Cole sat back down with a thud. Then he leaned forward and grabbed a pad and pen. “You know where he is?” Cole’s hands were trembling.
“Yeah. He wants to talk to you, but he wants to talk to you alone, and he wants you to go to him.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s hiding out in the Poconos.”
“He told you all of this?”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “Listen, he’s scared. He thinks the people who killed Bon might be after him next. He told me he doesn’t trust anyone anymore and that he’ll only talk to you.”
“Why me?” Cole asked.
“He didn’t say.”
“Just tell me where to go. I’ll go,” Cole said. “Give me the address.”
“Before I give the address, Jerry told me to tell you one more thing.”
“What’s that?” Cole asked.
“He told me to warn you that you’re being followed and that you need to be careful, especially when you go to see him.” Matt stopped for a moment, as if trying to remember exactly what Jerry had said. “He said that you need to lose the person who’s following you before you get anywhere near the Poconos. If you don’t, he’ll know and he’ll run. You need to show up alone. Nobody can know where you’re going. He told me to tell you that this is the only chance you’re going to get.”
“Give me the address, Matt. I’ll get there alone. I’m not about to give Jerry any reason to run from me.” Cole knew it might be a trap, but he was willing to take that chance. Matt gave Cole the address, and instructions about what he should do when he got there. Any deviation from the instructions, Matt told Cole, and he’d never see or hear from Jerry again.
It took Cole almost an hour of looping up and down random country roads before he felt confident that the blue sedan that had been behind him on the highway was gone for good. He was alone now, for better or for worse, driving deeper and deeper into the woods to visit someone who had been recruiting his friends to be victims of a serial killer. The farther Cole drove, the less there was around him except for miles and miles of barren trees. They looked like the many-fingered hands of skeletons plunging out of the earth. Their fallen leaves littered the ground, dead and just beginning to rot. For the last twenty minutes of his drive, Cole saw nothing but the army of skeleton trees.
Then he saw a single cabin sitting at the top of a hill. A thin line of smoke came from the metal chimney. The cabin had a long view of the road. Jerry could watch from there. He would be able to see any cars as they came up the road miles before they reached the cabin. Cole understood now. Jerry would have enough time to run down the other side of the hill and hide if he didn’t like what he saw coming toward him. He could make sure that Cole was alone.
Cole had his gun. It was heavier than he was used to. After so many years of carrying an unloaded gun, Cole could actually feel the extra weight of the bullets.
As Cole neared the house, he remembered the final instructions Matt had given him. Cole stopped the car. If this was a trap, that moment was his last chance to turn around. From here on out, he’d be totally vulnerable, without any cover or means of escape. He followed the instructions. He parked the car at the bottom of the hill. When Cole stepped out of the car and slammed the door, the sound echoed through the barren hills, the only noise for miles. He began to walk up the hill toward the cabin. It was a longer walk than Cole expected, at least half a mile.
“Jerry!” Cole shouted when he was partway up the hill, his voice echoing across the barren countryside. “I’m alone. I just came to talk.” There was no answer. He kept walking slowly up the hill. He was completely exposed, naked to any danger. “Are you there?” Cole shouted after a few more agonizing steps. With each step, he waited for the trap to reveal itself, for a bullet to plug his body.
“Would you shut up?” a quieter, more measured shout came from inside the house. Cole recognized Jerry’s voice. Jerry was watching him. All Cole could do was hope he was alone and not aiming a gun at him. Cole trod the remaining steps to the cabin in silence.
Jerry opened the door before Cole could knock. He was holding a gun, but down at his side, not aiming it at Cole. Jerry was smaller than Cole remembered, maybe five five or five six, and skinny. Cole wondered if he’d lost weight or if Meg’s memories had just added a few pounds to him. His skin was pale and his dark greasy hair hung over his eyes and ears. “You sure you’re alone?” Jerry asked Cole as they stared at each other through the open doorway.
“Do you see anybody else here?” Cole asked, looking behind him at the miles of empty hills.
“Nobody followed you?”
“No,” Cole assured him.
“Okay, come on in.” Jerry motioned Cole inside with a nod of his head and a wave of his gun.
The inside of the cabin was warm. Jerry had a fire burning inside an old-fashioned woodstove in the center of the cabin. The wood crackled as it burned. Cole stared at Jerry, trying to reconcile everything he now knew about him with everything that Meg remembered. Then he looked around the cabin. It was small and sparsely furnished. Everything—the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the table and chairs—was made out of pale-stained wood.
Jerry started to talk. “This place belongs to the uncle of a friend of a friend. A few of us came out here about two years ago to get out of the city for a weekend. The uncle never really comes. I thought of it when I went on the lam. I figured I could crash here without leaving any trace, any record I’d been here. Then, when I have to go”—Jerry motioned with his hand, moving it through the air like an airplane—“I’ll just be gone.”
“Does anyone else know you’re here?”
“No,” Jerry said, with a quick, nervous laugh. “Nobody knows where I am except for me and Matt and you.”
“You trust Matt?” Cole asked.
Jerry shrugged. “You gotta trust somebody.”
“Do you trust me?”
“No,” Jerry said to Cole, shaking his head. His voice lacked any doubt or pretense. “But it doesn’t matter if I trust you, because you may be the only one who can help me. With you, I’m being practical.”
“Fair enough,” Cole conceded. “So, why did I drive all the way out here? What do you want to talk about?”
“You’ve been asking a lot of people about me,” Jerry said to Cole, eyeing him suspiciously.
“I have,” Cole confirmed.
“Well, I wanted to talk to you about what you can do to keep me from ending up like Bon.”
“You know what happened to him, then?”
“Of course I fucking know what happened to him, man. You went and got him killed and now you’re trying to do the same thing to me.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Cole said.
“Really? Then how would you put it?”
“I’m just trying to get the answers to some questions,” Cole said.
“What the fuck do you need answers to questions for? Before you started nosing around, everything was cool. Now it’s all turned to shit. What you did to Bon was not cool, man.”
“I didn’t do anything to Bon,” Cole argued.
“You did everything but hold the fucking knife,” Jerry said, “and now you owe me some protection.”
Jerry was starting to make Cole angry. “I don’t owe you anything, you sick son of a bitch. You were recruiting victims for a serial killer. We’ve identified seven of his victims. There are probably a lot more, and your hands are as filthy as they come.”
Jerry took a step away from Cole, shaking his head and laughing. He was still holding his gun. Cole watched the gun. “No way, man,” he said. “No fucking way. You’re not going to put any of that bullshit on me. What they did to Bon was uncalled for but the others, the others knew what they were getting into. The others all signed on. They knew the deal. I was doing people a favor until you came along and fucked it all up.”
“Are you really talking about your sales pitch, your line about being paid to live the life of your dreams? Are
you honestly going to try to tell me you believe that bullshit? He was killing them. You know that.”
“It’s not bullshit,” Jerry insisted.
“Don’t try to play games with me, Jerry,” Cole shouted. He had an urge to grab his own gun just to speed this conversation along, but he held back. The last thing he needed was a gunfight way out in the middle of nowhere.
“It’s not bullshit,” Jerry repeated.
“Don’t play games with me,” Cole repeated. “We’re past that. I think we passed that when they held your friend down over a bathtub and slit his throat. But you had already tried to sell him out anyway, so maybe that doesn’t bother you.”
“I’m not playing games,” Jerry said, “and I never would have done anything to hurt Bon. I tried to help him.” Cole heard a sincerity in Jerry’s voice that Cole had never heard in Meg’s memories. “You don’t believe me because Meg didn’t believe me, and you have her memories. But don’t you have Bon’s memories too? Don’t you see the truth in those?”
Cole shook his head. He finally began to believe that there might be some truth to what Jerry was saying. “Sometimes it takes a while. Bon’s memories haven’t come to me yet,” he lied.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” Jerry ran his hands through his hair, even the one holding the gun. “That’s the whole reason I invited you here. That’s the whole reason I thought you would help me.”
“Why would having Bon’s memories make me help you?”
“Because then you might actually understand. He believed me. He was one of the only ones.”
“What do I need to understand?” Cole asked.
“That everything I said is true.” Jerry’s voice sounded desperate. “Meg never believed me. Most of them never believed me, but it’s true. Bon believed me. I couldn’t get him in, but at least he believed me and at least I tried.”
“Tell me the truth, then, Jerry. We have seven dead bodies. What am I missing here?”
“Jesus Christ!” Jerry yelled. “You’re a cop. Aren’t you supposed to be able to figure these things out? He doesn’t steal people’s memories. He pays them to make the memories—ten years of the finest crazy-ass memories anyone can make. They get ten fucking years!” Cole’s knees went wobbly. He took a step backward. If Jerry was lying, he was a magician at it. “The bodies that you found, do you remember how old they were?”
Cole thought about it. “They were all in their early to mid-thirties,” Cole confirmed.
“And Meg and Bon and all the people that I was recruiting, how old were they?”
“In their early twenties,” Cole conceded. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t put that together himself.
“Because that’s what he wanted. He wasn’t stealing people’s memories. Do you think anybody would want the memories of any of those fuckups? They’re a bunch of misfits and runaways. He didn’t ask me to find him memories. He asked me to find him potential. He was looking for people who would blow the doors off life if they were just given the chance. You want to know what he was looking for?” Jerry lifted the hand that wasn’t holding the gun and started counting off the required traits. “They had to be attractive. They had to be smart. They had to be risk takers. And they had to be people that no one would miss. They had to be people who had everything going for them in their lives except for dumb luck. Then he would make up for their bad luck by giving them wads of good luck, and by luck I mean more money than they could ever dream of. Money,” Jerry repeated. “Shitloads of money, and all they had to do to earn it was to turn it into memories. They were getting paid to spend money. They weren’t victims. They were lottery winners.”
“And after ten years?” Cole asked.
Jerry nodded. He knew what Cole was asking. “Sure, ten years later he came to collect. That was the deal. But those bodies that you guys fished out of the rivers, they all made that trade with their eyes wide open. I’m pretty sure they would all do it again. And if they turned it down, I’d step into their shoes in a second.”
“You’re telling me that this has been going on for more than ten years?” Memory transplants were only a quarter century old, and had only gone mainstream about twenty years ago.
“Yeah,” Jerry confirmed.
“And you’re telling me the victims understood they would be killed after those ten years?”
“Yes,” Jerry confirmed, “and they signed papers to prove it. You want to know why they did it?”
“Sure.”
“Because it’s worth it. Do you have any idea how much living you can do in ten years if you’ve got an almost unlimited supply of money and no worries? You start out as Oliver Twist and you end up as James Fucking Bond. Who wouldn’t take that deal? Ten years, man, it’s a long time. Where do you get off accusing me of trying to hurt my friends? I was trying to help them. I was trying to give them a chance to get more out of their crappy lives. We deserve more than the piece-of-shit hands we were dealt.”
“Okay, let’s say I believe you,” Cole said, though it was clear to both of them that he didn’t, not yet. “Then explain to me how you ended up doing this for him.”
“Fine,” Jerry agreed. “I was trawling online for odd jobs—you know, contract stuff where I could make some nice coin pretty quick—and I saw a post for what I thought was a job, advertising that you could make money living the life of your dreams. I figured it was a scam at first, but what did I have to lose? So I answered the ad and a week later I went in and took all these tests and answered all these questions.”
“From a well-dressed bald man with a computer and a video camera?”
“So you are starting to remember?”
Cole didn’t answer Jerry one way or the other. “But you didn’t make the cut?” he asked instead.
“Of course not. Look at me. But I did do something right, because I got another email from the guy about three weeks later. He wanted to talk to me again. I got all excited. I thought that maybe he’d reconsidered, maybe he went back and looked and I did better on all those tests than he’d initially thought. I didn’t have a clue what he was looking for back then. Anyway, a few days later, he showed up at the restaurant where I worked. We arranged a time and place to speak in private. That’s when he told me what he was doing and what he was looking for. Of course, I knew he was right not picking me. No matter what I did in my life, nobody was going to want my memories. But he told me the test showed that I had something going for me. So he offered me a job. He told me that, even if I didn’t make the cut, I could work for him and help give someone else, maybe one of my friends, the life of their dreams.”
“What was in it for you?” Cole asked Jerry.
“Money mostly, but also the chance to tag along. In addition to the recruiters, he needed handlers. He told me that, if he picked a few people that I introduced to him, then maybe I could become a handler. Maybe I couldn’t win the lottery, but he was giving me a chance to be close to someone who did.”
“And now you’re willing to give that all up?”
“You’re not leaving me much of a choice, are you?” Jerry said, shaking his head. “Besides, what he did to Bon wasn’t right. He wasn’t supposed to do shit like that. That’s not what I signed up for. That’s not what Bon signed up for either. I mean, he rejected Bon. I thought that was bad enough. Now, because of you, I don’t know what he’ll do to me.”
“Tell me his name,” Cole demanded. “Tell me his name and I can make this all go away.”
“I can’t,” Jerry said. “I don’t know his name.”
“How is that possible?”
Jerry shrugged. “He never told me. I never asked.”
“Then tell me where I can find him.”
Jerry shook his head again. “I don’t know. I used to meet him at a diner on the Upper East Side once a week. I’d show him pictures of people and we’d discuss prospects. Last week, he didn’t show up. I don’t know how else to find him.”
“If you haven’t seen him, how did
you know that he had someone following me?”
Jerry shrugged. “It was a guess. I mean, that’s what he does. He had people following me too, until I gave them the slip.”
“Sounds like quite a business partner.”
“Look,” Jerry said, “I never said he was a saint. I know he wasn’t doing any of this out of the goodness of his heart, but who gives a shit? I wasn’t doing it out of the goodness of my heart either. The fact is, up until Bon, he gave everybody exactly what they wanted, and everybody understood the deal.”
“You don’t know where I can find him. You don’t know how to reach out to him. You don’t even know his fucking name. What in God’s name makes you think that he was telling you the truth? Ten years is a long time to wait. How do you know he wasn’t just taking the memories of the people who passed his test? Did he ever hire one of your recruits?”
Jerry walked over to a little wooden table in the corner of the cabin and sat down. He put the gun on the table. “No, he never hired any of my recruits. But I know he was legit because he introduced me to one of the lucky bastards.”
“What?” Cole asked.
“When he asked me to recruit for him, I was pretty skeptical. It all sounded super sketchy to me. So, to prove that he was telling the truth, he introduced me to one of the people whose lives he bankrolled.” Jerry shook his head. “I’ll never forget it.”
“Who was it? Who did you meet?”
Jerry laughed. “They never told me his name either.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“He was staying in the penthouse at the Greenwich Hotel, down in SoHo.” Jerry shook his head. “I met him up there. It was just the two of us. That place was the swankiest place I’ve ever seen. Holy shit, it was so fucking classy. And huge. I mean, there were two fucking fireplaces in a goddamn hotel room. Everything was made out of this crazy old wood and these giant stones, real Zen, you know? The guy I met was already eight years into it. You could see it in him. He looked like a fucking model who didn’t have a care in the world. He showed me around the hotel room. Then he took me out onto the terrace so we could talk. The terrace was even bigger than the room. It was unreal. I could barely believe it. I didn’t know places like that even existed. You know what he tells me when we walked out onto the terrace?”
The Memory Detective Page 24
