The Speed of Sound

by Eric Bernt

  Detective McHenry was one of the lead investigators in the recent gas attack in the subway, which meant there was a connection between the fugitives and the attack.

  But what?

  He called Agent Raines to relate that Detective McHenry was returning from New Jersey. Raines responded that he didn’t care about the detective at the moment. Until the fugitives were in custody, they were to be Max’s one and only priority.

  Max stood up, asking his ever-growing team of analysts keeping real-time watch over the city if anyone had anything worth relating. There was no response, other than shaking heads. Nobody dared to bring up any more low-probability catches. Nothing under 70 percent would be mentioned. Max spoke into the phone to his superior. “Sir, if they were still in the city, we’d have seen something by now.”

  “I’m inclined to agree.” Agent Raines’s voice was reassuring. He seemed to want Garber to know that he still had complete confidence in him. “Focus your people’s attention on the subways, particularly the major stations. Get their images out there wide.”

  Max smiled, because he had already done so. Every street cop and transit-authority officer had already received high-resolution images of the two fugitives.

  CHAPTER 81

  Secaucus Junction, Secaucus, New Jersey, May 27, 9:41 p.m.

  Eddie had never been on a train. Given the number of firsts he had already experienced in the last ten hours, Skylar was reluctant to introduce him to another. But there they were, parked outside of Secaucus Junction, trying to prepare Eddie for his first train ride. He was tired, both physically and emotionally, but managed to keep his growing sense of panic at bay by memorizing a printed train schedule.

  He was hungry. Night had fallen, and he should have eaten dinner four hours ago. Saturday was fish-stick night at Harmony House, and it was among the most consistent meals offered by the institution. While Eddie had never given any serving of fish sticks the prestigious rating of five, he had also never given one a score lower than three, and it was the only Harmony House entrée to hold that distinction. Fish sticks were consistently a three or a four, and consistency was what Eddie craved now more than ever.

  “How much longer do we have to wait?” he asked Skylar as they waited for Kreitenberg inside his car, which was parked in a handicapped space near the station’s main entrance. The bird-shop owner had a ninety-three-year-old mother he occasionally drove to doctor appointments, and that gave him the legal right to possess the handicapped placard now dangling from the rearview mirror.

  “As long as it takes Rupert to buy us the train tickets to Philadelphia.”

  “Does it always take this long to buy train tickets?”

  “It depends how many people are in line, and how many tellers are open.” The slightest hint of concern crept into her voice. Rupert was taking longer than expected.

  “Does everyone who rides on a train need someone else to buy their tickets?”

  “Only people who are playing tag like we are.”

  “Because they don’t want anyone to say, ‘Tag, you’re it’?”

  “Exactly.” Skylar kept a close eye on their surroundings. The parking lot around them was dimly lit. There was a nonstop parade of cars pulling up, with people getting into or out of them quickly.

  The only sign of the authorities was a vacant police car that had already been parked by the main entrance when they had arrived. It was this vehicle that had prompted Skylar to ask the bird-shop owner to buy their train tickets for them.

  To her surprise, Kreitenberg didn’t ask for an explanation. In fact, he answered with fatherly understanding that he’d be glad to help them. What shocked Skylar even more was that he refused to allow her to pay for the tickets. He told them he’d be right back, and then left them in the car, adding that there were granola bars in the glove box if either of them got hungry.

  Eddie opened the compartment and devoured one of the bars. He cringed somewhat, but that didn’t stop him from eating the whole thing. “Two. Not good. Stale. Too crunchy. This granola hurts my teeth.”

  “Didn’t seem to bother you too much,” she said, continuously scanning the area around them.

  Eddie paused, staring at the empty wrapper in his hands. She was right. “Skylar, why do you keep looking around?”

  “I’m wondering where Rupert is.”

  As authoritatively as he could, he answered, “It depends how many people are in line, and how many tellers are open.” His imitation of her was getting better.

  Skylar smiled until a shadow suddenly appeared outside her window. Panic set in. She quickly glanced around the car, wondering how to get her and Eddie safely out of the vehicle, until the shadow held two train tickets to Philadelphia up against the window. She sighed with relief as Rupert opened the door.

  “Sorry if I startled you.”

  “You came out a different exit.”

  “I did.” He nodded, motioning to the empty police car. “I counted six officers and what looked to be the same number of agents, but they are harder to pick out. I saw at least one holding a phone with pictures on it, and I’m pretty sure they were yours.”

  Eddie turned to Skylar. “Why would officers and agents have phones with our pictures on them?”

  “Because they’re looking for us.”

  “Are they playing tag, too?”

  “Yes.”

  Eddie asked, “How many people are playing tag with us?”

  “More than I care to think about.” She glanced briefly at Rupert, who continued to surprise her. “Why aren’t you asking any questions?”

  “If you were comfortable telling me what’s going on, you would have already done so.” She got out of the car, and he handed her the train tickets, along with two New York Mets caps and oversized T-shirts. “They’re looking for a doctor and her patient, not two baseball fans. The Mets are playing the Phillies tomorrow in Philadelphia. Now you two will fit right in.” He motioned to other fans making their way into the station. “Next train leaves at 10:22.”

  She studied him, realizing her faith in New Yorkers had just been restored. “Did you really tell Eddie that you like birds more than people?”

  He answered sincerely, “Not everyone is lucky enough to know someone like you.”

  Skylar shook her head. “I’m not as nice as you think.”

  Rupert smiled warmly. “All I need to know is the effect you have on him.” He gestured to Eddie as he got out to join them. “You know how special he is. What you don’t know is how special you are.”

  From the moment Skylar and Eddie entered the crowded station, it was apparent that Kreitenberg was correct about the number of law-enforcement personnel looking for them. There seemed to be officers and agents around every corner, glancing at phones, which Skylar was certain displayed their images.

  Skylar held her breath and kept her eyes on the ground as Eddie paused to cup his hands to his ears and rotate his head, familiarizing himself with the sounds of the gleaming station. The main concourse was over forty feet high and featured a thirty-foot-tall steel-and-glass cattail sculpture as its centerpiece. The sculpture was supposed to remind New Jersey Transit passengers that they were in the Meadowlands, where cattails were prevalent. At least, they had been before the open spaces were bulldozed and turned into a train station featuring statues of them.

  The sculpture was ringed with neon, which emitted a slight but audible BUZZ. Eddie focused on it, along with every other noise echoing around the cavernous space. Footsteps, conversations, ringing devices, squeaking wheels, and never-ending arrival/departure announcements all bounced around the space’s surfaces of granite, limestone, steel, and glass. The collective white noise formed a continuous RUMBLE, which Skylar knew was going to be a challenge for Eddie.

  This explained the tissue paper sticking out of his ears. Not much, thankfully, but it was there, for anyone who looked closely enough. Perhaps Skylar should have been less concerned with appearances, because Eddie’s hands started sha
king. “I don’t like it here.”

  “The faster we keep moving, the less time we have to spend here.”

  “It’s too loud.”

  “Breathe, Eddie.”

  “I am breathing. Otherwise, I would be dead.”

  “Focus on your breathing. Try to slow it down.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m asking you to.” She had learned to stop trying to explain things, much like parents do by their second or third child.

  It only took Eddie a moment to act on the request. He began breathing slower. As the new rhythm became more automatic for him, Skylar watched as he turned his attention to the many passersby. He focused on one person at a time. Many of these people wore Mets garb, just like Skylar and Eddie. Kreitenberg was right. They were blending in, and that was good. They appeared to be nothing more than two small parts of the Mets collective moving toward a common destination. She gave people slight nods, or looks that compatriots give each other. They were united in common purpose. They were one.

  It was working right until Eddie started to moo like a cow. He was focused on a heavyset woman walking by in well-worn cowboy boots. “Moo.”

  Skylar considered them fortunate that the woman didn’t hear him. “Why are you mooing?”

  “This space makes people sound like cattle.” He stared at a particularly large, unshaven man, who was drinking from a large bottle wrapped inside a paper bag. He was at least 6’4” and over three hundred pounds. “Moo.”

  The man stopped abruptly and stared down at Eddie. “What the hell you say?”

  “Moo.”

  Skylar quickly jumped in. “Please excuse my friend. He has Tourette’s, and can’t control certain impulses.”

  Eddie made his BUZZER sound. “I do not have Tourette’s. I have Asperger’s syndrome.”

  Skylar got right in Eddie’s face and looked him directly in the eyes. “I’m your doctor. If I say you have Tourette’s, you have Tourette’s. Now let’s go.”

  She would have dragged him away by the arm if she could, but knew that would only make things worse. So she did the only thing she could, and that was to walk away, desperately hoping that he would follow.

  Thankfully, Eddie did follow her, repeating what the large man was saying behind him as he did. “Shoulda beat that punk-ass bitch to the ground. Don’t care if he’s no retard. Sumbitch needs to learn some respect.” Eddie’s tone and intonation were dead-on.

  After turning a corner, confident that they were a safe distance away from the man-beast, Skylar paused, breathing a deep sigh of relief. She waited for Eddie to catch up to her. “You do not have Tourette’s.”

  Eddie looked upset. “Then why did you say I do?”

  “Because I felt like I had to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want him to hurt you.”

  This got his attention. “You really think he was going to hurt me?”

  She nodded. “I’m quite sure of it.”

  Eddie glanced at various parts of his body, imagining a serious injury. “So it’s okay to lie if you don’t want someone to get hurt?”

  She didn’t know what to say. “It’s okay if you don’t have any other alternatives.”

  “How do you know if you don’t have any other alternatives?”

  “You do your best to consider all other possibilities.”

  Eddie nodded as if he understood, which he didn’t. It was all quite confusing, and left him feeling uncomfortable. “I want to go back to Harmony House.”

  Skylar nodded. She knew this was hard for him, but she wasn’t about to give up yet. “I thought you wanted to hear your mother’s voice.”

  “I do.”

  “If I take you back to Harmony House, you may never get to.” She would also lose any chance of ever getting retribution for Jacob’s death.

  “Because Dr. Fenton might take my echo box away?”

  She nodded. “Yes. And I made you a promise to stop anyone from taking it away from you.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “But I need your help to keep that promise.”

  He thought for a moment and reached his decision. “I will help you keep that promise.” He counted his footsteps under his breath as he and Skylar made their way down two flights of stairs to the lower departure level. They were joined by an increasing number of Mets fans heading for the same train, who all shared the same thought: there was nothing more fun than staying up all night making fun of Phillies fans on their home turf the night before a good shellacking.

  Eddie continued quietly counting to himself. “Two hundred and thirty-two. Two hundred and thirty-three.” He stopped abruptly to scratch his neck where the newly purchased Mets T-shirt collar was rubbing against it. “I don’t like this shirt. It itches my neck.” He started to take it off.

  “You only have to wear it until we get on the train.”

  “It makes me uncomfortable.” He pulled the shirt over his head.

  Skylar glanced at an officer in the distance, and spoke conspiratorially. “If a police officer tags you, it will be even more uncomfortable.”

  Eddie looked around. He also saw the officer down the platform. “I do not want to be tagged. I want to hear my mother sing.”

  “Then keep walking and do your best not to draw attention to yourself.”

  He put the Mets jersey back over his head as he resumed walking toward the train. “Two hundred and thirty-four. Two hundred and thirty-five.”

  CHAPTER 82

  Harmony House, Woodbury, New Jersey, May 27, 10:11 p.m.

  The distraught call from his boss was not Michael Barnes’s main concern. It was understandable that Fenton resented being in the back of a squad car. Of course he was livid about being taken in for questioning. Detective Butler McHenry was a nuisance, but not a legitimate threat, not to either of them. McHenry had no jurisdiction nor evidence he could use against Fenton. The detective was fishing, hoping the old man would slip. In Barnes’s professional estimation, that was highly unlikely. Possible, because anything was possible, but the odds were low. Fenton would lose a few hours being questioned, but that would be the extent of it. McHenry was nothing more than a frustrated detective who knew justice would never be carried out. His only move was to pester and annoy.

  Barnes’s bigger concern, the one causing the knot in his stomach to grow increasingly tight and resistant to the over-the-counter remedies he’d been gobbling down, was that the team he’d sent after the nurse had not been heard from. Strunk and Dobson should have checked in over an hour ago, but both of their phones had stopped transmitting GPS signals at Gloria Pruitt’s residence. Which meant something had happened.

  But what?

  Barnes ran through a variety of scenarios, and the most likely involved the local police showing up at the nurse’s house while Dobson and Strunk were engaged in the activities he’d prescribed. But even that was a stretch. A neighbor would have had to have seen something suspicious and called the police, or possibly even intervened directly. But his team’s response in either scenario would have been to eliminate the witnesses. They would have had no qualms about it, and neither would Barnes. Far better to have collateral damage than anything even potentially leading investigators back to Harmony House.

  So what was the holdup?

  He called his team again. Both calls went right to voicemail. Something was very wrong. As he imagined various locations where his two men might be, Barnes never considered anywhere remotely close to their actual location. Which was the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

  Parts of them were there, anyway.

  CHAPTER 83

  Peaceful Easy Feeling, 5.3 Nautical Miles off the New Jersey Coast, May 27, 10:14 p.m.

  The GPS coordinates were N 39°37’51.44”, W 74°05’56.59”. The National League East fans had jointly purchased the Albemarle 360XF three years ago, mostly because of the Volvo Penta IPS engine that came with it. IPS stood for Inboard Performance System, and that was what
set this fishing boat apart.

  At the moment, however, the Volvo Penta IPS wasn’t being asked to give them anything, because the engine was turned off. The boat was still, except for the gentle rocking caused by the ocean currents beneath it. They had picked this location because of the three-hundred-foot vertical wall that was directly beneath them. The wall teemed with carnivorous life that didn’t seem to care about whether its food came from land or water. Whatever the sharks didn’t eat, the marlin, cod, mackerel, and Atlantic barracuda would. And whatever they declined would be savored by the bottom-feeders, which never rejected anything remotely edible. The absence of sunlight apparently made everything look good.

  The key to getting these fish to feed on human remains was to chop up the bodies into pieces small enough to look appetizing. This was exactly the activity the boat-owning assassins were engaged in. And it explained the blood spattered all around the back of the boat, including over its beautifully scripted name.

  The partners accomplished their work with matching Henckels carbon steel eleven-inch meat cleavers. The blades were razor sharp. Neither man showed any emotion about the work. It was just part of the job. The mess would all be hosed away within minutes after the last chunk of human flesh had been tossed overboard.

  Giles paused as his phone rang. Not his regular phone. The encrypted one used exclusively for communication with their employer. They were probably calling for a progress report. He answered by saying, “The job is complete.”

  “I had no doubt,” Stenson replied. “That’s not why I’m calling. I have another job for you.”

  “I’m listening,” Giles responded, which was what he always said when Stenson called. Murphy paused to listen in.

  “It needs to be done tonight.”