The Unyielding Future

by Brian O'Grady

My name, along with our very famous passenger, allowed us admittance. We were directed to park just in front of the Lees’ house and we all piled out. Detective Sharpe appeared moments later and asked if he could have a word with Adis and me. My cell phone told me that we were feet from the GPS tracker.

  I followed as Adis and Sharpe walked to a park bench. Adis sat and Sharpe stood over him, waiting for me to catch up.

  “Following a dog collar,” Sharpe said without any introduction. He motioned to a uniformed officer. “Get me the collar,” he said gruffly. Sharpe was in a mood. “Does this belong to your dog?” Of course it did, and I nodded. “Do you want to sit down?” I must have looked like death warmed over (it’s an expression my mother uses). I sat next to Adis; now Sharpe stood over both of us. “You could have let us know about this earlier.”

  I explained that we had just remembered that Nitrox had a tracker. I was thinking, and I’m sure everyone else had the same thought, that if we had remembered this earlier the Lees might still be alive.

  “We found it on top of their daughter’s dresser. He had taken it apart and put in a new battery. He even called the tracking service to make sure that it was still registered.”

  “So he knew about the tracker all along.” Now Adis stated the obvious.

  “One step ahead.” Sharpe shook his head. “You are Mr. Adis?” He offered his hand.

  “Just Adis.” They shook.

  “We met briefly a couple weeks ago.” Sharpe shifted his feet. This had to be awkward for the detective. He had been trying to track down any information about Adis for weeks, suspecting all along that the old man was somehow involved with the high school shootings, these kidnappings, and quite possibly the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. My official police statement made things even more suspicious when I said that it was Adis who had opened the door to the burning bus, although very few people actually believed me. “You look surprisingly good. Surprisingly unburned.” He smiled. “Can I ask what you are doing here?”

  “I am a family friend.” Adis offered nothing more.

  “Are you a runner as well?” Sharpe was being a first rate asshole for my benefit.

  “Only when I’m being chased.” Adis smiled. “I’m guessing you haven’t found any physical evidence, Detective?”

  “None. Just the collar.” There was a subtle shift in Sharpe’s tone, an undercurrent of compliance.

  “Can you show me where you found it? I will of course understand if you are unable.” Adis voice was smooth and supple, and even though it wasn’t directed at me I began to feel its narcotic effect.

  “I don’t see why not. I will ask that you not contaminate anything.” Sharpe turned and started up the driveway. Adis followed, and I followed Adis after giving Leah and the kids a quick glance.

  We stopped briefly on the porch. I expected to find tape outlining where the Lees had been found, but there was nothing. The same wooden swing I had seen on a half dozen occasions swung lazily in the spring breeze.

  Adis silently stared at the swing. “They didn’t die here,” he finally said. I looked at him and half expected to see his hands suspended in a caricature of the TV detective Adrian Monk, but Adis’s arms hung at his side. After a few more quiet moments I got the impression that he was trying to see through time and watch as Mr. Sicko placed each body. Sharpe seemed content to watch the elderly man. “Shall we?” Adis finally said, and he flipped his smile back on.

  Sharpe led us through the house that I knew well. The Lees were people that I very much liked, and I physically felt their absence as I walked into their living room. For a moment I let Sharpe and Adis go on ahead as I paused by a Beladora lamp table (I actually researched the name of this piece of furniture in honor of the Lees). The Lees had a simple, elegant style, not garish or popular, just elegant. Every time we visited, I was struck by how different their house was from ours. We basically had all the same stuff—couches, chairs, knickknacks—but their stuff always seemed to be properly placed and new, while our stuff was usually a little askew and covered in a thin veneer of something I have come to call “children.” I had worked with Jim Lee on hundreds of different cases, and his steady hands and decades of experience had allowed us to do some extraordinary work (for which I was usually given an inordinate amount of credit). And I liked him. Genuinely. To this day I wish more had been done to avenge his death (he of course would counter with To what end?).

  “Are you done in the child’s room?” Sharpe asked an assembly of CSI technicians.

  “We are done with the house,” a bald man said after a moment’s hesitation.

  “Thank you,” Adis answered, and the CSI team suddenly and collectively recognized the famous man. A few started towards him and others started to whisper. “Can I ask you gentlemen a favor?”

  A jumble of yes, certainly and the like followed. The group of men began to encircle Adis. Sharpe and I stood outside it.

  “I would like to borrow your watches for a small experiment.” The eight men eagerly stripped off their watches, and Adis lead them to the fireplace mantel. “Now if each of you could lay your watch along here.” Each man in turn arranged his watch until eight watches faced Adis. “Thank you. One last thing before I begin. Can you tell me how long you have been here, in this house?”

  “We arrived—” I guessed the bald guy was the lead technician, because he again answered “—two hours and thirty-three minutes ago.”

  “You must have done a thorough job.” Adis smiled and the eight men smiled back. I could have been hacking detective Sharpe to death and not one of them would have noticed. Adis turned back to the row of watches and withdrew his own watch from his pants pocket. For the next eight minutes he silently compared each watch with his own. All ten of us stared as he went from watch to watch never saying a word or giving any indication of what he was doing. “Thank you gentlemen. I’m all done.” Adis walked over to where Sharpe and I were standing. “Can I see Amber’s room?”

  “Of course. Can I ask you what that was all about?” Sharpe was still suffering from the Adis-effect.

  “I was looking for temporal irregularities on mechanical and electrical devices caused by recent quantum displacements. I just have one more test and then I’ll be done. “

  Sharpe nodded with a look of complete confusion and then led us through a hallway covered in family pictures. Adis touch a few in passing. “This is the little girl’s room,” Sharpe said after entering the neatest, cleanest, pinkest child’s bedroom I had ever seen. I wanted to take a picture of it and show our eight-year-old that a child can exist in a clean environment without having her creativity stifled.

  “Detective, her name is Amber Lee,” Adis said without a trace of emotion. Had that been my comment it would likely have included at least one of the seven words you can’t say on TV (unless you have cable).

  “Of course.” His voice was apologetic. “We found the dog’s tracker here.” He pointed to a desk that was more organized than my operating room.

  Adis glanced at the desk and then walked to Amber’s television and turned the set on. “How do we get an on-air channel?” I found the remote and hit several buttons until a car commercial popped on. The signal strength was poor and the image kept disappearing. “Can you put it on a channel that is not broadcasting?” I kept hitting the channel button until nothing but electrical snow appeared. As an aside, and completely unrelated to Amber Lee, her parents, Adis, or this story is the fact that the electric snow, or static, is largely produced by electromagnetic signals prompted by cosmic microwave background radiation, which as we all know is the residual thermal energy (heat) from the big bang that created the universe. So if you find yourself with some time, click on the television and watch the big bang.

  “Is this the other test?” Sharpe asked, and he sounded a little, for lack of a better word, dumb.

  Adis ignored him and studied the random pattern of dots. I told myself that if a little blonde girl appeared at the door saying “they’re here,
” I was out of there.

  After a minute Adis stood up. “All right. I think I’ve seen everything.” He smiled and presented his hand to Sharpe, who reflexively shook it. “I will be getting out of your hair. It was nice to meet you again. I’m sure we will be seeing each other soon.” Adis turned and worked his way out of the Lees’ house and walked back to Leah and our children without once turning back. I hurried along behind him, and about halfway down the drive way we lost Sharpe. Gordon Anderson and a trio of black-suited men surrounded my family. Anderson looked like he was lecturing Leah, almost certainly about her rash behavior. She looked completely uninterested in his opinion.

  Adis walked up to Leah and gave her cheek a peck and then climbed into the car. All three of our children started laughing. For about half a second Leah had the most adorable look of confusion, which was then replaced by a look of embarrassment, which immediately transformed into irritation with her chortling children. “Get in the car,” she demanded. She glanced at me with a look that warned me not to say anything.

  “Well?” Leah asked after we had driven past the police.

  “Basically, we just looked the place over,” I said after Adis had left the question hanging. I could feel her disappointment and frustration.

  Mika and Tom both asked rapid-fire questions that went unanswered after Leah gave them a glare just before she turned on the highway. She floored the Denali, throwing everyone back into their seats. Fortunately, it was a short ride home.

  As the garage door began its ascent, Adis spoke. “I wonder if I could have a few minutes alone with your parents?” He addressed the backseat, and our three children all agreed, uncharacteristically, without a single question.

  Chapter Fourteen