The Memory Collector (31 page)

Newspaper sections lay scattered at her feet. Inserts had fallen out, glossy advertisements and coupon sections, and had slid partway beneath the sofa. But one of the glossy pages wasn’t from the newspaper. It was the corner of an eight-by-ten photograph. Jo bent and picked it up.

It was a wedding photograph, embossed at the bottom with
Misty & Ian, together forever.
It must have fallen from the bookshelf and slipped beneath the sofa.

The Kanans had married in a park. Ian looked young, fit, and handsome in his blue suit. His ice-chip gaze was worldly. Even at twenty he’d possessed a preternatural ability to see straight through people. He looked almost defiantly relaxed. He had his arm around Misty.

She was smiling, bending against his side, holding a bouquet of gardenias. She was wearing a wispy wedding dress, and she was barefoot. She had baby’s breath in her hair. She looked about eighteen.

She was not the woman in the kitchen.

Heart knocking, Jo pored over the photo. She must be making a mistake.

She wasn’t.

The woman in the wedding photo looked much like the woman calling herself Misty. Amazingly like her, in fact. Same sylphlike figure, same creamy skin and sleek caramel hair. And the same pendant hanging around her neck: two dolphins leaping around a sapphire. But the woman in the photo had warm eyes and a gregarious smile, not the chill and resentfulness of the woman Jo had been speaking to. And in the photo Misty had a Celtic tattoo on her right arm.

Outside the windows, the fog had thickened. Jo’s thoughts sharpened to a single word:
imposter.

She began seeing clearly—the fact that the house was always cold and dark, and Misty rarely around. The hesitation about details of the family’s life. The woman’s lack of interest in how Seth would cope with everything.

Because the woman didn’t care about Seth.

Jo’s breathing accelerated. The police had gone. Tina and her boyfriend had gone. She was on her own.

She quietly folded the photo in half, slid it under her sweater, and tucked it in the waistband of her jeans. She stood and turned around.

The imposter was standing six feet from her. She had the iron in her hand.

Steam hissed from it. The woman raised her arm and roared across the living room at Jo.

Hot.
The thing was blazing hot. Jo jumped onto the coffee table and leaped toward the easy chair. The woman was between her and the front door, and
shit,
a hot iron would brand her, melt her face off. The woman spun, swinging the iron in her hand like a bowling ball. Its long insulated cord swished behind her, the heavy plug chittering against the floor like the rattler on a diamondback.

Jo jumped back. Behind her was a bookshelf and the wall. She needed a shield. Something big or—
damn
! The iron swept within a few inches of her. It smashed the lamp and sent it flying to the floor. The light in the room turned bald and glaring.

Jo grabbed a book from the shelf, an atlas. The iron came at her. She held the atlas in front of her and took the blow with it. She heard a crisping sound and smelled burning. Her fingertips, wrapped around the edges of the book, felt a dry impossible heat.

The woman was thinking brutally, not clearly, but she was bound to figure it out—she didn’t need to burn Jo straightaway. If she brained her with the iron, she could knock her out, lay her flat, and ablate her entire dermis from her body, till she was pressed and creased and dead.

With a yell, Jo shoved the book at her. The woman stepped back, off balance. Jo took a wild swing and slammed her hard in the chin. The woman stumbled back, stunned. Jo ducked sideways, trying to get around her, and the woman charged at her again.
Shit.
She saw the woman’s eyes, dead but wild, and the iron, looming near. In desperation she grabbed the woman’s arm, threw herself backward, and rolled to the floor, as though peeling off a rock face and landing in a back somersault.

The woman flailed, head up, and her face hit the corner of the wall where it met the hallway. Jo heard the crack. The woman’s head snapped back and she flopped heavily on top of Jo. The iron fell.

No—Jesus, hot
. . . Jo shrank from it, felt it sizzle against the sleeve of her shirt, fought down a yelp. The iron thunked to the hardwood floor.

The woman’s forehead fell against it. She came alert with a shriek.

Jo shoved the woman aside, skittered to her hands and knees, and crawled away. A hand grabbed her ankle.

Jo tried to pull free. The woman reached for the iron. Jo grabbed the electrical cord and cracked it like a whip. The iron battered its way along the floor. The woman slapped her free hand down to stop it but missed.

Jo kicked loose and stumbled to her feet. Hanging on to the cord, she ran through the living room and into the kitchen. She heard a low growl behind her. With her free arm she swept dishes onto the floor. And a two-liter bottle of olive oil. It shattered and she heard a glug ging sound.

The front door was straight ahead. She heard footsteps behind her. The electrical cord went taut as the woman grabbed the iron again.

Then she heard the long gritty swoop of a shoe sliding across oil and shards of glass. With a thump, the woman went down. Jo glanced back.

The woman was splayed on her back, grimacing. She fumbled for the cabinets and countertop, trying to sit up. She was woozy but not neutralized. And she was surrounded by cutlery.

Jo figured she had thirty seconds. She ran for the door.

24

J
o crashed out the front door into fog the color of concrete. She ran toward the Ducati, struggling to pull the keys from her pocket.

What was
that
?

Goddamn it—the woman inside the house was not Misty Kanan. Jo jumped on the Ducati. With a shaking hand she jammed the key in the ignition. She looked back at the gaping front door.

The woman stumbled into view. She bumped the doorframe and lurched outside. Jo kicked the bike into life. She didn’t have the helmet. She didn’t care. The woman staggered to the Tahoe and opened the door. She reached inside and came out fumbling with something.

A gun.
Shit.
She was struggling with the safety.

Like she was spurring a wild horse, Jo jammed her feet against the pedals and swung the bike toward the street and took off.

She swiped at the controls until she found the headlight. It turned the air in front of her into a white fiberglass wall.

She had to get to the corner. If she could turn onto Fulton, she’d be lost from the woman’s line of sight. Get to Fulton and she could stop, run around, strip naked, and scream, which she really felt like doing, at least the screaming part.

The fog bit at her hands and face. It numbed the air, muffling other sounds. Her eyes streamed. Where was the corner? She had to call Amy Tang. Who the hell was that woman?

A black shape swelled in front of her, low, sleek, big—
car
.

She braked. The vehicle materialized, parking lights like yellow canines, engine muted by the fog. Her back tire locked. The car was rolling slowly but was
right there
. . .

She hit it almost head-on and vaulted straight over the handlebars.
Ball up,
she told herself. She slammed against the hood with a metallic thud and slid into the windshield.

The car shrieked to a stop. She rolled and lay still.

The hood was warm. The engine thrummed. Adrenaline lit her up like an electrical storm. She was too shocked to feel pain yet. She raised her head and looked through the windshield at the horrified face of Alec Shepard.

Shepard jumped out of the Mercedes. “Dr. Beckett?”

She rolled over on the hood of the car, hearing a hum in her head, seeing him through the fog. His dress shirt and blue tie and salt-and-copper beard seemed to pulse.

He rushed to her. “Christ, you came out of nowhere.”

She slid off the hood. “We gotta move.”

Her feet hit the ground. Her legs held. The Ducati lay revving near the curb. Its headlight glared blindly into the fog, illuminating their legs. The mist ate their shadows.

He put a hand under her elbow. “Let me turn on the flashers.”

“No, we have to get out of here.”

“You’re in no condition to go anywhere. We need to stay here and call the police and file an accident report.”

“Woman in Ian’s house has a gun.
Come on.
”

His brow puckered. “Did you hit your head?”

Her fight-or-flight reflex was zooming like the bike’s engine. She put her hands against his chest and shoved him toward the driver’s door.

“She wants to kill me.
Go
.”

He hesitated only a second longer. She lurched to the car and got in. He jumped back behind the wheel and put the car in gear.

Jo could see nothing but fog. “Turn around and get off this street. Come on, get out of here so I can call the police.”

She said
police
with the same vehemence she might have said
rip your nuts off.
It did the trick. He pulled a U-turn and gunned the car down the street toward Fulton.

She fumbled for her seat belt. She was trembling. She could tell that her ribs had taken the brunt of the impact.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“I got your message about the break-in at your house. I came to check on Misty and Seth. I called your cell phone.”

“My phone’s at home.” She held out a tremulous hand. “Give me yours.”

He took it from his jacket and handed it to her. She dialed Amy Tang’s cell. Shepard stopped at the corner, signaled, and turned onto Fulton. Jo glanced over her shoulder to see if the imposter was on their tail, but the night was a solid white wall.

“Where have you been since Ian chased us this afternoon?” she said.

“Staying out of sight.” He cut his eyes at her. “I wasn’t sure whether he found me by following you to the restaurant.”

“Me neither.”

Amy answered the phone, crisp and rushed. “Tang.”

“It’s Jo. Send a unit back to Ian Kanan’s house.”

“What’s wrong?”

“The woman we thought was Misty Kanan is an imposter. She just tried to kill me.”

“Beckett?”

“Putting you on speaker.”

Jo set the phone on the center console and, trying to compose herself, told Tang and Shepard the short form. The Mercedes rolled east on Fulton. Golden Gate Park scrolled past on their right. The trees were a depthless black that absorbed even the fog.

“You in one piece?” Tang said.

“Yeah, but never ask me to take part in an extreme ironing competition.”

“You got it.” Tang’s voice was as sharp as a diamond. “Why is another woman impersonating Kanan’s wife?”

Shepard looked at her. Behind the salt-and-cinnamon beard, his face was taut.

“Is the fake working with Kanan?” Tang said.

“Maybe. Maybe she’s working against him—for the people he’s hunting. And . . .” A thought rose in Jo’s head like clear air. “Kanan knows her.”

Shepard looked at her sharply. “What are you talking about?”

“Your brother knows the imposter. In the E.R. at San Francisco General, she walked right up to him.”

Jo recalled it clearly—the woman’s attitude, her familiarity, her
close
familiarity. “He put his hand on her shoulder. He knows her well.”

Tang said, “So she’s on his team.”

“Maybe.” Jo swept her hair off her face, thinking about it. “But that feels wrong.”

What had happened between Kanan and the imposter in the E.R.?

She turned to Shepard. “Where’s Misty?”

“I don’t know.”

“When did you last see her?”

He raised his shoulders. “Maybe six weeks ago.”

“How’s Ian and Misty’s marriage?” Jo said.

“Solid. Totally.”