The Memory Collector (29 page)

Tang stopped the unmarked car on the street outside Jo’s house. In the vanishing light, the forested hills of the Presidio had darkened to black.

Jo opened the door of the car and got out. Tang leaned across.

“Beckett, this is unspooling fast. And two hundred eighty-three people were on Kanan’s flight yesterday.”

Jo held on to the door. “I know. We can’t determine how quickly the next strike is coming, but we have to presume it’s already inbound.”

“Find him. Dig into Kanan’s worm-eaten psyche and figure out where he is, before more people get dead.” She gave Jo an unblinking look. “Get yourself checked out, too.”

Jo nodded, feeling the gulp rise in her throat again, and began to shut the door. Tang lowered her voice.

“And your blouse is buttoned incorrectly.”

Jo looked down. She turned hot. She shut the car door and jogged up her front steps fumbling with her buttons.

When she opened the door, Tina leaned out the kitchen doorway.

“Hey, sis. Get changed or we’ll be late.”

Tina had a sunny smile on her face and a leftover doughnut in her hand. She was wearing black workout pants and a red tank top. She stuffed the doughnut in her mouth and licked sugar from her thumb.

Jo kissed her on the cheek. “I know, girls’ night out. I can’t.”

Tina’s shoulders dropped. “Don’t do this.”

“It’s an emergency. I’m sorry.” Jo handed Tina her phone and swept past her to the kitchen. “And please get rid of the ‘Sick Sad Little World’ ringtone.”

“Fine, I’ll give you something cheery from the Killers. And I’ll tell you what we’re doing tonight.” Tina set the phone down and picked up her backpack. She took out a filmy turquoise scarf to which were sewn four dozen cheap silver coins. She shook it. The coins jingled and winked in the light.

“Are you loony?” Jo said. “Belly dancing?”

Tina tied it around her hips. “I told you—it’s cultural.”

“Our culture? You and me and Nefertiti? Hon, I will never tie that scarf around myself and shimmy around a dance floor. I have no equipment to shimmy
with
.”

“You promised,” she said.

“I know. But I can’t.” Jo shook her head, consternated and amused at her sister’s enthusiasms. “You like shiny things, Tina. Disco balls, cheap coins . . .”

Tina turned toward the French doors. “What was that?”

In the back yard, in the dusk, a small dark shape had plunged to the ground.

“I don’t know,” Jo said.

She went to the doors. As she peered at the lawn, another object hit the grass like a lawn dart falling to earth. She looked next door at the dark second-story windows of Ferd’s rent-a-mansion.

“I don’t like this.”

She opened the French doors and went outside. On the grass lay a plush toy squid and a small floppy tiger. They were ragged and pathetic.

Tina walked up beside her. “Beanie Babies.” She bent down. “They look . . . oh, yee-eww. Why would your neighbor mangle stuffed animals and throw them at your lawn?”

In reply, another one plunged through the air like a doomed sky-diver and crashed at Jo’s feet.

“He wouldn’t,” Jo said. “It’s not Ferd. It’s his alter-id, Mr. Peebles.”

“His pet’s a bunny-basher?” Tina peered at the darkened mansion. “What are you going to do?”

“Not a thing. Ferd can retrieve this stuff when he gets home.”

“Aren’t you going to stop him?”

Jo headed for the house. “I ain’t the monkey police. And unfortunately, I have bigger problems to attend to.”

Tina looked at the limp bunny again. “They’ve still got the tags on, covered by tag protectors. Jo—they’re mint-condition collectibles.”

“Not anymore.”

“Uh-oh.” Tina crouched down. “It’s scorched.”

“Forget about it. Ferd will have to deal with this.”

“No,
freshly
scorched. I can smell it.” She glanced at Jo and up at the darkened window. Gingerly she put a fingertip on the toy’s smushed little face. “It’s still hot.”

Jo came back and picked up the ragged bunny. It smelled of burned polyester. Even in the dusk, she could see a blackened patch between its ears. A little flame of alarm crackled inside her. She looked at the window and saw a flare of yellow light inside the black frame.

“Oh, crap.”

The light disappeared. Then it bloomed again and flickered. And vanished.

“He’s got a lighter,” she said.

She ran inside her kitchen with Tina on her heels. She opened a cabinet door and grabbed a set of keys from the rack inside.

“Ferd works at Compurama on Geary. Call and tell him to come home.”

The shortest distance to Ferd’s house was straight over the fence. Jo rushed out the kitchen door and across the grass, launched herself at the wood, grabbed the crossbeam, and scrambled over. She landed on Ferd’s lawn with a thump and ran toward his back door, sorting keys. As she charged up his back steps, she saw another toy rocket from the upstairs window. It was a vividly colored bird. And this one either had a bright gleam in its eye, or it was alight.

Damn it. Molotov cockatoo.

Jo turned the key in the lock and raced through Ferd’s dimly lit kitchen to the stairs. She ran up two at a time.

Upstairs was dark. She stopped at the top of the stairs and fumbled along the wall for a light switch. Ahead was the partially opened door to the Beanie Baby launch site.

She knew from trial and error—better known as failure—that when confronting a nimble, pea-brained adversary with opposable thumbs, the first task was to confine him. Which meant shutting him in a room with the door and window locked.

But she couldn’t simply close the door down the hall. Do that, and Mr. Peebles could still burn the house down. She had to get in there and grab the lighter before he climbed out the window and ran off to stuff burning Beanies through her neighbors’ mail slots.

Maybe Ferd was right. Maybe a monkey virus did exist.

And was making
her
crazy.

Quietly she approached the door. In the dark beyond it she heard cooing sounds and the click of the lighter wheel. A bobby pin was jammed into the lock on the door. The little sociopath had figured out how to jimmy it.

She slipped inside the room and shut the door behind her.

Mr. Peebles was crouched on a desk in front of the open window. His tiny fingers were working the wheel of the lighter. His next sacrificial victim, a floppy hound dog, lay splayed on the desktop in front of him. When the door clicked shut, his febrile hands went still and his head swiveled. His eyes, glaring at Jo in the dark, reflected the gleam of distant streetlights.

He sat as still as an idol. A tiny, hairy, manic idol that may or may not have been vaccinated for rabies. Jo crept toward him.

With a screech he threw the lighter out the window, like a busted dealer dumping his junk. He grabbed the floppy hound and leaped onto a floor lamp. Jo crossed the room and slammed the window. Mr. Peebles sprang to a bookshelf, clutching the puppy to his chest.

On the floor in the corner of the room, a plastic container tub was tipped over. The lid had been pried off and dozens of Beanie Babies spilled onto the floor. Some were ripped apart. Others had been—

“Oh, you nasty monkey.”

They’d been . . . loved to death. A terrible sound rose in her head. Barry White, singing “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe.”

On an easy chair was a larger, thoroughly debauched collectible. And if Tickle Me Elmo wanted a cigarette to celebrate his night with Mr. Peebles, he was out of luck. The lighter was gone.

“Couldn’t you just pee in his shoes like a normal pet?” she said.

Ferd was either in denial or too oblivious to see that what ailed his helper monkey wasn’t viral but hormonal. She glanced around the room. There were no World of Warcraft stickers, nor a Klingon dictionary. The bookshelf contained coffee table books about Italy. This office didn’t belong to Ferd, but to the owners of the house. So, probably, did the collectibles.

Mr. Peebles chuffed and glared at her. She reached for him and he nearly flew into her arms. He curled against her shoulder, clutching her sweater with three prehensile extremities and the toy hound with the fourth.

“Where’s your crate?”

The one strewn with copies of
Plush Toy Monthly
and
Monkey Hustler
magazine.

Holding him tightly, she headed up the hall. Two doors down, in Ferd’s office, was a six-by-six-foot crate with a climbing tree and comfy bedding. She peeled Mr. Peebles’s fingers and toes from her shirt, turned him smartly around, and set him inside. She latched the door and turned to the desk, looking for something to seal it with. Her hand bumped the computer mouse and Ferd’s screen woke up.

She inhaled. A vein began throbbing in her temple.

On-screen was a Technicolor image downloaded from an episode of
Star Trek
. She recognized the sexy Borg woman wearing a silver bodysuit slicked to her skin like spray paint. Her hip was thrust out. She was hoisting a weapon the size of a whaling harpoon.

Jo’s head had been Photoshopped onto her body.

In the crate, Mr. Peebles screeched and jumped on the bars. She gaped at the screen.

Seven of Jo. She didn’t know whether to rip out the computer’s guts or laugh her head off.

Out the window, movement caught her eye from next door. She looked across the fence and down into her brightly lit kitchen. Froze.

A man was inside.

Fear lit her up like lightning. From the sharp upstairs angle, she could see only his legs. He was slight and nimble, wore jeans with a blue bandanna hanging from the back pocket. He walked across the kitchen and turned, slowly, looking around.

Where was Tina?

She stuck her hand in her jeans pocket for her phone. Came up empty.

Shit.
Her phone was on her kitchen table. She picked up the phone on Ferd’s desk and punched 911.

She couldn’t see Tina anywhere. The living room looked empty. Upstairs, the lights were off. The man turned to the kitchen table and opened her laptop.

“Nine-one-one emergency.”

“There’s an intruder in my house.” She gave the dispatcher the address. Her voice sounded chipped. “My sister’s in there. Hurry.”

“Stay on the line, ma’am,” the dispatcher said. “I’m sending a police car.”

As the intruder’s hands moved across her keyboard, a second man’s set of legs strolled into the kitchen, holding her satchel. He dumped it out on the kitchen table.

She tried to catch her breath and couldn’t. “There’s another one.”

The second man, stockier than the first, picked up Jo’s notebook and flipped it open.

What was in the notebook?

What wasn’t? Ruth Fischer’s name and number. Snarky notes on Riva Calder. A mention that Alec Shepard was Ian Kanan’s brother.

Misty Kanan’s home phone number and address.

“Get the cops here. The intruders are going through my computer and my notes on a missing person case and murder investigation. They’re going to find the address of the missing man’s wife and son. Get somebody over to her house, too.” She gave the dispatcher Misty Kanan’s name and address.

Sounds of typing and background chatter. “Officers are on their way, ma’am. Stay on the line.”

On their way
wasn’t good enough. “My sister’s in there. I’m going to find some neighbors and go get her.”

The dispatcher’s voice hopped up half an octave. “Ma’am, sit tight. Do not confront the intruders. Stay where you are—”

Jo dropped the phone on the desk and ran for the stairs. She wanted a weapon. She wanted her
katana
.

In Ferd’s kitchen she pulled open a drawer. Silverware rattled. She moved to the next. Knives. She grabbed a serrated bread knife with a twelve-inch blade. She hefted it. It was heavy, well-balanced, and looked wicked. The stainless steel blade glinted when she turned it.

She looked out Ferd’s back door. Two intruders were in her house. Were more of them outside, waiting in a car or hiding in the park across the street?

Palms tingling, she ran quietly out the back door and down the steps. What did the men want? Was it Kanan and his posse? She bent low, keeping her head below the top of the fence. Holding the knife along her leg, she ran to the corner of the mansion. She peeked around at the darkened sidewalk that led along the side of the house to the street.

Shadows faded to darkness. She couldn’t tell whether anyone was hiding there. Holding her breath, she began tiptoeing along the sidewalk.

From the far side of the fence came a man’s voice. “Back door’s open. What’s out here?”

Feet stepped onto her patio. “What’s all this crap on the lawn?”

She heard a jangling sound. She slowed. A whisper passed her on the air and a hand grabbed her shoulder.

She spun, bringing up the knife, and found herself staring into Tina’s wide and frightened eyes. Tina’s jaw fell open and she inhaled, about to scream. Jo threw a hand across her sister’s mouth and pressed her against the fence. The coins on Tina’s hip scarf clicked like nickels pouring from a slot machine.

“You hear that?” said one of the men.

Jo held Tina tight against the fence. Tina’s gaze kinked back and forth. She was shaking like a Chihuahua.

“Forget it. Get inside,” said the second man.

Jo took Tina’s elbow and ran with her up the steps and back inside Ferd’s dim kitchen.

“What’s going on?” Tina hissed.

Jo clasped her sister hard, shaking, knowing she was about to cry. “What are you doing here? How did you get out?”

“I called the computer store and left a message for Ferd and then I wondered if you’d caught the monkey,” Tina said in a blistering whisper. “So I followed you out the back door and I heard men in the house, and it scared the shit out of me, so I climbed over the fence like you did and . . . and . . .” Eyes down. “Knife? Who? Jo . . .”