Flyer

by J. L. Wilson

  I shook my head. “I have to admit, I’d be pissed off if I wasn’t so thankful they were so sneaky.” I looked at the dozen or so Inspiration Spirals then at Jason, unnerved to find him watching me. When I met his gaze, he looked away. “Did you find out anything in Dad’s notes?”

  “I looked at sections dated one month before and one week before and after the accident at the farm.” Bell handed me one dark green notebook with small sticky tabs stuck around the edges like porcupine quills. “I didn’t see anything that was about Peter.”

  “She said something like a week and a month less,” I said, opening the notebook at the spots designated by the tabs. “It couldn’t be less because that would be before the accident. It has to be a week and a month more, which would be after the accident.”

  “We figured that out.” Bell shrugged when I shot him a dirty look. “I’ve skimmed through these and I don’t see anything about Peter.”

  “Aunt Jane said it was on Dad’s bowling night.” I flipped through the notebook, skimming past March. I got to April and stopped, my eye caught by a random phrase on the page.

  Specialist might be needed. Does it have to come to that? Dad had crossed out a few words then wrote Hard to leave my dearest Mary. I know what I leave behind for her. That’s what is hardest.

  I looked up, tears spilling down my face. Bell covered my hand with his. “He knew even then that he was sick,” he murmured.

  “He suspected.” I wiped my cheeks. “He was so tired that final year I was in high school. They removed one tumor from his larynx and they thought that was it. He had to do radiation therapy and it made him sick. We assumed that was the cause of his weakness and the pain.”

  Bell’s hand tightened on mine. “I remember that. I would come home to visit and he just didn’t have any interest in anything. It was like it was all he could do to get up in the morning and go to the office. When he got home, he was exhausted.”

  I turned the pages, skimming through the May entries. Dad had jotted figures on pages here and there, long sums of five-digits that didn’t make much sense.

  “I think that’s what it cost for his medical care.” Bell tapped the page. “He was adding up what it cost with what they had saved for your college and for John’s college.”

  I swallowed heavily. Was Peter right? How did Mom and Dad pay for that specialist? I just assumed the insurance covered it. God, I was so naive. I assumed so much. “They didn’t tell me,” I whispered. “I had no idea.”

  “I don’t know if anyone did.” Bell slid the notebook off my knees and turned to the last page in the notebook. “Do you know what this is?”

  I shook myself out of my speculative trance and looked down at the scribbles on the page. “Sure. Dad kept track of his bowling scores. I think he had some kind of statistical analysis he did on them to see if he improved or something.” I picked up my wine glass and swallowed a healthy amount, trying to rinse away the grief still clinging to me.

  “Do you know what this is?” He flipped to another page.

  I glanced at it. I was familiar with my father’s shorthand when it came to programming. Early artificial intelligence work fascinated him. He taught himself Ada then Prolog, two software languages that were often used in A.I. work. His program designs usually combined elements of the two.

  “It’s a subroutine,” I said. “He always prototyped in Ada.”

  Bell shook his head. “No, it’s not Ada, it’s…” His voice trailed off and he lifted his head, staring into space.

  “It’s Ada,” I said, pointing to one line of code. “It’s—”

  “Wait,” Jason said softly.

  I had forgotten he was there. I shot him a startled look then I followed his gaze where it was fixated on Bell, who now stared at the notebook. I recognized that faraway look in his eyes. I got up and went to the kitchen, Jason joining me.

  “I’ve seen him do this once before,” the big man whispered. “It’s like he goes in a trance or something.”

  “He’s in the zone.” I took the wine bottle to the couch and filled Bell’s glass, then picked up my glass and rejoined Jason in the kitchen. “It might be a while before he remembers we’re here.”

  “You recognize it?”

  “Bell and I go back a long way. I’ve seen him and my father do all-nighters to debug code. I recognize it.” I smiled affectionately at Bell, who was jotting notes on a legal pad on the coffee table. The sight reminded me of the old days, when Dad and Bell would trade ideas while they worked on some gadget or another. Mom would make them sandwiches and they would barely notice her or me or anything around them. We would come back an hour or two later and the sandwiches were gone and the two men didn’t even realize they’d eaten.

  Did Mom and Dad really take money from Peter and Sylvia so long ago? I sipped my wine, letting my thoughts churn. I suppose it was imaginable, but what wasn’t imaginable was that she kept it from me all those years. There were lies within lies and secrets hiding secrets, all tied up with what happened so long ago.

  “It’s a subroutine,” Bell said from the living room. “It’s an A.I. subroutine that steps through a man going to spend time with friends then walking home at night, alone.”

  I nodded slowly. “He hid the information in software code.”

  Bell smiled. “It’s all here.” He tapped the notebook.

  Jason looked from me to Bell. “What’s there?”

  “Wendy’s father was an amateur programmer. He wrote out a piece of software code that mimics how a human being would behave in certain circumstances.”

  “Like a robot?” Jason asked.

  “Something like.” I went back into the living room and sat on the floor, using the coffee table as my desk. I picked up the pages Mom had copied for me. “These are pieces of it.” I smoothed down the papers, sorting through them.

  “I don’t get it,” Jason said. He knelt next to me, looking over my shoulder.

  “An A.I. program is a series of routines that will make a computer program act like a human.” Bell spoke absently, his mind obviously occupied by the pages of the notebook in front of him. “People don’t realize it, but our actions are composed of thousands of tiny decision points, many of which have outcomes that follow no logical pattern. An A.I. program attempts to mimic that.”

  I looked at Jason, whose brow was furrowed so deep it was comical. “It’s like this,” I said. “Take any action you do. For example, I am thirsty. I don’t want water. I want to drink wine. I need to first evaluate my glass. Does it have wine in it or not?”

  I held up my glass. “If there isn’t wine in the glass already, I branch to a subroutine that takes me into the kitchen to find the wine and fill the glass. If there is wine in the glass, I put my fingers on the glass. I verify that I have wine in the glass to drink. Pick up the glass. Sip from the glass. Is my thirst satisfied? Decide whether to take another sip. Put down the glass.” I quickly skimmed the pages in front of me, sorting them into months then weeks then specific days. “I think this is right.” I slid the papers across the wooden surface to Bell. “All human activity is a series of cause and effect,” I said to Jason. “My father wrote down what happened that night in computer code.”

  “I still don’t get it,” Jason said.

  Bell tapped the notebook. “This is the master program. It calls subroutines. Wendy’s father split all the subroutines into small chunks and inserted them into various spots in the notebooks. Her mother knew what her father did and she reassembled them.”

  “There’s a computer program that proves this guy is still alive?” Jason asked, his skepticism warring with his confusion.

  “I need my laptop,” Bell told me. “It’s in the spare bedroom.”

  I scrambled to my feet and went into the second bedroom, which also served as an office. Bell’s small tablet/laptop sat on the desk next to a stack of folders and books. I grabbed it and turned to leave when light on metal caught my eye.

  A gun sat behind
the pile of books and papers. It was small and black, probably a 9mm. It was like the one in Dad’s gun safe back at the house. Bell had been a security guard at a psychiatric hospital. I suppose that was when he learned to use a gun. He didn’t do any shooting when we were dating, at least none that I was aware of. It was perfectly legal in Iowa. The sight of it only reinforced what I knew—there were parts of Bell’s life and past that I had no clue about. In many ways, he was a stranger.

  I returned to the living room and handed Bell the computer. He pulled a lapboard from behind the couch, opened the laptop, and began to type. I watched him for a second then said, “I still can’t believe Peter would do this. He wouldn’t try to run us off the road. Why? What does he have to gain from it? Insurance fraud doesn’t carry that much of a jail sentence, does it? He could beat that charge, couldn’t he?”

  “He may have murdered your mother,” Bell said quietly. He regarded me for one long minute then returned his attention to his keyboard.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, blocking out the image those words invoked. When I opened them, I met Jason’s sympathetic gaze. “There’s no proof.” I was pleased my voice was calm and didn’t reflect my inner turmoil. “No one tested her to see if some foreign substance caused her problems.” I threw my hands up in the air and went to the kitchen to my glass of wine.

  “You don’t want to believe that someone you know could murder someone, do you?” Jason said. “Trust me. I’ve known people to murder other people for a lot less than half-a-million dollars.”

  “But—” I took a swallow of wine, trying to push my tumbling thoughts into some kind of order. What had Peter meant about ‘it’s complicated’? What did he mean about my father’s cancer specialist?

  I looked at Bell and saw him looking expectantly at me. I pushed aside Peter’s taunting conversation for later thought. “I grew up with Peter. He was in and out of our house a million times. He knew my parents. He couldn’t—” I looked at Bell. “He couldn’t kill my mother.”

  “Who would have believed that I’d grow up in Kensington, Iowa, and go on to become as rich and as famous as I am? Weirder things have happened, Wendy. You have to admit it’s at least possible.”

  “Possible isn’t proof. No one has proof. Without that, there’s no case. Why would they do it? It makes no sense.”

  “Let me finish this.” Bell shuffled through the pages I gave him, glancing at them then typing. “This might be the proof we need.”

  “But—”

  Jason put a hand on my arm and drew me to his side. “This is personal with him,” he said in a low voice. “Let him do it whether it helps or not. Maybe it’ll make him feel better.”

  “If it’s personal with anyone it should be me,” I whispered in return.

  “It’s because of you it’s personal.” Jason nodded when I looked at him incredulously. “Tom cares a lot about you and your family. A lot.”

  I drained my wine glass and set it in the sink. “Nobody should fight battles for me.” I walked into the living room and leaned over Bell. “I’m beat. This day started with a car accident and it’s catching up to me.”

  He kissed me quickly. “I’ll be in later. I want to work on this while the ideas are fresh.”

  I touched his face gently. “I know. I remember.” I smiled at Jason. “Tell your guy at my house to feed the cat and don’t drink all the beer.”

  Jason grinned. “Will do. Good night.”

  I washed away the residue of the day in a warm shower, swallowed three pain/sleep pills then I fell into bed, tossing and turning until I found a position that didn’t hurt my bruises too much. I don’t know how long I slept but I heard Bell slip into bed beside me.

  “Did you get it figured out?” I murmured.

  “I think so.” He kissed my cheek. “Jason was right. This is personal and it’s my fight because of you.”

  I considered arguing with him but sleep was a breath away. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  “I mean it, Wendy.”

  “I’ll sleep on it, Bell.” I closed my eyes and turned over.

  “I won’t let you get away again,” he said softly. “I mean it.”

  It almost sounded like a threat. I filed that away for later worry. Right now, all I wanted was temporary unconsciousness.

  I woke early in the morning, just as it was getting light. I lay in the unfamiliar bed, trying to catch my bearings. Then I heard Bell next to me, his breathing heavy.

  Bell. Good Lord, what was I going to do about him? I propped myself up on my elbows and peered at the window. Sunlight was creeping in. It would be a good day for Mom. That was what was important. I slid the covers off and sat up.

  “Wendy?”

  I looked over my shoulder. Bell lay on his side, watching me. “We need to talk sometime. About our future.”

  “We don’t have a future, Bell.” I saw the protest in his eyes and I hurried on. “I love you. But that doesn’t mean we have a future together.”

  “You’re not talking sense. You’re upset. It’s everything that’s happened. We can talk about it later.”

  “That’s exactly why it makes sense.” I slid away from his touch and stood, picking up the shirt I was using as a robe. “We got back together at a time of extreme stress. It’s a lot of nostalgia mixed in with fear that makes us want to be together.”

  “That’s bullshit. I love you, Wendy.”

  “If you loved me, why didn’t you get in touch with me before this?”

  He didn’t answer immediately then finally said, “I had to prove myself. I wanted to be a success.”

  I blinked widely in surprise. “Bell, you’re the very definition of success.”

  “Yeah,” he said wryly. “It was your mom who finally made me realize that. And she made me realize that I needed to take a chance and approach you again.”

  “But you never did.”

  “I was going to. Then she died and…It wasn’t until I saw you again that I realized how much I do love you.”

  I headed for the bathroom. “It wasn’t until you saw me again that you realized how much you once loved me. You’re just trying to recreate that feeling, Bell. It isn’t real.”

  “Is that how it is for you?” he asked.

  He looked so hurt, so disconsolate, that I almost dropped my clothes and went back to the bed. “I don’t know what it is with me,” I said quietly. “I do know that my mother’s funeral is today and I want to focus on that. You and I will just have to wait, Bell. Today is Mom’s day. I need to go home and get ready.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No, I’d like some time alone.”

  “I want to keep a guard with you.”

  I shook my head. “I really want some time alone.”

  He shook his head just as adamantly. “I want a guard with you. You know and I know that wasn’t an accident yesterday.”

  I relented. I knew there would be no convincing him. “OK. Whatever.” I headed for the bathroom.

  “We’ll talk about this later,” he called after me.

  “I’m sure we will,” I muttered.

  Half an hour later I was in the car with a man with a shaved head and muscles on top of muscles, who looked like an ex-prize fighter. He was introduced to me as Bob, the guard who had stayed at the house the night previously. We drove to the house in a maroon Cadillac sedan that Bell had rented ‘because it looks better than the truck for a funeral.’ I was relieved I wouldn’t have to climb in and out of his monster truck.

  When Bob and I neared the house, I saw the car sitting across the street in the same position it had been in the day before. “I need to talk to the person in the car,” I said when Bob pulled into the driveway.

  “I’ll come with you.” He shut off the engine.

  I hopped out of the car and was halfway across the street before he got out. I held up a hand when he started to follow. “Stay there. I just need a minute.” I didn’t give him a chance to protest but I walked over to
the sedan and tapped on the glass.

  The window rolled down.

  “Hello, Peter,” I said.

  Chapter 15

  The shape of his face was different, but he still had that distinctive sandy-red hair, straight and fine, cut shorter now and framing his face. He also had the same crafty, pale blue eyes that I remembered from long ago. When we were younger his face was a perfect oval, with high cheekbones that accented his long, patrician nose. Now his face was rounder, his eyes slightly slanted down at the corners, giving him a sad, almost pensive look. But his mouth was the same. Peter had a very deep indentation above his lips as well as a small chin. It used to make his face appear somewhat unbalanced and bottom-heavy, but now his thinning hair gave him more forehead, balancing out the look.

  All of this flashed through my brain in the time it took to recognize him. He smiled, that distinctive one-sided almost-sneer of his. “Hello, Wendy. Good to see you.”

  “It’s not good to see you, Peter. What do you want?”

  “I want the proof. I want to make sure it’s destroyed.”

  “I don’t have any proof,” I countered.

  “You must have it. I know how your father was. He would document it. That means you must have it, now that your mother’s dead.” His smile hardened into a sneer. “She felt guilty, although I don’t know why. I suppose it was because she took the money from us. And because of Tom Bell, of course.”

  “What?” I leaned on the car, as much to get closer to him as to block the sunlight glaring into my eyes. “What about Bell?”

  “Your mother took money from us then Tom tried to pay it back. He and your mother became accessories to murder. Then Tom got the bright idea to try to blackmail me. If I go to jail, he goes to jail. Even if you don’t care about Tom, do you care about your mother? Of course, it doesn’t matter to her now, but do you care about her reputation?”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  “Your father saw me that night. Your parents needed money. Your father’s job paid him a pittance and they had kids to put through college. Then your father got sick and he had more bills to pay. But why am I telling you this? I’m sure you knew.” His pale eyes reminded me of the blue glass marbles my brothers used to play with. They looked equally hard and cold.