Rundown by Michael Cadnum Read Free Book Online Page B

on, someone with a flat tire or a stall.”
    â€œI didn’t.”
    â€œYou sound sure,” said the voice from the back seat.
    I craned my neck to look at Detective Ronert, his sympathetic face stuck in the farthest possible corner of the back.
    I said, “I can’t remember a particular vehicle.”
    â€œThat late in the day all the botanical garden staff is gone,” she said. “So any car in the parking lot—” She glanced into her side mirror, and a bicyclist flashed by, pumping hard down College Avenue.
    â€œSo,” she continued, after watching the cyclist’s butt disappear down the street. “Were there any cars parked there?”
    â€œThere could have been,” I said.
    â€œBut you can’t remember?” she asked.
    I made an I’m-trying frown.
    â€œBecause failure to recall the run-up to a crime is very common, and these back-canceled impressions are what we need to uncover.”
    What would I have been able to recall, I asked myself.
    â€œThe point is—we have some tire tread,” the detective was saying. “There was a car that parked just beyond the gardens, up behind a pine tree, like someone trying to hide. If you saw a vehicle secluded during your run—”
    â€œYou can match the tread to the car,” I prompted, like the smartest kid in class.
    â€œWe did already, it was a Volvo, not new. They’re very easy to identify, all those European tires. But the car could have parked there any time within the last couple of days. We can’t search for all the ten-year-old Volvos.”
    â€œTen-year-old tires would be pretty worn out.”
    â€œThey were.”
    I made myself look like someone searching her memory. Then I offered a helpless smile.
    â€œAll the other attacks have been in more urban areas. San Jose State University, the Hayward BART station, the old Montgomery Ward building.” She left some silence between statements, like someone who never had to rush. “How far up the canyon did you jog, Jennifer?”
    â€œAll the way up to the Lawrence Hall of Science.” This was untrue, but my voice betrayed nothing. Besides, I could run tougher hills than that.
    â€œSo you passed that funny-looking pine tree, with the twisted branches.”
    â€œI can’t remember a particular tree.” But then, like a poker player turning over a card, I saw it clearly in my mind, the tree she was talking about. I had seen it as I surveyed the canyon in recent weeks, a stunted Monterey pine. “The one like this, arms all over the place.”
    Detective Margate made a smile by pressing her lips together. “We can forget about the Volvo, right?”
    I made the kind of exaggerated sigh Dad gives when Cass drives him crazy.
    Detective Margate took her time, shifting into drive, releasing the parking brake. “We need you to help us, Jennifer. And we need your parents to consent.”
    â€œI’d love to help. The trouble is, Mom hates police shrinks.”
    The car accelerated, and we began passing cars in the slow lane. “I was in Strawberry Canyon until well after midnight last night and studied that path up and down the slope. I just don’t see our perpetrator hiding in the poison oak.”
    â€œYou’re going to send me to a doctor who’ll get me to remember.” I watched the store fronts drift by.
    â€œIt’ll help us immeasurably,” she said.
    â€œHe’ll stick a needle into me.”
    â€œThat’s not how Dr. Pierce works,” she said, in a tone of great kindness, like the world’s best nurse. “He uses memory regression. The other victims have cooperated. If nothing else works, he uses hypnosis.”
    I stared at her profile.
    She asked, “Where do you work?”

Chapter 11
    At first Animal Heaven looks like just another pet store, cheese-flavored chew toys for the family Rottweiler dangling next to a display of choke