by Keith Thomas
“And did it?”
“No,” Matilda said. “It wound up being a nest of sorts, a way to insulate myself in my own thoughts. I don’t think I realized that until now, until Ashanique. I’m so scared that I’m going to lose it all, lose myself like my mother and grandfather, that I’m struggling to write all my thoughts and ideas down as fast as I have them.”
“They all worth keeping?”
“Of course not. What happened this morning, it’s helped me remember that all this stuff is only important if it truly helps other people too. Why bother solving the riddle of memory if you have no one to remember—”
Matilda’s cell phone buzzed.
She pulled it from her purse. The screen read TAMIKO.
“A colleague,” Matilda said, tucking her phone away. “She probably heard about what happened yesterday morning, wants to make sure I’m okay.”
“Understandable, you had a rough day.”
Matilda’s cell buzzed again.
A text from Tamiko:
Just heard. Oh my God. Please call me. Or just stop by.
“Sorry,” Matilda said, turning back to Kojo.
“Look, you’ve got stuff to do. I should get going anyway.”
“Of course, all that paperwork.”
“Yeah.” Kojo smiled. “Always the paperwork.”
He put out his hand. They shook.
Kojo noticed how cool her hand felt. He had the sudden, at the time inexplicable, desire to warm it. The shake lasted a little longer than either of them expected and ended with an awkward parting.
Kojo laughed. “Okay. Okay. I’ll be in touch.”
Matilda said, “Please do.”
33
MATILDA WATCHED KOJO walk to the elevator.
As the doors closed, he looked at her and waved.
Matilda replayed their conversation as she walked back upstairs; she worried she wasn’t as clear about Ashanique’s uniqueness as she’d meant to be. At the same time, she wondered if it mattered. She could tell that Kojo recognized the strange, powerful aura around the girl—it was unmistakable.
Reaching Ashanique’s floor, Matilda stopped by the doc box, where physicians and nurses gathered to chart and discuss cases.
There were a couple of residents charting. She didn’t know either of them, and they both looked a good ten years younger than she was. Four in the morning and they were running on that superhuman energy that came with being twenty and on the verge of a new career. When Matilda walked in, they seemed surprised to see her.
“I heard what happened to Clark. So terrible.”
Matilda just nodded. She knew they weren’t sympathetic because of the affair. Clark had kept that as hidden as his empathy. But he was her boss, and in a tight-knit university community, the loss of a boss to something as horrible as a murder—No, Matilda mentally told herself, it was a slaying—was a tragedy no one could emerge from unscathed. Matilda needed to remain numb.
She needed to focus on Ashanique.
Matilda took a seat at a computer. As she logged into the system, she wondered: If what the girl had was something psychological—possibly a mixture of coaching and untreated illness—then it was unique, a condition she’d never seen before. Let alone read about. If it wasn’t, then . . . Well, Matilda knew she couldn’t let her mind go there yet. All she knew with any certainty was that Ashanique’s case was incredibly complicated. Whatever Janice had gotten into, it was ugly, and the girl desperately needed help to get out of it. Regardless of what the cops uncovered, regardless of whether social services could find the girl a new, safe home, there would be years of therapy required to work through the trauma—not to mention whatever underlying condition was causing the seizures and visions.
Matilda opened Ashanique’s electronic medical record and asked one of the residents to take a look at the girl’s labs. She knew the results weren’t off—nothing elevated, nothing weird—but she needed corroboration. There were brain scans as well. The resident only confirmed what Matilda already figured: analysis of the girl’s chart showed nothing physically wrong with her.
No tumor. No infections. No nothing.
God damn it. So much for the easy explanation.
Matilda went down the hall to Ashanique’s hospital room.
She found the girl asleep. As the first beams of daylight softened the air, Ashanique turned, grimaced, and groaned. Matilda walked over, ready with a soothing hand, when her cell phone buzzed again. This time, it was a call from Canada and not a number she recognized.
Matilda answered the phone with a whispered hello as she exited Ashanique’s room and stepped into the hallway.
“Dr. Deacon? This is Dr. Lane Foss. Did I wake you?”
“No, I’m awake. Who’s this?”
“Sorry,” Dr. Foss said; his voice had the distinctive speakerphone echo. “I don’t know what time zone you’re in. I’m one of the curators at the Canadian War Museum. You left a message about a pocket watch belonging to a British First World War soldier named George Ellison. . . .”
“Oh, yes. Yes I did.”
“Well, we have the pocket watch in an exhibit here. It’s on loan from the Imperial War Museum in Manchester. Did you have a specific question about it?”
Matilda leaned against a wall as two nurses passed her. One of them, a former student who had gotten terrible grades, waved, and Matilda nodded back with a smile. She couldn’t believe the hospital had hired her.
“So, uh,” Matilda said into the cell, “this is going to sound a little goofy, but is there any chance that there’s a smiley face or a drawing carved onto the back of the pocket watch?”
“A smiley face?”
“Yeah.”
Dr. Foss was silent. Matilda worried he was about to hang up. The request did sound ridiculous. But he didn’t hang up. She heard a click as he switched off from speaker. His voice was suddenly closer, the phone rustling as he walked.
“I’ll take a look,” he said. “I’m right near the exhibit now. Can I ask what this is in regards to? It is an odd request.”
“I’m working with a, uh, family member of Mr. Ellison. There is apparently a long-standing story that Mr. Ellison carved a face on the back of that watch. I told the family I’d inquire about it. That’s the long and short of it.”
“Well,” Dr. Foss said, “I’m looking at the pocket watch now and I don’t see anything. It’s blank on the back. Just a metal case with, uh, no . . . There’s no inscription of any kind. Guess we can put that family legend to rest.”
Matilda glanced into the room at Ashanique.
The girl had rolled again in her sleep, covering half her face with the bedsheets as the light poured in. Matilda was convinced the girl wasn’t making up the pocket watch story. It was such a strangely specific detail. And Ashanique seemed so confident of it. Still, this little girl had far bigger problems than dealing with a voice inside her head. Her mom had taken investigational cancer drugs for God’s sake. There was a maniac trying to kill her. Maybe, Matilda thought, it’s just best to let this past-life stuff go. As convincing as Ashanique seemed, it isn’t doing her any good to rehash it all. The girl needs real help, not your getting lost in her mother’s delirium.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you, Dr. Foss,” Matilda said. “Thank you—”
“Hang on.”
Foss’s voice was distant again.
“There’s something here,” he said. “I need to use both hands for a second. Can I call you back in a minute? It’ll be just a minute.”
“Sure.”
Dr. Foss hung up before he heard the reply.
Matilda stood in the hallway, confused about what was happening and checking her cell every few seconds for a message or an email. Nothing came. She sighed, leaned over to look again at Ashanique, and that was when her cell buzzed.
It was not a phone call, though.
It was a video call.
Matilda answered, and a video chat window opened on her cell. She saw
a desk, blurry with motion for a moment, before it stabilized.
Dr. Foss’s voice came in from offscreen.
“Sorry about the delay,” he said. “This is kind of crazy, but I noticed the back of the pocket watch, the casing, had an edge to it. There was a layer of metal on top, a covering. So, I . . .”
The image shook again and Dr. Foss’s hands appeared; he was holding a metal circle in his right hand. It was dull bronze.
“This was on the back,” he said. “Sort of a cover, I guess. It was probably done when it was refurbished shortly after the war. I pulled it off. It just kind of snapped off. Anyway, I want you to see this.”
Dr. Foss put the metal circle down on the desk and moved the pocket watch into view. The watch appeared quite ordinary. The kind of thing you’d find in the vest pocket of a hip businessman or the back pocket of a grandpa. Dr. Foss turned it over and Matilda gasped, nearly dropping the cell.
Engraved on the back of a pocket watch, faint but unmistakable, was a smiley face. It wasn’t the sort of smiley face Matilda was used to seeing. Nothing like the spray-painted ones under overpasses or drawn with Sharpies in bathroom stalls. The head was blocky rather than round, the mouth flat. The impression it gave was less of mirth than longing—there was something undeniably haunting about it.
“I guess family legend trumps expert opinion,” Dr. Foss said. “I would love to hear more about how you found out about this.”
“Wow, uh, thank you,” Matilda said, utterly stunned.
“You’re welcome.”
The call ended.
Matilda thought she might vomit.
34
5:38 A.M.
NOVEMBER 15, 2018
LAKESHORE GYMNASIUM
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
RADE ENTERED the Lakeshore Gym through the revolving doors.
He was wearing a baseball cap with three LED lights sewn into the crown.
The lights were on.
A referral-only athletics center on the city’s Gold Coast, Lakeshore was the fifth most exclusive club in the United States. Members endured a five-hour fitness evaluation before they could begin a customized training program in the gym’s 150,000-square-foot indoor running track, five heated pools, twelve indoor tennis courts, driving range, and private changing cabanas. Annual membership fees typically ran close to $27,000. Retinal scanners restricted access on each of the gym’s five floors. Only fifty members had admittance to the penthouse’s private spa.
Rade was not a member.
But he was likely more familiar with the facility than even its staff. He’d surveilled the place on the few occasions he’d visited. He knew where the cameras were, their models, and how to fool them. The cameras installed in the club couldn’t properly process bright LEDs, the ones sewn into his cap would conceal his face when anyone reviewed the video feed—he’d look like someone with a gleaming supernova for a head.
Rade also knew there was only a single, armed security guard on duty.
The young woman at the front desk wore a dark suit and had her hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She was in her early twenties and greeted Rade with a pearlescent smile. He noticed the tiny diamond stud in her left nostril.
“Good afternoon, sir. Can I help you?”
“Dorothy Sykes,” Rade said.
The young woman shook her head.
“I’m sorry. Our membership—”
Rade pulled a Bren Ten 10mm pistol from the holster under his left arm and shot the young woman between the eyes. Blood Pollocked the wall behind her. Making sure not to get any of her blood on his fingers, Rade kneeled down over her body and carefully pulled her ID badge and then used it to swipe through the door behind the desk. The door led to a hallway lined with sitting couches and framed photos of tropical locations artfully blurred.
The security guard came running around the corner, face busy with concern. He barely registered Rade’s presence before a slug popped through his chest. The guard hit the lushly carpeted floor face-first.
At the end of the hallway was an elevator. Using the receptionist’s badge, Rade stepped inside and pressed the P button for the penthouse. As the elevator climbed, Rade tucked his sweatpants into his shoes. Then he unzipped and removed his hoodie and carefully folded it before placing it on the floor of the elevator.
Thirty-two seconds later, as the elevator chimed and the doors opened, Rade pulled on shatterproof athletic glasses and changed his latex gloves.
He stepped out of the elevator into the penthouse.
There was a reception area with leather chairs and courtesy health food—nuts, fruits, and bottles of water. Across the room was a door with a retinal scanner lock. There were two older men lounging about and watching a basketball game on a flat-screen TV; Rade shot them both—one in the head, the other in the shoulder. He grabbed the wounded man and dragged him over to the retinal scanner.
“Open the door.”
“Jesus!”
Rade pushed the man’s head against the scanner. It read his retina, and the door unlocked. Rade shot the man in the temple and let his body slump to the floor. He pulled open the door and stepped into a narrow hallway that led to a glass door indistinct with steam. Hidden speakers played Chopin.
Rade walked slowly, listening carefully.
The speakers were playing Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2.
Rade pushed the steamed door open and stepped into a large tiled room. Chairs surrounded an opulent Jacuzzi, large enough to house an entire football team.
Three men and four women sat in the pool.
The men were half-submerged, their faces red and dripping with sweat. One of the women rested on the pool’s edge, dangling her feet into the tumultuous water, the other, a blonde, was up to her neck, eyes closed.
Whatever conversation had been interrupted ceased immediately as everyone turned, bewildered, to stare at Rade.
He shot all of them but the blonde.
• • •
Dr. Dorothy Sykes sat frozen in the Jacuzzi, her recently reworked breasts bobbing in the froth.
She’d had her eyes closed when the shooting started. The bark of the Bren Ten violently jolted her from a healing daydream about a recent trip to Barbados. Thank Christ the shooting was over quickly. Dorothy opened her eyes to see the bodies of her fellow exclusive members bobbing in front of her.
The Jacuzzi water went from pink to bright red to deep red.
“That . . . ,” Dorothy said, “was uncalled-for.”
“You lied to me,” Rade said. “That won’t go unpunished.”
“I didn’t lie to you, Rade. And these people—”
“Rich scumbags.”
“They had nothing to do with it! You’re losing it, Rade.”
Rade closed his eyes and rubbed his right temple.
“I’m not losing anything. . . . Maybe you’ve forgotten what I am, Doctor. I am not just some errand boy. I’m not a soldier driven by moral duty or blind devotion to an ineffable cause. I am what you made me: a weapon. You don’t actually think the knife cares about whose throat it slits, do you?”
“This was wrong. This won’t be an easy mess to clean up.”
“None of them are.” Rade stepped closer to the pool and pointed the gun directly at Dorothy’s face. “There’s a new machine online. I can be cured.”
“Why would you believe Fifty-One?”
“I can tell when someone is lying to me. I’d peeled her like a grape. In a situation like that, I’ve found that people tend to be pretty honest.”
Rade raised the Bren Ten, leveled it at Dorothy.
“Okay, okay,” she said. “Can we talk?”
“Go ahead.”
“Um, maybe I could get out first? I mean . . .”
Dorothy glanced down at the body of one of the murdered men floating beside her. The body spun in circles, buffeted by the jets. He had a Marine crest tattoo on his left shoulder, faded, the ink diffused under the skin. There was something so unnatural abo
ut his flesh in the water. It looked like rubber.
Dorothy had seen death before.
She’d inflicted it plenty of times. But those times had always been under contained, antiseptic circumstances. Always rationalized through careful process and design. While in high school at Dover Sacred Heart Academy, she wrote a report on Dracula. A curious girl encouraged by one of the school’s more liberal teachers, she explored the real history behind the vampire mythology. She wrote about Vlad the Impaler, lingering on the more disgusting details, and Elizabeth Báthory, who bathed in the blood of virgins. Writing the paper, Dorothy had gotten an illicit charge envisioning a nubile countess sitting in a tub of gore. She felt filthy pleasure in the idea and punished herself with six Hail Marys.
In the Jacuzzi, her stomach turned.
She needed to get out. And quick.
“Can you please hand me a towel?”
Rade walked over to a shelving unit and tossed a towel to Dorothy. She stepped out of the pool and wrapped the towel around her chest.
Her skin glistened with pink water and tiny crimson bubbles.
“I didn’t lie, Rade,” Dorothy said as she sat in a lounge chair.
Rade leaned and crouched across from her, rolling his neck, working out a kink.
“There is a second machine but . . . ,” Dorothy said. “But we’ve only had some early successes with it with primates. All of our tests with human subjects failed. We didn’t—I didn’t want to tell you until we’d perfected the procedure. Until the accelerator was ready.”
“What’s the holdup?”
“We’re getting complex DNA damage. Can’t repair it easily.”