by Nick Pirog
“Cancer, huh. You sure? I’m thinking it was some sort of pox. Chicken or small.”
“Could have been.” Her fingers were going frantic, slipping, readjusting. She looked up. The defiance was gone, swapped for pure and utter panic. She said, “Um, listen, do you suppose you could lend me a hand here?”
I bent down, grabbed her arm, and pulled her up. She was surprisingly light.
Her flashlight had come to rest about six feet from her. I plucked it from the mud and wiped the lens clean with my sleeve. I handed it back to her, gave her a soft pat on the shoulder, and started picking my way down the bluff. Through the trees, of course.
From that point on, Erica followed behind me.
Chapter 5
After a couple minutes of silence, I turned and asked the detective, who was nipping at my heels, “Do you mind my asking how old you are?”
“Yes.”
I waited for her to elaborate. She did not.
I turned and stared at her.
She said, “I’ll be 26 in two weeks.”
“You’re 25?”
She nodded.
“Isn’t that pretty young for a detective?”
She shrugged. “I guess so. The rule of thumb is usually three years working the beat, but when the position opened up I was the obvious choice.”
I knew the rule of thumb. “And when was this?”
“About ten days ago.”
I stopped and turned. “Are you shitting me?”
“Nope.”
I wanted to tell Detective Erica Frost what I used to tell my students on the first day of class. “Don’t do this. Walk out that door right now and find something else. It will ruin you. It will eat you up from the inside. It will rip out your heart and poison your brain. You’ve all seen Ghostbusters? It’s like where they put all those ghosts. You store them in this little part of your brain. A part you can’t see, a part they don’t have a name for, a part that won’t show up on a CAT scan, and you lock them away. Now, it might be thirty years from now, but eventually something is going to flip that switch and let all those ghosts loose. And you can’t put them back. You can’t ever lock them up again. Do yourself a favor, get up, walk out that door, and never look back.” In three semesters only one kid left. He became a real estate agent. Then one of his clients killed him. Life’s funny sometimes.
Erica snapped me from my reverie. “And what do you do for a living?”
“I’m retired.”
“Well, what is it you used to do?”
“I used to be a party planner.”
“Really? You don’t strike me as the type.”
“Yep. I specialized in Retirement and Going Away.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yeah. Why? You need something planned? I also do Graduation and Coming Out.”
“Not right now. But if I do you’re the first person I’ll call.”
We made it to the small landing where I’d stopped earlier. We both swept our flashlights over the dark water. The tide had gone out and had taken the white water with it. Erica moved her flashlight to the area just to our right and said, “Is that a wallet?”
She knelt down and pulled my wallet from where I’d hid it just an hour earlier.
“It’s probably the killer’s.” Figured I’d throw that out there.
She ignored me.
She flipped the wallet open and shined her flashlight on the license. She looked from the license to me, then back to the license, then back to me. “Six foot. Brown hair. Blue eyes. 180 lbs.” She flipped the wallet closed and handed it to me. Then she said with a smirk, “Consider yourself a suspect, Mr. Prescott.”
I smiled, took the wallet from her, and put it in my pocket.
The body was where I’d left it. Erica sidled up to what was left of the woman, training her flashlight on the partially devoured flesh. She went down on her haunches, wrinkling her nose in the process. I guess the smell was getting to her. She looked up at me and asked, “What do you suppose happened to her?”
“Probably some killer whales nibbling on her. There’s a bunch of other stuff out there. Sharks, sea dogs, giant salmon. All kinds of weird stuff.” Just ask Captain Nemo.
Erica pulled a latex glove from her pocket and slipped it onto her right hand. She grabbed the woman’s chin and gently lolled it to the side. She looked up at me, then back at the woman. Her mouth was gaping and I prodded, “I’m guessing you know who she is?”
“You don’t?”
“If I knew who she was, I wouldn’t have referred to her as the dead lady with the bullet hole in her forehead.”
“This is Ellen Gray.”
“No way.”
She nodded, and an evil smile lit her face. I knew that smile all too well. Without her saying a word, I knew she’d just caught the case of a lifetime. A career maker.
I asked, “Are you sure this is Ellen Gray?”
“Positive.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Yep. It’s her.”
“Can I ask you one question?”
“Sure.”
“Who the fuck is Ellen Gray?”
She gave me an inquisitive glare. “You really don’t know?”
I really didn’t and shook my head.
“She’s the governor of Washington.”
We both looked at the body and I said, “You mean was.”
3 A.M.
NICK PIROG
www.nickthriller.com
~One~
One hour. Sixty minutes. Three thousand, six hundred seconds. That’s how long I get each day. How long I’m awake. I won’t bore you with the science of it all; I’d rather get to the story. And what a story it is. And I only have an hour to tell it. But just know that I have seen every doctor and taken every medication in the book and nothing helps. I wake up at 3:00 a.m. each morning and fall asleep an hour later. Then I sleep for twenty-three hours. Then repeat. It isn’t much of a life, but it is the only one I know.
I’m 36.
By my age, most people have been awake for over 200,000 hours. I’ve been awake for less than 14,000. According to the doctors, there have only been three people in existence to ever have the condition. Condition, that’s what they call it. Not a disease, not an illness, a condition. A young girl in Taiwan has it. And another guy in Iceland. But it’s named after me. I had it first. Henry Bins. That’s what they call it. I’m Henry Bins and I have Henry Bins.
Anyhow, you might be wondering how I can string two sentences together if I’ve been awake fewer hours than a normal three-year-old. Well, what can I say, I’m a prodigy. And maybe because God gave me Henry Bins – I’m Henry Bins and I have Henry Bins – He found it only fair to compensate with a brilliant mind.
It’s now 3:02. I’d better get started.
…
I open my eyes with a jolt.
It’s April 18th. I know this because yesterday was April 17th. And the big electronic clock on my dresser tells me so. The glowing green embers also tell me it is 3:01 a.m.
One minute gone.
I rip the covers off and jump out of bed. I am fully clothed. I’m wearing gray sweat pants, a maroon hooded sweatshirt, and lime green Asics. Next stop, the kitchen. My laptop is sitting on the kitchen table. I hit the mouse pad and the black screen vanishes, replaced by the frozen picture of a castle. I’ve been watching Game of Thrones in ten-minute intervals. I hit the spacebar and the show resumes. Keeping an eye on the screen, I open the fridge and remove a sandwich – roast beef, heavy on the mustard – and a peanut butter protein shake. Both have been pre-made by Isabel, a Mexican woman who cooks, cleans, and does countless other things I don’t have time for.
I pick up my cellphone. No calls. Three messages. All from my father. Two are pictures of his dog. I message him back that he needs to find a woman and sit down to the computer. I devour the sandwich and the smoothie as I open a separate window and log into my E-Trade account. It’s all about multitasking. I can’t
help but glance at the clock in the bottom right corner.
3:04.
Four minutes gone.
I check my stocks, which look good – I’ve made roughly 8k in the last twenty-four hours – then make some minor tweaks on the parameters I have in place for buys and sells, then close the window. I log onto OkCupid, a dating site, and go through the various messages. Nothing worthwhile. My screen name, NGHTOWL3AM only attracts the crazies. As you might think, meeting a woman has proved difficult. For many years, I would try twenty-four hour bookstores, coffee shops, or diners, but after three trips to the emergency room and one woman calling her brother to dispose of my dead body, I gave up.
I close the window and devote three minutes of my undivided attention to Game of Thrones. I love Tyrion.
At 3:10, I hit pause, grab my iPhone and ear-buds and sprint out the door.
It’s the beginning of spring and the Alexandria air is cold. I wish I’d worn a beanie, but I don’t dare waste the time going to grab one. The streets are silent. Three in the morning must be the quietest time of the day. Even the nocturnal night people have turned in and the crazy, morning folk are still tucked away. But then again, I don’t have anything to compare it to. I just know the half hour I spend in the world, it might as well be on mute. I run under the streetlights, the closest thing I know to sunlight, and concentrate on every sensation. The burn in my thighs, the cold air as it travels through my nostrils and down into my lungs.
I force myself to stay in the moment. I don’t have time for the past or the future. My life is the present. For many years, I played the what if game. What if I had a normal life? Where would I be? Would I be married? Would I have kids? But then twenty or thirty minutes would be gone. Wasted. Thinking about things that I can’t change. That are unchangeable.
I listen to three songs by The Lumineers, my new favorite band, then five minutes of Feed the Pig, an investment podcast. It is two miles to the Potomac, a highway of water separating Virginia from Maryland, and I spend a perfect minute watching a trawler sucked downstream by the sweeping black current. I used to wonder what it would look like during the light of day, how the water would look under a burning sun and puffy white clouds, but day didn't exist in my world. Only night. Only darkness.
As I head back, I see a car turn onto the side street. This is the first car I’ve seen in six days. It is a Ford Focus. A new one. The Ford stock closed at 13.02. Just saying.
I do the four miles in just under twenty-eight minutes and when I reach my condo steps it is 3:38 a.m.
Twenty-two minutes left.
I do push-ups and sit-ups for three minutes.
I jerk off in two minutes.
I take a four minute shower.
When I pull on a clean set of nearly the same outfit and head back to the kitchen, it is 3:48.
Twelve minutes.
I pull a salad from the fridge: greens, carrots, tomatoes, quinoa, and chicken. Healthy stuff. I grab an apple, two chocolate chips cookies, and a big glass of milk. I sit down at the table and click on my Kindle. I’m reading Lone Survivor, about a Navy SEAL who survives a shootout against the Taliban in the Afghanistan mountains. Amazing stuff.
I eat slowly, soak up each word.
I take the last bite of my second chocolate chip cookie at 3:58.
I turn the Kindle off, stand up, and walk towards the bedroom.
I sit down on my bed at 3:59 a.m.
That’s when I hear the woman’s scream.
I stand up and run to the window. Directly across from my condo is a ranch style house with a gate. The Ford Focus I saw earlier is parked on the street directly in front. I have no idea who lives there. I’ve never seen them. That could be said for all my neighbors.
I know I should go back to my bed, that I am going to fall over any moment. But I can’t. I’m glued to the window. I might as well be stuck between the two panes. I tick off seconds.
The gate opens and a man walks briskly through.
As he opens the door to the Ford Focus, he walks directly under the streetlight. As if sensing my gaze, he turns, and looks up. We lock eyes. Then he gets in the car and drives off.
My last thought as my eyes close and I start falling is the chiseled features and piercing stare of the man.
The President of the United States.
~Two~
By the time I got to my feet, the first minute of my day had already come and gone. My neck was stiff, consequence of sleeping in such an awkward position, but I counted myself lucky. I hadn't hit my head on anything. No blood. No concussion.
I rub my neck as I peer out the window. An echo of the President's face plays over my eyes and I shake my head, eliciting a shooting pain through my sternocleidomastoideus - the long muscle running from the clavicle to just below the ear. Could that really have been him? But it was. There wasn't a shadow of a doubt that the man I'd seen was Connor Sullivan. The 44th President of the United States.
I walk to the kitchen and sit down in front of the laptop. After a short couple seconds I have pulled up the bio of Connor Sullivan on Wikipedia. The once three-term governor of Virginia has dark brown hair parted on the left and gray-green eyes that aren't unlike my own. But that's where the similarities begin and end. Sullivan is the tallest president, dwarfing Lincoln by three inches and Madison by nearly fifteen. He is a head taller than me, which would put me eye-level with the most famous chin dimple in the free world. It only added to his allure that he was an All-American small forward at Dayton.
I thought about adding a quick update to his long and tedious Wikipedia page: April 18th – murders woman in Alexandria, VA.
On this note, I search the local news outlets for an attack or murder, but come up empty.
My cellphone chirps and I quickly respond to my father's “are-you-still-alive” texts and know that he will finally be able to sleep knowing his baby boy is alive and well. My mother left when I was four, unable to cope with my disease, leaving my father to care for me. He worked two jobs, sixteen hour days, but he was there every night I woke up at 3 a.m. He tried to make my life as normal as possible. When I was young, I had twenty minutes of school each morning with Professor Bins. Math, science, spelling – he covered everything. My father was adamant I develop social skills and would pay parents, literally pay them, to get their kids to come play video games or tag or ping-pong with me for a half-hour. (I actually still keep in touch with a couple of them on Facebook.) My dad would call in favors, or shell out grand sums of money for establishments to make special arrangements for me. On my tenth birthday, I woke up at an amusement park. For an hour, the two of us had the whole park to ourselves. When I was 18, he set up a prom for me. The girl was the daughter of a woman he worked with, and she wasn't all that cute, but it had been exciting nonetheless and I did get a quick kiss out of it. He administered my SATs to me over the course of ten nights, standing over me with a stopwatch. (I got a 1420 by the way.) On my 21st birthday, I woke up and my dad had turned the house into a bar and it was full of coeds. I later found out he paid a University of Virginia sorority a couple thousand dollars to pack the place.
I contemplate calling him and telling him about his favorite President, but my father would bury me in a thousand questions and my hour would dissolve like sugar in water.
I grab a sandwich from the fridge and try to shake last night from my mind. Last night was the past. I don't deal in the past. I deal in the present. And presently, I'd wasted eighteen minutes of my day.
I turn Game of Thrones back on and watch as Jon Snow performs fellatio on a redhead Wildling. I feel a sensation in my pants, but decide that with my limited supply of time, masturbation isn't going to make the cut.
I grab my phone, slip on my Asics, remember to grab a beanie, and run out the door.
It is 3:26 a.m.
I will have to cut my run short. I do a seven-minute mile out, then a six-minute mile back. By the time I stand beneath the streetlight, the same streetlight Connor Sullivan park
ed his car under a day earlier, it is 3:39.
Twenty-one minutes.
I turn and face the house. It is silent, as if the wrought iron gate surrounding it protects it from all threats, even sound. I pull my hand into my shirt and fiddle with the lock atop the gate. It unlatches and the gate swings open with a soft creak. I know what I'm about to do is wrong, both ethically and legally, but what if there is a woman in the house that needs help? It had been nearly twenty-four hours since the scream; she could feasibly still be alive. Right? Either way, you might be asking yourself, why wasn't I calling the police to come check it out?
Simple.
This was the most exciting thing to happen in my 14,000 hours of being awake.
I slide through the opening in the gate, then tiptoe up the steps. There are two narrow panes of glass running vertically along the door and I lean forward and peer into the house. My eyes are still pinging with the light from the streetlamp and I can't make out a single shape. I lift my hand, still covered by my shirt – I have no plans of leaving any fingerprints – and push down on the wrought iron handle. It gives and the door pushes inward.
I wiggle my foot in the space and push inward until I can fully slip my body through. The door eases shut behind me. I pull out my cellphone and click on the flashlight app. The room brightens.
Breaking and entering. Check and check.
From the shape of the house, I know the garage is left and the kitchen, living room, and bedrooms are to the right. I take a deep breath and whisper, “Hello.”
No one answers.
I begin moving slowly through the house. It is bigger than it appears from the outside, stretching back nearly double what I would have predicted. The house smells clean and tidy and it is. The kitchen is spotless, save for two dishes in the sink, which I deduce once held grilled cheese and tomato soup. The refrigerator is full. Some healthy items. Some not so. There is a large sectional in the living room adjacent to a flat screen TV that I assume, by the 3D glasses next to the remote, is one of the newer models. There are two small bedrooms and one master. The master is the only one that appears lived in. Trinkets, mostly of elephants, fill every imaginable surface.