Part 9 (1/2)
”Who knows? His brain is being cored like an apple.”
”What do you think is going on?”
Jo took a breath. ”I hesitate to speculate without more evidence.”
”SWAG, Beckett.”
Scientific Wild-a.s.s Guess. Jo leaned back, tapping her fingers on the wooden tabletop. ”Okay. Here's a working hypothesis.”
”You mean a hypothesis we should work from. Playing defense.”
”You got it. Kanan went to southern Africa, supposedly on a business trip. While he was there he was contaminated with a highly dangerous substance that is causing irreparable damage to his short-term memory. He may have been engaged in illegal activity.”
”Such as?”
”Stealing something.”
”Because, if he knows what caused his brain injury, why else would he hold back?”
”Exactly,” Jo said.
”You think he was involved in a heist?”
”Working hypothesis.”
”So, he stole something dangerous. But it went wrong, and he got contaminated.”
”Which might be why he asked me if I 'have it' and swore he was still on the job.”
”A falling-out among thieves? Is he after his co-conspirators?” Tang said.
”Revenge is a plausible motive.” Jo leaned forward. ”Something's tormenting him. Beyond the head injury, I mean. Pain and fear are driving him.”
”You sound sympathetic.”
”Empathic. I am. I can sense his pain, and it's awful.” She picked up her mug. ”Doesn't mean I'm a sucker. If we don't find Kanan, people are going to die.”
Tang took a notebook from her coat pocket. ”Did you see any of the names on his. .h.i.t parade?”
”One. Alec.”
”No last name?”
”Sorry.”
”This anterograde amnesia. It won't gradually improve?”
”Unfortunately, no. It's rare but devastating,” Jo said.
”Why does he remember things for five minutes and then forget it all?”
”Memory formation doesn't happen instantaneously. It's a process, not an event. And it occurs in several parts of the brain. When new information comes in, it's held in working memory for a few minutes. Then the medial temporal lobes encode the information and send it to the parts of the brain where it's stored permanently as long-term memory.”
”But Kanan's encoding equipment is damaged. And it won't recover?” Tang said.
”Not given the way his brain looks on the MRI. That brain matter's been eaten away from the inside. It's gone.”
”What caused it?”
”Kanan first told me he'd been poisoned. Then he said 'contaminated.'”
”With what?”
”No idea. And I don't know whether it's accidental or deliberate. He was either confused or being cagey. Did somebody try to kill him? Did he try to kill himself? He wouldn't clarify.”
”What do you want to do?”
”Attack it the same way I do a psychological autopsy.”
”He isn't dead.”
”But the cause and manner of his injury are equivocal.”
Jo performed psychological autopsies in cases of equivocal death, when neither police nor the medical examiner could determine whether a victim's death was natural, accidental, suicide, or homicide. She consulted on the sneaky cases, the ones lying in the tall gra.s.s so they couldn't be clearly seen. The cases the people who liked confessions and hard evidence couldn't unravel.
”Branching out?” Tang said.
”Yeah, expanding my resume beyond Lifestyles of the Dead and Infamous.” She gave Tang a tart smile. ”I can dig into Kanan's history and try to find out how he got this...” infestation, she almost said. ”Contamination, or whatever it is. Then maybe I can find out what the h.e.l.l it is. And figure out who he's after.”
Tang cupped her hands around her mug. ”The department called you in, correct?”
”For a possible fifty-one fifty. So I'm not on board as a consultant, just as a member of the mobile crisis team. However, your general works detail has a psych liaison.”
”Social workers charge a lot less per hour than a shrink.”
”Great. Get yourself one. I'll head to Maui until the social worker brings Kanan in and convinces him not to hunt me down.”
Tang put up her hands. ”I'm just ragging you, on behalf of the taxpayers. Listen. Kanan battered pa.s.sengers on the jet, a.s.saulted a police officer, and grabbed you at knifepoint. That's kidnapping, false imprisonment, and a.s.sault with a deadly weapon. I want you to consult as psych liaison on this case. Evaluate Kanan and help us find him.”
”Good. Thanks.”
”Get to it,” Tang said. ”Find out who he's after.”
Before he finds me, Jo thought. ”You've got it.”
Tang downed the rest of her coffee and got to her feet.
”There's something else,” Jo said.