by David Beers
The world now knew what Jeffrey had known early yesterday morning.
He had followed Brand as far as he dared, leaving the motel parking lot a few minutes after Brand's car pulled off and staying far enough back that only Brand's taillights could be seen in the distance. There was a real possibility Jeffrey would lose him, but he could always find the trail again in Florida. Instead, he kept up enough to see the apartment complex Brand entered, and then Jeffrey went straight, leaving the killer to do what he wanted. He didn't wonder too much why Brand was there, it would come out soon. Whatever was happening wouldn't be kept quiet for long. Instead, Jeffrey went to the first bar he found open and ordered a beer, waiting an hour or so before returning to the neighborhood. He went back for one reason, to see if he should hang around Durham or head back to Daytona. If Brand's car was there, chances were he would come back for it; if it wasn't, Lucent would end up in the trunk and on a straight line back to Brand's laboratory.
The beat up car was there, street lights shining, looking lonely in the darkness.
Jeffrey parked his own car in another lot in the complex and waited.
Brand returned that night, around ten, and transferred something from one trunk to the other. He drove off and Jeffrey followed.
He shouldn't have opened the liquor bottle, either one really—the orange juice only reminded him of the vodka and the vodka sung to him like the sirens of old. He opened it though, setting both bottles—one after the other—in his lap and poured himself the first screwdriver. He looked up periodically during his bar tending to make sure he could still see the rusted, gray car. Four cars ahead, driving at an even sixty-five miles per hour. Jeffrey drinking for a solid two hours before Brand pulled off the interstate to fill up.
Jeffrey shouldn't have gone in. He should have pissed in an empty cup or pissed on himself. Under no circumstances should he have followed the man into the store.
But he did.
He watched as Brand went to the cashier, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. The wig he wore hung out of a hat, looking shaggy, and the sunglasses kept anyone from being able to see those blue eyes that every television in the country showed hourly. The radio played in Jeffrey's car, and it sounded like someone had poured gasoline over the entirety of the United States and threw a lit match onto it. All stations interrupted whatever music or person was regularly scheduled every fifteen minutes to update listeners on the manhunt.
Jeffrey walked past the person who murdered four people last night and went to the bathroom. He finished up, washed his hands, and turned to leave.
It was then, for the first time in his entire life, that Jeffrey understood fear.
His hand pulled the door open, and the wigged killer stood in front of him.
Brand's sunglasses were on, so Jeffrey couldn't see his eyes, but both men looked at each other. He should have just passed, just said excuse me and walked on as if there was nothing to look at. Instead, he held the door and stared, seeing Matthew Brand for the first time in ten years.
Five seconds passed before Jeffrey's alcohol saturated brain understood the mistake in near perfect clarity. In those five seconds, his life changed radically.
"I'm sorry," he said, dropping his eyes to the floor and making a side stepping motion around Brand.
The man didn't move, but let him pass.
Jeffrey walked as fast as he could without running, his head down, not turning around to see if Brand was following him. He found his car, started the engine and left the parking lot, just barely glancing back to see Brand standing at the gas station's door, watching his car drive away.
Jeffrey pulled off miles down the road, after having driven at ninety for ten minutes or so. His hands were shaking too bad to grip the wheel any longer. He pulled into a deserted grocery store, opened his door, and puked up all the booze intended for his liver. He kept gagging long after all the liquid ran across the ground, feeling the rush of stomach acid working its way up his throat. He pulled both his feet out from the car and put them on the ground, dropping his head between his knees.
Life was over.
There wasn't anything else left to do but head back to California, go inside his mansion, and wait on Brand to show up. He wouldn't try to pretend that he had somehow eked by without being noticed. Sunglasses or not, both men looked directly into each other's eyes and knew the other.
Chapter Twenty Eight
The Devil’s Dream
By Jeffrey Dillan
Appendix I
I was able to interview Matthew Brand one time. Both the court and the public didn't want it to happen, but his and my lawyers made it possible. He made no requests about what we would talk about, only that it would last two hours before he headed back to his cell and waited on the trial to commence.
The following is the transcript of our conversation. Please visit my website to watch the video in its entirety.
Dillan: What made you let me come here? You've been incredibly reluctant to engage the media since you were caught, why me and why now?
Brand: You're thorough. The rest of the media isn't. Your lawyers gave me some of the pages of the book you're writing, and you're getting a lot of it right. I'm not Satan incarnated in your eyes, and so it makes a conversation a bit easier, I suppose. They're going to kill me or lock me away until I die, and I don't know how many more opportunities I'll have to tell someone my side. A cop could easily have me shanked in jail for what I've done, so even without the death penalty I'm in danger of dying.
Dillan: The book is close to being done. It will come out after the trial, so I'm not sure if you'll get a chance to read it entirely, but the piece I'm missing is why you were caught? Everyone is lying about it, but I've researched it and know you led them right to you. Right at that moment, and you sat there with a gas mask on and waited until you could see them. Why? You could have flipped that switch and things might be completely different now. Why didn't you?
Brand: My son's murder was broadcast day and night. The cop's pleas of not-guilty were published far and wide, to other continents even. Their acquittal was no less famous. My son's entire life was shown for all to see as if he was an object, rather than someone who breathed air and had been silenced unjustly. I couldn't imagine bringing him back without the world knowing that his death wasn't forever, that the wrongs committed were righted. I've been vain since I was a child and I suppose this isn't any different, not when you get down to the essence of it. I wanted to say fuck you to all of those cops coming after me, to Malone and to the T.V. stations that put his face up on the screen for everyone to look at whenever he asked. I wanted to say fuck you. Ten years had passed but I hadn't forgotten.
Dillan: I can understand that, but how, how did you think you were going to get away with it? You had nothing but a switch in your hand when two hundred cops showed up with weapons ranging from gas to grenade launchers.
Brand: I...I'm able to create life. Myself, without the need for sperm and egg, I'm able to take life from others and bring back someone from the dead. Whenever I want. Right now, if they allowed me the tools, I could bring my son back. I could bring your mother back. I could bring back Ronald Reagan if people wanted him to run for President again. I think I lost it a little at the end, to be honest. What I was doing made me feel like I was a God. Like no one on Earth held the power I did, and that meant they couldn't stop me. I figured they would show up and they would watch as I did what no one had been able to before, watch in awe. Turned out they didn't think anything in there was too awe-worthy.
Dillan: Would you have done it differently, now, if you could?
Brand: I'm not too interested in either dying or being locked away forever, so yeah, I probably would be a little more low key about my plans.
Dillan: There's a chance that they'll keep you around just for your brain power. They're talking about some new science that can allow people to live indefinitely. They could lock you up in a cell for another year, and when it's ready, t
ransfer you to it and pretty much freeze you. Have you thought much about it? Everyone dies, but they're saying they might not let you.
Brand: The science is there, for sure. I've worked through a lot of it in my jail cell, as soon as I heard that I might be one of the first trial runs. If they give me life without parole, I might have another forty-five years left. And honestly, the chances of me getting out, by state mechanisms or my own volition, are low. I'll die an old man with only memories. I don't look forward to that. I also don't want to die a relatively young man with ambition. I know I failed. I know that Hilman is no closer to being back right now than when I started this thing ten years ago. To me though, it's like I learned what not to do. It's not over, not in my mind. It's a setback, and at some point, another chance will emerge for me to see my son again. I'm not talking in any spiritual sense; I mean here, on this planet, hopefully while you're still alive to watch it happen. If they put an electric charge through me, there is very little chance that ambition will get realized. So this is a very long answer to your question, but I think out of all the options the state is considering for the rest of my life, the deep freeze is the one that is most suitable to my desires.
Dillan: You're talking about doing this again, am I right?
Brand: Doing this again isn't going to be possible. Those that killed my son are all dead. I said that I failed, and I did, but there's still some silver lining to it.
Dillan: But you're talking about bringing your son back. You can't do that without someone else dying right?
Brand: Right, and yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. The dream I dreamed isn't dead, Jeffrey. It's been postponed.
Dillan: Look around. There's a guard with a gun outside this door. Two more outside the next one. You're chained to this table. How can you possibly think that you'll ever get the chance again?
Brand: How could I possibly think I could get this far in the first place? A nation trying to find me and the only reason they did is because I told them where and when to show up. I just need the opportunity to show itself, Jeffrey. I'll take care of the rest.
Dillan: It just seems incredulous to believe something like that. You're in the jaws of the beast now, and it's preparing to grind you up or save you for a later date, but it's not planning on letting you go.
Brand: Did you think they were going to catch me? Or did you think I was going to succeed, that I would bring Hilman back?
Dillan: I didn't think they would find you. I didn't know if you could bring your son back. I don't understand the science and there are people on both sides of its possibility.
Brand: You didn't think they would catch me and you're unsure about what I could do because of your lack of knowledge. What makes you think they'll be able to hold me, then?
Chapter Twenty Nine
Jeffrey took the orange juice from behind him and downed it.
He vomited it up thirty seconds later, dropping the plastic bottle on the asphalt.
There couldn't be any questions going through Brand's head about who he had just seen. He wasn't thinking coincidence had made that possible. Brand knew Jeffrey was following him.
God, why did he start drinking? Why had he allowed himself to think that the stars would align for two minutes and Jeffrey could empty his bladder and return to his car without being seen?
Stars don't fucking align.
The book was no longer a thought in his head. The book could float away to some other writer's head; he would never write it. He would never put another word down, because Jeffrey's time on this Earth had just become limited to a number of days probably in the single digits. If he made it ten days out of this, he was doing something exceedingly well—and right now, half drunk and staring at his puke on the pavement, he didn't know what he could possibly do to make that happen. Brand would be coming for him now, coming for him before he went after anyone else in this horrid web. He would want to silence the only man who knew where he was and what he was doing. Jeffrey was dead. Sitting here, in this abandoned parking lot, he was already dead and just waiting on his heart to understand it.
The book, his editor, that F.B.I. agent, they could all go fuck themselves. He had to figure out a way—
The cop. The F.B.I. agent. Moore. That was his only chance. He'd face some criminal charges but even that could put him out of Brand's reach. Throw him in a jail cell for all he cared, as long as Brand didn't end up next to him. He would call Moore and he would tell her everything. Where he had been, what he had seen, and the exact spot they could march to find Brand and his entire experiment. Hell, if they hurried, Lucent might still be alive. That was his bargaining chip, but he had to play it quickly. If he waited longer than today, than right now, there would be no such thing as immunity for the man that watched Brand steal a baby from its bed.
"Fine," he said, reaching his hand into his pocket, searching for his cell phone. He felt only the soft fabric of his jeans. An atomic bomb sized panic ballooned inside his stomach. His left hand frantically made a grab for his other pocket, only to find emptiness there too. He knelt outside of his car, his knee dropping directly into his vomit, and turned around to look inside his car. He stretched out across the front seat, searching for the phone, looking inside cracks, between his seats, under seats, in glove compartments, in any possible place it could be.
The phone was gone.
* * *
Matthew went back to the bathroom. Sometimes luck shone on you and he supposed he was due some after the last twenty years. He supposed luck had a lot of red in whatever account Matthew held, and it was going to have to work some serious overtime in order to get it in the black. He'd needed to use the bathroom, and standing in front of him was the man who'd written the definitive account of Matthew's first attempt. Hat pulled down, older, with a three or four day beard growing across his face. It was him though. Jeffrey Dillan. Live and in the flesh, a literature rock star, just happening to be using the same restroom as the most wanted man in the country. The same man he'd profiled in an honest and courageous way, then profited heavily from that portrayal.
A small world.
Matthew watched Dillan's car leave, watched him screech out of the parking lot and begin hauling ass down the tiny road in front of the gas station. Headed where? To Daytona Beach? Is that where Mr. Dillan intended to go, had intended following Matthew to? The vodka on his breath had been mixed with the sweet smell of processed orange juice. If it wasn't for that, perhaps the whole thing could have been a coincidence. Perhaps Dillan had accidentally stumbled into the same gas station as Matthew, perhaps the only man in the entirety of the state that could identify him even with a wig and makeup on. No one would be so dumb as to follow him inside. No one following him would risk it. He would have believed that except for the smell of alcohol coming from his mouth. The alcohol though, that made idiocy more likely, made the accidental nature of what just happened nearly impossible.
He read up on Jeffrey during his nights in the hotel room. He knew the literary genius from ten years ago had developed a drinking problem and stopped writing. Was he now carrying the burden of alcoholism and a new idea for a novel?
What did that say about Matthew? A drunk writer had made his way down to Florida and found him? Matthew hadn't even known until the man decided he quite simply wasn't going to hold his piss any longer and followed the object of the nation's manhunt into a gas station?
Matthew stood just inside the bathroom door and looked at the floor. Had he been that careless? Had he been that dumb? If Jeffrey Dillan had walked into the bathroom with booze practically spraying from his mouth, then yes, Matthew had been that fucking dumb.
He pulled the bathroom door closed behind him, locking it. The place smelled of both piss and bleach, the tile floor yellow from use. Matthew pulled the sunglasses from his face and stuck them on the collar of his shirt. His thought of actually using the toilet was gone, his survival taking precedence. He looked close, looked at the empty stall and the flushed u
rinal. His eyes went to the mirror over the sink, looking for anything that would be of more help than what he currently knew. All he had at this moment was the bathroom the man had just used.
Looking in the urinal nothing but a red mat stared back up at him. Nothing in the stall, not even feces floating in the toilet. He walked to the sink and found gold sitting there. A cell phone. It could have been left hours ago, or it could have been left ten minutes before. Matthew pressed the button at the top, and the touchscreen came to life. He picked it up, looking for evidence to who had left this phone here. It didn't take long.
Too many contacts had a last name of Dillan.
Jeffrey had been looking at his phone while pissing, set it down to wash his hands, and the alcohol in his system allowed him to walk away from it for just a second. Had Matthew not been walking in when he did, Dillan would have turned around and picked it up, but instead he completely forgot it. Left it sitting on the sink for Matthew to find.
He clicked the email app, opening it to Dillan's personal address. He typed in a few words and sent an email from Dillan to Dillan.
We need to talk. Email yourself. -MB
Matthew didn't know what other ways the man had to communicate, but he'd get the email if he accessed a computer anywhere. He would email back without an encryption, then things would be much easier for Matthew. He would know where Jeffrey Dillan was and he could show up on his own time to see exactly what the man had been doing here at this gas station. He had never thought about killing Dillan, not until now, because the man had been an honest reporter. Things changed though. Matthew knew he was no God, and if they caught him again, he wouldn't be lucky enough to survive in rest behind The Wall. If they caught him again he was going to the gas chamber. So despite his honesty, despite what he might be trying to do right now, despite the small connection they had years ago, Jeffrey Dillan might need to die.