The Memory Killer

“Jail,” I said. “Prison. You might have been caught and I’d never know.”

“Don’t I get one call? I’d probably call you, Carson. Unless I used it to order a pizza.”

“You’re fine, then?” I sighed. “You’re still in Kentucky?”

“I’ll look for clues. I see endless trees outside my window, Carson. And the goddamn whip-poor-wills are screeching like banshees. Yes, I’m in Kentucky. Why do you ask?”

“Last year you implied you were moving to Key West. It never happened. The whole Key West thing … it’s just to unsettle me, right?”

My brother was a world-class manipulator and since he lived in isolation with no one to jerk around, I got to be the puppet.

“Why would I wish to unsettle you, dear brother?” he said, his voice a study in innocence.

“You enjoy keeping me off balance,” I said. “It’s your hobby.”

“Such drama,” Jeremy yawned. “I’ve simply been traveling, Carson. Too busy to return your calls.”

“Travel is dangerous for you. Traveling where?”

My brother’s face was on every Wanted list in the country. The photo was from his last year at the Institute, when he’d done a Brando before sitting for the photographer, filling his cheeks with tissue, propping his ears forward, flaring his nostrils. Though never expecting – at that time – to escape, he had planned for the occasion, the just-in-case kind of thinking that exemplified my brother’s mind. As a result of his planning, Jeremy resembled his photo only slightly, but a seasoned eye might see through the façade, and it would be over.

“Traveling hither and yon,” he said. “Seeing old friends.”

“You have no friends.”

“Don’t be a Negative Nelly. Of course I have friends.”

“Who?”

He changed course, affecting the high and tremulous voice of an elderly woman. “I’m … muh-muh-moldering here in the w-woods, Carson. Now th-that I’m … nearing my duh-dotage … I need h-human cuh-cuh-contact.”

“Spare me the routine. You’re not even forty-five yet. And human contact means danger.”

“I disagree, Brother,” Jeremy said, back to normal voice. “In populations where the locals are known for a live-and-let-live attitude and a soupçon of eccentricity, I can hide in plain sight if I’ve planned well.”

My irritation was turning to uneasiness. When my brother grew restive, bad things occurred. He was being cryptic as well, another dark sign.

“Planned how?”

“I’m building my final chapter, dear brother. I’m coming back to the world.”

He chuckled and hung up.

Coming back to the world? Heeding a shiver at the base of my spine, I folded my chair and retreated from the roof, suddenly feeling small and vulnerable under the vast dark plain of sky.

7

The megaphone on the wall of the south Miami bar is a two-foot tin cone that legend has stolen from ancient crooner Rudy Vallee while on a swing through Florida in the 1930s. If true, it’s safe to say that while in Vallee’s possession the cone was not embellished on both sides with a twenty-inch-long penis rendered in pink glitter, the penis aiming toward the conic apex, making the user appear to be, well … the point is obvious.

The bartender pulls the megaphone from its pegs and climbs atop the bar. He’s wearing skin-tight black jeans and an orange bowling shirt. Those who notice begin yelling No! into an atmosphere of beer, sweat and a hundred lotions, potions, and colognes.

The disco music dies in mid-air. Sweat-dripping dancers flail for a few seconds as more yells of No! echo from the walls. The barkeep raises the megaphone to his lips to catcalls. “Last call,” he says, the peniphone giving his words stentorian depth. “We close in twenty minutes. ONE drink a person … None of this ordering five, you ladies hear me?”

The barkeep takes a showy bow. Good-natured hoots follow him to the floor. The music returns. A dozen young men rush to the bar as a pair of waiters race from table to booth to take orders. “A last drink, hon?” the waiter passing Debro yells atop the shuddering bass line.

Debro shakes his head and averts his face to tap out a fake message on his phone. The waiter sprints away as Debro pats his knit cap and turns his gaze to a young man beside a table. The man is wearing a safari-style shirt atop coral shorts and for most of the evening kept his tanned legs crossed as he entertained a succession of friends and friend wannabees.

But now the feet are on the floor and legs spread wide as the man clutches his belly. For the second time in five minutes he rushes to the bathroom. Debro presses the illumination on his watch: forty-seven minutes since slipping across the shadowy bar and – pretending to stop and read one of the racy cocktail napkins – squirting five drops of the mixture into the young man’s drink. Debro has also been watching the bathroom, empty until the man entered, everyone frantic for a final drink.

He pulls his knit cap tight and walks quickly to the restroom, hearing vomiting from the far stall. He checks the other stalls to assure no one’s hooking up, arriving at the final stall as the man exits, wiping his lips with toilet paper.

“You all right, brother?” DB’s eyes frown with concern.

The man leans against the stall divider for support. “I think I just puked up my liver. Jesus, all I had was three daiquiris. Ooops …” The man spins back for another round of vomiting.

“It’s probably Fraturna Mortuis,” Debro says, knowing Jacob Eisen has no connection to Latin or medicine. Eisen turns and blinks in confusion.

“What?”

“The virus causing it. Gut started aching ten–fifteen minutes ago? Dizziness? You feel weak, right?”

The man nods. “You a doctor or something?”

“An intern,” Debro lies. “You got a ride home, right?”

“Walking. I live eight blocks away.” Eisen turns green and grabs his belly.

“How about I give you a lift, bro?” Debro says. “This will pass fast, but you’re gonna be too sick to walk.”

“I … I already am. Damn … can barely stand.” Eisen’s head spins to the left as his eye widen to their limits. “Holy shit.”

“What?” Debro asks.

“I just saw a fucking parrot. How’d a parrot get in here?”

Time to move fast, Debro thinks. Eisen’s knees buckle and Debro keeps him from dropping. The attack passes and Eisen wipes cold sweat from his forehead and studies Debro through pain-tightened eyes. “You look fum-uliar,” Eisen says, his words garbled. He touches his throat with fear. “Wha- t’ fu? My froat … I -an’t – alk.”

“Laryngitis from the virus,” Debro says, pulling Eisen close. “Here, lean on me. We can go out the back.”

“Fanks, bruver,” Eisen chokes, grateful arms encircling DB’s neck like a sick child clinging to a parent. “Yura … life … saver.” He starts to stumble and knocks Debro’s hat to the floor. Debro grabs the hat, stuffs it in a pocket, then enters the alley. He has researched every footstep. They reach the street as a quartet of men pass by.

“Is your friend OK?” one asks.

“A little touch of the bug,” Debro says. He winks.

“I know that bug,” one says. “For me it’s wine mixed with margaritas.” The others titter like birds and continue. Inebriation is as common here as the cabs on the streets.

“Shhhh, Jacob,” Debro says as Eisen struggles to speak. “We’re almost there.”

Eisen turns to Debro and swallows hard to dampen his constricting vocal cords. “I din tloo- muh nm.”

I didn’t tell you my name.

“You just forgot, Jacob. You’re sick.”

“Nuh,” Eisen chokes. He tried to push Debro away. “Ehm-ee-co.”

Let me go.

Debro sees only the receding backs of the quartet. He opens his vehicle’s rear door and grabs Eisen by his hair. Eisen screams. Though veins stand out on his throat and forehead with the effort, all that flows from Eisen’s mouth is a stream of warm air. Debro pushes Eisen into the back seat and puts a knee into Eisen’s spine, easily pulling his struggling arms back for the handcuffs, the man’s muscles like boiled rubber bands.

“Do you see us, Brother?” Debro grins as he takes his position behind the steering wheel. “Are you with me tonight?”

8

My inability to contact my brother – combined with his odd behavior – sparked strangely concocted dreams rooted in childhood, and this night was no exception. I dreamed of my father tied to a kayak I was paddling across my cove, screaming as sharks ripped away his flesh. I turned to my deck to see a two-headed man there, one face Jeremy’s, the other mine. The three of us exchanged looks of approval as my mother sat knitting silently in a chair on the strand, never acknowledging the blood-stained water moving her way.

I was enjoying the show when my phone turned the dreamscape into a shadowed pillow. I blinked my eyes, realizing I’d overnighted at the Palace, my empty glass on the bedside table with my phone. The clock said 5.48 a.m. and the phone’s screen was showing MORNINGSTAR.

“Why did I buy an alarm clock when I have you?” I mumbled.

“I stopped in to see Dale Kemp,” she said. “He’s regaining consciousness.”

I snapped upright. “What’s he saying?”

“Where? What? Water.”

“I’m on my way, Doc. Gracias.”

Wondering about Morningstar’s sudden fixation with the hospital, I found her sitting beside Kemp like a mother, her eyes scanning the chart on her lap. The heart monitor played a soft tone into the room.

beep … beep …

“He was just here,” Morningstar said, patting the hand and setting it on the sheets. “A minute ago he drifted off.”

“I’ve got to talk to him,” I said, fearful Kemp might again tumble into the cavern of his mind.

“He needs to stabilize. I’ll leave word with Dr Costa. Then when Kemp is—”

“I hear people talking about me.” Dale Kemp’s eyes fluttered open.

“Hi, Dale,” I said. “I’m Carson Ryder. I’m with the police.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“You didn’t do anything, Dale. You were drugged and abducted. But you’re safe now.”

Morningstar frowned and put her lips to my ear. “I’m not sure this is the best time for—”

“What do you remember, Dale?” I said, pressing ahead.

He tightened his eyes. “I was … getting ready to go out to a bar, uh, the Scarlet Fox. I’m trying to decide what shoes to wear. And then …”

“What?”

“Jesus,” he whispered. “They’re coming.”

“What?”

… beep … beep beep …

I heard the heart rate monitor blip more rapidly.

“Dale? Memories?”

beep, beep, beep …

“They’ve got wings.” He eyes were getting wider and he tried to push to sitting. “They’re … insects. Ahhhh SHIT!”

beep beep beep beep

“Easy, Dale,” I said. “It’s over. You’re safe.”

He looked down at his arms. “They’re eating me! Oh, Jesus … HELP ME!”

beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep …

“What the hell’s happening here?” We turned to see Costa, the attending physician, fortyish, dark and slender with angry eyes. “What are you doing to my patient?”

“I just asked a couple questions,” I said.

“SAVE ME,” Kemp howled, tubes pulling from his arms as he raised them to fend off invisible creatures. “THEY’RE EATING ME!”

Costa scrabbled in the bedside cart and came up with a syringe, deftly plunging it into Kemp’s arm. Kemp’s eyes rolled back and he sank to his pillow. Costa checked his vitals and looked between Morningstar and me, his eyes holding on her.

“Who’s idea was this?”

“It was my fault,” I said. “Dr Morningstar was against my questioning the victim. I pushed ahead anyway.”

He aimed the eyes at Morningstar. “I’m not sure you should be spending so much time here, Dr Morningstar. What can a pathologist add to my patient’s care, if I may ask?”

I objected to his conveniently impaired recollection. “She’s the one you called in to identify the toxins,” I reminded him. “When you and your people came up short.”

“My patient needs to sleep,” Costa snapped. “I want no one here but hospital personnel. You can question him when I say, but only when I say. Got it?”

We glared at one another for the required time, then Morningstar and I retreated to the lobby. “Sorry,” I said, leaning the wall by the exit. “I should have listened. I’ll come back tomorrow.”

“I should have protested harder. And I was afraid it might be your lone chance to get some information.” She sighed and turned her eyes skyward. “I guess I just burned Costa as a reference.”

I was about to ask what she meant by “reference” when my phone rang, Roy.

“Another victim with symptoms similar to Kemp entered MD-General a half-hour back. A young male found in the Glades west of Miramar. Whoops … here comes the vic now.”

I paid closer attention to background sounds and heard voices and clattering wheels, a gurney, probably. “You’re at the hospital, Roy?”

“You got me interested in this thing.”

“Roy … can you stop things long enough to look at the vic’s back? It’s important.”

“Hey, Doc …” I heard a hand cover the phone, voices. Twenty seconds later Roy was back. “The victim’s in front of me, Carson. He’s as limp as a wet rag. What am I looking for?”

“Check carefully between the shoulder blades.”

“They’re lifting him. Uh … it looks like a figure eight with some scratching under it.”

I blew out a long breath. “It’s the same perp. I’m gonna head to the scene and see what the techs found.”

I called Gershwin and gave him directions to the scene. It took me fifteen minutes to arrive beside a lock separating a pair of drainage canals a few miles west of Miramar, the landscape flat and thick with swamp grass and mangrove, the sound of birds and insects as thick in the air as the scent of water.

I saw a taped-off section along a rise between the road and the canal. The crew supervisor was Deb Clayton, a pixyish woman in her mid thirties whose button nose, large bright eyes and close-cropped sandy hair would make her a perfect Peter Pan on Broadway. But instead of Pan’s tight green uniform Clayton wore a white tropical shirt, baggy brown cargo pants and red sneakers. She flanked a forensics unit step van, labeling evidence bags. One held a fishing bobber. Gershwin pulled up in a motor-pool cruiser.

“Who found him?” I asked Deb.

She walked us to the edge of the canal, green and still. “Two guys in a boat. The victim was only visible from the water.”

“Any eyes nearby?”

She nodded to the east. “The nearest house is back on Highway 27. All the perp had to do was pull off the road and drag the victim over the rise.”

I checked the sightline from the road. All you saw was wild grass. I turned to Gershwin. “The guy was probably supposed to die from exposure.”

Gershwin shook his head. “Not if the perp knows the area. This lock is where the Big Miami Canal intersects the South New River Canal. Heavily fished, more traffic on the canals than on the road. He was on display.”

“You’re sure?”

“At daybreak this becomes a parade of fishing boats.”

I crouched beside the shallow water, seeing a dark garfish hunting the shoreline for minnows. It seemed we’d just gotten a glimpse into our quarry’s mind.

“He incapacitates his victims and assaults them, Zigs. But maybe our boy doesn’t need to kill.”

“Didn’t you tell me these freaks never ramp down,” Gershwin said, looking into the flat expanse of sawgrass. “Only up?”

Debro was lazily reconnoitering bars and bistros in the near-Miami area, gauging escape routes. He’d visited most of the places, studying the seating, the lighting. The crowd. It used to anger him, the skinny little twinks finger-flicking hair from their glistening eyes as they minced from one clique to another. They’d look at him once and ignore him.

He was invisible then, too. This way was better.

Debro turned toward downtown. He’d finished his morning’s work – up before dawn, take the package to the Glades, dump it.

Buh-byee, Brianna. Did the boats dock enough for you, bitch?

He drove carefully, signaling turns, stopping fully at signs, avoiding speeding through yellow lights. If he drove poorly, his invisibility would falter. But with proper care, he could remain invisible for ever.

He saw a street sign. The comic-book shop was five blocks away, too close to let the opportunity pass. He tossed his knit cap to the seat beside him and turned the corner, pulling to the curb a dozen feet from the window glowing with neon signs. He reached for the outsize sunglasses in the glove box, but paused. He had his own mask, he realized. Right here in his hands.

Even better, he could flash the sign.

Debro pulled the cap low and strode to the store. He paused beside the building, pinched his thumbs and forefingers together before lifting his elbows skyward. The mask in place, he stepped to the window and leered inside, seeing a shape behind the counter. He pushed his groin against the window, his belt buckle clicking against the glass. If the clerk wasn’t looking before, he was now.

He turned and walked calmly back to his vehicle and climbed inside, pulling to the curb three blocks away. He pulled off his cap, set it on the dashboard, and once again made the mask with his hands.

Do you see us now?

9

The new victim’s room flanked Dale Kemp’s room and we peeked in on Kemp. He had fallen back into himself after the delirium, his face seeming a somber mask waiting only the closing of the casket lid.

We stepped to the next room and found Morningstar and, to my surprise, Roy McDermott, who offered a sheepish grin. “I couldn’t help myself, Carson. After your tutorial in the case, I got interested. I’ve got some free time, since it ain’t like I’m J. Edgar, right?”

Roy was referring to J. Edgar Hoover’s involvement in every aspect of the FBI, micro-managing, they call it now. Roy was hands-off, hiring the best people and trusting them to get the goods on the bad guys. “I don’t really care what y’all do,” Roy had once told me. “I just want to see files stamped Case Closed.”

My eyes moved to the patient on the bed, victim two. Light brown hair with a buzz cut. Closed eyes. Had I not known the vic was male, I would have thought him female, the features small and delicate. His hands lay outside the sheet and I saw digits smudged with fingerprint ink. The fingernails showed traces of red polish. I lifted the edge of the sheet, again the fading abrasions of ligatures on wrists and ankles.

“Got a hit on prints from a bust last year, Carson,” Roy said. “No biggie, caught at a traffic stop with a half-doob in the ashtray. Name’s Brian Caswell, works under the name Brianna Cass. He was reported missing eleven days ago.”

“Works as what?”

“Female impersonator, drag queen. Day job is at a nail salon.”

“How’d you find this out?”

“Checked with Missings at MDPD. I also called to see if anything new had come up, but nothing.”

“You talked to Rod Figueroa?”

Roy nodded. “Nice guy, eager to please. He asked if we could handle it as a joint case with the FCLE in full lead. Basically it means we copy him on reports.”

I shook my head in disbelief. If Figueroa had any more faces to spin he’d need gimbals in his neck. But at least it was cooperation. I studied Caswell’s motionless face. He would have been good at the cross-dressing thing, I figured, given the bone structure and lips so full I suspected collagen enhancement.

“Age?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Injuries the same as Kemp?”

Roy’s eyes went to Morningstar, so mine followed.

“Semen found orally and anally. Lots of tearing, like the attacks were violent and repeated.”

Eleven days allowed a lot of time for attacks. “Under the influence of the datura, you think?”

“It makes sense, Carson. After feeling ill, the victim starts hallucinating violently, then crashes into semi-consciousness, unable to fend off attacks or even comprehend them. If the toxins are administered on a regular basis …”

“The mind could be permanently wounded.”

“So even when a vic recovers,” Gershwin said, “we’re screwed?”

Morningstar nodded. “Ask who he saw raping him and the answer might be a purple dragon.” She looked at me. “You saw the effect on Dale Kemp.”

“It’s insane,” I said. “And yet totally rational and brilliant. After the initial capture and restraint, the perp has no need to keep victims bound. He drugs them so heavily that they’re trapped inside themselves. When he tires of them, he simply trades them for fresh meat. Even if they recover, they’ll never ID him.”

I paused as a nurse entered the room, a guy in his mid twenties, intelligent green eyes, chestnut hair just long enough to cover his ears. He had a runner’s carriage, slender and with a bounce in his steps, as if about to break into a sprint. A stethoscope hung around his neck.

“Uh, excuse me, Nurse …” Roy said.

“It’s OK, sir,” the guy said. “I’m cleared.”

The exact facts of the case were being tightly managed, the suggestion being druggings with rohypnol – more common, unfortunately. We were keeping the ingredients of this particular cocktail under wraps for three reasons: keeping secret a fact only the perp knew, legal reasons there; avoiding panic when the press dubbed the altered drinks Devil’s Cocktails or Loco-tinis or whatever; and avoiding nutbags wandering the woods with bad intentions and a botanical field guide.

Roy had outlined the situation with the hospital administration and the nurses were chosen for competence and ability to keep a secret. Plus MD-Gen was where ill or injured criminals were sent, so the staff were used to cops taking over rooms. It was, after all, Miami.

The nurse did nurse things, writing numbers from the monitors on the chart, checking the fluid drips and wires, listening through the steth. He popped the protective tip from one of the syringes loaded with the anti-robinia preparation and injected the victim. Roy stood and approached the nurse.

“You look familiar. Your name is …?”

“Patrick White. We met once before, Mr McDermott. Last fall when, uh, Mister Green was here. I was one of his nurses.”

Mister Green was Sergio Talarico, a narcotics smuggler who’d suffered a heart attack while in solitary confinement. He’d been rushed to MD-Gen where he’d had a triple bypass and seven weeks of convalescence, all without attracting the notice of his enemies, who wanted him dead so they could usurp his territories.

Roy grinned and pumped the guy’s hand. “I remember now. Past midnight and the floor’s goddamn security cameras blew a fuse or whatever, went black. Everyone freaked, thinking Talarico’s enemies were coming down the halls with AKs. All the other staffers disappeared out the exits.” Roy turned to me. “It was just this guy and two cops hunkered in Talarico’s room, not knowing what was going on.”

“Why’d you stay?” I asked White.

He winked and made a syringe-plunging motion with his fingers. “No one messes with a Patrick White patient, sir. I am one bad-ass dude with a hypodermic needle.”

I chuckled despite the grim surroundings. The guy not only had cojones, he had a sense of humor. “You been here long, Mr White?” I asked as he turned to drop the used syringe into a receptacle on the wall.

“Trained here, work here. Now I’m going for my Nurse Practitioner license here.”

The three of us wished White well as he blew out the door to his next patient, our eyes returning to the man on the bed, Brian Caswell, AKA Brianna Cass. No one spoke a word as I approached, put my hands on the bed rails, and leaned low.

“Where have you been, Brian? What did you see?”

All I heard back was the hiss of oxygen into nostrils.