“Thanks,” Boyd said. “I think we’ve got enough now. Why don’t you guys go on? Hank’s got your names and numbers. We’ll call if we need to.”
As Hank herded the students out into the hall, Boyd smoothed out the wrinkles in the piece of paper and held it out to read:
Things in the Night
I no longer watch as one on the sidelines
I’m holding the trigger; I’m giving the word
Today this one lives
Today this one dies
I cannot stop these things in the night
A curse they’ve become
A race I can no longer run
So I must take my leave
Not just now but evermore
Hoping I go to a better place
In search of peace, an end to this war.
This is poetry? What a load of nonsense. Boyd turned to Hank, holding out the poem. “Take a look at this. I ain’t no Emerson or Jack Frost, but it sounds like it might be a suicide note to me.”
“You mean Robert Frost?” Hank asked.
“Whatever.”
Hank took the note and began to read. Boyd took another slow pan around the room, shaking his head, thinking about the poem, the tall building, the broken up body below, this kid’s folks, and about having to make another call.
Then he thought, Jack Frost, that’s the snowman, you idiot.
34
Just after lunch, Professor Thomas Thornton almost had a heart attack. It came while listening to the local news.
The anchorwoman, a dark brunette, had announced to the world that the second death in two weeks had occurred that morning at Culpepper University. This one an apparent suicide. The young junior, Jared Markum, was twenty-one years of age and had been slightly depressed in recent weeks, according to friends. Other than that, he was said to be friendly and well-liked. At this time, police believe there is no connection between the death of Markum and another Culpepper student, Ralph Riesner, who died two weeks ago. She cocked her head to the left, picked up a new camera angle, and transitioned from feigned concern to a petite perkiness as she told of a local high school band raising money for a trip to Cleveland, some kind of marching contest.
Thornton didn’t hear that part. A mouthful of hot coffee, fixed just the way he liked it, spilled down the front of his shirt and across the dining room table.
Thornton was gasping for his next breath.
Why didn’t he see this coming? He’d told Dr. Jameison they should cut out this covert crap, that no good could come of it. Jameison was so cocky, so sure of himself. Well, he couldn’t smooth talk his way out of this one. Thornton had given Jameison’s wonder drug to Markum last night. Which meant they had killed Jared Markum, just as surely as if they held hands and pushed him off the Jefferson Building themselves.
Now what should Thornton do? Go to the police? That’s what he should do. But he’d spend the rest of his life in prison. Certainly, they would view this as a murder, manslaughter at the least. They weren’t looking for anyone right now. If he confessed, that would be it. No turning back. Was he ready for that?
No, he wasn’t. But he had to do something.
He decided to call Dr. Jameison, tell him it’s over. No more tests. It stops today. Jameison could do whatever he wanted. It didn’t matter. It was time to fight fire with fire. He had enough information to put Jameison behind bars for life. Jameison’s only power over him was Thornton’s fear of exposure. But this was too much. Now two of the four people he was testing were dead. Jameison had as much to lose as he did.
So, he would call Jameison and terminate their deal. Then he wondered about Jack. Was Jack all right? Two nights ago he had given Jack the drug. Without thinking, he reached for the phone. It rang four times, then Jack’s confident, gentle voice told whoever was calling to please leave a message at the sound of the tone. Should Thornton leave a message?
The beep. Thornton hung up.
He sat staring at the television. An energetic sportscaster was telling everybody who did what last night in the world of sports. Thornton didn’t care. Young Jared Markum was dead. And Thornton had helped to kill him. “Jameison,” he muttered aloud, as he searched for his name on his phone. He looked at his watch. Jameison should be home. Thornton drummed his fingers on the bar as the telephone rang.
“Hi, you have reached the number of Dr. Curtis Jameison. I’m not attending the phone right now, but I’d like to return your call. Please leave your name and number, and a brief message, after the tone, and I’ll call you back first chance I get. Good-bye.”
“Jameison,” Thornton yelled. “You know who this is. You need to call me. Now.” Thornton allowed for a brief pause. “Now two are dead, Jameison. Do you hear me? Two! Bre’r Bear—or whatever codename we called him—jumped off a school building this morning. But we both know…we pushed him off. You and I. As soon as you hear this, call me.”
Thornton set his phone down when it rang. He looked at the screen. It was Jameison. “Jameison, now another student is dead!”
“Calm down, Professor. Now, what’s this all about?”
“I will not calm down! Another of my students is dead. Do you understand? Dead!”
“I heard you. Yelling like this won’t change anything. Calm down and tell me what happened.”
“I told you all this secrecy would complicate things. Didn’t I? But you have all the answers, don’t you?”
For a moment, Jameison didn’t speak. “All right, Professor. Just tell me what happened. Who died?”
“Markum. Jared Markum. Earlier this morning. He jumped off a six-story building at the university. It was on the news just now.” Thornton’s voice cracked.
“Pull yourself together, Thornton. Once again, this is not our problem,” Jameison said. “So…a poor, depressed young man decides to end his life prematurely. It happens all the time.”
“Not this time, Jameison. Have you no conscience at all? Markum was not a poor, depressed young man! He was a bright, energetic student, well-liked, with a promising future. And we killed him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Thornton. Is that what you want to tell the police?”
“No!” Thornton shouted back.
“Then wise up, old man. Pull yourself together and let’s think this thing through.”
“There’s nothing to think through, Jameison. We are through. No more tests. It’s over.”
Jameison didn’t reply.
“Do you hear me? I said…it’s over. You can threaten me. Blackmail me. Do whatever you want to do. Right after I hang up this phone—”
“—all right, Professor. You win.”
“What?”
“I said…you win. No more tests.”
This was unexpected. He gave in way too easily. “I’m glad to hear you say that.”
“Well, Professor. I’m not without compassion here. I’m very saddened by this news.”
“Why didn’t you listen to me?” pleaded Thornton, his mood more conciliatory. “I told you doing the tests this way would complicate things. Couldn’t you see that?”
“Of course, that was a risk.”
“A risk? It was more than a risk. You lied to me.”
“Professor, we couldn’t run the risk of telling our subjects what we were doing. Not at this stage.”
“But we could run the risk of some of them dying?”
“I’m not happy anyone’s dead, Professor. But millions of dollars are at stake here.”
“Maybe for you. But I don’t care about the money for my gambling debts. I’ll take care of them on my own. What I want from you is your assurance that I will never see you, or hear from you again.”
“Professor, why so nasty? I said we could end our little tests.”
“Just to make sure we understand each other here,” Thornton said, “I am taking some…precautions.”
“What do you mean?”
Thornton didn’t want to say.
“What are you going to do, P
rofessor?”
“Are you worried, Doctor?” Thornton enjoyed the uncertainty in Jameison’s voice. It was the first time he had heard it. “You needn’t be. That is, unless you intend to ever bother me again. Because if you do, it will set a chain of events in motion that will end your lavish lifestyle. You’ll spend the rest of your life in an orange jumpsuit.” Thornton surprised himself with his audacity. “All I want is my name off of this… project. And if you breathe a word to the Board of Regents, I’ll go straight to the police. I swear I will. I’ll go to jail, but so will you.”
“I don’t know what you’re planning, Professor. But, I don’t think it’s a good idea to—”
“I don’t care what you think, Jameison. And you shouldn’t care what I think, remember? This is our last conversation.”
“Well if this is our last conversation, then there’s something you should know.”
“Such as?”
“You’re not the only one who’s taken some precautions.”
# # #
Jameison sat in his leather upholstered chair and quickly composed himself. He set his phone down on the end table and began to plot his recovery from this unplanned event. He already had enough data to convince himself that the drug was fine. Really, there were no setbacks here. You have a wimpy kid who dies from a heart defect and another kid who commits suicide. The drug, by itself, didn’t hurt anyone. Jameison would simply specify in his proposal that the soldiers who would use this drug must meet the same physical criteria required for pilots and combat-ready troops. And of course, all of them would be fully aware of what they were about to experience before taking the drug.
He could do this. It could still work.
The real question now was…what to do with Thornton, and all these loose ends.
35
It was Monday morning. Last night, it happened again.
Yesterday afternoon, Jack and Rachel had driven back to Culpepper after a great visit with her folks. As planned, they attended the church her parents belonged to, ate lunch at a barbeque restaurant, then arrived back in Culpepper shortly after five.
Jack had mentioned he really needed to spend time getting ready for his lecture today, so after a very pleasant goodbye kiss they’d parted. Jack had gone into his apartment, laid his study materials out on the coffee table, poured a glass of white zinfandel from that bottle of wine Thornton had given him, and started reading. This next lecture surrounded the events on the infamous WW2 raid on the ball-bearing plants of Schweinfurt and Regensburg in Germany. A daylight raid where over sixty B-17 bombers were shot down and dozens more damaged beyond repair.
The problem was…Jack didn’t just read about the raid; he fell asleep and woke up inside one of the bombers, just as it was being attacked by a swarm of German fighters.
It was the most terrifying and, in some ways, most exhilarating experience of his life. More intense than the first two dreams combined.
But why had this happened? He hadn’t had one of these dreams for several nights and thought the spell had been broken. Why did it happen again?
What makes one historic event more magnetic to his subconscious than another, or is that even a factor? As with the other two dreams, Jack had been reading intensely about a history topic before bed. But the truth was, he’d been reading that intensely since the age of twelve. How could it matter? Why was it happening now?
There had to be an explanation.
He got out of bed, walked straight to his little four-footed bathtub, and turned on the shower. After, he got dressed and went into the kitchen. Two cups of black coffee were sitting in the pot. He sat on the sofa with his mug and noticed the last magazine he’d read last night lying across the armrest. “Fateful Armada,” he said aloud. It was fateful all right. Holding it up, he looked at the colorful print of the B-17 formation on the cover. It looked so pale compared to the real thing. In frustration, he tossed the magazine across the room.
It landed on the journal he’d received from Dr. Waters. He felt a strong impression just then to do what the Doctor had ordered. He was desperate for answers. It couldn’t hurt. He got up halfway and leaned forward, nipping it in his fingertips. As he opened the journal, he looked at his watch again. He could spare thirty minutes or so.
He remembered something the pastor had said yesterday in his sermon. He talked about how we often spend hours thinking about our problem but spend only minutes in prayer. So Jack said a quick prayer, asking God to show him something that would help nail down the cause of these dreams, if there was anything here.
The journal proved to be just a cheap three-holed folder with a fancy logo printed on the front. There was a form inside asking for name, date, and the like. The better part of the page was divided into three wide columns labeled morning, afternoon, and evening. An instruction page told him to put the condition he was tracking in the space provided, then to list everything he did on the day before the condition occurred. And the words: “Please be as specific as possible.”
Jack wrote down: “Intense, realistic dreams.” Sounded about right. He decided to start with last night’s dream episode and the events of the previous day, since they would be the easiest to remember.
For the morning he wrote:
Got up at 8:00am
Had some bacon and eggs, a cup of coffee with Rachel and her folks.
Drove to church, got there at 10:00
After, ate lunch with them, BBQ pork platter and a diet Coke.
For the afternoon:
Drove home.
For the evening:
Ate some leftovers.
Prepped for Monday’s lecture on Schweinfurt Raid.
Drank a glass of wine.
Went to sleep around 10.
Woke up on a B-17 headed for Schweinfurt
“This isn’t getting anywhere.”
He was about to close it and give it up. But his sense of discipline nagged him to finish. Reluctantly, he turned to the second page. It took him a while to remember the details of what he did the day of the second dream, the trip to Tokyo with Doolittle’s Raiders. But he dutifully wrote it all down, as best he could remember. Still nothing clicked.
On to day three—the Pearl Harbor dream.
This took even a little more time. He could recall the dream with stark clarity. What he ate and drank and did that day was a bit tougher. But he got it all down, as best he could remember. He flipped the pages back and forth a few times, trying to find something that connected them together.
Through a tedious process of elimination, he listed one thing he had done on two of the three occasions.
Had dinner with Thornton
Then two more things he had done on all three:
Spent time with Rachel
Drank a glass of wine.
Jack stared blankly at the items convinced more than ever the exercise was futile. How could there be anything here? He never ate the same things, didn’t read the same things. He certainly wasn’t allergic to Rachel. That was absurd. And how could a glass of wine trigger these dreams?
His phone rang. He picked it up. “Hello?”
“Just thought I’d call and say good morning.” It was Rachel. “And also to tell you, I won’t be at your lecture this morning. The professor I work for needs me to do some special project this morning.”
He tried to pull himself together. “I’m going to miss you. But it’s good to hear your voice.”
“It is? You don’t sound very good. Is anything wrong?”
A pause. What should he tell her?
“Jack? Let me guess…did you have another dream?”
Man, can she read me. “I did. But, that’s not what’s bothering me.”
“It’s not?”
“Not really. I mean I’m not glad it happened. Maybe I’m getting used to it. I don’t know, but that’s not what’s bugging me.”
“Where was it this time?”
“Schweinfurt and Regensburg. I was on the raid in a B-17.”
>
“Were you reading before bed again?”
“Yes, but Rachel I had to. It’s the lecture I’m speaking on today. Besides, the dream isn’t really the thing that’s bothering me. Not the big thing.”
“Then what is?”
“I’ve been sitting here the last thirty minutes trying to write down some things. Trying to sort this out. Remember that journal from Dr. Waters?”
“Yeah. You started on it. Good.”
“I’m not sure it’s going to do any good.”
“Dr. Waters seemed to think it was important.”
“I don’t know, Rachel….”
“What?”
“I got the impression he was just fishing. We spent the time, I spent the money. He had to give me something to take home.”
“I don’t think it was that, Jack. I agree it wasn’t what I was hoping for, either, but I don’t think he’d do something like that for nothing. Did you find anything, any pattern after writing it all down?
“I got two things here, the only two things that happened before each of the dreams.”
“What are they?”
“There’s nothing, Rachel.”
“Just tell me. Maybe I’ll see something.”
“Okay, I saw you each day and drank a glass of wine each day. That’s all. I don’t know what good I thought it would do….”
“You sure you didn’t forget anything?”
“I’ve been over it and over it.”
No one said anything for a moment. “Well, I gotta say one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You sound a whole lot better than you did after the other two dreams.”
“I guess I do.”
“But there’s something else you did all three times that you didn’t include on your list.”
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