by Eric Bernt
It had been over two decades since he’d taken any kind of CPR class, but he did his best to remember the basics. He tilted her head back, opened her airway, gave three strong breaths into her lungs, then placed both hands on her chest and gave three firm compressions. Nothing happened. He repeated the sequence. Still nothing. “Come on, breathe, you stupid little bitch!” He continued the compressions, pausing only to fill her lungs with air. His rage now turned to desperation. “Please, dear God, breathe!”
Over the next several minutes, his pleas grew increasingly pathetic. But there was nothing he could do. The girl was dead. Finally pausing to catch his breath, he looked around the room to assess the damage. Cocaine was sprinkled all over the bed. Ripped lingerie and empty champagne bottles were strewn about the floor.
If it wasn’t for the dead girl, the scene would be inviting. But there she was, cold and motionless. Ruining everything.
Henry quickly paced around the room, figuring out what he should do. There would be no getting out of this cleanly. The suite was registered in his name. The hotel had lots of security cameras, which undoubtedly had captured him coming and going. He had no access to a vehicle, even if he could magically transport the body outside the hotel. And he was much too high to seriously consider driving, anyway. The thought of being pulled over while transporting a dead hooker was so ghoulish it was almost funny.
Henry was going to need help, and knew exactly who he would turn to. The group who’d been in the shadows his entire political career, helping him whenever and however necessary. Like his derelict record in college that had somehow been sanitized. And his many other indiscretions that had never reached the light of day. Most importantly, he had won every election he had ever entered, by doing exactly as he was told. Not only did these people have the ability to rewrite the past, they could determine the future as well.
Henry had never once deviated from their instructions or guidance, because while certain aspects of his character left much to be desired, his survival instincts were superb. He knew better than to disobey them, whoever they were.
He took out a second phone, a device they had given him with explicit instructions: use only in case of emergency. Well, this certainly qualified. Henry pressed the “1” button, speed-dialing the only number he was ever to call from this device.
“Yes?”
“I need your help.” Henry’s voice quivered slightly. He knew he sounded high.
“Is the matter urgent?”
“I wouldn’t have called otherwise.”
The phone’s GPS transmitter let the man on the other end know that Henry was calling from inside a hotel in Philadelphia. “What is your room number?”
“It’s 3902.” Henry decided to ignore how unsettling it was that they already knew what hotel he was in. He convinced himself this was a good thing.
“Two friends will be there within ninety minutes. Do not leave your room. Do not communicate with anyone else. When they are outside your door, I will text you.”
The two men were seven minutes early. The time was 2:28 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time when the text message arrived on Henry’s phone: knock knock.
Henry peered through the peephole at the two expressionless men. They wore nylon sweat suits and baseball caps. Phillies and Mets. Henry had never seen either man before, and knew he would never see either one again. He opened the door and stepped back as they entered. Both men put on surgical gloves. There would be no trace they were ever here. They locked the door behind them and moved quickly from room to room to assess the situation.
It was bad.
Henry followed carefully behind them. “Please tell me you guys can get me out of this.”
Mets fan turned to him and spoke evenly and clearly. “You must do exactly as we say.”
“Just tell me what to do.”
Phillies fan pointed to the beige carpet next to the bed where the dead girl was sprawled. “Stand here.”
Henry did so. It seemed a little strange, but he was not about to question a damn thing.
“Face her.”
Henry turned toward the body, even as his instincts told him something was wrong.
Unfortunately, he was right.
The two men moved swiftly and in perfect unison. Mets fan stepped behind Henry, grabbing him from behind. Phillies fan grabbed his right arm, placing a handgun into Henry’s hand and forcing his fingers around the handle. The man’s grip was incredibly strong. There wasn’t anything Henry could do to stop Phillies fan from forcing the gun barrel into Henry’s mouth.
Having thoroughly rehearsed the sequence, Mets fan knew to duck just as Phillies fan pulled the trigger. The back of the congressman’s skull covered a good portion of the wall behind him as he dropped dead to the floor. The weapon remained in his hand. The residue on his fingers would clearly show that he had pulled the trigger. Any forensics expert in the world would conclude this was a suicide. The congressman had gotten away with too much for too long. Anyone who read the newspapers knew it. But his luck had finally run out.
Mets fan retrieved the encrypted phone from Henry’s pocket, and the two assassins exited the room. The body would be discovered shortly after nine o’clock the next morning when he didn’t show up for a breakfast with his chief of staff. A hotel security guard would tweet the news at 9:17 a.m. Within fifteen minutes, the guard would receive competing six-figure offers from three different news outlets for photographic evidence from the scene.
The Democratic Party was going to have to find another front runner for the upcoming presidential election. And the man who had ordered the death of Henry Townsend knew exactly who they were going to turn to.
CHAPTER 7
Harmony House, Woodbury, New Jersey, May 20, 5:30 a.m.
Eddie’s eyes opened bright and early, as they did most mornings. This was his favorite time of day, these very first moments. Because the day would never be more quiet, more peaceful, or more beautiful than it was right now. He just lay there, head resting upon his Batman pillowcase, listening to the magnificent SILENCE. There wasn’t another living soul moving anywhere in Harmony House. But Eddie knew that outside his window, it was a different story. He cracked open the window—no more than an inch, because an inch was all that was needed to let the glorious chorus come pouring in.
This morning it was a black-capped chickadee and a hermit thrush. Other mornings, it was a common tern and a green-winged teal. And if he was really lucky, a blue-winged warbler joined the ornithological chorus, but that was only on rare occasions. The chirps of each bird were distinct. And Eddie could mimic each just about perfectly. Puckering his lips, pulling his cheeks tightly against his teeth, and exhaling ever so slightly in quick bursts, he turned the duo into a trio.
Eddie could talk to the birds.
The three birds seemed to have a lot to say. CHIRP, CHIRP, WHISTLE, WHISTLE. CA-CAW, BRRRIP. It lasted for one minute. Then two. But seemed more like days. By his count, thirty-seven different varieties of birds had made early morning music with him, and he hoped for more. Like a belted kingfisher or a swallow-tailed kite. He hoped that if there was a heaven, one day he would get to sing with a chorus of every kind of bird in existence. How truly glorious that would be.
The only thing Eddie could imagine sounding more beautiful was the sound of his mother’s voice, which was the one voice he most wanted to hear, but was also the one he never could. She had died giving birth to him. One of the few kind aspects to Asperger’s was that it kept Eddie from being burdened with the sense of guilt over her death that many in his situation might suffer. That kind of emotion just didn’t compute. Not for most people diagnosed within the autism spectrum. All he knew was that he wanted to hear his mother.
Many of those who had known Michelle Parks during her short life had told Eddie that her voice was like nothing they had ever heard. That she sang like an angel. That on more than one occasion, she had brought people to tears. Eddie found this confusing, even when it was explained to
him that they cried in a good way. He would nod, pretending to understand, while thinking it was not nice of his mother to have made people cry. The only times he cried were when he was hurt or confused, and neither felt very good. And since he was certain that his mother had been a nice person, he was equally confident that she would have never intentionally brought anyone to tears.
Many who’d known her believed that Eddie’s mother had been on her way to a recording career when she met her untimely demise. Unfortunately, no one had ever bothered to properly record her voice before the tragic event occurred. Sure, there had once been the usual collection of home videos, but those didn’t count for two reasons: the audio quality of the VHS tapes was so poor that it was almost impossible to hear her to begin with, and her parents had watched them so many times in the years following Michelle’s death that the tapes had become unplayable. Which was why her parents had tossed out the recordings when they decided to sell their home. It was just too frustrating to hang on to them.
Eddie remained undeterred. For as long as he could remember, his only goal in life was to hear his mother’s voice. He wanted to hear the angel. His angel. And he knew he could find a way to do it. That was what he’d told himself every day since his arrival at Harmony House.
One day, he would hear his mother sing.
Eddie supposed the reason she had never been properly recorded was because angels weren’t supposed to be. Never mind that she was trailer trash from a small eastern-Pennsylvania town called Saylan Hills with a population of 811. Or that Eddie wasn’t altogether sure what angels were, even though he had memorized numerous definitions from multiple sources. He did know that people nodded with approval whenever he made the statement that angels weren’t supposed to be recorded, so he made sure to say it whenever talking about his mother. He liked it when people thought he knew what he was talking about. Because then they didn’t look so strangely at him, and he wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable.
Most of the time, however, they knew he didn’t have a clue.
Eddie glanced over at the hard-shell camera case sitting on his simple wooden desk. At least, it looked like a camera case. But it was not. It was a device. A prototype. Which was the primary reason Eddie had been brought to Harmony House. The echo box. To date, the government had invested over $27,358,916 into its development, but still had nothing to show for it. Nothing tangible, anyway. All they had were Eddie’s theories, theorems, algorithms, and mathematical equations, literally thousands of them, which filled over thirty of the binders stacked neatly along his wall. And none of the scientists at the government’s disposal, including the nation’s very best and brightest, had been able to make heads or tails of his work. In fact, many of them were now convinced that Eddie’s Theorems, as they were known, were utter nonsense. A pipe dream.
The scientists were tired of seeing such a vast amount of research funds being directed to this nonsense when they had far better uses for the money. Feasible uses. Practical, even. How dare they have to take a back seat to a deficient! A showdown was brewing. High noon would be at the annual closed-door budget meeting, which was to occur in three days. The only question was whether one of these brainiacs was finally willing to stand up to a force of nature. They needed a dragon slayer.
What none of them could possibly know was that one would arise from the least likely of places.
CHAPTER 8
Jacob Hendrix’s Apartment, Greenwich Village, New York City, May 20, 11:22 a.m.
Jacob and Skylar slept as long as they could. Neither was in any sort of a hurry. They hadn’t gotten into bed until after three, and tumbled out of it sometime after four. They didn’t fall asleep until close to five.
Skylar opened her eyes slowly. Her head hurt. Of course it did. It took her a moment to remember why, which made her smile. She stared at the man staring back at her. “How long have you been awake?”
“Only a couple minutes.”
“How long have you been staring at me?”
“Only a couple minutes.”
She never broke eye contact. “If I asked nicely, would you get me three Advil?”
He paused to make her think it was an imposition. “Look behind you.”
She rolled over to see three Advil and a glass of water sitting on her nightstand. She gulped down the pills with the entire glass, then turned back to him. “Well, that was fun.”
“It wasn’t bad.” She hit him with a pillow. “Tell me about your job again, so that this time, I’ll remember.”
She shook her aching head. “There’s really not much I can tell.”
“Because you haven’t started work there yet, or because you’re not supposed to?”
“Both.”
He grinned slyly. “You know, the less you tell me, the more I want to know.”
“That’s true of everything, isn’t it?”
“Touché.”
She paused briefly, surprised that she actually did want to talk about her new job. “My boss is a legend. Dr. Marcus Fenton. Probably the most famous name in autism research since Hans Asperger.”
“Asperger was a Nazi, wasn’t he?”
“He acquiesced like every other Austrian during the war. It was the only way he could keep seeing patients.”
“I thought Hitler was busy exterminating anyone who didn’t have a perfect blond genetic disposition.”
“He was. That’s why what Asperger was doing was so amazing. Even in that climate, he was able to show the value of neurological outliers.”
He marveled at her. “I can only hope that I convey half the passion talking about what I do as you do talking about your patients.”
“Wait until I start working with them.”
CHAPTER 9
Harmony House, Woodbury, New Jersey, May 20, 12:03 p.m.
Eddie carried binder #138 into the cafeteria as lunch was being served. He carefully tucked it under his right arm as he selected a plastic tray and waited in line with the rest of the Harmony House patients, at least those capable of selecting their own food. It was Saturday. Meat Loaf Day. Meat loaf and green beans and mashed potatoes and a chocolate-chip cookie, with a choice of seven beverages from a fountain dispenser. Eddie liked the menu on Meat Loaf Day, not particularly because of the main course, but because this was the one day of the week when he could be certain there would be no purple food among the offerings.
There were no grapes, no eggplants, no blackberries or plums to be found anywhere. There were no grape juices, no grape sodas, no desserts with any kind of purple decorations, as there sometimes were on holidays and patient birthdays. Purple was the color of bruises, and bruises hurt, so no food the color of bruises could possibly be good to eat. Eddie liked red foods and yellow foods and, really, most other colors of food except for purple. As a child, he used to think that if he ever got to be president, he would outlaw purple food, but dismissed the thought as he got older, because he assumed that no one with autism could ever become president. Unless, of course, you accepted a recently published theory in a New York magazine that two of the four most recent presidents were on the spectrum. Eddie contented himself with the notion that one day, he could convince whoever did become president that bruise-colored food was no good for anyone.
Eddie did the same thing every time he entered the cafeteria: tilted his head to one side, then the other. Then slowly rotated his head left, then right. He was confirming the familiarity of the many sounds he knew so well.
The room was the largest in Harmony House and, therefore, echoed the loudest. The CLANKING of silverware. The WHIRRING of mixers. The MURMURING of conversations. The SQUEAKING of rubber-soled shoes. The overhead fluorescent lighting created a slight, constant BUZZ that Eddie had complained about numerous times, to no avail. Even Eddie didn’t get everything he asked for. At one point in 2008, Eddie became so frustrated that he attempted to go on a hunger strike, but only until he got hungry after skipping lunch. More than the actual hunger, the break in his routine was more t
han Eddie could bear. Fenton told him he needed to set a better example for the other patients. Eddie promised he would.
That explained the tissue paper sticking out of his ears. It had been years since he had entered the cafeteria without it. Standing in the food line, Eddie inhaled deeply through his nose, smelling his surroundings. He turned to the nearest cafeteria employee, whose name was Jerome Barris.
“The meat loaf smells like it’s burned again.”
“Not all of it.” Jerome was Harlem born and bred, and every word he spoke was a reminder of it.
“How much is not burned?”
“Fifty-three point eight two percent.” Jerome cracked a smile. He liked Eddie, and wanted to make sure Eddie knew it.
Eddie made a BUZZER sound. “Not true.”
The cafeteria worker stared at Eddie from beneath the hairnet containing his closely cropped flattop. “How do you know it’s not true?”
“There is no way to make such an accurate assessment with the limited measuring equipment you have at your disposal.”
“Okay, fine. About half. That better?”
“Yes, that is better. It is a more reasonable approximation. I would like a piece from the about half that is not burned, please.”
Jerome used a plastic spatula to inspect the various pieces of meat loaf before him. He selected the one that showed the least signs of char, and served it to Eddie. “I’ll say one thing about you, man. You sure is polite. Your mama done raise you right.”
Eddie blinked several times. “No, she didn’t. She died when I was born.”
Jerome froze. He felt bad, and it showed in his face. “Sorry, man.”
“Why are you sorry?”
“About your mom.”
“Did you know her?”
Jerome was drowning, and he knew it. So did his superior, Ida Peroni, who carried her 260 pounds on her five-foot-four-inch frame with the grace of a dancer. She approached quickly. “No, Eddie, Jerome did not know your mother. He was only trying to express his sorrow that you did not get to know her. Do you understand now?”