The Memory Killer Read Online Free PDF

chair, and bungeed it to a vent. I set it up, put the drink beside me and my feet on the two-foot ledge. Below my soles was sixty feet of open air and three a.m. traffic, half taxicabs. I sipped rum and Coke, pulled my phone, and took another stab at my errant brother.
    Per Clair’s instructions I thought so hard that my mouth formed the words
Answer the phone, Jeremy
. I visualized my brother cocking his head to the phone ringing in his office and lifting it to his ear … visualization another of Clair’s suggestions.
    Answer …
    The phone again directed me to his voicemail. Two dozen of my calls already lay in the electronic wasteland of my brother’s VM box … so much for synchronicity. Anger boiling in my gut, I held the phone to the night sky, growling, “God-dammit, Jeremy. Call me
now
and let me get on with my life.”
    Five seconds later my phone riffed an incoming call. I checked the screen and saw the name AUGUSTE and stared in disbelief: Jeremy’s alter ego, Auguste Charpentier. I wondered if I’d already gone to bed and was dreaming.
    Elmore replayed the riff, too strident for a dream, and a triumph for either Clair or coincidence. My finger hesitated over the connect button, wondering whether to voice relief or ire. Given the number of messages in Jeremy’s voicemail, I figured irritation was my due.
    “Where the hell are you?” I snapped. “Why haven’t you been answering?”
    “Goodness, so testy,” Jeremy said, his voice melodically Southern, not the Frenchified accent he affected with others. “I’ve been busy, Carson. No time for your idle chit-chat.”
    “Idle chit-chat? I had no idea whether you were in Kentucky or Florida or … worse.”
    “You mean back home in dear ol’ Alabammy?”
    “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