by Peter Clines
He pulled the straw out of his drink and had a sip. “You’re welcome.”
“Why’d you tell me?”
He shrugged. “Just the decent thing to do.”
Jamie coughed and took another hit off the bottle. She set it down. “His girlfriend called this afternoon, looking for him. No one had told her. Anne had to break the news.”
Mike decided to have another sip of his drink rather than say anything.
“I finished going through all the code,” she said, “and I’ve run fourteen different simulations. It couldn’t’ve happened. The accident.”
“It did.”
She shook her head. “Not because of me.”
He waited a few moments to see if she had more to say. “You’re sure?”
“Positive. Numbers don’t lie, and nothing was wrong with the numbers. If something went wrong, then it’s been going wrong every single time we’ve used the Door and nobody ever noticed anything.”
“Or something else failed somewhere in the calculations,” said Mike. “One of the science teachers at my school told me that on every test she usually has one or two kids who get an equation wrong but still get all the math right.”
“You think we’ve had the equations wrong all this time?”
Mike shrugged and had another drink.
She snorted. “There’s nothing wrong. Besides, the Door’s always worked.”
“Except when you tried to put it on a timer.”
“Yeah, whatever. Don’t nitpick. It works. The equations work. The math works. The Door opens. We go through it. It has to be something that went wrong with the hardware.”
“And Neil and Sasha say it’s not the hardware. So there has to be something else.”
She made a rude noise and drank half the remaining beer.
“Have you considered it might be something cumulative?”
“You better finish that,” she said to Mike, waving to the bartender. “You’re going to have another one in a minute.”
“You always drink this much?”
“Only when people I know die in front of me.” She finished the bottle and set it down on the counter.
He gave a slow nod and took another drink. “That’s kind of impressive.”
“What is?”
“Going through all the code already.”
“Y’know, for a supposedly decent guy, you’re kind of a cold bastard, aren’t you?”
“Me?”
“Bob’s been dead a day and a half, and you’re still talking about work.”
Mike downed the last of his drink in one swallow. “I don’t have anything to say.”
“That’s what I mean,” she said. “Cold bastard.”
Carly set down another glass and another bottle. She looked at Mike, then Jamie. “He still on your tab?”
Jamie nodded. She didn’t bother holding the beer out for a toast this time. She swallowed twice and set it down on the bar. “So,” she said, “why is Leland ‘Mike’ Erikson, sometime decent guy, such a bastard?”
“You really want to know?”
“No, but it beats anything else we could talk about.”
He took a hit off his drink. Then another. “Did you have a pet die when you were little?”
Jamie wrinkled her brow. “What?”
“A cat? A dog?”
“Are you comparing Bob to a cat?”
“I’m trying to make a point.”
“Yeah, of course I did.”
“You said cat. What was her name?”
“His. Spock.”
“Did you cry when he died?”
She tilted the bottle back. “What’s it to you?”
“Did you?”
“Yeah, okay, I was eight, and my cat died.”
He swallowed some more rum and Coke. “You’re not crying now.”
“It was almost thirty years ago.”
Mike nodded. “Lose any of your grandparents?”
“Both on my mom’s side,” said Jamie. “One on my dad’s.”
“You’re not crying for them, either.”
She banged the bottle down loud enough to draw attention. “Is this some super-genius analogy, where you try to prove I’m as big a bastard as you?”
“No,” he said, “just making a point.”
“Okay. What?”
“What I keep telling you. I remember everything. My memories never fade. They never get soft or blurry. Never.”
Jamie blinked.
“My dog, Batman, was hit by a car when I was six,” said Mike, “and I cried for four hours. I lost my granddad on my mom’s side when I was nine, and my nana on my dad’s when I was eleven. We had to put down our cat, Jake, the morning of my sixteenth birthday. My mom died my junior year of college, and I was there in the hospital with her. And every single one of them could’ve happened a minute ago. I can tell you what everyone around me said, every thought in my head, every sight and sound and smell. I remember every second of them all dying with perfect, crystal clarity. Everything’s always raw. It’s always ‘too soon.’ ”
She lowered the bottle. “That sounds like hell.”
“It’s not great,” he agreed. “And now I get to have Bob dying right in front of me every day for the rest of my life. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t had a few nights where I wished for early-onset Alzheimer’s, because I don’t want to think about how much’ll be in my head by the time I’m sixty or seventy.”
“That’s messed up.”
“Yeah,” he said.
Her chin dipped toward the bar. “I never thought of it like that.”
“No one ever does.” He tilted his glass back and swallowed twice.
“Did you really have a dog named Batman?”
“You had a cat named Spock.”
“Yep.”
Mike sketched lines around his eyes with his fingers. “He had black fur on his face like a mask. I thought he went out at night and fought crime.”
Jamie’s lips twitched into a faint smile. “So the whole super-brain thing didn’t kick in until later?”
“Batman was a great dog. He could’ve been fighting crime while I was asleep.”
Her lips got dangerously close to a smile again. A moment later she held up her half-empty bottle. A moment after that he tapped it with his glass.
“I’m sorry if it seemed like I didn’t care,” Mike said. “I liked Bob. He seemed like a decent guy.”
“He was,” she said. Her tongue slipped and it came out sounding like “wash.” She shook her head and rolled her shoulders. They popped twice.
He tapped his fingers on his glass and nodded at her shoulder. “Sorry about this morning.”
“About what?”
He gestured with his chin again. “Touching you.”
She frowned, then shook her head. “Don’t be. I was angry. I needed to blow off some steam. I overreacted.”
“It wasn’t appropriate.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said. “You touched my shoulder by accident. It’s not like you slapped my ass or something.”
“It bothered you.”
“Because I have issues. My issues aren’t your problem.” She raised her beer and tilted her head back.
He finished his own drink. His throat was warm, and a pleasant tingle ran from the back of his skull down into his chest. Jamie downed the last of her bottle and waved for the bartender. “How many is that for you?” he asked.
“Enough that this is her last one,” said the bartender.
“How many?” asked Mike.
“This one’s ten in about two hours.”
“Fuck,” Jamie said. “Bob’s dead, Carly.”
“I know,” said the topknotted woman. “Give me your keys and you can have two more for him before I call you a cab.”
Jamie dug in her coat pocket and slapped a mess of keys on the bar. “Give me three more, and the government jerk can walk me home.”
Mike raised his eyebrows.
&nb
sp; “Oh, don’t get your hopes up,” she told him.
“D’you actually know this guy?” asked Carly. “He looks kind of…”
“Like a government jerk?”
“I was going to say kind of like Snape in Harry Potter.”
“Sitting right here,” said Mike.
“He’s fine,” Jamie said. She tapped the key ring. “Drinks.”
Carly gave Mike a look. He returned it. She sighed and scooped up the keys.
“I don’t usually drink this much,” Jamie told him.
“Well, you’re doing it like a pro.”
She snorted, but it turned into a chuckle at the end. “Bob was always telling me to loosen up. I never listened.”
“Issues?”
“Yeah.”
Carly returned. She set a fresh glass in front of Mike and put a beer in Jamie’s hand. A third of the bottle was already empty. Jamie didn’t seem to notice.
He slid the straw out of his drink and dropped it on the bar. “Anything you want to talk about?”
“What?”
“Your issues?”
She straightened up and stared at him. “Are you serious?”
Mike shrugged. “Part of the teacher thing.”
She shook her head. “I’d think it’d all be in those great personnel files you saw.”
“Believe it or not, even these days, government files aren’t as in-depth as most people think,” he said. “I did some stuff as a kid that I was sure would be in mine. It was a bit disappointing.”
She smirked. “Not that special after all. Must’ve been a blow.”
“I’ve had worse.”
Jamie took a quick drink. “You know I’m a speed junkie, right?”
“Yeah, that’s in there.” The ants carried out her dossier pages. “Twenty-three speeding tickets in four states over five years. Eight driving to endanger. It raised a lot of flags when you were vetted for the SETH project, even after Arthur vouched for you and got them to overlook your hacker history. It’s a miracle you’ve still got a license.”
“Traffic school. It doesn’t mention the crash?”
Mike shook his head. “Crash?”
She sighed. “All that brain power and it never occurred to you why a cheerleader turned into a computer geek?”
“I just figured you were some Internet male fantasy come to life.”
She made an unpleasant sound and hefted her bottle again. “I was sixteen,” she said. “Dating this guy from the next town over. Kevin Ulinn. Kev. He only had two things going for him. He was a college freshman, and he had a motorcycle. Drove my parents nuts. I’d sneak out at night and we’d drive around. Get out on the highway and push it up to one-ten or so, then fuck wherever we ended up. Perfect high school summer relationship.”
“I’ve seen a few like that.”
Jamie nodded. “I bet you have, Mister I’m-just-a-high-school-teacher.” She swallowed two mouthfuls of beer, then raised an eyebrow at the mostly empty bottle. She made two attempts to line it up with the wet ring on the bar napkin, then gave up and set it down. Her eyes were glassy.
“One night he hit a wet spot, lost it, and dropped the bike. We were going about ninety-five. They said he died instantly. Hit the ground just right and snapped his neck, even with the helmet. I got thrown off and skidded almost a hundred feet down the road on my back. He’d given me his leather jacket. Without it the pavement would’ve ripped me to shreds. They say it was just rags when the paramedics got there. Serious miracle I didn’t end up in a wheelchair. As it was, I woke up in the hospital with a broken arm and three fractured vertebrae. Wore a halo until Christmas.” She reached up and gestured at the two scars on her forehead.
“That must’ve been terrifying.”
“Oh yeah. Lucked out that I didn’t end up with a bunch of surgical pins or any of that, but I had to get skin grafts over most of my back, sides, and this arm.” She picked up the bottle with her left hand and toasted, but didn’t drink. “They didn’t take well, and it ended up scarring a lot. A complete mess. So ended my days as a cheerleader. No more halter tops or short sleeves. Had to wear this awful, high-necked dress to the prom. You know it’s bad when an eighteen-year-old boy doesn’t want to have sex with his date on prom night.”
Mike looked at her shoulder. “So your back’s still sensitive?”
“Nah,” said Jamie. “It’s completely numb. The crash grated off pretty much every nerve ending from my neck to my ass. Haven’t felt anything in almost seventeen years.”
“So what’s the—”
“I just don’t like being reminded that I’m disfigured.”
“I’d hardly say that,” he said. “If you don’t mind me saying it, you’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met.”
She waved the words away. “Yeah, that’s what they all say. Then they see me naked.” She downed the last of her beer. The bottle hit the bar hard and loud.
Mike looked at her. “Can I ask you a question?”
Her head went side to side. “No, you cannot see my scars.”
“Not that. I was just wondering how you read all that code today.”
“What?”
“Over two million lines of code. How’d you go through all of it in one day?”
She looked at him for a moment. She took in a slow breath. Then her eyes got watery and trembled. “Oh, you poor bastard.”
“What?”
“I’m going to throw up all over you on the way home.”
TWENTY-FOUR
A dark-haired woman with owlish glasses and a white coat leaned into the lobby. “Leland Erikson?”
Mike straightened up. “Yeah.”
“Phoebe Forrester.” She held out her hand.
“Dr. Forrester?” he repeated with a faint smile.
“Believe me,” she said as they shook hands, “I heard it all through med school.” She studied his face for a moment, then gestured him through the door and into a white hallway. “I’ve been expecting you. Someone from the Defense Department called, said you’d be stopping by.”
He bit back a yawn. “I hope it’s not too inconvenient.”
“It’s not a busy day, and it’s a break in the routine. Are you okay?”
“Sorry. Late night dealing with a drunk friend.”
“Ahhh. You were one of the ones who found the body, right?”
“It wasn’t a body then.”
“Right. Sorry.” She stopped by a wide door. “How do you want to do this?”
“To be honest, it’s my first autopsy. What do you recommend?”
“Do you want to see the body or just hear the results?”
“I know which one I want,” he said, “but I think I need to see the body.”
Forrester gestured him to the next door. “He’s cleaned up. It won’t be that bad.” She pushed open the door. “Did you know him?”
“Kind of. We’d hung out a couple of times.”
“Just remember to breathe. Speak up if you need a minute.”
The cold smell of polished metal and chemicals hit his nose. He’d seen morgues on television, but he still paused for a moment in front of the wall of steel doors. Phoebe walked to the far corner and double-checked a clipboard. “This was an odd one.”
“Odd how?”
“Better to show you.” She pulled a pair of latex gloves from a box. “You want a pair?”
“Hopefully, I won’t need them.”
She held the box for another moment. He tugged out a pair of gloves and held them in his hand. She snapped hers on. “What’s your field of specialty? Your people didn’t say.”
“Early American literature.”
“Sorry?”
“It’s a joke,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. Feel free to be clinical. I’ll ask if I don’t understand something.”
“Okay.”
She yanked on the handle and slid the body out. There was no sheet. Both of Bob’s eyes were cold and white now. His yellow skin had faded to a
pale, waxy color. A large Y of stitches stretched out across his chest. The ragged wound in his side had been cleaned. He’d been a big believer in manscaping.
“My official ruling,” said Forrester, “going off the scalp wounds, is that the underlying cause of death is sharp force trauma. Accidental. That’s what’s going to be on the death certificate.”
“But you’re saying it like that because…?”
“Because there’s a lot wrong with this guy. But trying to pin down all the contributing factors for the chain might take a few weeks. Maybe even months. There’s the obvious stuff,” she said, pointing at the wound below the ribs. “He’s got a nice gash on the back of his skull, too. Between them, they account for the blood loss. Less than three pints in him when he got here. I’d guess one, maybe one and a half pints of what he lost ended up on his clothes, but they still need to be tested.”
“Dammit,” said Mike.
“What?”
“His clothes were already bloody.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It can wait.” He nodded at Bob’s—at the body’s wound. “Do you know what that is?”
“It’s a puncture wound,” she said. “I’d be tempted to say it’s ballistic trauma—a gunshot wound—because it goes straight through the soft tissue, but it’s too clean to be point-blank. This…” She shrugged. “Maybe a very fast stab or thrust of some kind?”
He gestured at the malformed body. “So you think all of this might’ve contributed to his death?”
Forrester shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t think he would’ve lived much longer, even if he hadn’t bled out. Three or four months, tops.”
“Why?”
“He had cancer.”
“What kind?”
“Lots of kinds.” She waved a hand across his body. “His skin’s like that because of pancreatic cancer. In some cases it causes painless jaundice. I heard about a patient this bad once when I was a resident, somebody with skin like the Simpsons, but I’ve never seen it before.”
“And you’re sure it’s cancer?”
She nodded and gestured at the Y incision. “His pancreas was just a mess of tumors. Same with his liver, lungs, colon, and prostate. A few small ones in his brain, too. Spleen and bone marrow show signs of leukemia. Except for the pancreas, none of it’s that advanced, but I don’t think he was getting treatment for any of it. No sign of chemo in his system, but…”