The Memory Collector Part 14

"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 G.o.d'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 c.o.c.ktail 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 gra.s.s 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-s.h.i.t 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 n.o.body 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 around 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 ma.s.s.

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?

"Stop it. Focus," he whispered.

He put the Navigator in reverse and whipped out of the driveway. He jammed it into drive and drove into the morning sun. He knew who he had to find. Alec. Shepard was target number one. The others were down the line. But even if he killed the others, even if he tortured them before he executed them, Alec would be the worst, because when Kanan found him, they'd be confronted with the inescapable truth of his betrayal.

A new song rolled from the stereo. "Breakdown." Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, cold and sinuous. Break down, go ahead and give it to me...

That was more like it.

* 12 *

"Forget the coffee. Get in the garage. Now."

Murdock opened the door and jerked a thumb at Ken and Vance. Ken lumbered through the doorway. His shirt stretched over the fat around his waist and across the veined flesh of his bulging arms. His acne seemed more inflamed than ever.

"I told you Kanan was a wild card," he said. "He's gone off the rails and he's going to take us with him."

"Hold it together," Murdock said.

The garage was cold and the bare bulb gave off unfriendly light. Vance jittered in a circle around them. "Are we screwed?"

He sniffled and tugged on his belt buckle to keep his jeans up. Or maybe to check whether his package had slunk away overnight without him knowing.

Murdock shook his shaven head. "Focus on the big picture. We hold the winning hand. Kanan is going to close the deal."

Vance wiped his nose. "'Cause if we're screwed, I want to get out of here. Get things over with. I'm sick of waiting. And bored out of my skull."

Murdock glanced at Ken. "Explain to your cousin what we need to do."

Ken sucked his teeth. "We're going to stake out places Kanan is likely to show. You're going to watch his house."

Vance adjusted the blue bandanna that was tied over his hair as a do-rag. "This was supposed to be a sure thing."

Ken glowered at him.

Ken may have been a pessimist, but he was a pro. Vance, though, was an incurable amateur. He was supposed to be Ken's apprentice in the art of specialist theft, but Murdock saw that even Ken had doubts about his cousin's potential. And this was a job on which they couldn't afford any more mistakes.

"Eyes on the prize," he said. "That lab in South Africa made bottled magic, and Kanan got it."

"So how come he ain't delivered?" Vance said.

"Stop fidgeting." He stepped toward Vance. "Do you realize what a huge advantage we have, obtaining this stuff? This isn't like trafficking firearms or C4 overseas. The logistics are astounding. We don't need a Ryder truck or a shipping container. This stuff can be carried in your pocket. It's the score of a lifetime."

Ken rubbed his nose. Yeah, yeah, Murdock thought-the stuff was incredibly tricky, too. But that was what made it so incredibly valuable.

He pointed a finger at Vance. "This is going to turn you into a bada.s.s beyond your wildest, gun-toting, ho-and-b.i.t.c.h-filled dreams. This stuff is the real deal. It's a superstar. And we're about to be the world's sole suppliers."

Vance shrugged his shoulders and wiped his nose again. "Yeah. Cool."

Murdock nodded at Ken. "Call Sales. There's no need to postpone the auction. One way or another, Kanan's going to deliver today."

He spread his arms. "We're going to be the lords of fear."

Amy Tang was waiting outside Ron Gingrich's apartment building on a side street in the Haight, talking on the phone. The breeze lifted Jo's hair from her collar and spun it around her face. She b.u.t.toned her peacoat and jogged across the street to the magenta-painted building.

Tang, repudiating the neighborhood's Day-Glo color scheme, was wearing black jeans, a black sweater, black boots. She looked like she'd shopped at Baby Gap for Goths.

She put away her phone. "I told Gingrich his boss is dead. He's upstairs bawling like a baby. I need you to tell me if he's faking."

Behind Tang on the corner, three grimy teenagers slouched on the sidewalk, panhandling. One of the girls held out her right hand for money and talked on a cell phone with her left. The cardboard sign at her feet said, AT LEAST I'M NOT A HOOKER.

Jo and Tang walked up creaking stairs to the third-floor apartment where Ron Gingrich lived with his girlfriend. A uniformed SFPD officer was standing outside the door. The apartment was small and haphazardly friendly. Batik sheets covered the sagging sofa. Spider plants decorated the television and bookshelf. Hendrix and Grateful Dead posters decorated the walls. The kitchen smelled like bacon and fried eggs.

Gingrich's girlfriend, Clare, was thin and nervous. So were the three Chihuahuas jumping around her feet like grease in a frying pan.