The Speed of Sound

by Eric Bernt

He continued listening to the unfamiliar footsteps, tilting his head slightly to one side and then the other. He guessed this stranger was about twenty-five, the average age of medical residents when they started working at Harmony House. Most were slightly younger than Eddie, which sometimes made him think that he should be their doctor and not the other way around. The fact was just another on the long list of things Eddie wished he understood, but doubted he ever would. Like all other things, he kept a list of these bits of unattainable knowledge. It was Eddie’s Book of Questions and was housed in binder #1000. He had chosen that number when he’d calculated that if he lived an incredibly long time, he might need all numbers through 999 for his other areas of interest, but one thousand seemed safe enough. And it was such a nice number, being ten cubed and all.

  Her footsteps moved briskly along the cold linoleum floor. Not like she was in a hurry, but more like she was excited. Happy. Like she couldn’t wait to tell somebody something. Eddie knew that feeling. Had it his whole life. This feeling like he was on the verge of something so special, so great, so amazing that he would be happy forever and ever. At least, that’s how he had tried to describe it. But to hear Eddie talk about his emotions left most people with the sense that he had no idea what he was talking about. Like he was just guessing. Or parroting. Which couldn’t have been further from the truth. Eddie, like most with Asperger profiles, experienced a complete range of feelings, but had considerable difficulty identifying or discussing them. He didn’t know how to show his emotions—at least, not like those in the neurological mainstream. The “normals,” as many thought of themselves. The sixty-seven out of sixty-eight people, on average, who were off the spectrum, and who defined the standard practices for interpersonal communication, which often didn’t leave room for those who struggled to express what they were feeling. If only there were an emotional Google Translate app for those living with autism. Perhaps one day someone would invent such an app—someone on the high-functioning end of the spectrum, diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. One of the group that Hans Asperger first labeled in 1944 as “little professors.”

  But until that day, Eddie would have to memorize the appropriate responses to specific situations. He spent hundreds of hours practicing in front of the mirror, making a sad face when told something sad, a concerned face when told something worthy of concern, when, in fact, he felt nothing at all. So, as Eddie sat on his Batman sheets in room 237, listening to the world around him, he made a mental note that, should he ever encounter this woman stranger, he would ask her to describe what she was feeling so that he would be able to repeat it one day and sound like he knew what he was talking about.

  CHAPTER 3

  Parking Lot, Harmony House, May 19, 4:16 p.m.

  Skylar exited the facility, moving briskly across the lot to the visitor’s space where her 2009 Honda Accord with Virginia plates was parked. As Skylar got into the driver’s seat, she had no idea that a pair of high-powered binoculars was trained on her. The person looking at her had a steady hand. After sixteen years of surveilling people, he should. Michael Barnes was adept at all the requisite skills involved. Wiretapping. Records retrieval. Breaking and entering. He would have made an excellent criminal if he hadn’t gone to work for the government.

  His hands were massive and weathered. Well-used instruments of strength and lethal destruction that were also capable of surprising precision. Barnes watched Skylar closely as she called somebody from inside her parked Honda. He glanced at the laptop sitting in the passenger’s seat next to him to see the number she was dialing: 212 area code, New York City. The number belonged to Jacob Hendrix. Her boyfriend.

  In the three months Barnes had been keeping tabs on her, which coincided with Dr. Fenton’s decision to consider her a serious candidate for a Harmony House position, Barnes had learned significantly more about her relationship with Hendrix than anyone outside the two of them had a right to know. Among the surveillance expert’s key takeaways was how rarely Skylar let her guard down. She deftly managed to keep her lover at a safe emotional distance. Barnes chalked it up to her ambition. She was married to her career. Anyone involved with her would never be more than a mistress. In his generation, this was something only men did. Now, of course, it was a whole different deal. Which fascinated Barnes. In fact, he’d privately started to think of Skylar as the most beautiful man he’d ever met.

  When Skylar had moved into Jacob’s apartment two weeks ago, Barnes had wired the apartment within hours, but he still hadn’t found the opportunity to install the transmitter that would allow him to listen to the apartment remotely. For the moment, he would have to be in immediate proximity to the building, which was just fine with Barnes. He preferred to familiarize himself with a location in person before retreating to his sanctuary in the bowels of Harmony House, if time and circumstances allowed. And in this case, they did.

  Jacob answered his mobile phone; Barnes listened through his laptop. “How’d it go?” the young professor asked expectantly. The reception on his cell phone was sketchy, which always seemed to be the case whenever he was on the NYU campus. It made Barnes wonder if the government might be running something out of one of NYU’s departments. Most every major university had at least one covert operation stationed on its campus. Some had over a dozen. Institutions of higher learning made perfect covers, and operations could run for years without ever drawing attention to themselves. Except from someone like Michael Barnes.

  The reception on NYU’s campus was as bad as the immediate areas around federal buildings, and those were bad because the government liked it that way. They’d have kept us miles away if they could, but even the government had to live with certain constraints.

  At least, that’s what they wanted us to believe.

  “I guess some things aren’t meant to be.” Skylar exhaled with feigned and exaggerated disappointment.

  Listening from inside his vehicle, Barnes couldn’t help but smile. The girl did have a way. No wonder the old man was so smitten with her. Barnes sharpened the focus of his binoculars onto the back of her dirty-blonde head ninety-seven feet away. He could hear her breathing.

  “I’m sorry. I know how badly you wanted this.” Jacob’s voice was compassionate. “You still in Woodbury?”

  “Yeah.” Her voice wavered ever so slightly. She was having trouble containing her excitement. “I guess I’m going to have to get used to it . . .”

  He paused. The man was no dummy. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”

  She held it for as long as she could. “I did it! I got the job!”

  “Congratulations! You deserve it.” He paused, genuinely thrilled. “Hurry up and get back to the city so we can go out and celebrate.”

  “I have no intention of going out the entire weekend.”

  Barnes watched her turn left out of the parking lot, not through the windows, but on his laptop. A transmitter affixed to her right rear wheel well tracked her location. It was a redundant system in the unlikely event that the GPS transmitter in her phone went down. The wheel-well transmitter was also more accurate. The phone could only pinpoint her location to within five yards, while the other was accurate to within five inches. Barnes would concede that it was overkill, but also saw nothing wrong with that.

  Before starting his engine to follow her into Manhattan, Barnes sent the recording of the phone conversation to Fenton. Nothing in the conversation would concern him. Shrinks were given greater latitude than most others he typically surveilled, which was part of the reason Michael Barnes had enjoyed his employment at Harmony House for the last fourteen years. It seemed more forgiving.

  Until he was asked to kill someone.

  CHAPTER 4

  Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, May 19, 4:17 p.m.

  Jacob Hendrix clicked off his cell phone inside his small, cramped office. At thirty-six, he was the youngest tenured professor in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He’d been offered similar positions at Northwestern, UC
LA, Stanford, and Duke even before he’d gotten his doctorate from Harvard. It seemed inevitable that one day, these institutions would have to create a formal draft for these hotshot young professors, just like the ones used by professional sports. Maybe CNBC or PBS would cover it.

  NYU was lucky to have Jacob. He was published. He was produced. He was awarded. And to top it all off, the guy wasn’t just good-looking. He was cool. The rarest achievement for an academic.

  The sounds of the city were present even through the double-paned glass in the office’s two windows, which were sealed shut. New building, new materials, new technologies, all designed to mute the city around them, but achieving only nominal effect. A beast the size of New York City can never be fully silenced, but it can be quelled, or so thought the big-name architect from the prestigious firm who’d successfully pitched the campus-expansion committee and built this edifice of higher learning, only to be humbled as all others had been before him.

  The student sitting across from Jacob was Barry Handelman, a nineteen-year-old burdened by coming from too much money. A billion-dollar-hedge-fund baby. Matisse in the living room, Monet in the dining room. But it wasn’t his fault. Barry wanted to be a filmmaker, and that was his fault. Jacob apologized for interrupting their meeting by taking Skylar’s call.

  Barry shook his head. “No problem.” His haircut cost more than most college students spent on food in a month.

  Jacob looked over his young charge. “You were saying?”

  “When I saw everyone else’s films, it was pretty obvious how shitty mine was.”

  “You’re right. It honestly wasn’t great.”

  Barry nodded, appreciating Jacob’s honesty, even if he had probably expected something a little less than both barrels between the eyes. “So you think I should quit?”

  God, rich kids. “Let me ask you something. Are you here because you want to be, or just to piss off your father?”

  “Because I want to be.” And he obviously meant it, too.

  “The two most important kinds of work I’ve done fall into two categories: the best shit, and the worst shit. The best shit gets you jobs like the one I have and people to say nice things about you, and might even make you famous, but it doesn’t help you grow. Not as a person. Not as an artist. Not as anything. But the worst shit does. The stuff that you bust your ass on and truly suffer for that turns out to be absolute crap. Because it’s how you respond—whether you can handle the criticism, and what you learn from it—that will determine whether you have a future communicating something or if you should just quit and see how much money you can make.”

  Barry smiled just a little. “I could make a lot, you know?” Jacob was certain his student was thinking of a number with nine zeroes.

  “I do.” Jacob stared into his charge’s eyes. “But that would be easy, wouldn’t it?”

  Barry stared back defiantly. “I’m not a big fan of easy.”

  “Prove it.” The mentor didn’t blink. Neither did his protégé. Barry stood, accepting the challenge.

  CHAPTER 5

  Jacob Hendrix’s Apartment, Greenwich Village, New York City, May 19, 9:33 p.m.

  It was several hours later when the police siren screamed past Jacob’s building on Bleecker Street, but up on the third floor, neither of them appeared to notice. Both he and Skylar were too busy catching their breath. He was lying naked on the couch, chest heaving. She was sprawled on the floor, somewhere in the vicinity of her clothes, which were strewn around the room.

  Veuve Clicquot was Skylar and Jacob’s celebration drink. It was what they had downed when Jacob accepted his offer from NYU, as well as when Skylar graduated first in her class from Harvard. And it was what they were drinking now as Skylar finally got around to asking, “So how was your day?”

  “Not quite as good as yours.” He smiled in the disarming way she’d loved from the first time she met him.

  “Your day isn’t over yet.” She threw back the remainder of her glass and poured herself another.

  “Good thing I bought a second bottle.”

  Sounds of the city poured in through their cracked-open window. Another siren immediately followed the first, this one heading south on MacDougal Street. It was accompanied by tires screeching.

  Outside, those close enough to the police vehicle speeding through traffic could smell the tire rubber burning. These included a stooped elderly man slowly making his way down the sidewalk, an Albanian mother carrying a screaming child over her shoulder, and a muscled man sitting quietly in a Chevy Impala, listening to a conversation that was being automatically transcribed on the laptop sitting next to him.

  Michael Barnes barely gave the screeching NYPD vehicle a second glance. He had been a cop once, a long time ago, but that was another lifetime. The job he was now so well compensated for was to ensure the sanctity of America’s most important, and least known, scientific-research facility. At least, that was how it was referred to in the federal budget every year. Scientific-Research Facility. Outside the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the current occupier of the Oval Office, no one in the government was aware of Harmony House and its importance. That was how it had been for twenty-five years. And that was how it was to remain for another twenty-five, if Barnes had anything to do with it.

  He ignored the cacophony around him. The screaming baby. The teenage couple arguing. And the dueling television sets blaring over each other. Mets seventh inning versus I Love Lucy dubbed in Spanish. Barnes filtered out the white noise, listening only to one source.

  He had placed seven different wireless microphones throughout Jacob Hendrix’s apartment. One of the adjectives used in every report ever written about Barnes was thorough, and for good reason. He had no life. No outside interests. No serious relationships. And that was the way he liked it. To be this good at what he did, it couldn’t be any other way. And he really was this good.

  Barnes heard the sound of another cork being popped. Yes, indeed, it was going to be a very long night. For some, much longer than others.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Rittenhouse Hotel, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 20, 12:01 a.m.

  The US congressman from New York’s Seventeenth District preferred to use his American Express Platinum card whenever he prepared lines of cocaine, for the same reason he used a hundred-dollar bill instead of a twenty to snort it. Because it impressed the young ladies he paid handsomely to consume the drugs with him. Most didn’t seem to care that he was the most powerful representative from what its residents considered the greatest state in the Union. And even fewer seemed to care that many in Democratic politics considered him a good bet to be their next presidential candidate. Perhaps it was because the little whores didn’t believe him. But then again, how could they possibly fathom what kind of money and power he had backing him? And not just his family’s, either.

  The escort service did include on their roster a number of better-educated, more articulate young ladies, but Henry Townsend figured if he wanted to debate, he could always argue with his wife when he got back home. That was what he was getting away from. Her, the kids, his staff, the press, all of it, for just a few hours. A mini-vacation. A layover in Valhalla. Where time stopped. And he could enjoy the view from the penthouse suite of whatever hotel in whatever city he happened to be in while he created nice long lines of cocaine for himself and whatever her name happened to be.

  Tonight, it was the Rittenhouse Hotel in Philadelphia, and her name was Allison. At least, that’s what she claimed it was. Allison had brought the drugs with her, because they were included in the $5,000 fee the congressman had already wired her employer. This outfit was the most exclusive, most reliable, and most discreet entity of its kind in the world. New clients were thoroughly vetted before being taken on. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the personal guarantee of Henry’s father, Terence Townsend, a longtime customer, the service would not have taken on Henry as a client.

  The New York congressman never did mu
ch of the cocaine himself. It was mostly for the girls. He liked them all cranked up. He knew to be careful with his own intake, because too much would impede his performance. But a line or two would get him going like nothing else could. The rest was for her. Allison. Or whatever her real name was. He didn’t care. She liked to party, and that was exactly what she was here for. She leaned over the mirror on the bed, did two of the lines, then threw her hair back.

  Henry admired her beautiful young face, as well as the magnificent curves beneath her Victoria’s Secret lingerie, which looked brand new.

  Henry chopped up another dozen lines of the white powder. Two for him, ten for her. Somewhere around number eight, she’d taken a break to service him. He was rough with her from the start, just like he planned on being the rest of the night. He tore off her brand-new lingerie and took her from behind. His hands were around her throat. Not quite choking her, but on the verge of it. Letting her know he could at any second. Because that’s what he really enjoyed. Letting them know.

  “Allison” slowly leaned downward toward the mirror on the bed to finish her last two lines, which should have been enough to last awhile.

  All Henry could think was that the young lady multitasked with ease. He pulled her up by the back of her hair, shuddering with anticipation. Oh, did he have plans. The things he was going to do to this young lady.

  Because the congressman was behind her, he couldn’t see her face when it happened. Her stunning young eyes bugged out, more in shock than in pain, because she couldn’t breathe. Her skin suddenly turned pale. Her hands clenched the sheets as she went into cardiac arrest due to what would later be determined a congenitally thin lining of her left artery. For the moment, all she knew was that she needed to scream, and couldn’t.

  She arched, and clenched, and then went completely limp. At first, he thought the girl just might have passed out, which would have been disappointing, but not devastating. It had happened before. But when he rolled her on her back, her skin was blue. It was clear she wasn’t breathing. And that he was now in a full-on crisis. “This is not happening!”