I decided to take a chance. Probably, in retrospect, it was a foolish chance. I grabbed his gun hand with my left and pushed it aside. At the same time, I pushed my weapon into his throat.
There were two dry clicks. McKesson had pulled the trigger. I’m not sure if the gun would have taken part of my face off, if it had fired. It was being pushed off target—but he had fired pretty fast. McKesson must have figured he had to shoot.
“What the hell?” he gasped. For perhaps the first time since I’d met him, I saw real fear in his eyes.
“Your gun misfired,” I said. “Happens all the time. I guess I just got lucky. You should buy the good ammo next time, not that cheap South American crap.” I knew, naturally, that luck had been with me. I’d grabbed his gun with my left hand—with the very finger that wore Jenna’s ring. The ring was, in fact, in direct contact with the metal of his weapon.
He stared at me for a second, baffled. “You’re so crazy. I could have taken your head off.”
“But you didn’t. Now drop it.”
The gun thumped down. Apparently, he was in no mood to try his luck against my weapon. I turned him around and cuffed him with his own cuffs. I tucked his gun into the front pocket of his jacket where he couldn’t reach it. I walked him to a door marked trash room a hundred steps down the hall. It was locked, but my sunglasses opened it, and after that the rolling steel doors that let out onto the parking lot.
“Where’s your car?” I asked.
“They’re watching us on camera by now. They know.”
I thought about that. Maybe he was right. “I know they’re watching. But I’m working for Rostok now.”
He jerked his head to look at me. I ignored him. It was hard to bluff a cop, especially this one. Whatever the case, we made it to his car unmolested. I let him sit in the passenger seat with his cuffs on while I drove. He wasn’t happy.
“They are going to fry you for this, you know that, don’t you?” he asked me.
“There’s nothing here to fry,” I said. “I’m empty. I’m a ghost without a past.”
“What are you talking about now?”
I gave him my story, telling him about my missing memories. He stared at me with growing apprehension. Clearly, he figured I belonged in a straitjacket.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I headed south, turned east on Sunset, and pulled over at Sunset Park. It was dark now, and there were only a few kids and weirdos around. I dug in the glove compartment.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
I had figured him for a habitual quitter. I found his pack of emergency smokes and a lighter in the glove box. I took out the lighter. McKesson fell quiet as he watched me. It was as if he suspected I was going to singe his eyebrows with the lighter. I remembered him pulling the trigger of his pistol, and thought to myself he’d look pretty funny without eyebrows.
I took the picture of my parents out of its case. There it was: a baby in a bounce chair. My smiling parents clustered close around me, my dad’s arm extended to full length to get the shot. If that baby was me, I’d never looked happier.
I flicked the lighter. It took three tries to get it to catch. These cheap safety lighters always hurt your thumb. I sat there behind the steering wheel, breathing hard. This was more difficult than I’d thought it would be. I told myself the flame would only mar one tiny corner.
I held the picture in my left hand and the lighter in my right. I didn’t put the flame under the picture, but instead brought it down from above to a corner. It took an effort of will, but I touched the flame down to the least interesting corner of the photo. There was no one there, I told myself. The lighter would only blacken what looked like a refrigerator in the background. It would give the picture a bit of character, that’s all.
The flame touched the picture for a half second, then I pulled it away. I was sweating.
“Your family?” McKesson said.
“I think so,” I said, flicking the lighter again. It had gone out.
“Nice-looking couple. You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“Do what?”
“Throw it all away. Burn your past.”
I studied the photo. Was it a little browner in that corner? It was hard to tell. I turned on the car’s dome light and inspected it.
“You know, you’ve been through a lot lately,” McKesson was saying. “People often give up when under heavy stress. I know some people you can talk to.”
I let my hands drop to my lap. “Would you shut up?” I asked. “This is hard to do.”
McKesson’s soft-guy voice vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “All right, asshole. Just tell me straight, are you going to do yourself, me, or the both of us?”
I stared at him for a second. “I’m not shooting anyone. I’m trying to see if this picture will burn.”