Authors: Meg Gardiner

The Memory Collector (5 page)

BOOK: The Memory Collector

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“You’re the last off,” she said. “The crew needs to shut down the plane. Let’s talk in the terminal.”

He looked her up and down, a slow glance. “Sure.”

The police officers bracketed him up the aisle, Weigel ahead, Paterson behind. Following a few yards back, Jo saw how Kanan’s hands hung loose at his sides. It seemed casual, but the way he held himself reminded her of a gunslinger. When they passed the emergency exit row, he saw the partially opened door. He frowned at it, his head clocking around as he walked.

“Why’s the exit open?” he said.

Jo could have sworn the temperature dropped ten degrees. Kanan kept walking. Ahead stood the two men who had tackled him. Kanan picked up his pace. Abruptly he reached into his back pocket.

Officer Paterson said, “Hey.”

Kanan ignored him, and then it was too late. By the time he pulled out a cell phone, Paterson was on him.

Paterson was fast. Kanan was faster. He spun, grabbed Paterson’s hand, smashed his elbow, and drove the cop to his knees.

Paterson cried out. The British flight attendant said, “Bloody hell.” Up the aisle, Officer Weigel turned around.

For a fraction of a second Kanan’s face was ferocious. He stared down at Paterson. Then confusion seemed to sweep over him again.

“What . . . ?”

Kanan gazed at Paterson with horror. Behind him, Officer Weigel unsnapped a holster and charged.

Jo put out her hands. “Wait—”

Weigel drew a Taser. “Doc, get back.”

He fired. The darts hit. Kanan jerked rigid.

Paterson broke free. Kanan stood motionless. And, so quick Jo barely sensed what was coming, Kanan’s hands drew upward and turned in, as if he were cringing. They drew into balls against his chest. His eyes blanked. His gaze rolled sideways, and then his head followed, slowly, turning to the left as though pulled in a circle by a weird magnet. Paterson stumbled to his feet and charged.

“Don’t!” Jo shouted.

She was too late. Paterson tackled Kanan, who went down like a tree.

Jo ran toward them. “Officer, stop. No.”

Paterson was wrestling Kanan. “Face down.”

Kanan didn’t respond. He continued rolling leftward, hands clenched to his chest, face pressed against the floor.

“Hands behind your back,” Paterson said breathlessly.

Jo grabbed Paterson by the shoulders. “Stop. He’s having a seizure.”

“He’s resisting.” Paterson grunted, straining to pull Kanan’s hands down.

“Officer, he’s seizing,” Jo said. “Get off. Move.”

Kanan wasn’t jerking or flailing or beating his head against the floor. He was simply gone, into a realm where bright lines flared at the corners of his vision and a panoply of color spun across the mind. He kept turning.

“Partial seizure,” Jo said. “Get off him.
Now.
”

K
anan lay in the aisle of the jet, turning as if on a rotisserie. Jo tried to pull Paterson away from him.

“Call the paramedics,” she said.

Officer Weigel loomed over them, Taser in his hand. “He got a hundred thousand volts. He’ll come out of it.”

“The Taser may have triggered the seizure, but something else is wrong with him. Officer Paterson, let go.”

Paterson relented. Jo knelt at Kanan’s side, fear pouring down her back like cold water. She wasn’t a trauma doc. She was a forensic psychiatrist. In her line of work the crisis cases never presented medical emergencies. Her crisis cases were already dead.

She shook it off, telling herself:
Go through it step by step. First, ABC. Airway, breathing, circulation.
She checked that Kanan was breathing and had a pulse. Then she stripped off her sweater, rolled it up, and tucked it under his head. Heat was pouring off his skin.

“Paramedics and an ambulance. Call them,” she said.

“You’re not going to section him?” Paterson said.

“No. I’m getting him to an E.R.”

Paterson got on the radio. Jo checked Kanan’s face and head for fractures and lacerations. The only cuts she could see were the gouges on his forearm. She avoided touching them and began to wish she’d brought latex gloves. In the aisle she spied his cell phone. She picked it up. Looked at dialed calls—an area code 415 number, about forty-seven times.

Like an ebbing wave, the seizure subsided. Kanan stopped turning and lay limp on the floor. His eyes closed and opened again. Above Jo, Paterson’s radio leaked static.

She put a hand on Kanan’s shoulder. “Mr. Kanan? Ian?”

She heard the clink of handcuffs being removed from a utility belt.

“Don’t,” she said. “He has a head injury. Where are the paramedics?”

“On their way,” Paterson said. “He assaulted a police officer. He needs to be restrained.”

“You’re not going to arrest him.”

“That’s not your call. Sectioning him is. You going to do that?”

Kanan shifted. “What’s . . . am—river’s too . . .”

“Ian,” Jo said.

“All wrong it’s . . .” He looked at her as though seeing her through a distorted video link. “Slick it’s too . . . falls—misty it’s . . .” He blinked and grabbed Jo’s arm. “Get you.”

He began breathing rapidly. Jo took his pulse. One forty-eight.

“Is anybody here to meet you?” she said. He was wearing a wedding ring. “Is your wife picking you up?”

His gaze sparked, as though her voice had lit a fuse in his brain. His eyes rolled back to whites and his lips parted. Beneath Jo’s hand his body tensed.

He convulsed. This time the seizure was grand mal.

The ambulance rolled north through the rain on 101, its siren shooing traffic out of its way. Kanan lay strapped to a gurney, unresponsive. Jo sat by his shoulder. The paramedic kept her balance as the vehicle took a curve. She called Kanan’s name and flashed a penlight in his eyes.

Officer Paterson lurked by the back doors, baby face puckering with suspicion. His left hand ran back and forth over the handcuffs on his utility belt.

Jo shook her head at him. “You can’t cuff a seizure patient.”

“One hand to the stretcher.”

“No. We need to be able to maneuver him. If he vomits we have to keep him from inhaling it, or he could die.”

“He’s a loose cannon. And he’s going to be under arrest,” Paterson said.

“If you think you can Mirandize him in this condition, you’re the one who needs sectioning.”

Kanan groaned. The paramedic said, “Ian, can you hear me?”

A gust of wind whistled over the ambulance and flung rain across the windows. Kanan’s eyes woozed open.

Jo took his hand. “What’s your name?”

He blinked as though trying to focus. “Ian Kanan.”

His gaze cleared. His pupils were equal, reactive to light, and had a wolfish glow. Jo felt a prickle along the back of her neck.

On the jetliner, Kanan had dropped Paterson to his knees with the speed of a train wreck. Despite her spirited defense of him, Jo didn’t want Kanan to do worse to anybody in the ambulance.

“You had a seizure. Lie still,” she said.

“I what?”

“Do you have epilepsy?”

He frowned. “That’s a crazy question.”

Jo was board-certified in both psychiatry and neurology, but as a forensic psychiatrist, her work dealt almost exclusively with history. When the police or medical examiner couldn’t determine why somebody had died, they called her to perform a psychological autopsy on the victim. She spent her days deciphering the countless ways the pressures of the world could end a person’s life.

Now she had a live case, a man with a huge and unidentified problem, who she sensed might turn on her at any moment.

“Do you recall hitting your head?” she said.

“No.” Hands on his jeans pockets. “Where’s my phone?”

“I have it.”

“I need to make a call.” His gaze zinged to Jo. “You’re American? Did the embassy send you?” He looked around the ambulance and his face tightened with alarm. “Where am I?”

“On your way to San Francisco General Hospital. Are you on medication?”

“No. San Francisco?” He tried to sit up. “Who are you?”

“Dr. Beckett.” She pressed a hand on his chest. “You were in southern Africa. Are you taking antimalarial drugs?”

“Quinine? Sure—Tanqueray and tonic.”

“Lariam?”

Lariam could have severe side effects, including seizures and psychosis.

“No,” he said.

“What were you doing in South Africa?”

His pale eyes looked eerie. She couldn’t tell why he hesitated. But whether he was confused or calculating, it took him ten full seconds to say, “Business trip.”

The wind rattled the ambulance and a burst of rain sprayed the window. Jo didn’t tell Kanan the two reasons they were heading to San Francisco General—it was the area’s only level-one trauma center and San Francisco’s designated evaluation facility for patients placed on psychiatric hold. Kanan glanced around. His gaze reached Officer Paterson and stuck.

Jaw tightening, he lurched against the straps on the gurney. “My family. Did something—”

“Hey.” Paterson moved instantly to Kanan’s side. The paramedic pressed Kanan back against the pillow.

Jo put a hand on his arm. “What about your family, Mr. Kanan?”

For a second he looked fearfully bewildered. Then he blinked and forcibly slowed his breathing. “What happened to me?” He looked at Paterson. “Am I under arrest?”

Paterson said, “Not yet. But you wanted to get off your flight so bad, you tried to jump out while the plane was rolling.”

“Did we crash?” He looked around the ambulance. “Did the plane go down?”

Jo gazed at him, puzzled. In the space of two minutes Kanan had gone from unconscious to intensely alert, articulate, strong, and confused.

“Mr. Kanan—”

“Ian.”

“Ian, I’m a psychiatrist. The police called me to the airport to evaluate you because—”

“You think I’m nuts?”

“I think you have a head injury.”

He stared at her for a long moment. A look of pain, and understanding, seemed to jolt him. His breathing became choppy. “They’ll say it’s self-inflicted.”

The cold trickle ran down Jo’s back again. “Your injury?”

“It’s over, isn’t it? I failed.”

“Failed at what?”

He squeezed his eyes shut. For a second, Jo thought he was fighting back tears. Paterson’s radio guttered. The sound caught Kanan’s ear. He opened his eyes and looked at the young cop. And as Jo watched, Kanan’s face relaxed. He blinked, breathed deeply, and turned to her, eyes shining and untroubled.

“Hey. What’s going on?”

“We’re taking you to the hospital.”

Puzzlement. “Why?”

Slowly, Jo said, “Do you recall what I told you a minute ago?”

“No. Who are you?”

The paramedic wrapped her stethoscope around her neck. “Man.”

Paterson braced his hand against the wall of the ambulance. “What is it?”

Jo felt grim. “Amnesia.”

She looked at Kanan, thinking,
And not the good kind.