Quantum

by Patricia Cornwell

  Just one more thing to make me feel lesser than when it comes to her, and I’m not sure I knew before now that my feelings toward my twin aren’t always charitable. I don’t think jealous is the word I’d use, and I shove the shower curtain open, the plastic rings scraping over the metal rod as if chattering unhappily. But resentful at times, if I’m brutally honest, not always knowing where I begin and she ends or the other way around.

  Testing the water, getting the temperature just right, and I step in to wash away the sweaty, violent day. Soothed by hot drumming spray as loud as a rainforest, the bright scent of my shampoo lifting my mood. Closing my eyes, I let the water massage my face, swishing out my mouth, scrubbing my teeth, the inside of my nostrils, my second decon of the night, only this time it’s psychological.

  As if somehow everything I know and fear is washing down the drain, and then I feel it again. Something nearby, tethering me with its attention. Turning off the shower, reaching around for the towel. Stepping over the side of the tub, and if it’s possible to have a heart attack at my age when fit as a fiddle, then that might be what I’m experiencing.

  A massive thud in my chest, the top of my head lifting off as something tap-taps at the bathroom door again.

  30

  “SISTO, it’s me. Hello, hello?” Carme’s voice. “Open up.”

  Tap-tap. Tap-tapping the other side of the locked door.

  “How do I know it’s really you?” I sound like a pluperfect doofus when I ask, because who else could it be?

  Dripping everywhere, frantically drying off and startled out of my gourd.

  “Who calls you Sisto?” The voice is Carme’s, and the answer is she’s the only one who calls me that.

  Few are aware of her pet name for me that goes back to our childhood. So many things shared by just us. Silly secrets and aliases, spy names, passwords and invented codes.

  “Open the door, Sisto. And you’ll understand.” Through heavy oak, wrapping a towel around me as best I can.

  Tap-tap, something hard like metal or plastic knocking again, and Glock in hand, I open the door . . .

  “Holy shhhh . . . !”

  Letting in my missing mirror ball, number 12.

  “Carme?”

  Hovering in front of my head.

  “Holy shhhh . . . ! Is that you?” Too shocked to move as I watch the mirrored skeleton sphere help itself to the bathroom, to whatever it wants.

  Circling appraisingly from different invasive altitudes. Brazenly giving my immodest state the once-over. Then spinning at eye level and holding. Before floating into the steaminess as if it lives here. Drifting along the shower rod, following it like railroad tracks in lazy pirouettes, hijacked by my sister.

  Has to be my fighter-pilot twin at the controls with those facile hands of hers, watching with the built-in camera, talking through the tiny speaker. Taking a good long look just as she always does when we’ve not been together in a while. A preflight of sorts, her assessing what shape I’m in, as if sizing up whether I’m worth taking for a spin.

  “I guess you’re not going to tell me where you are.” Toweling my hair as the wind buffets the tin roof in varying tones, and the orb says nothing. “Are you here in the barn? Maybe give me a hint if you might be close enough to catch a cold from . . .”

  Such a strange thing to say, don’t know why that tumbled out of my mouth. What our mother used to lecture us about when we hit puberty, laying out the parameters if we were to spend time with certain “subjects of interest.” In the pet cemetery at Fort Monroe, for example. At the picnic tables in the dark parking lot at Smitty’s drive-in. Sitting in the very back at the movies, not caring what you’d come there to see.

  Mom was fine with our crushes as long as we didn’t get close enough to the objects of them to catch anything. Ruling out pretty much everything and everyone I was curious about.

  “I guess you remember her saying that,” I keep talking, and the orb doesn’t answer.

  Not audibly. Spinning clockwise.

  “I guess that would be a yes?” toweling my hair.

  Reluctant to use the blow dryer while a PONG hovers overhead, and I almost worry about scaring it. But that’s just plain dumb.

  “You remember Mom teaching us about the birds and the bees, as she called her idea of sex education? Lecturing us,” I go on, “and I won’t remind you who usually listened, by the way. And who did not.” Toweling my hair vigorously. “The latter being you. And why the sudden silence?” Glancing up at the orb at 2 o’clock like a silvery full moon. “Why aren’t you talking?”

  Nothing.

  “Are you safe?” and with that, it stops rotating.

  Only to start again in the opposite direction. Counterclockwise. She’s saying no. She’s not safe.

  “Did you do something bad.”

  The mirror ball stops again, reversing itself. Yes, she’s done something bad.

  “Did you kill anyone? Or more than one? May as well tell me,” as I’m about to die inside. “I’ll find out soon enough.”

  Reversing her spin again. No, she did not kill anyone, and my heart sings. But not loudly or much.

  “But people think you have. But it’s not you. Someone else is doing something . . . Crap!” Frustrated and scared. “Can I be any more vague? Darn it, Carme, tell me what’s going on,” as she spins the same way, yes, yes, yes to all.

  She’s implicated in something terrible and involved somehow. But she’s not to blame, and I need her to talk to me. To explain. To give me every detail. But not an audible sound even as she spins while I tremble inside, about to cry.

  “You’re not going to talk to me anymore?” Clearing my throat, tears in my eyes. “Carme?”

  Gently drifting down, nose to flashy nose, looking reflectively at me, lightly butting against my forehead as delicate rotor wash gives my cheek a breezy kiss. Bringing to mind Carme leaning her head against mine, holding it there, her breath stirring my hair. Recharging each other, she’s been saying all our lives. A melding of the minds, and the way we know the other cares.

  Please don’t die.

  The orb lifts up like a helium balloon, as if trying to make me understand that she’s doing the only thing she can.

  “It would be good if you’d say something again.”

  She won’t.

  “If we could talk like we always do.”

  Silence.

  “All right then, let me see if I can guess your logic,” and I find the situation strangely comforting, horrifying and unbearable all at once.

  Trying to keep my voice from quavering. Trying not to sob. Because my sister didn’t go to all this trouble to be the usual outrageous mischief-maker. She hasn’t been sneaking around like Santa’s elf turned delinquent, breaking and hacking in and out of places, tampering with projects and crime scenes, overtaking and reengineering them. And I hate to think what else as images drift up from earlier in the day.

  The dried blood spatter on the steam pipe in the Yellow Submarine tunnel. The alarm not armed when I walked into police headquarters, the TV set to the International Space Station live video feed when it never is. Even stranger, the two astronauts about to conduct the top secret spacewalk were on the TV screen as I walked in, as big as life, prepping for the installation of the faux LEAR. Not to mention the scene at Fort Monroe, the unlocked doors and missing badge turning up, the bizarre staged and unstaged scene, and what I picked up with my signal analyzer.

  Then I get home to the porch light out, the dead bolt unlatched, and who’s to say Carme isn’t behind all of it. Including Vera Young’s stolen badge turning up, and the bleach and its missing bottle. I don’t need a forensic pathologist to tell me she’s dead viciously and unwillingly, and that everything about the
homicide has been tampered with by different people with what would seem to be antithetical agendas.

  One wanting to disguise. While the other blows the whistle. And I sure would like to find out what’s implanted in Vera Young’s body. What sort of sensors, for what purpose, and most of all, I want to know what any of it might have to do with my sister.

  What have you done? I almost ask the orb, but I won’t.

  Reminded I need to respect this and every PONG as a person with instincts, feelings and free will. Otherwise I’ll underestimate the spirit behind it, making it defensive. Or desperate. Remembering the drone is tethered to my twin and at the same time assuming no such thing. What I do know for a fact is she’s not ducking Dick or me or anyone as a prank, to be a jerk or punish.

  Carme is hacking her way into whatever she needs because it’s the only way the two of us can be together for some awful reason. And I’m scared I might never see her again.

  Don’t leave me.

  “If you transmit remotely and your voice sounds through the PONG’s speakers, the risk is someone else might overhear,” I say logically, calmly, could win an Academy Award for my acting skills. “Plus, you use more energy. Plus, you don’t want me or anyone to record you since you seem to be MIA at the moment.” As if it makes perfect sense, and I don’t think it strange. And might even do the same.

  No response.

  “Dick’s looking for you, but then you must know that,” and of course Carme would. “A lot of people are eager to find you right about now. I’m supposed to turn you in,” and she probably knows that, too, probably knows everything.

  The orb just spins like the exposed jewel movement of a skeleton watch. Moving clockwise. Nonplussed and in no hurry.

  00:00:00:00:0

  “AND finally, if a simple yes or no is as much as I’m going to get from now on?” Talking up to the ceiling, talking to my sister, and I need to finish getting ready.

  It’s midnight, NASA centers are being furloughed as we speak, and despite it all, I have to get to Langley. But how am I supposed to do that when someone unexpected has dropped in, and I stare up at the glittery skeleton sphere silent in gauzy veils of steam, spinning positively.

  “Then all I can say is at least it’s consistent with your style.” This time my comment prompts a zippy whirl as if Carme just stepped on the gas.

  Yes, she agrees it’s her personality to be what she calls verbally economical and I call terse. Staccato. Insensitive and rude at times. I think she’d talk in acronyms and numeric codes all the livelong day were it socially acceptable. Brave and bold, yet isolative, distrusting, forever on the commitment lam. Here then gone, walking off the job, lost in space, that’s my sister, shying away from nothing except getting close.

  Her fear of intimacy isn’t to be confused with fooling around because she has no problem with that. I should know, having spent many an evening with her at Fort Monroe, witnessing her do plenty that should have given her chronic colds and a few other ailments. Carme has a fierce will and insatiable appetites she’s never hesitated to explore and satisfy. Where she falls short, if not flunks, is in the emotional department.

  She’s never been as intuitive and psychologically driven as I tend to be, but any ability she had to connect probably shorted out that late fall day when we were 6. Sort of like what happened to Fran after I came home from Colorado Springs, hadn’t been living in the barn two weeks when I got the call on Christmas Eve. That she and Easton were driving through a tunnel when a tire blew. And the wrong guys pulled over to offer roadside assistance.

  Maybe some damage really is permanent, and I don’t blame my sister for not wanting to be vulnerable again. Not after what happened when the stunt pilot gave her a ride home in that sexy ’68 “Carma-raro,” as he often playfully called it.

  00:00:00:00:0

  TAKING a detour along the way as it got dark, turning off Beach Road into the cemetery. Asking her how many dead people there were in there, his headlights shining on headstones. Until he flipped them off, just them sitting alone in the dark.

  “I don’t know,” Carme later telling me what she said. “How many?”

  “All of them,” he laughed, taking her hand, asking if she was his special girl.

  One day he would take her to the prom, and when boys take girls to the prom, they park in places just like this. Cemeteries at night, no eyes or ears when you steal your first sweet kiss.

  00:00:00:00:0

  OR so he said, as it was relayed to me after the fact. Not that I know much. Just that the stunt pilot vanished, our parents making sure we never spoke of him again.

  In later years when I started interning with Fran during high school, I let my fingers do a lot of sneaky walking through old records. Not just at Hampton PD, but also Langley, digging everywhere for documents that might tell me more about what happened all those years ago. But nothing. Including the identity of the lawyer my parents took me to see.

  In Hampton’s historic district near where a lot of the breweries are today. Some balding man with wire-frame glasses, in a dark suit and bow tie. Possibly a commonwealth’s attorney. But no one I recognize, and to this day I can’t figure it out.

  31

  FEELING very small in my favorite cowboy outfit, sitting between Mom and Dad on a black leather couch with brass tacks in the armrests. The lawyer asking me questions about Carme and the pool.

  “Calli, tell me again why you left your sister all by herself,” from the leather wing chair he’s pulled too close.

  “She ordered me to leave.”

  “Now let’s back up and think carefully because this is very important. Did Carme order you to leave . . . ?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Or did the stunt pilot?”

  “She did.”

  “I see, but whose idea was it really . . . ?”

  “Hers.”

  “And the two of you are how old?”

  “Six.”

  “Just turned 6, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And when’s your birthday?” Jotting notes on a yellow legal pad. “Let’s see how good that photographic memory of yours really is.”

  “November 22, 1991, at 2:22 a.m. Except Carme was born 8 minutes before me at 2:14 a.m. eastern time. Or 7:14 and 7:22 Greenwich Mean Time. So, we’re not exactly the same age.”

  “Now aren’t you clever with all those fancy numbers and talk. Well, same age or not, 6 years old still strikes me as kinda young to be arranging carpooling,” cutting his eyes at Mom and Dad, nobody smiling except him now and then.

  “Try to answer his questions, Calli,” Dad next to me on the couch. To the lawyer, “She’s getting tired. It’s been quite stressful . . .”

  “Of course, of course, but just to be very clear, Calli, it was yours and Carme’s birthdays when you went to the indoor pool, when your stunt-pilot friend drove the two of you in your daddy’s Camaro. A special treat on a special day. A weekday, both Mom and Dad working, and he said he’d take the two of you swimming at the Officer’s Club and have you home at 6:00 p.m. sharp.”

  “1800 hours is what we said.”

  “Yes, everybody and their military time around these parts. But what I hear you telling me is it was Carme’s idea for you to catch that boat ride home with . . . what’s their name?”

  “The Powells,” Mom reaching for my hand.

  “That’s right, they’d take their boat back and forth to the Officer’s Club. And you’re telling me it was Carme’s idea for you to leave her at the pool. Leave her to fend for herself on her birthday alone with a man the same age as your daddy.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’m just wondering if it might not have been her idea. That’s what I keep getting at.”


  “I don’t know.”

  “Clever as you may be, you won’t understand this word, honey, but it’s important to figure out if something is pre-med-i-tated.” Making fun the way kids at school do if you know too much. “My point is, did your stunt-pilot friend plan to take Carme to the cemetery all along?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was it planned in advance, and maybe you were interfering?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They didn’t want you there, now did they?”

  Looking at me, somehow knowing they always made me feel that way.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who did he think he was taking for a ride in that fancy car that the stunt pilot helped your daddy rebuild?”

  “Carme.”

  “And he could tell the two of you apart?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was this stuntman . . .”

  “Stunt pilot,” Dad keeps correcting him.

  The lawyer flipping through a big yellow notepad.

  “Now, Calli, was this stunt pilot ever a little too friendly with you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe touching you in private places, saying things that made you feel . . .”

  “Now, don’t be giving her ideas,” Mom swooping in.

  “Well, we need the truth, Penny. No matter how hard it might be to hear, now isn’t that right, Calli? Didn’t your parents bring you up knowing the difference between the truth and a lie?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You sure that stuntman . . . stunt pilot never got a little too friendly, maybe a little too touchy, maybe made you feel uncomfortable . . . ?”

  “I don’t know,” while shaking my head no.