell phone and got voice mail.

  He clicked off and redialed the SFPD Northern Station. He kept his voice to a murmur.

  “This is Gabe Quintana from the One twenty-ninth Rescue Wing at Moffet Field. I phoned forty-five minutes ago with an emergency message for Lieutenant Tang. I’m calling to verify that she’s coordinating the police response to a hostage situation on the Stanford campus.”

  The desk officer’s voice perked up. “Let me check, Mr. Quintana.”

  He saw an SUV cruise up Palm Drive and begin to circle the Oval. It was a blue Chevy Tahoe, driving slowly. He put the phone against his leg and peered around the tree trunk.

  Diaz rolled along University Avenue at exactly twenty-five miles per hour. The cops in genteel, leafy Palo Alto didn’t have much crime to clean up, so they came down on speeders like a bunch of gorillas. Ahead, University became Palm Drive and cut through the campus to the central quad.

  The GPS on the dashboard showed the road layout of the rendezvous site: Palm Drive aimed straight for the quad, but instead of dead-ending, it turned into a one-way loop, an oval about a quarter-mile long. At the top of the oval, closest to the quad, was the rendezvous. At the base of the oval was a cross road where they might be able to set an ambush.

  “Let’s scout it,” Kanan said.

  “Fucking-A,” Diaz said.

  Kanan took the computer battery from his backpack and the Kbar from the ankle sheath. He carefully stuck the tip of the knife between the two screwed-down, superglued halves of the battery casing. As delicately as possible, he pushed the blade through the seal a few millimeters. Most of the way.

  Diaz eyed him with calm interest. “Boss?”

  “A researcher at Chira-Sayf told me what this stuff can do.” He pulled out the knife and examined the seal. “Slick will eventually eat through any petrochemical-based container. Give it a week and it’ll pretty much destroy it.”

  “So?”

  “So now that I’ve slit it, Slick will also eat through this seal, in about an hour if I’m right. Then it’ll get a taste of oxygen. At that point it gets dangerous.” He looked at Diaz. “Don’t worry, I’m just priming it. When it’s time, I’ll puncture it the rest of the way.”

  “What happens when it breaks through the seal?” Diaz said.

  “Within a few minutes, whoever’s holding it will get a nasty surprise. Though they won’t live long enough to appreciate it.” He slapped some athletic tape across the stab mark in the seal. “It’s not as reliable as C-4, but it’s as effective.”

  Diaz watched him put the container back in the backpack. “So we need to make sure Seth and Misty are out of range by then.”

  “I won’t puncture the seal unless they’re safe.”

  Diaz drove with one hand and set a timer on his watch for fifty minutes in the future. “Yours too.”

  Kanan turned the outer ring on his diver’s watch. “Set.”

  Calder held up a hand, gesturing for Vance to slow the Tahoe. “Okay, nice and easy. Take us to the top of the Oval and pull over in the pickup zone.”

  They cruised again around the right side of the Oval, past parked cars, oaks, and bushes, past the darkened buildings of the chemistry and computer science departments, toward the golden stone of the quad and the Technicolor gleam of the mosaic on the façade of Memorial Church. Jo felt like she had a clamp around her chest.

  Calder peered out the windshield. “Now it’s time for proof. We see if you’re lying, or whether Ian’s coming.”

  Jo wasn’t about to tell her he wasn’t.

  Or that the police were.

  She dug her fingernails into her palms. It was nine P.M. In one minute, maybe two, Calder and her goons would be in custody and she would be free. Rescue would be on its way to Alec Shepard.

  If things went right.

  She was terrified. Riva had a gun. Murdock had a gun. Alec was drowning. Time was running out, and she was in a vehicle with an armed paranoid in the front seat, an angry narcissist at the wheel, and a psychopath beside her.

  And the police needed to take them alive and get them to confess where Seth and Misty were being held.

  Jo breathed, trying to make sure her voice didn’t shake. “Ian doesn’t know you’re behind it, Riva. He’ll come after this vehicle without hesitation.”

  “No,” Calder said. “If he sees me he’ll think I’m innocent.”

  “Wrong. If he sees this SUV, and if he sees me get hurt, he’s going to think just one thing. Bad guys inside. He’ll take this vehicle apart. You don’t think he has weapons by now? He told us on the phone at the lake—he sees his family and me, unhurt.”

  None of them replied. The Tahoe crept around the Oval. Calder took out her phone again and read an incoming message. She was as fidgety as a cat facing a bath. She was trying to set something up, Jo thought—a sale, or a getaway. With her impersonation of Misty blown, she was working on borrowed time.

  “Ian will never simply walk up to a darkened vehicle and drop his lab sample on the sidewalk. He’s going to need proof of life. At a minimum, he’ll need to see me,” Jo said.

  Murdock said, “Don’t try to pull anything on us. You’re trying to save your own skin.”

  “Of course I am.”

  “You think we’re about to let you out of this vehicle?”

  “We’ll all live longer, and you’ll get away, if you let me convince Ian this is an intermediate stop, not a double-cross. He and his buddy Gabe and their armory will be out there.”

  And the cops. Please, Christ.

  They neared the top of the Oval. Riva put up a hand. “Okay, this is it. Get ready.”

  Gabe checked his watch again. Five minutes had passed. Sticking to the shadows, he crept closer to the pickup zone at the top of the Oval.

  He was still on hold with the San Francisco P.D. Still saw no sign of any police presence. It made him feel goosey.

  When the police took down the kidnappers, he didn’t want to get in the way. And he didn’t want to be mistaken for an unfriendly. But he also didn’t want the entire campus P.D. showing up with lights blazing—not yet.

  He pressed himself to the trunk of a tree, crouched down, and listened. His breath frosted the air. Around him, the night was quiet. In the far distance, beyond the brightly lit arches of the quad, a group of people strolled between buildings. Their laughter echoed off the sandstone walls.

  He heard a vehicle coming up the Oval from Palm Drive. It wasn’t the police. It was a blue Chevy Tahoe. Maybe the same blue Tahoe that had circled the Oval a few minutes earlier. Its headlights swept across the trees and brushed past the oak he was hiding behind.

  They kept going and illuminated the silhouette of a man in the shadows ten yards from him.

  They glinted off the pistol in the man’s hand.

  Gabe’s reflexes went into overdrive. The man was standing still and alert, watching the Tahoe circle the Oval. He was trying to see who was driving. And whether to shoot.

  The man was dressed in civvies, not uniform, not tactical gear. He had dreadlocks. That big mother of a weapon in his hand didn’t look like departmental issue.

  He wasn’t a cop. That left bad guy, wild card, or crazy mofo—armed and lying in wait.

  Gabe charged at him. Two steps, three, sweeping the crowbar low, and he wasn’t quiet, didn’t even try to be, just covered the ground between them. Fast.

  The man was aiming the gun at the car.

  Gabe had the drop on him. He hooked the
crowbar around the man’s ankle and yanked back; at the same time he smashed the guy with the flat of his palm just above the small of his back.

  The man flipped forward and went down hard. The gun was knocked from his hand. Gabe shoved a foot down on his back, grabbed his collar, and pulled up, arching the man’s back so he could barely breathe, much less maneuver.

  “Show me a badge or I’ll kill you,” he said.

  The man struggled, stunned, beneath him. He was a little springy black guy with an infuriated look in his eyes. He reached for the gun. Gabe struck his arm with the crowbar and hauled up harder on his collar.

  “I’m Gabe Quintana. I’m the one who called the cops about the rendezvous. Show me a badge or I break your neck. In four. Three. Two.”

  “I’m Nico Diaz,” the guy choked out. “I’m with Kanan. We’re—fuck, man, we’re here to get his family back.”

  The Tahoe stopped in the pickup zone at the top of the Oval. Vance put it in park and left the engine running.

  Calder turned to Jo. “Okay, this is it. Murdock, let her out.”

  “What? She’ll run.”

  “Not if we point our guns at her head.”

  “She’ll still run.”

  Calder sighed in annoyance. “Tie her up. The back of the car’s full of camping and fishing gear. Find something. And one of your plastic zip ties.”

  Murdock kneeled on the seat and leaned into the far back of the Tahoe. He grunted and came back with a coil of white nylon rope.

  “Put your hands up,” he said to Jo.

  She raised them in the air. He looped the rope around her waist. Then he took a heavy-duty zip tie from his jacket pocket, the kind police officers used for plastic handcuffs. He ran it around both halves of the rope and pulled it tight, cinching the rope around the outside of her sweater. He reached down and tied the ends of the rope to the support struts for the front passenger seat.

  “Set,” he said.

  Calder looked at Jo. “Get out. Stand on the sidewalk in front of the car. Hands up. Call Ian’s name and let’s see what happens.”