The Memory Collector (13 page)

“The psychological evaluation requires me to map the victim’s life. I investigate the victim’s entire history, meaning medical, psychological, and emotional—family, relationships, marriage . . .”

The blush started at the base of Misty’s neck and rose up her cheeks. “You want me to talk about our sex life?”

Jo put up a hand. “I’m just saying, relationships are something I ask about.”

Misty licked her lips. “No, it’s fine. Ian and I are close. We always have been. It was chemistry at first sight.”

The blush was so hot it was practically pulsing. Jo thought that if they turned off the lights, it might bathe the room in a scarlet glow.

“He’s my soul mate. I could forget myself in him. I could . . .” She stopped, realizing she’d used the word
forget
. Her eyes looked flash-bulb hot. “Great, a Freudian slip.”

Maybe so.

“I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Psychiatrists note things like that, Misty. But we don’t judge.”

Misty worked her jaw back and forth, as though saying,
Sure
. “We’re happy in bed. How’s that?”

“That’s fine.”

Misty’s foot continued jittering. She looked at the floor. When she looked up again, her eyes were bright with tears.

“What’s he going to be like from now on? Is he going to forget me?”

Jo paused, working out how much she could say and with what certainty.

“I’m his wife. And I’m a school nurse. You can tell me anything.”

“His memories before the injury should remain intact,” Jo said.

“So there’s no way he’s going to forget his own name, where he grew up, what he does for a living, that kind of thing.”

“No.”

“How about our marriage?”

“He’ll remember. His amnesia isn’t the kind you see portrayed in most movies. Anterograde amnesia means he can’t form
new
memories.”

“So when he sees me, he’ll know who I am. He’ll come home and know this is our house.”

“Yes.”

Misty’s knuckles, clutching her knee, were white. “And over time, he’ll improve?”

“We don’t know for certain, but it’s unlikely.”

Misty’s eyes flashed like a strobe, white and cold. Just as quick, the look was gone. “You don’t really know what happens to the brain, do you? You’re a shrink. You deal with emotions, not medicine. Breakthroughs happen every week.”

And she was a
nurse
? “Not with this, I’m afraid.”

Misty looked at Jo as though taking her photo with a crime scene camera. “Let me tell you one thing for certain. This is a lock. Ian and I love each other. From the day I first set eyes on him I knew he was the man I wanted. I still know it, and I’m not going to let him slip away. I will fight to help him.”

Her stare lost its chill and seemed to throb, as though she were daring Jo to contradict her. It was as if she’d let a crack open in her armor and had poured out words she had kept dammed inside for so long that they had nearly turned to rust.

Tang said, “Why would he bring back two daggers and a scimitar from the Middle East?”

Misty’s eyes lit briefly, a dull flash, as if from the weird steel of the knife Jo had seen hanging from Kanan’s hand. “He works for some strange and egocentric people. They probably want to hang that stuff on their walls like trophies.”

Her cheeks were mottled with white patches. Jo took it as a sign of stress. It was the pale pepper of humiliation.

“These guys at Chira-Sayf, they’re all about who swings the biggest dick. But did they get those swords themselves? No, they had Ian do it.” Her face was sour. “They’re a bunch of empty jockstraps.”

“We need to speak to his boss,” Jo said. “Which empty jockstrap would that be?”

Misty stood up. “Riva Calder. I’ll get you the phone number.”

She walked to the kitchen island, tore off a piece of scratch paper, wrote down a number, and gave it to Jo.

Tang scooted forward on the sofa. “Who’s Alec?”

Misty nearly did a double take, like they’d head-faked her. “Alec?”

Tang looked up. “Yes.”

Misty hesitated. “Maybe it’s Alec Shepard. He’s the CEO of Chira-Sayf.”

Tang wrote it down. “Does Ian have a beef with Shepard?”

“No. Of course not. What are you getting at?”

“When your husband attacked Dr. Beckett, she saw a list of names written on his arm, including ‘Alec.’” Tang underlined a word in her notebook. “And ‘They die.’”

Misty stood stone still. Her face paled to the color of potato paste. “Hold on. You think he wrote a hit list on his own arm? No way.”

Tang clicked her pen. “Can you offer another explanation?”

Misty put up a hand, like a traffic cop. “Why are you attacking Ian like this? What are you trying to prove?”

“We’re trying to find out what he’s doing,” Tang said.

“You have an agenda, and it isn’t to help him.” Her voice rose. “You think he’s on a vendetta? That’s paranoid. It’s ridiculous.”

Jo said, “If you know what else it could be, please tell us.”

“I have no idea. Maybe Ian’s worried about those people. Or desperate to contact them.”

“But not to contact you?”

Jo might have slapped her. She winced. “Why are you attacking me? My God, Ian has a memory problem. Of course he wrote things down.”

“‘They die’?”

“Jesus, I don’t believe this. He’s in trouble. He’s sick. The longer he’s missing the more danger he’s in. And you come here and tell me he’s the problem?”

Tang clicked her pen. “Who has he gone out to kill?”

“He hasn’t.”

“Do you know that for certain?” Tang said.

Misty clenched her fists. “How dare you? You think you can get inside Ian’s head deeper than I can?” She turned to Jo. “You think you can know him better than me? Why—because he pinned you against a wall for five seconds?”

Tang said, “Is Ian happy at work?”

“Very.”

“Have you heard anything about thefts from the company?”

“Now you’re insinuating that he’s a thief?” Misty’s gaze didn’t heat so much as distill to a clean, frozen sheet of glass. “Ian is an honest man. He would never steal from anybody. Never. And I’m done talking to you.”

Tang held on a moment, as though considering whether to press her weight. Then she closed her notebook and stood up. “We’re trying to get at the truth, Mrs. Kanan. We’ll talk again.”

Jo followed Tang to the door. Misty held it open. She didn’t say a word to the lieutenant, but as Jo passed by, she put a hand on her arm.

“All I want is Ian.” Her tears looked hot. “Find him.”

At the curb, in the damp wind of sunset, Tang pulled out her cigarettes. “Playing good shrink, bad cop with you is a blast. That was illuminating.”

“That was painful,” Jo said.

“She knows more than she’s telling. Even odds her husband is crooked, and she’s covering for him.” She lit a cigarette, inhaled, and squinted at Jo. “We need to find out what he stole, and from who. Add it to your to-do list.”

10

R
on Gingrich carried the last two bags of crushed ice to the aluminum bucket on the terrace near the pool. He split them open and dumped them in.

From the house, Jared called, “Don’t forget to light the tiki torches.”

Gingrich sent him a salute. Since getting off the flight from London he hadn’t had two minutes to himself. He strolled to the garage, flip-flops slapping, got a case of Stella Artois from the stack, and schlepped it back to the terrace. His ponytail batted in the wind. The clouds had blown off and the evening was chilly and sparkling clear.

He pushed his fists into the small of his back. And he wondered yet again how he’d ended up working as a gofer for a twenty-six-year-old kid, a boy genius computer game designer who considered himself a rock star for the twenty-first century.

Ron shoved beer bottles into the ice in the king-size bucket. The previous day and a half seemed like a blur. Jet lag really was a bitch, especially at his age. Sure, he knew how to make things happen on the road and off. He’d managed tours for heavy metal bands for twenty years, gone on the road once with the Grateful Dead, before coming over to Jared’s Silicon Valley start-up as a jack-of-all-trades, the get-it-done guy. Buy the boss twenty black T-shirts, and the right brand saggy jeans, and Crocs to match whatever color the cool CEOs were wearing down the road in Sunnyvale.

He was willing to put up with plenty of shit. He wasn’t too proud to work hard, he liked to tell people.

He gazed past the pool and down the hill past the cypresses, toward the bay. From up here in this ten-million-dollar neighborhood, the water was an iridescent gray-blue in the sunset. The Sausalito ferry chugged for harbor. He could see planes taking off from SFO. From this distance they looked like silver ants crawling the sky.

What was he supposed to be doing?

He looked at his hands. He was holding two warm beers.

Ice bucket. The party. Right. He stuck the beers in the pail.

From the house came voices. People were arriving. Young tech hipsters—the guest list was mostly game designers, overgrown teenage boys who’d hit the jackpot and found a way to rake in the bucks playing video games. Plus some of the venture capitalists who funded them. And a few people from the CGI end of the film industry. Maybe even one or two folks from Industrial Light & Magic.

Jared stuck his head out the patio door. “Ron, the tiki torches. And get rid of that stack of tools by the pool shed. Somebody might trip over it, and I have lawyers coming.”

“Sure, boss.”

“And don’t call me boss.”

“Sure.”
Ass.

Jared shouldn’t mind being called boss. Jerry Garcia hadn’t minded when Ron called
him
boss. God, he missed the Dead.

He took his iPod from his pocket, stuck in the earbuds, and scrolled through his playlist. When “Attics of My Life” rolled into his ears, he smiled.

He got his lighter and lit the tiki torches around the pool. A chilly wind was blowing, but the boss wanted atmosphere. His gaze wandered and he saw jets taking off from SFO.

That guy going nuts on the flight from London—talk about a freak-out. When the man ran up the aisle to the emergency exit, Gingrich thought for a second that the plane was on fire. But the flames were only in the dude’s head. Gingrich had watched him, thinking,
WTF?
Then he and Jared looked at each other and knew that if they didn’t do something, it wouldn’t get done. They jumped up and wrestled the wacko away from the emergency exit.

He rubbed the cut on his arm where the man’s belt buckle had scratched him in the scuffle.

“Ron?”

Jared sounded perplexed. Gingrich turned.

The sun was down, the tiki torches flickering on the terrace. The noise from the party was bombastic.

“Where have you been?” Jared said.

“Going to put away those tools, like you asked.”