The Memory Collector (23 page)

This time when Murdock and Vance hauled her through the door into the cold garage, they seemed on the verge of losing it. Murdock shoved her hard toward the chair that sat on the concrete beneath the bare bulb.

“Sit.”

She lowered herself slowly into the chair and swept her hair over her shoulder. They had total physical control over her, but she could try to maintain emotional control, at least over her self-respect. Murdock ripped the duct tape from her mouth. He positioned himself in front of her, bent over, and put his hands on his knees so his wet gums and shining bald head were at eye level with her.

“Where’s Ian?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“He tells you everything that goes on at the company. He’d tell you where he’s going.”

“No.”

Vance strutted up. “You want me to break out the enhanced interrogation techniques, bitch?”

He grabbed his crotch. The spit stuck in her throat. Murdock swatted him back as if he were a fly, and Vance retreated to the far side of the garage with a sneer, adjusting his saggy jeans.

“Who’s Ian after?” Murdock said.

“I don’t know.”

“How do we find him?”

Murdock was right in her face, breathing the words on her. But she heard what he wasn’t saying:
How do we find Ian before he finds us?

They were scared and getting desperate. Something had happened. The third man, the one with extreme acne, wasn’t around anymore. Something had screwed up their plans. Something, maybe, named Ian Kanan.

“Are they dragging you into it?”
she had asked him.

And the results were not pretty. Inside her heart of dark hearts, she rejoiced.

Murdock leaned closer and nuzzled her hair with his nose. His words sounded moist. “Play nice, remember?”

Just so they didn’t tell her to play dress-up in the warm clothes they’d brought along, the ones that would shout “Riva Calder.” What was that line Dave Grohl sang? About the face you see, mirroring your stare?

“Where’s Ian?” Murdock said.

That song had another line.
I’m the enemy.
The one who will bring a foe to his knees.

She swallowed her fear and stared him in the eye. “What’ll you give me if I tell you?”

Murdock’s gaze went flat. “Wrong question. What’ll I give you if you don’t?”

Jo had a clear view of Sixteenth Street through the front windows of Ti Couz. The restaurant was short on decoration and long on atmosphere, with high ceilings, glossy paint, wobbly tables. Great food. Plates clattered and waiters shouted good-naturedly at the cooks in the kitchen. At the next table a burly, bearded couple held hands. They looked like grizzlies in button-down shirts.

Watching for Shepard, Jo leafed distractedly through a copy of the
Bay Guardian
. It was like browsing a time portal, absorbing the latest manifesto from the Summer of Rage. The Man, no surprise, was bent on oppressing the people.

Her phone chirped with a text message from Gabe.
10 min. out.

Through the plate-glass windows she saw Alec Shepard stride along the sidewalk. He was the only man on the block wearing a suit. Not just any suit, but one the color of a stealth fighter, sleek and tailored, with a crisp white shirt and an electric-blue tie that hung on his chest like a broadsword. He was built to substantial dimensions, with the broad head and chest of a bison. His gray hair and salt-and-copper beard were clipped close. His stride was confident. He stepped through the door, took off his sunglasses, and gave the room the same bottomless stare that Ian Kanan had given her aboard the 747. Maybe it was a patented Chira-Sayf glare.

She waved. He strode to the table and shook her hand.

“I can only stay a few minutes. The police called me. Apparently, someone stole my new Navigator from the driveway this morning.” He sat down across from her. “It’s turning out to be quite a day.”

Shepard didn’t hesitate to put his back to the windows. Even though Jo had warned him that Kanan was after him, the idea of a deadly threat seemed not to fit with his mental landscape.

“Please explain this melodramatic message you left with my secretary,” he said.

“Ian Kanan may be planning to kill you.”

“Absurd.”

Jo held his gaze, trying to judge his tone, his attitude, whether he was nervous or frightened. He was stone.

“Why do you think it’s absurd?” she said.

He put his sunglasses on the table. “I think, in the circumstances, you’re the one who owes me an explanation.”

“Haven’t you spoken to the police?”

“About the auto theft. I just flew in from Montreal. If there’s anything else, the captain didn’t get it over the radio.”

Jo leaned back. “Have you heard anything in the past thirty hours? Kanan has suffered a brain injury that’s caused short-term memory loss.”

His mouth twitched, like a fishhook had caught in his lip. “I heard. I want to talk to the neurologist about that. I’d like you to stick to evaluating Ian’s psyche. Tell me why you’ve reached this bizarre conclusion that he’s become a homicidal maniac.”

“Mr. Shepard—”

“Alec.”

“Alec, strange things are going on at Chira-Sayf. One of your employees is missing. Another lied to me two hours ago about her identity. Yesterday Ian assaulted me. He thinks he’s been poisoned. He has a list of names written on his arm, starting with yours, and a declarative sentence ending in ‘they die.’ And I think his injury originated in the theft of materials from your nanotech lab in Johannesburg.”

Shepard’s eyes were the pale gray of dirty quartz. He peered at her a long moment, assessing her the way she’d assessed him.

Jo’s face heated. This wasn’t psychoanalysis. She couldn’t afford to sit there like an analyst waiting for defenses to fall, connections to click, insights to light the room. She generally avoided pushing people to respond to her questions. When their memories and impressions unrolled without her prompting, she got more honest answers. But Shepard was stonewalling.

“Who sent Ian to Africa?” she said.

“When?”

“Last week. South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia. That’s where he arrived home from yesterday.”

“I didn’t know he was in Africa.”

“No?” Jo put her hands flat on the table. “Why did Chira-Sayf shut down the Johannesburg lab?”

“That’s not within your purview.”

“What nanotech projects did the lab work on?”

“I thought you wanted to talk about Ian.”

“I do. Tell me about your relationship with him. Start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out. Explain whether you think he could be involved in a theft from the lab, whether your nano project could have poisoned him, and why he was seen walking away from the scene of a murder at the marina this morning.”

That got him to drop the mask for a second. Shock lit his gaze. “Murder?”

“Alec, SFPD detectives have been trying to reach you. A man was found floating dead in the water next to
Somebody’s Baby
. He’d been stabbed to death. Ian was seen leaving the marina immediately afterward.”

“That’s . . .” He shut his eyes.

“Alec?”

Ignoring her, he took out his phone, dialed, and put it to his ear. “Jenny? Put me through to legal.”

Shepard rubbed his forehead. His face had turned as red as a radish. Behind him, outside on the street, the sunlight jangled off passing vehicles. Jo realized she was clenching her jaw.

“Bill? Alec. We have a hell of a problem. Why didn’t you contact me?”

Beyond the parade of vehicles on Sixteenth Street, Jo saw the shine of maroon paint. Her eyes refocused. A red SUV was parked across the street from the restaurant. Her mind clicked back to the CCTV photo of Kanan taken at the marina.

“Alec—the car that was stolen from your driveway. A Navigator?”

He looked up, irritated at the interruption.

She leaned forward. “Is it a red Navigator?”

“Yes.”

She nodded out the window. “That one?”

Ian Kanan stared through the Navigator’s tinted window at the little restaurant on Sixteenth. He saw Alec sitting at a table inside. A woman was sitting across from him, in the gunfighter’s seat. Young, dark hair, good-looking, leaning toward Alec with an intense expression on her face.

He scanned the dashboard. Next to a bunch of Post-it notes, a photo I.D. was clipped to the heating vent. JOHANNA BECKETT, M.D. Same gal.

So Beckett was in this, connected somehow. He held up his phone and snapped a photo of the two of them.

He looked at Alec, and his stomach went hollow. His mind, the bright bubble of
now
where he existed, filled with the word
betrayal.

He took the gun from the small of his back. It was an HK semiautomatic. He checked the magazine and racked the slide to chamber a round.

Shepard craned his head toward the window, phone to his ear. His annoyance turned to puzzlement, then surprise.

He ended the call. “That’s my Cal sticker in the back window. I’ll be damned. Son of a bitch—what are the odds?”

He pushed his chair back. Jo reached across the table and put a hand on his arm.

The Navigator’s windows were tinted. The wintry sunlight bleached the glass a cold yellow. They couldn’t see the driver.

“Ian could have taken it,” he said.

“How? He has a key?”

His brows furrowed. “No. But he knows the procedure to disarm the alarm, and where I keep a spare key. He set up the security system for our fleet of corporate vehicles.”

He moved again to stand. Jo tightened her grip on his forearm.

“Why hasn’t he come in? Alec? What’s going to happen if we walk outside?”

“Nothing good.” He stared out the window. His splintery voice seemed to scratch the air. “Are you going to call the police?”

So he did think Kanan was dangerous. “Yeah. After we get out of his line of sight.”

She waited until a waiter swept past, arms laden with thick white dinner plates. He stopped at the burly gay couple’s table and began unloading them, blocking the view through the window. She grabbed her satchel and slid from her seat, keeping a hand on Alec’s arm.

“Follow me. Don’t look around. Don’t draw attention to yourself.”

He stood up. She led him back through the restaurant and pushed through the kitchen door. The cooks looked up but she hurried past and led Shepard out the back door into an alley.

She glanced around. “We need to move away from here, as fast as possible. Where’d you park?”

“Across from the restaurant.”

“In sight of the Navigator?”

“Unfortunately.”

Jo knew the neighborhood, but not well. The Mission police station was several blocks away, and to reach it they’d have to cross Sixteenth. The alley ran only the length of that block, meaning they would have to cross Sixteenth in sight of the Navigator.