Memories May Lie Read online

  Memories May Lie

  Book Two of the Charlie Spade Series

  Vanessa Muir

  Copyright © 2019 Creative Brand Ventures, LLC. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, organizations, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations or persons, living or dead, is fictionalized or coincidental.

  This book is a Hidden Sphinx production. For inquiries regarding this book, please email [email protected].

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author or publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Enjoyed The Story?

  Hidden Sphinx Book Club

  1

  The marble rolling pin lay at the base of the sofa, unassuming, the end caked with blood. A few hairs bristled from the drying mess on the cylinder and waved a morbid greeting to Agent Spade.

  “I believe we have our murder weapon,” Agent Charlotte “Charlie” Spade said, snapping on a fresh pair of memory-latex gloves. Schlap-schloop. The gloves fused to her skin and she grimaced. “Educated guess? It’s blunt force trauma.”

  Eli, her partner, shifted in the corner, three fingers pressed to his mouth. “How can you possibly make that assumption? He’s just – the body is – the victim is just sitting there.” He spoke through the spaces between his fingers and swallowed.

  This was the first case Charlie had taken on since the last debacle which had resulted in the arrest of her ex-partner, Jones. That investigation had seen an unprecedented level of interference by the Mem Store and the Council.

  Charlie couldn’t shake the feeling that one of their lab-coated buddies would pop out of the woodwork and stick his nose where it didn’t belong. She glanced over her shoulder at the entrance to the apartment, then shrugged to rid herself of the paranoia.

  It didn’t work.

  She returned to the matter at hand: the dead man on the sofa.

  Charlie pressed her latex-enshrined finger to her temple and brought up the case information. It appeared as a hologram in front of her eyes via technology available to Stormshield agents. She scrolled downward with a thought.

  “Victim’s name is Shane Mitchell. Mem Store researcher.”

  “Right, or we wouldn’t be here,” Eli put in, and used his free hand – the one not keeping a tide of puke at bay – to smooth his Stormshield Service Group badge.

  Charlie speared him with a look of pure impatience. “Shane Mitchell, married to Jana Mitchell, currently missing. The downstairs neighbor reported she heard an argument, a roar, and then a thump, followed by the sound of dragging.”

  “Dragging,” Eli whispered.

  “Uh huh,” she replied. “Dragging.” Charlie tapped her temple again, cut out the feed, then moved toward the sofa. She didn’t touch the rolling pin, but focused on Shane’s corpse, instead.

  The victim sat, his hands folded neatly in his lap, and his head lolling to one side. His mouth had been forced wide open in a silent scream, a plastic bottle of MemXor Pills rammed into the cavity, and his eyes were shut. Blood matted the dark, curled hair on the side of his head – the skull had caved in at the point of contact.

  MemXor was the drug used to stabilize a patient’s brain during the memory removal process.

  “Peculiar,” Charlie said.

  “Not the word I’d use for this, but okay.”

  “The witness says the wife, Jana, dashed by downstairs and disappeared out into the road.” Charlie walked around the back of the sofa and observed the bloody mess behind it. “This must be where she attacked him.”

  “You’re assuming she’s the attacker?”

  “Domestic dispute,” Charlie replied. “That’s what the report says.” But how much could they trust the report? After what had happened on the last case, Charlie wouldn’t put it past the Council and Mem Store to feed SSG false information.

  “So, the wife did this,” Eli said and gulped again. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.

  “That’s what they want us to believe.”

  “Don’t start.”

  Eli thought she was paranoid. No, she was jaded. Her private visits from a Black Mars agent had made her wary of everything and everyone, including him. Especially him – something about Eli lurked beneath the surface. Some secret he wouldn’t share.

  It’d become increasingly difficult to think of him as a ‘rookie.’

  “Fine,” Charlie replied, then nodded toward Shane’s head. “I need you to hold him.”

  “What?” Eli’s mouth flapped open and closed. “Listen, I’m lonely, but I’m not that lonely. And this job doesn’t pay enough.”

  “This is a murder scene, not a comedy club. Hold his head so I can get the pill bottle out, jokester.” She gave him her classic deadpan stare and tapped her practical navy blue heel on the boards. “I want that pill bottle.”

  “Surely, the forensics team can retrieve it.”

  “Hold his head.”

  Eli dropped his hand in defeat, then brought out a pair of memory-latex gloves. He snapped them on, approached the corpse, and took up his position, all with an expression of grim distaste twisting his features – classic handsome dude with that stick-straight nose and cutting-edge jawline. Too pretty to work, right?

  He gingerly held the victim’s head, careful not to touch the portion which dipped in – a bloody mess of bone shard, brain, and congealing fluid. He retched, then gritted his teeth. “There, happy?”

  “You’ve never looked better,” Charlie replied and winked.

  “Now, who’s the comedian?”

  Charlie ignored him and leaned in. She took hold of the end of the pill bottle and tugged. It didn’t budge. “Wow, it’s rammed in there.” She grunted and tried again. No dice.

  “This is my favorite memory,” Eli said. “Like, of all time. This and the time we watched that video of a madman sawing a woman’s thumb off and popping her eyeball out of her skull. I’ll tell my kids about this when I’m older.”

  “Focus on holding his head.” Charlie tugged again, wrinkling up her nose.

  One final tug brought the pill bottle out with a scrape of teeth on plastic. The pills inside rattled. The victim’s jaw remained dropped in that eternal scream, frozen by rigor mortis.

  “There we go,” Charlie said and lifted the bottle. She searched for the expiration date. “Ah, here. It’s not expired. Fresh pills, well within their date.” A kernel of disappointment wormed through her mind. Not related to the last murder then. Or was it? Jones’s final memory had indicated that Mem Store had secrets. Something to hide.

  “So?” Eli prompted. “What does it mean?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” Charlie replied and placed the bottle on the coffee table, a glass and chrome construction which reminded her of the furniture her father kept in his office. She restrained a shudder. “Check the bathroom. See if you find anything else in there.”

  Eli scooted out of the room without a backward glance. Apparently, anything
was better than holding a dead man’s head. Even taking orders from his partner.

  He’d been a desk worker before all of this. Pushing papers didn’t prepare him for the gruesome reality of working in the field.

  Charlie retreated to the other end of the living room and folded her arms, surveying the scene.

  Shane Mitchell sat arranged on the sofa. Except for the gaping mouth, the bloodied rolling pin at his feet, he looked as if he’d fallen asleep watching TV. A cotton button-down shirt, slacks, and expensive loafers. The picture of domesticity, and the apartment wasn’t small either.

  Everything was minimalistic, stylish, and expensive.

  Mem Store paid its employees well. “Pays them or pays them off?” she muttered.

  “Here.” Eli strode through the open arch which led to the hall beyond. He carried an armful of pill bottles. “All MemXor. All within their expiration date. And this isn’t even all of them. There are loads back there, lined up in the bathroom.”

  “So, he was hoarding pills?” Charlie shook her head. “Why? Why keep the MemXor at his home? And why would the wife have shoved them into his mouth after she killed him?”

  “How do you know she did it after he died?”

  “Look,” Charlie said and nodded at Shane. “The rolling pin was dropped in front of the sofa even though the attack happened behind it. There are clear drag marks on the boards, here and here.” She walked to them and crouched, pointing at the bloody tracks. “And he’s sitting upright. He’s arranged this way for a reason. But what is it?”

  “To nauseate investigators?” Eli asked.

  “No, it’s a message. There’s a message somewhere in this, and I’m going to find out what it is,” Charlie said and rose from her crouch.

  A notification blipped in front of her eyes, and she stripped off her gloves. She tapped her temple and raised an eyebrow. “Ah,” she said. “It looks like we’ve got our first lead.”

  “What is it?”

  “The victim’s daughter is at SSG headquarters in Corden Prime Central. Prepped for interrogation.” Charlie dumped her spent gloves in a plastic bag, then placed it on the table beside the pill bottle for Forensics to collect.

  Prepped. That had a decidedly sinister ring to it. “Let’s go,” Charlie said and beckoned to her partner.

  Eli dropped the pill bottles like hot shit and chased after her, stripping off his gloves as he did.

  2

  Charlie marched through the entrance to the interrogation unit at SSG HQ, Eli still hot on her heels. They wound between the glass cubicles, ignoring the blank stares from the interrogators, all tapping away on their screens without focusing on their research.

  Images flashed by – scenes of men and women in various states of torture or undress, and Charlie shuddered for the second time that day.

  The interrogation unit gave her the creeps. The people who worked here were emotionless robots, specifically selected for their lack of empathy.

  And these were the people who had Shane Mitchell’s daughter in their custody.

  Luckily, the interrogation unit fell under SSG jurisdiction.

  “Hurry,” she said over her shoulder.

  They made their way to the center of the room, where a series of glass rooms with double-sided mirrors, of course, dominated the space. Inside one of them sat a young woman with long, blond hair, falling to her waist, her eyes red-rimmed and puffy. Her wrists were bounds in plexi-cuffs and placed on the steel table in front of her.

  A rat of a man stood outside the room, grinning to himself. Krent. The most disgusting interrogator of them all.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Charlie asked, a whip-crack of noise which brought up heads and narrowed eyes.

  Krent jumped, as if someone had stuck a handful of ice down the back of his pants, and spun to face her. His lips peeled back. “You.”

  “I repeat, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Charlie halted in front of him and planted her fists on her hips.

  Eli stopped at her side and mimicked her.

  Two blue-and-yellow clad SSG operatives against one ratty Krent.

  “Get outta here,” he said, eloquent as ever.

  “This woman is a witness in a crime I’m investigating,” Charlie said and tapped her wristwatch. She gestured to the screen, where the notification flashed. Her witness, her case, and her room, now.

  “We,” Eli spoke up. “We’re investigating.”

  Krent’s head, too big for his body, swiveled from side to side, first toward Charlie, then to Eli. “You don’t have authorization.”

  Charlie foisted her watch on him again. “There’s my authorization. It came directly from Boss Ink’s office. You realize what we’re working on, don’t you, Krent? More State-sensitive information.” A lie. She had no idea what it was yet, but nothing gave an SSG agent the cold shivers like the term ‘State-sensitive information.’

  Nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of the Council, even though that was precisely what they were paid to do.

  An unbiased examination of the facts. A mediating body to ensure the State never got out of control.

  Krent backed away, one step, two steps, three. He sucked in through his teeth. “It ain’t over, Spade.”

  “That’s your parting shot?” she asked, then shrugged. “To each their own, I guess.” Charlie pushed open the door which led into the interrogator’s side of the room, and Eli followed.

  A glass wall separated them from the witness, who looked up and sniveled.

  She wasn’t a young woman, she was a teen. “Who are you?” she asked.

  Charlie walked to the glass doors which led to the witness’s side of the room, her reflection approaching her. She did her best to ignore it, but damn, she was in bad shape. Her hair needed a wash, her full lips gloss-free, and the dark circles under her eyes?

  It was the lack of sleep that did it. After last week’s case, and the possibility that Jones’ memories might have held the answer to all her questions about the efficacy of MemXor, she couldn’t sleep.

  Focus, girl. You’ve got a job to do. This one might bring you closer to that truth.

  Charlie entered the code to open the doors. Eli hissed.

  This was against regulation, but Charlie had lost her respect for SSG regulations a while ago. Probably had a lot to do with the cover-up work the “independent” body did for the State.

  She moved through to the witness’s room and sat down opposite her. “Are you Tatiana Mitchell?” she asked.

  “Who are you?” Tatiana repeated.

  “Tatiana, I’m Charlie Spade. I’m the SSG agent working on your father’s case,” she replied. “You were asked to come down here today to answer a few questions about what happened to him.”

  Eli scraped a chair back and took his place next to Charlie.

  “Asked to come down here?” Tatiana snorted. “They arrested me. That weird weasel looking guy threatened to inject me with some silver stuff, and they chucked me in here. I haven’t eaten since this morning!”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Tatiana,” Charlie replied and shot a look out of the glass walls toward Krent, who’d positioned himself at a cubicle nearest the entrance. He flipped her off. “I’ll make sure you’re taken care of and released, just as soon as we’re finished here. This won’t take long. Perhaps, ten more minutes of your time.”

  Tatiana squeezed her eyes shut and kept them that way. “Fine,” she whispered, at last. “Let’s get this over with. My father died today. And my mother is missing.” She cut off, choked on mother.

  “Let me start by saying that I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Tatiana nodded, and her eyelids flickered open. A single tear escaped her left eye and trickled down her cheek. “Thank you.” She slapped the moisture away.

  “Were you in the apartment when the incident occurred?” Charlie asked. She tapped her temple to record the conversation. She didn’t technically need to since the interrogation room had camera
s of its own, but she didn’t trust them. Perhaps, she couldn’t even trust her own cranial device, but she didn’t have much of a choice here.

  “No,” Tatiana said. “I was at my home.”

  “You live separately from your parents?”

  “Yes. I’ve just turned nineteen. I moved out a month ago.” Tatiana hesitated. “I couldn’t stand the fighting, anymore.”

  “Your parents argued frequently?” Eli asked.

  The witness didn’t look at him. She kept her gaze fixed on Charlie and didn’t answer the question.

  Charlie repeated it. “Your parents didn’t get along?”

  “Not anymore, no,” Tatiana said.

  Eli grunted but didn’t comment at the snub.

  Interesting. Why doesn’t Tatiana want to talk to Eli? “Why do you think that was?”

  “It had a lot to do with Dad’s work. He wasn’t home much. He made it clear to both of us that Mem Store was his life, and research was his real love or whatever. He pushed me to join Mem Store, but I said no. I think that was the final straw for Mom. She got sick of it.” Tatiana blinked back tears again. It was every time she mentioned her mother. “We both did.”

  “Did you ever hear what your parents fought about?” Charlie asked.

  “I tried not to, but I know it was about work. He kept bringing research home with him, and I think it pissed her off. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Tatiana’s resolve crumbled. She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes and sobbed. “Please. Let me go home, now.”

  Charlie’s heart twanged. She wasn’t close with her father, and Tatiana seemed a kindred spirit in that. “One last question,” she said, softly. “Do you know where your mother might have gone?”