Forest of the Mind (The Book of Terwilliger 1)

by Michael Stiles

  In need of better light, he went to the bathroom and flipped on the light switch, then cursed and leapt backwards when he noticed a big black spider lurking in the corner mere inches from his hand. Shuddering, he went to the kitchen to get a shoe, then spent several minutes trying to squish the creature without getting too close to it. Every time he got ready to strike, the thing seemed to anticipate his move and retreat to a safer position. Finally Ed swiped at it with a savage yell, missing by several inches. It dropped to the floor and nearly escaped into a crack in the baseboard, but Ed headed it off and gave it eight or ten hard smacks with the shoe to make sure it was dead.

  He stood up and looked in the mirror, once again struck by how awful he looked. Something tickled the back of his mind, something he had meant to do, but he dismissed the thought and went to his closet for a clean shirt.

  * * *

  Special Agent Kajdas fixed himself a drink and went down to the basement, ducking his head to avoid the low beam at the bottom of the steps. There was a musty smell down here, and the basement was mostly full of cardboard boxes that Tom had never bothered to unpack after his move. It was all old junk that he should’ve just thrown out. The only area that was clear was a path to the back corner, where he had put a sturdy wooden desk and a comfortable chair next to a large, gray box, as big as a washing machine but twice as heavy. The box was a KY-3 encryption machine that Albert Wensel had had delivered to Tom’s home soon after his move to California. A large black phone on the desk was connected to the gray appliance by a thick black cable.

  He plopped himself down in the chair, took a sip of his drink, and flipped on a switch on the front of the gray box. A yellow light came on, followed after a long minute by a green one. Picking up the phone, he dialed the direct number to Wensel’s office—Kajdas was one of a short list of people who were permitted to bypass Albert’s secretary—and tapped his fingers on the desk as he waited for an answer.

  “This is Wensel.” He sounded tired; it was late on the East Coast.

  “Albert,” said Tom, “it’s me. I’m going to hit the button.”

  “Go ahead.”

  He pressed one of the buttons on his phone, and the line went silent. Half a minute went by. Kajdas waited, watching the lights on the telephone and praying that the connection wouldn’t be lost, until the phone receiver erupted with a flurry of loud pops in his ear.

  “What’cha got, Tom?” Wensel’s voice on the secure line was only slightly distorted.

  “I just got back from picking him up. Engel says his memory is clean.”

  “How far back?”

  “October last year, thereabouts. There’s nothing left. I thought we decided―”

  “He’s better off this way,” Wensel said. “At least now he won’t be a danger to himself.”

  Kajdas shook his head in frustration. “I’m worried about a relapse. Emotionally, he’s no better off now than he was when his wife died. To him, all that seems like just a couple months ago.”

  “I want to know who tries to contact him now that he’s back home,” Wensel crackled. “Got surveillance on him?”

  “Same coverage as before.”

  Tom felt like a scoundrel, but there were limits to what he could do. The men who were calling the shots in this game were far above Kajdas’ level. He never would have let Wensel do this to Ed if there were any other way.

  “If the girl tries to reach him,” Albert continued, “let me know right away. Call me at home. I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night. We have to find her.” He made a disgusted sound that came across the secure line sounding like a squeaking rodent. “God only knows how much trouble she could cause.”

  “Already looking out for her,” said Tom. “I’ll track her down if she calls. She’s been a terrible influence on him.”

  “Okay, Tom, I’ll let Mr. Witherspoon know the status. He thinks very highly of the work you’ve done on this assignment, by the way.” The emphasis proved to Tom what he had already suspected: Wensel’s superiors hadn’t forgotten about his previous failure.

  “Glad to hear it,” said Tom. It never hurt to be in the good graces of important men. “I’ll try not to disappoint him.” Again. Kajdas knew just how lucky he was to be given a second chance after his Candlestick problem. He didn’t want to think about what they would do if his plan misfired this time.

  * * *

  After a quick sweep of the rest of the apartment—no more spiders to be found, though they were probably waiting in dark places until his back was turned—Ed switched off the lights and crawled into bed. He fell asleep almost instantly, and his dreams were all about Eleanor.

  “I don’t want that ugly thing in my apartment,” he grumbled at her when she unwrapped the ceramic gnome and set it on their tiny old dinner table. She’d bought it earlier that day from a filthy street vendor who had almost certainly stolen it from someone’s front yard; it looked like it had been out in the weather for years.

  “It’s cuter than you are, bucko,” Eleanor shot back. “You won’t even have to look at it. I’m putting it out in the garden. It’s for good luck.”

  “If we’re really lucky, maybe it’ll accidentally fall off the balcony and break into a million pieces.”

  Eleanor flashed him a dangerous look. “If it does, you’ll be sleeping in your stupid little car for the next six months.” Ed had stopped arguing and let her keep the thing. No sense in getting kicked out of bed over it.

  The dream changed; it was six months later, and Ed and Eleanor were fighting. He couldn’t remember what the fight had been about. The dispute escalated until they were both yelling, and some heavy objects were thrown, mostly by Eleanor. This didn’t bother Ed—it was not unusual for Eleanor to throw all his clothes off the balcony in a fit of rage—until she got into his record collection and started flinging the vinyl discs at his head. Ed heaved the sliding door open, stormed out to the balcony, and seized the ceramic gnome by its pointed red hat.

  “This,” he declared to Eleanor and the whole neighborhood, “is the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen!”

  “Don’t you even think about it,” she growled.

  “I don’t want it on my balcony!”

  Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. “If you break my gnome, I’ll kill you in your sleep.”

  Ed, looking her straight in the eye, tossed it over the railing. During the two seconds it took for the statue to hit the ground, Eleanor’s face turned from an angry red to a terrifying purple. The gnome landed on the concrete with a dull thud—not the shattering sound Ed had been hoping for.

  Within a couple of days they had begun speaking to each other again, Ed was permitted to sleep on the couch instead of in his Barracuda, and the gnome was returned to its proud spot in the garden. It was marred now: a jagged white crack ran down its face and across one of its eyes, but somehow the horrible thing had survived its fall with no other damage than that. Ed didn’t dare suggest that a gnome with only one eye might be less lucky than the regular kind. In the pecking order of Eleanor’s affections, he knew that the gnome was, at least for the moment, several levels above himself.

  The gnome sat there, guarding her immaculate little box of dirt, until the day Eleanor had disappeared.

  Ed watched it sitting in the dirt now, thinking vaguely that its eye seemed a brighter red than it had before. A thought came to him, somewhat distantly, that he was dreaming all of this, and that he had put Eleanor’s ceramic gnome in the garbage can a long time ago. But it looked so real sitting there, dream or not, and even though it didn’t say a word, it seemed to want him to come closer. Ed knelt down and put a hand on its hat.

  A jolt ran through him like an electric shock. An image flashed before his eyes, like thousands of tiny, flickering points of light floating on the surface of a black sea. Ed sat up in bed, the afterimage of the lights still fading from his vision, and groped in the darkness until he found the light switch. The gnome was not there; there was no burning smell, and his head
wasn’t buzzing. But as he sat there in the empty bedroom, heart racing, Ed realized that something was different. A memory had come back to him.

  3

  Meat-Man and the Gnome

  November 1967

  Ed’s head was starting to hum again, the way it did when the gnome was coming.

  He was sitting alone in a booth in a deli on Fairfax, staring at a stain on the tabletop while his sandwich sat untouched on his plate. He checked his watch again; Fleischman was now twenty-five minutes late. Maybe he’d lost his nerve. From what Ed knew of the man, that wouldn’t surprise him.

  The Santa Ana wind was blowing fiercely outside. Girls were walking down the street wearing short sleeves and miniskirts in the warm weather, most of them keeping a firm grip on their skirts in case of sudden gusts. Ed would have ogled them in the old days, but today they hardly caught his attention. When he had been with Eleanor, she’d always become irritated with him for staring at other girls all the time. Then she was gone, and suddenly Ed found himself completely uninterested in checking out girls on the street. It was a weird thing.

  Ed made himself take a bite of his corned beef sandwich, trying his best to ignore the growing vibration in the back of his mind, and the smell of burning charcoal that he knew wasn’t real. He always smelled charcoal smoke when the gnome showed up. He didn’t even want the sandwich. But the waitress had started to give him nasty looks after he’d been sitting there a while, so he’d ordered something to placate her. It hadn’t worked. She was now giving him nasty looks for failing to eat his sandwich quickly enough.

  Five more minutes and then I’m leaving. Fleischman wasn’t going to show. Ed gave up on the sandwich and got out his wallet.

  A man in a rumpled suit entered the restaurant—letting in a blast of wind—and stood just inside the door, blinking rapidly. His right hand gripped a wrinkled envelope, which he held close to his gut as though that was somehow safer than carrying it at his side or in a pocket. He spotted Ed and came straight over. Ed muttered a rude word under his breath. Half the people in the restaurant were staring at Fleischman as he made his way to Ed’s booth. Wonderful.

  Before sitting down, the lawyer took one last nervous look around. Then he plopped his ample backside down on the seat opposite Ed and slid to the center, placing the envelope on the table between them. Despite the heat, Fleischman wore a gray suit jacket over a white shirt and black tie. The tie was loosened, and his shirt collar unbuttoned to reveal a forest of dark hair peeking out from his neckline. His clothes had the rumpled look that clothes get when they’ve been worn through the night and well into the next day.

  “Mr. Terwilliger,” said Fleischman.

  “Hello, Fleischman,” said Ed. Fleischman, Ed thought. Meat-man. The attorney did look like he’d been putting away quite a few ribeyes lately. “How’s work treating you?” He wanted to say something about punctuality, but it seemed like bad form to pick on a fellow who was about to pay you money.

  Fleischman made a face and threw his hands in the air. “Lousy. I get nothing but the bad cases. I think the partners are trying to get me to quit.”

  “Couldn’t they just fire you?”

  “They can’t fire me; I’m too good for them to fire. I only lose so many cases because they give me all the bad ones. Nobody else will take the ones I take.”

  Ed nodded, trying to look sympathetic. The burning smell was growing strong enough to make him want to wrinkle his nose, but he forced himself not to. “So they only give you the guilty ones, is that it?”

  Fleischman shook his head. “They’re all guilty. Nah. The ones they give me, they got no chance of getting off.”

  “That’s tough,” Ed said. Seeing Fleischman looking wistfully at his sandwich, he said, “Why don’t you order something? The food’s good here.” That was a lie; the food wasn’t very good, and the service was terrible. But it was close to Ed’s apartment, so he came here from time to time anyway. Eleanor had always hated this deli. It was one of the few places he could go that didn’t remind him of her.

  “I know,” said Fleischman. “Beth and I used to come here a lot. But I can’t stay. I’m supposed to get home early today and take the boys to the park. I promised Beth.” He sat there forlornly, looking out the window, probably having second thoughts about the transaction. Ed decided he’d better say something before the man changed his mind.

  “You’ll look less out of place if you order something,” Ed said. “I’ll buy.”

  That did the trick. Fleischman waved the sullen waitress over and ordered a sandwich and a cup of coffee. He fidgeted constantly as he waited for his food. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he muttered.

  The last thing Ed wanted to do was let this man know how desperate he was for the money. It sounded like Fleischman was on the verge of losing his courage, though; Ed had to say something. He was sure no one would hear him over the background noise in the restaurant, but he leaned closer and lowered his voice anyway. No sense in taking unnecessary chances. “Fleischman, don’t worry so much about this. No one’s going to find out. A few weeks from now, your client will walk free and this’ll all be a distant memory.”

  Fleischman looked up at him. “So what do I do when the guy goes and shoots somebody else? How do I live with myself then?” He fiddled with the salt and pepper shakers. “Just to save my butt for a month or two. Then I start losing again and I’m back in the same spot.”

  Ed was no good at cajoling. But it had been hard enough convincing Fleischman to do this in the first place. He couldn’t let him change his mind now. “Think about your family, Fleischman. How will you support them if you’re out of a job? This is an investment, that’s all. One good win could turn things around for you. Besides, one extra dirtbag on the streets won’t make any difference. Do you have any idea how many cases I work in the lab every day? The thugs are killing people left and right in this city. One more won’t make a bit of difference. He’ll be back in jail in a couple months anyway.”

  Fleischman chewed his lip and stared off into space. “Investment.” He took a deep breath and ran his hand through the remaining strands of his thinning hair. Some of them came loose in his fingers. “And you’re sure you can do this without getting caught?”

  “I’ve done it before. It’s easy.”

  “How many times have you done it before?”

  “A few times,” said Ed. Two times could be called a few, couldn’t they?

  “And you’re sure this will be enough for an acquittal?”

  “No.”

  Fleischman’s eyes grew wide. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re the lawyer. That part’s your job. Are you sure nobody ever found the weapon?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “’Cause if they found the weapon,” Ed went on, “it’s all over. Even if they didn’t, there are still risks. There could still be fingerprints, there could be witness testimony to worry about―”

  “Nobody saw him,” said Fleischman, shaking his head vigorously.

  “All I’m saying is, I can’t guarantee results here. I’ll do my part to confuse things, but the trial is up to you. You’re not paying me for the verdict, you’re paying me for the lab work.”

  “I don’t see why I should pay anything now. I oughtta pay you after you actually do it.”

  “That’s not how we’re doing this, Fleischman.”

  Ed held his gaze until, to his great relief, the lawyer deflated a bit before his eyes. “Okay, fine. Half now.”

  His sandwich arrived, and he devoured half of it in three monstrous bites. “Why do you do it?” he said through a mouthful of food, his voice gurgling juicily in the back of his throat. “Stickin’ it to the Establishment or something?”

  Ed shrugged. “Have to pay the rent somehow.”

  Fleischman was sweating buckets. His jacket was stained around the armpits. “All right,” he said, lowering his voice even further as he glanced at the wrinkled envelope on the table. “The mone
y’s in there. Call me when you’ve done it.”

  “You bet,” said Ed. He tried to put on a comforting expression. “Take it easy. Everything will be fine.”

  Fleischman nodded, looked out the window at nothing in particular, nodded again. Then he got up and left. Ed nibbled at the edges of his sandwich for another five minutes or so, then put some cash on the table—he couldn’t afford to leave much of a tip, not that the waitress deserved one—and picked up the envelope. He would count the bills when he got home, of course, but he knew Fleischman wouldn’t short him. The poor guy was too cowardly to try something like that. Ed felt a twinge of pity, which he quickly suppressed. The lawyer had a wife and kids, a job that paid him well. Ed had nothing—a few pictures of his dead wife, a nice apartment around the corner that he could no longer afford. And he was pretty sure he was losing his mind. Guys like Fleischman thought they had it pretty tough, didn’t they?

  He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. The noise in his head had become so loud that he couldn’t hear a word the waitress said when she came over and snatched up the cash he’d left for her. Whatever she’d said, he probably didn’t want to hear it anyway. Rubbing his nose to try to dispel the foul odor, he went outside.

  * * *

  The noise in his head had increased until it felt like a freight train running through his skull. The burning smell was so intense that he found it difficult to breathe. His mind felt unsettled, like something was wriggling around inside his brain. He was becoming all too familiar with the feeling. This was how it always felt just before the gnome came.

  Locking his apartment door and tossing his keys on the kitchen counter, he got down on his knees and opened the bottom drawer where he kept odds and ends like rubber bands and masking tape. With shaking hands he pulled the drawer all the way out and set it on the floor. The cupboard under the sink was adjacent to this drawer, and beneath the bottom of that cupboard was a small gap between the base of the cupboard and the flooring that he could just slide his hand into if he took out the bottom drawer.