The Memory Detective Read online

  The Memory Detective is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An Alibi Ebook Original

  Copyright © 2018 by Trevor Wiessmann

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Alibi, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  ALIBI is a registered trademark and the ALIBI colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN 9780399178702

  Cover design: Tatiana Sayig

  Cover images: Shutterstock

  randomhousebooks.com

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Pierce had only gone out for a quick swim, but they were already waiting for him when he returned. They were inside his house. He hadn’t been gone very long, maybe twenty minutes, half an hour at most. He didn’t even think he’d been gone long enough for the woman in his bed to wake up—not after the night they’d spent together, anyway.

  Pierce almost always woke up early, no matter what type of insanity he’d gotten himself into the night before. He was always eager to start the new day because every day, for him, was an adventure. That morning, he crawled out of bed quietly so that he could sneak down to the beach for a swim without waking up his new friend. She hadn’t even moved as he slid out from under the single thin sheet that covered the two of them. He didn’t bring his surfboard. He didn’t have time. He wanted to get back to her but first, he wanted to plunge himself into the ocean. He made the short run to the beach and dove headlong, unfettered, into the bright blue waves of the early Hawaiian morning. He was alone in the water. No one else was out yet. He pushed his body through wave after wave. When he’d had his fill, he body-surfed back to the beach. He hadn’t brought a towel, so he was still dripping when he walked through the door to his house. His chest was heaving from the rush of the water. He’d planned on running back to the house, heading into the bedroom, yanking the thin sheet off his bed to reveal his new friend’s taut, naked body, and diving into her the same way he dove into the deep blue ocean.

  He hadn’t planned on these uninvited guests. Not yet. He was only two weeks into a monthlong rental. They were more than a week early. And, yet, they were there, waiting in his house in the early morning as if they owned the place. Of course, they didn’t own the house. They owned something much more valuable.

  “Good morning, Pierce,” the man in the chair said as Pierce ran in, his body gleaming with water. “It’s good to see that you’re keeping up your morning routine.”

  Pierce glanced around the room. It was bright and airy, full of giant open windows that let the breeze blow all the way through the house. Besides the bald man in the chair, whom Pierce had known through almost a decade of periodic meetings, a large man that he’d never seen before stood silently in one corner of the room. “What are you doing here?” Pierce asked, finding it harder now to catch his breath. The large man positioned himself between Pierce and the door. Pierce glanced down the hall toward his bedroom, thinking that maybe, merely by being here, she could save him.

  “It’s time, Pierce,” the bald man said without standing up. Pierce could hear what sounded like sincere sadness in the bald man’s voice. The sadness made it so much worse, made what was happening so much more real.

  “I can’t,” Pierce stammered. “I have a guest.” He motioned toward the hallway. “She might hear us. She’ll wonder where I went. She’ll ask questions.”

  “No, she won’t,” the bald man said with absolute certainty. “Our employees know not to ask questions, Pierce. She was my little going-away present for you.” The bald man smiled.

  She wasn’t a present. Pierce knew better than that. She was a spy. How many others, over the years, Pierce wondered, worked for the Company? How many others were merely agents meant to make sure that I was doing what I said I was doing? “But it’s not time yet,” Pierce argued. “I have another week and a half. You told me yourself on the phone that I had another week and a half.” The sun was blaring in. It was a gorgeous morning. There was barely a cloud in the sky. Pierce could hear the wild roar of the ocean waves through the open windows.

  “I know,” the bald man said, the pathos returning to his voice. “I’m sorry. It’s a shame we had to lie to you like that. It’s not your fault. It’s just that we’ve had a couple runners in the past, and we’ve invested far too much in you to take any chances.”

  Pierce looked around for a place to run. He was in phenomenal shape and there were only two of them. All he would have to do was get out of the house, and they wouldn’t be able to catch him. Then he’d have the whole world to hide in. His new life wouldn’t be what it had been. He’d have to give up the lifestyle that he’d grown accustomed to, but he could still make a life out of it. If he could just put five minutes between him and the two collectors, then those five minutes would turn into ten minutes and then into half an hour and an hour and a day and a week and, with each passing moment, he would be harder and harder to find. The bald man saw Pierce’s eyes as they darted around the room. “Don’t try to run, Pierce,” he said, sounding like a disappointed parent. “It wouldn’t be right. After everything we’ve given you, it’s time for you to hold up your end of the bargain.”

  Pierce shook his head. He’d always known this day would come, but he wasn’t ready for it. Not yet. Not today. “You told me that I had ten years. That was the deal. It hasn’t been ten years. It’s only been nine years and eighty-seven days.” Pierce could hear the weakness in his own voice. He tried to keep himself under control, but he could feel that control slipping away. That was all he wanted, a little more control and a little more time. He had no regrets. He didn’t regret a fucking thing. He merely wanted more time. It had gone by too quickly. How could it have all gone by that quickly?

  “No,” the bald man said. “What we said was that the average was ten years and that we guaranteed you at least eight. I was there, remember? I was the one who told you. Wit
h the way you’ve lived your life, Pierce, I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long. You’ve got some amazing memories in that pretty head of yours. You only lasted this long because we priced you accordingly. Now is not the time to run, Pierce. Now’s the time to reminisce. Take advantage of the time you have left with those beautiful memories.” Pierce kept scanning the room, looking for an escape route. His hands were trembling. “After all, they’re worth a fortune,” the bald man finished.

  “I’m sorry, Fergus,” Pierce said. “I’m just not ready yet.”

  “We had a deal, kid,” Fergus shouted. He was a businessman now, the pathos in his voice gone. “We invested a lot of money in you.” He shook his head. “Most people don’t take advantage of the deal we give them the way you did. Do you remember where you were when I found you? Do you remember what type of life you had ahead of you? And now look what you’ve done. Look at everything you’ve done.” Pierce could hear the awe in Fergus’s voice. “We don’t begrudge the fact that you cost us so much. You have to invest money to make money. But now, show us a little bit of appreciation and hold up your end of the bargain. I’m pleading, Pierce. Don’t waste your last few days. Take that time to remember.”

  Pierce wasn’t in the mood to remember. Remembering was for other people. He was the one who made the memories. He eyed the open windows. The one to his right wasn’t that high off the ground. None of the windows in the house had any glass or screens, and the ground beneath the window was all soft, white sand. He could jump through it without hurting himself. Then he could run.

  Fergus stood up, his patience wearing thin. “Okay, let’s go,” he ordered. With that, Pierce bolted.

  Pierce took five quick strides toward the window and dove headfirst through it, hurtling to the ground. The drop was about eight feet, but Pierce landed in the sand, and the adrenaline coursing through his body erased any pain that he would have felt otherwise. His hands weren’t trembling anymore. His body was full of purpose, a single purpose: Run. He got back on his feet and started to move. He ran away from the beach, toward the jungle behind the house. His body could save him. They wouldn’t dare hurt him. He was too valuable; they wouldn’t risk it. All he had to do was make it into the jungle.

  “He’s running,” Pierce heard Fergus shout from inside the house. Pierce didn’t even have time to imagine whom Fergus was shouting to because, a moment later, he was tackled by a man the size of a small bull. The man moved quickly. He got on top of Pierce and wrapped his boa constrictor arms around Pierce’s legs. Pierce tried to kick his way free, but it was no use. The man’s grip was pure muscle.

  “Let me go,” Pierce pleaded. “Let me go. Let me go. Let me go.”

  Pierce could see a fourth man walking toward him now, two long syringes in his hands. Then he heard Fergus’s voice, barking orders. “Don’t hurt him. We don’t want to tarnish the memories.” The man with the needles stepped closer to Pierce. “We’ve invested too much in this one. This kid is an artist,” Fergus’s voice continued. “Wrecking his memories would be like tearing a Picasso.” The man with the syringes squatted down on Pierce’s chest, pinning his arms to the sand.

  “Which one first?” the man called back to Fergus.

  “Hit him with the protein inhibitor first,” Fergus ordered. “We want him to remember as little of this as possible. The kid is already tainting a masterpiece. Then we can give him the tranquilizer.” Pierce felt the first needle stab him in the side of the neck.

  A moment later, Fergus was standing over Pierce, his body blocking out the sun, shaking his head. “I told you, Pierce. You could have had another day or two to reminisce, but you wasted it. Don’t worry, though, your memories, those beautiful memories, they’ll live on. That’s the great thing about what we do. Because of us, those brilliant little works of art in your head don’t have to die. It’s only that you won’t be the one who gets to remember them anymore. It’s only fair, Pierce. You’ve already had your turn.”

  Pierce pushed up one more time with all his might but couldn’t budge the two men sitting on top of him. “Now the tranquilizer,” Fergus ordered. Then Pierce felt the second needle jab him in the neck. It was the last thing he ever felt.

  Chapter 2

  The two bodies lay motionless on adjacent operating tables. One was Cole’s. The other was the body of an unidentified teenage girl. She’d been murdered with a hammer, her naked corpse found inside a shopping mall Dumpster in Queens. Both bodies were lying facedown, their shoulders and the backs of their heads exposed. Wires and tubes ran from different parts of Cole’s body to various machines. One wire ran from Cole’s fingertips to an electrocardiography machine that monitored his heartbeat. Other wires ran from Cole’s head to a separate customized electroencephalography machine that closely monitored his brain activity. An IV was hooked up to Cole’s forearm, delivering directly into his veins the sedatives that he needed to knock him out. Other tubes had other practical purposes related to normal bodily functions. The heart monitor beeped with an eerie, rhythmic cadence, almost as if the operating room had its own heartbeat. The electroencephalography machine hummed along monotonously, barely registering. That was one of Cole’s requirements: that every effort be made to reduce his brain activity during the procedure. When they asked him how far they should go, Cole ordered them, “Do as much as you can without causing me any permanent damage.” He knew from experience that this was the cleanest way to come at the new memories, that this would allow him to remember things before his brain could alter them. Doing it this way kept the memories as pure as possible.

  The other body, the young woman’s body, didn’t have any tubes or wires connected to it. It simply lay there, utterly still. Her head was wrapped in bandages, but the bandages weren’t doing her any good. They’d simply wrapped her head to keep it from falling apart. It was only dumb luck that the hammer the murderer had used to crack the girl’s skull open hadn’t reached the part of her frontal lobe storing the neurotrophic factor proteins that formed the basis for her long-term memories. At least, the preliminary tests seemed to show that the area was still intact. The only way they would know for sure was to wait until Cole woke up. If the procedure worked, he would wake up with the victim’s memories and be able to recall them as if they were his own.

  The surgeon made two small incisions in the base of the girl’s skull, right at the top of her neck. Then, with the help of two attending nurses, she slid a thin cable with a fiber-optic camera on its end into the first incision. Seconds after the camera was inserted, a small screen above the woman’s body was powered on. Then the surgeon and her team placed a thin, flexible syringe, little more than a glorified vacuum, into the other incision. A small vial was connected to the end of the syringe to collect the clear, nondescript fluid that housed the woman’s neurotrophic factor proteins and whatever else came with them, including memories of a life barely lived and, with any luck, memories of a murder.

  The surgeon began to manipulate the camera with one hand and the syringe with the other, steering them both into the recesses of the woman’s brain. She watched the screen, letting the camera be her eyes. The transparent liquid that she was looking for appeared hardly different from any of the other fluid stored in the brain. However, contained in that clear, nondescript fluid were the proteins that made up the building blocks for every memory the dead woman ever had. Since the surgeon had no way of identifying the liquid itself, she had to navigate by looking for certain architecture within the brain. All she could do was find the spot in the woman’s frontal lobe where the memories should be and hope they were actually there.

  As the surgeon carefully rooted around in the dead woman’s brain, one of the nurses began to prep Cole for his part in the procedure. The anesthesiologist stood by, monitoring Cole’s brain and heart function and adjusting the medication in his IV accordingly. Selecting the spots for the incisions on Cole was simple. They merely had to find the two tiny marks at the top of his neck from all of his previous pro
cedures. There was a time when the doctors had worried that scars would become a problem. They gave him creams to rub into the back of his neck, and he came to the hospital periodically so that they could shave the scar tissue down. After about half a dozen procedures, however, the scar tissue stopped developing. Now it was as if Cole had an instructional map at the base of his skull, two tiny pinholes that let the doctors and nurses know exactly where to work. The nurse found the holes and inserted the fiber-optic camera. Then he inserted the syringe. As he pushed the tools in, the machine monitoring Cole’s brain activity began to light up. Neither the nurse nor the anesthesiologist flinched. Everybody in the room understood that the activity on the monitor was due to the direct stimulation of the brain, not because Cole’s brain had become active.

  Like the back of his neck, the pathways to the appropriate part of Cole’s brain were marked by scarring, like microscopic road signs. The nurse got the tools into position in mere minutes, while the surgeon was still searching through the dead woman’s brain. “He’s ready for you, Doctor,” the nurse said, stepping away from the instruments.

  “Just another minute,” the doctor said, teeth clenched in concentration. While the blow from the hammer had not hit the area of the woman’s brain where her memories were stored, it had done enough damage to make finding that area a bit tricky. The doctor twisted both her hands. “I think I have it,” she said. “What do you think, Bill? It’s a bit of mess in there.”