* 5 *

The black van idled on the driveway, waiting while the garage door opened. Rain sliced across the windshield. The door droned up and the van pulled in.

Alan Murdock shut off the engine. "Unload the supplies."

Vance Whittleburg hopped out, hitched up the saggy jeans that hung halfway down his behind, and began shifting grocery bags and boxes of ammunition into the house. Even carrying sodas and ketchup, he made sure to strut like the g.a.n.g.b.a.n.ger he dreamed of being.

Murdock put the garage door back down. This was a neglected rental house in Mountain View, off San Antonio Road. It was hard by the railroad tracks and hardly the only home on the street with a weedy lawn and garbage cans in which stray dogs foraged. The street didn't have a neighborhood watch. It was a place where n.o.body cared. And n.o.body would take notice of temporary tenants coming and going.

The door from the house opened and Ken Meiring pushed into the garage. Gauze circled his overmuscled forearm, covering the b.l.o.o.d.y bite Seth Kanan's dog had inflicted. Ken's face was red, all the way into his crew cut. The acne that ringed his neck stood out like plague buboes. If the guy didn't lose some weight and cut down his steroid dosage, he was going to give himself a stroke.

Murdock walked to a cabinet along the wall. "Got news that'll lower your blood pressure."

"Go ahead, Dirty Harry-make my G.o.dd.a.m.ned day."

Murdock ignored the mockery. So he wasn't a San Francisco cop anymore-he was ent.i.tled to wear the SFPD T-shirt until it fell apart.

"You don't complain about the parting gifts I brought with me from the department," he said.

He opened the cabinet. It was stocked with goodies he had liberated from police custody, including plastic handcuffs, CS gas, and a handy nightstick. He set a box of nine-millimeter ammunition inside, next to his pistol.

Ken grunted. "Fine, sprinkle pixie dust on my mood."

"He's here."

Ken's eyebrows rose.

"Came in on a Virgin Atlantic flight this morning." Murdock smiled, exposing his small teeth. "We're back in business."

"You positive?"

Outside, the Caltrain lumbered down the tracks. The bare lightbulb that hung from the roof of the garage jittered. Ken stared at Murdock like he was watching the light reflect off Murdock's shaven head.

Murdock's smile receded. "You should really have more faith in me, Ken. The deal is back on track."

"When?"

Murdock locked the cabinet. "Patience."

"Patience is dangerous. Kanan is a wild card."

Murdock turned, stepped close, and lowered his voice. "But we hold all the aces."

Ken slowly, gradually, nodded. Murdock stepped back.

"You need to expand your horizons," he said. "This isn't like hijacking a truck full of restricted electronic gear. This is the big leagues. Mergers and acquisitions, Ken."

Ken looked unconvinced.

"Acquisition, anyhow," Murdock said. He took out his phone. "And we have a monetary wizard setting up the next phase."

"That who you calling?"

Murdock smiled again. His gums made a wet sound. "The sales department."

As he listened to the phone ring, he slapped Ken on the back. "Get yourself geared up. Kanan's bringing back liquid lightning. Enough to shock the whole world."

Ken eyed him. "Maybe. But we have to get it from him."

Jo walked toward the E.R. with Simioni, flipping through Ian Kanan's pa.s.sport and wallet. The pa.s.sport showed visits to Jordan, Israel, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia, all stamped within the past two weeks. His driver's license listed a home address near Golden Gate Park. A corporate photo I.D. said IAN KANAN, CHIRA-SAYF INCORPORATED, SANTA CLARA. Silicon Valley, she suspected.

Simioni had a printout of Kanan's MRI. Jo knew it would hit Kanan like a hammer blow.

As a forensic psychiatrist, she mercifully avoided dropping doom on people. She a.n.a.lyzed the dead for the police-she didn't break bad news. Not anymore. Not since the moment she'd told her mother- and father-in-law their son was dead.

She knocked and went through the door into the E.R. room. Kanan was pacing by the window, phone pressed to his ear. He was dressed in his street clothes. He looked like a penned animal.

"Misty, I'm back, babe. I'm on my way."

The door clicked shut. Kanan turned, saw Jo and Simioni, and hung up. He extended his hand. "Ian Kanan. Doc, give me the word-what's happening? Because I need to leave."

Simioni hesitated, comprehended that Kanan didn't remember him, and shook. "Rick Simioni. I'm the neurologist who sent you for the MRI."

Kanan frowned. "MRI?"

Jo offered her hand. "I'm Dr. Beckett. You suffered two seizures and have a severe head injury. It's affecting your memory."

"What are you talking about? My memory's fine."

"Do you recognize me?"

His gaze slid smoothly up her body. It took in her athletic physique, her dark eyes, her long brown curls. It stopped at the laminated hospital I.D. clipped to her sweater.

"No. Should I?" he said.

"I'm a psychiatrist. I brought you here from the airport. I've been with you for nearly two hours."

"I don't remem-" His face dropped. In the sudden quiet, a lash of rain hit the window. "I have amnesia?"

"Yes."

Simioni said, "A particular kind called anterograde amnesia. You haven't lost old memories. But something has damaged the part of your brain that forms new ones."

"'Something.' What?"

"We're investigating that."

"Don't you know?"

"Not yet. We need your history. Talk us through what you were doing in Africa and the Middle East."

Kanan held back, his face registering disbelief at not yet. Finally he said, "Business trip."

"What do you do, Mr. Kanan?"

"Ian. I'm a security consultant for a tech company in Santa Clara."

Jo had guessed right. "What does your job involve?"

"I help the company keep hold of its equipment and its people."

"How?"

He raised a hand. "Stop. You're saying I have a head injury and keep forgetting everything?"

"Yes. And help us. You just came back from the developing world. What does your job involve?"

He hesitated and then seemed to calm himself. "When company personnel head overseas, I go along to scout dicey situations. I ride herd on engineers and executives. Make sure absentminded programmers don't leave their laptops on a train and that n.o.body plays away from home in a way that could get them hurt."

"Excuse me?" Simioni said.

"I keep executives from getting so drunk they get rolled by prost.i.tutes or reveal trade secrets to foreign compet.i.tors."

Simioni crossed his arms. "You do any industrial health and safety work?"

Kanan's smile was brief and wry. "I'm a babysitter."

Jo and Simioni exchanged a glance, puzzled. The possibilities were numerous and awful and none of them made immediate sense. A blow to the head. Viral encephalitis. Brain surgery performed with a Black & Decker drill. Tapeworm larvae burrowing into Kanan's brain.

Jo forcibly ignored that image. Kanan's eyes were bright. He was handsome and lucid and in deep trouble.

"You're saying something's wrong with me?" he said.

"Something serious, yes," Jo said.

Simioni held out the MRI photos. As Kanan examined them, his face paled.

There was little point breaking it to him gently. There would never be a good time to explain things to him-anything-ever again. Whatever he learned, he could never a.s.similate. He could only be reminded of it, endlessly. A melody poured through Jo's thoughts. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Strip My Mind."

Simioni asked Kanan a list of questions. Fever? Drinking unfiltered water or eating suspect food from a Zimbabwean food stall? No, no, and no.

Kanan stared relentlessly at the images. "I've never heard of this."

"It's extremely rare," Jo said. "Did anything strange happen on your business trip? Anything at all out of the ordinary?"

"No." He looked up. "What's the treatment?"

"We're working on that," Simioni said.

Kanan's voice sharpened. "Don't you know?"

"We won't even have a chance to treat it unless we can figure out what's causing it."

Kanan looked rigid, like a spring pressed down, ready to blow. "Prognosis?"

"The part of your brain that processes information and sends it to long-term storage is damaged," Jo said. "It means information won't be transferred to memory. It will slough off."

He jabbed a finger at the MRI printout. "You're saying this part of my brain is being scratched out." He drew a breath. "Erased."

"In a way, yes."

"Like I'm looking through a camera viewfinder but can't click the shutter," Kanan said. "Am I going to become a vegetable?"

She held on to his gaze. "No."

"I'm gonna end up staring out the window drooling?"

"Not at all," Simioni said.

Kanan's gaze lengthened. Simioni continued explaining things, but Jo knew that Kanan heard none of it. His head and heart were stuck at the screeching red letters that had just been scrawled across his life. Mind wipe.

Jo touched Kanan's hand. "You have some kind of brain trauma. That's all we know."

She gauged his pulse. It was fast and strong. He was wearing a denim shirt over a brown T-shirt. The logo on the T-shirt said FADE TO CLEAR. Kanan saw her reading it.

"My kid's garage band. They got a dozen shirts made in the Haight." He blinked. Though he looked calm, he was breathing rapidly. "Find out what's wrong with me. Fix it."

"We're trying," Jo said. "But it's doing damage right now, and that damage is not the kind that can be repaired."

Simioni's pager went off. "Have to go." He crossed his arms. "Mr. Kanan, we're doing everything we can. Hang in there."

He left. Kanan watched the door close.

"None of this makes sense. I remember everything. Ian David Kanan. Age thirty-five. Blood type A-positive."

He reeled off his address, date of birth, driver's license and Social Security numbers. "I broke my arm at summer camp when I was eight. I took Misty to the senior prom. I work at Chira-Sayf. I can recite the security code to open the door to the lab there."

"What time is it?" Jo said.

He looked bemused. "I don't know, dinnertime?"