The Memory Collector Part 2

Rusty grunted with effort. "Grab the lip of the hull, not me."

Kicking wildly, Lesniak dug his nails into Rusty's forearm. "Don't drop me. The croc..."

Straining, Rusty pulled Lesniak halfway out of the water. Lesniak's feet propellered. He looked up, frantic, and saw blood running from Rusty's forearm where his fingernails were clawing the man's flesh.

Oh, G.o.d. Rusty wasn't big enough to pull him aboard. Lesniak outweighed him by forty pounds, easy. His panting increased. His feet were still in the water and oh G.o.d, the croc, the croc...

The boat rolled and began to spin. Rusty slid toward him on the slippery deck. Lesniak screamed and tried to climb up Rusty's arm.

Rusty gasped, "Let go of my arm, grab the hull, and let me pull you-"

"Help me!" Lesniak screamed.

Rusty grabbed Lesniak's belt. Lesniak felt himself being pulled up-shoulders above the side, gut b.u.mping the lip of the hull. He kicked helplessly, trying to worm both feet out of the water. The boat swung lazily around, rising and falling on the flow of the river. He grabbed at Rusty, clawed for his s.h.i.+rt, swiped a hand, and knocked the man's sungla.s.ses off his face. He had to get out of the water. He was crying, he heard himself, he couldn't stop.

Rusty groaned with effort. "Stop fighting me. You'll pull me over and we'll both drown."

Lesniak wriggled a knee over the top. His shoulders drooped back toward the waterline. They were spinning in a circle. His right foot was tingling. The croc, oh Christ, the jaws the teeth the hideous pain... He slid back down the hull. Rusty grabbed for him and got a hand on his pants pocket.

The pocket ripped open. The flask fell out and landed on the deck.

Lesniak stared at it. The boat continued its lazy spin. The flask glinted in the sun. Around the screw-top lid, he saw bubbles.

Oh, s.h.i.+t.

Bubbles were foaming from under the lid of the flask. The seal had broken.

The boat rolled. The flask slid across the deck. No, no-if a wave swamped the boat the flask could be swept overboard. Lesniak let go of Rusty's arm and reached for it. The flask was his future, everything important and good and bra.s.s f.u.c.king ring and- "I can't hold you," Rusty shouted at him. "Hang on to the hull."

No way, not in a million years. Hang on and Rusty would grab it and he'd never get it back and everybody would find out and...

The flask gleamed. He stretched, fingers grasping.

The boat snapped into a roll. Lesniak lost his grip and fell like a punching bag back into the water.

The current took him. He surfaced and spun around, frantic. He was moving fast again, clear of the little chain of islands. A huge roar rose in his ears. It wasn't the engine anymore, but the water, the sound of water coursing over rocks in ma.s.sive amounts.

On the boat, Rusty had the flask. Struggling for balance as the boat spun, he tightened down the bubbling top and shoved it in the back pocket of his jeans.

Lesniak stared, stunned. Rusty fought his way back to the controls of the speedboat. He wiped his b.l.o.o.d.y arm against his s.h.i.+rt, turned the wheel, and headed downriver. Fast. Straight at him.

h.e.l.l, oh, no. With that huge Chevy engine and a fibergla.s.s hull that would crack his head like a teacup. Lesniak turned and began a final, thras.h.i.+ng attempt to outswim it. The water swept him forward.

He heard Rusty shouting at him. Heard "Stop," and "Don't..."

Terrified, he looked back over his shoulder. Without his sungla.s.ses, Rusty's eyes looked freakishly pale in the sunset. A flock of egrets sped low across the river behind him, white and graceful.

The jet boat bore at him. Then Rusty spun the wheel. The boat went into a tight, arcing turn. It pa.s.sed ten yards behind him, spewing white water in its wake, and turned upriver.

Bobbing on the swift current, exhausted, Lesniak felt a knot in his throat. The guy was leaving. Thank G.o.d.

Thank G.o.d, h.e.l.l.

Rusty had the flask. He had the stuff. Slick, all of it.

The boat receded slowly, motor roaring. This was why it had the huge Chevy engine-it needed every single horsepower to fight the current here. The growl of the engine was hard to hear above the ever-louder rush of water over rocks.

His heart leaped into overdrive. He spun. He was in the center of the river, coming around a broad bend at great speed, into the dusk, islands far away, riverbanks just a hint at either edge of his vision.

He rose on a swell, like a body surfer, and saw ahead. His mouth opened.

Riding like a fly on one hundred fifty million gallons of water, sweeping into a trough, he turned and started swimming upriver. Mouth open, eyes open, lungs busting. Feet heavy in his shoes, arms weak, he swam desperately, hearing the roar behind him. He saw the sh.o.r.e, low and green and immensely distant. He saw the red sunset s.h.i.+mmering on the slate surface of the water. He saw the mist rise overhead. Mosi-O-Tunya, they called it, the smoke that thunders, Victoria Falls. He felt himself pulled backward as the mighty Zambezi turned into a high dive, a mile-wide thrill ride, a blue dragon taking to the air and leaping off the cliff into the gorge. He tried to grab the water itself, to hold himself up, to stay here and not plunge toward the rocks three hundred fifty feet below. But though he screamed out to the river G.o.ds, n.o.body could stop him as he swept toward the edge.

* 3 *

Jo Beckett held her arms away from her sides and spread her feet. People eddied around her, staring briefly before they hurried on. Ten feet ahead, a cop stood with arms crossed. His radio scritched. Behind her she heard the snap of latex.

"Don't worry, these gloves are clean," the woman said. "Wider stance."

Jo complied. The woman pressed her spidery fingers up the inside of Jo's thighs.

The cop s.h.i.+fted his weight. "Come on, it's an emergency."

Hands ran around Jo's ribs, down her back, and across her rump.

She forced herself not to flinch. "Just don't tuck a dollar bill down the waistband of my jeans."

The woman's hands paused, and she glared.

Jo offered a contrite look. "Never mind-I'm a lousy dancer. I'd fall off the pole. Can I-"

"A terrorist isn't getting past me just because somebody claims to be in a hurry."

"She's not a terrorist," the cop said. "She's a doctor with the mobile crisis team."

d.a.m.n right, Jo wanted to tell the screener-maybe using one of the curses her grandfather had picked up in the Cairo backstreets of his childhood. But that, she decided, was a rotten idea.

Airports, she thought, sucked like a bilge pump.

San Francisco International was packed and noisy. The crowd b.u.mped through the security line like cattle being prodded toward the chute at a stockyard. The checkpoint's plastic bins banged against each other, sounding like a discordant drum line. A posse of screeners waved people forward, saying, Hurry up, move along. Show your boarding pa.s.s. Now show it again. Now show it to that screener. Jo knew redundant checks prevented slip-ups. But if this checkpoint had been a person, it would have obsessive-compulsive disorder. Defending against a previous threat, not antic.i.p.ating the next one.

Such as the possible situation at gate 94.

Outside, a March storm pounded the Bay Area. Rain clouds rolled overhead, a nasty jumble of gray and black. A cold wind scoured the runways.

The screener lowered her hands. "You're clear." Her tone implied, For now, girly.

Jo hurriedly reclaimed her earrings, and belt, and Doc Martens, and her necklace with the Coptic cross, and her satchel, and her dignity. She suspected that airports were either a psych experiment in ma.s.s humiliation or a conspiracy to drive the traveling public insane. Possibly both. Shoes off, lab rats. Aggravating, isn't it? Here, have some Xanax.

The airport cop, Darren Paterson, wore an apologetic look. He was baby-faced African-American, wearing a uniform that fit him like Glad Wrap.

"Sorry about that," he said.

She tied her Doc Martens. "No problem. My service said you're looking for a psych eval on a pa.s.senger who came in on a flight from London. You think he needs to be fifty-one fiftied?"

"That's what you need to tell us."

Section 5150: involuntary commitment. As a psychiatrist, Jo had the authority to send people to a custodial psychiatric facility for seventy-two hours.

She only got calls like this if the police thought someone was dangerous to himself or others. But usually the cops themselves took people into custody under section 5150 and transported them to an E.R. for psychiatric evaluation. Maybe the airline had requested medical personnel. Maybe Paterson wanted experienced backup-he looked so young that she suspected he was a rookie. Maybe something truly bizarre was going on. In any case, when her service buzzed her she'd been two minutes from the terminal, and the authorities had decided against waiting for the rest of the crisis team to arrive.

"Glad you were in the vicinity," Paterson said.

"You lucked out. I was dropping my brother off for a flight to Los Angeles." She walked with Paterson along the concourse. "What happened?"

"Ian Kanan arrived on a Virgin Atlantic flight from Heathrow. Became confused and combative when the plane landed. He's barricaded himself aboard."

The terminal echoed with the roar of jet engines. Rain slashed against the plate-gla.s.s windows.

" 'Confused and combative,' but you didn't arrest him. What exactly did Kanan do?" Jo said.

"When they touched down he jumped out of his seat and tried to open the emergency exit."

"With the plane still rolling?"

"Two male pa.s.sengers tackled him. Flight attendants say Kanan threw them off like they were made of papier-mache. Apparently he fought like a maniac."

"In what way?"

He glanced at her. "As in crazy."

She smiled briefly. "Most people see bizarre behavior and think, Nuts, or not nuts? Psychiatrists think, How nuts, and what kind?"

They reached the gate. Down the Jetway, a clot of airline personnel huddled inside the open door of the airliner. They looked at Jo with a mixture of relief and bemus.e.m.e.nt, as if thinking, A shrink? Talk him off the plane-yeah, that'll do it.

The captain stood in the c.o.c.kpit doorway. "Get him off my aircraft."

Officer Paterson pointed down the aisle. "He's in economy."

Jo said, "No wonder he went berserk."

The flight attendants turned to her. Jo put up a hand. "Kidding."

She looked down the empty length of the jet. More airline staff and another police officer hovered near the galley.

You never knew what you were going to get in these situations. Catatonia. Religious mania. A bad drug trip. Drunkenness or a violent psychotic episode. A guy trying to detonate his shoes.

She had no time to take a complete history on Ian Kanan. But the two pa.s.sengers who subdued him had remained aboard the plane. Ron Gingrich was a tough-looking fifty-five with a gray ponytail and Grateful Dead s.h.i.+rt. Jared Ely was in his twenties, wearing a black T-s.h.i.+rt, green Crocs, and a surfeit of nervous energy.

"Tell me what happened," Jo said.

Gingrich smoothed his goatee. "We landed hard. Crosswind; it felt like we were coming in sideways. Hit with a whump, and people were like, Whoa. The plane was rattling real loud. Couple overhead compartments fell open. Then this guy"-he pointed toward the back of the plane-"comes tearing up the aisle. He jumps over the woman sitting in the exit row and starts ripping open the emergency door."

Ely nodded. "It looked like he knew exactly what he was doing."

"What do you mean?" Jo said.

Ely's gaze was sharp and thoughtful. "He didn't hesitate. Didn't stop to read the instructions on the door. He got straight to business, like he'd done it before."

Jo nodded. "Then what?"

"We grabbed him."

"Spur of the moment," Gingrich said. "We just moved. I tell you, the guy fought like a demon. But two against one, we overpowered him."

"Did he say anything?" Jo said.

Gingrich nodded. "Oh, yeah. Crystal clear."

Ely said, "He kept telling us we were crazy."

Jo turned to the flight attendants. "How was Kanan during the flight?"

"A zombie," said a young blonde. "He didn't read, didn't watch the movies, didn't even watch the air map. Didn't eat. He sat there."

"Did he drink?" Jo said.

"No."

"You sure?"

The young woman's name tag read STEF NIVESEN. Her face turned wry. "We flew in from the U.K. Everybody drank. Except him."

"Did you see him take any medication?"

"No."

"Where's his carry-on?"