Second Sight

by George D. Shuman

  Carla Corcoran was sitting in a rocker in her living room. Her house was one of the larger ones, six doors down from Grant’s Tavern, on the corner of an intersection. The décor was predictable early American, but done with style. She was as meticulous as her first husband had been. Everything was perfectly arranged, from the flowers on the table to the pencils on her antique desk.

  The windows were open this evening. It was the first chance to air out the house, and the warm spring breeze smelled fresh and wonderful. Colter was at the clubhouse, as usual. He was a good man, but absent more than not. He wasn’t the kind of man who could sit still. He could have retired on a government pension, but the club kept him busy, and he liked the attention everyone gave him. He certainly wasn’t a Jack McCullough, Carla thought; the two men couldn’t have been more different. She wondered if it was like that with all divorced couples. Were they constantly comparing past mates?

  She’d hate to admit it to anyone, but Jack would always remain the love of her life. She missed the real companionship he gave her. She could never resolve that he would take his own life. If something were so wrong that he couldn’t live with it anymore, he would have told her. They were just like that.

  She’d thought about him more and more since Betsy had introduced her to Sherry Moore. Not that she’d forgotten him, not by a long shot, but now that she’d dug out that old journal in the attic and gone through the photo albums, he was on her mind much more.

  She had all his things, all still locked in her desk. Colter might have been surprised to know that, but then Colter would never have cared enough to look. Colter’s world was outside the house. Carla’s was inside.

  She picked up a book and read two pages before she marked it and laid it down. She went to the kitchen and turned the gas on beneath the teakettle, took a paring knife, and brought an orange into the living room. She looked at the television and decided against it. She peeled the orange neatly, studying the parking lot outside Grant’s Tavern. People looked happy carrying their packages and there was laughter in the air. When Jack was alive he’d sometimes take her there for a drink, but that was an exception to the rule. Mostly they sat at home and read and Jack would clean his guns while they talked, and she would make jars of jam from the berries he brought her. It was a simple life, but simple was good.

  The curtain fluttered in the breeze. She felt weepy just then and wiped a tear from her eye. The kettle began to whistle in the kitchen and she laid down the orange and went to make a cup of tea. When she returned to her rocker she sat and reached for the knife and a drop of blood splattered on the orange in front of her.

  Carla wiped her nose with the side of her hand and was surprised to see blood on it. How odd, she thought, reaching for the tissues on an end table. She dabbed at her nose, then she stood and went to her desk.

  She looked confused for a moment, but then she took an old key from her pocket and opened the rolltop. It was dark now, she’d noticed, the last light of day having slipped behind Mount Tamathy.

  She took out a piece of paper and a pen. The words came easy, fluently, as if they had long been bottled inside. “Colter and all my dear, dear friends, you could never know the pain I have lived with these last fifty-eight years….”

  When she was finished she folded the letter neatly, creased it with a thumbnail, and stood it tent-style upon the top of her desk. She took Jack’s big .38 caliber revolver from the bottom-righthand drawer and the box of ammunition next to it, old green cardboard flaking away across the desktop as she opened the box to reveal tarnished brass shells. She removed a few and dropped them into the chambers.

  There was a slight smile on her face as she put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger.

  27

  Troy Weir was hardly oblivious to the fact that he was acting out his childhood conflict. He was also keenly aware that his acts were, if nothing else, perilously close to premeditated murder.

  He knew that his dark psychosis had as much to do with his stepfather’s arrogance as with his mother’s irritating submissiveness. In his mind the abused had become as loathsome as the abuser. He had watched the game play out from the perspective of a toddler and then later, as a teen, reinforcing again and again that all people are not created equal. That money and aggression trumped goodness and decency and compassion every time. That power in the right hands could bring the most enchanting prom queen or respectable congressman to their knees. That one man could forever change another man’s—or woman’s—life in the course of hours, minutes, even seconds.

  He remembered the day that his stepfather changed his mother’s life. The day he took away his name and money and left her to die in a nursing home. Left her with a pittance of his billion-dollar fortune and a smirk as she reminded him of his own words when she signed a prenuptial agreement nearly twenty years before; when he said that the entanglement of personal and corporate lawyers made life impossibly complicated and that she only need trust in his word and she and Troy would be taken care of for as long as they lived.

  Now, in an ironic turn of events, his stepfather had come to interpret Troy’s antisocial behavior as ambition. And ambition was to Edward J. Case what a Harvard business degree was to Wall Street. Here was a man who could put humanistic feelings aside, a man very much like himself. It was only fitting, Troy thought, that the Nobel Prize-winning laureate would see his own reflection embodied in a sociopath.

  He also knew he had to be careful. The National Security Agency vetted every single person who had ever been assigned to the MIRA Project. They would not hesitate to resort to legal, even physical, intervention if they thought for one moment that their multibillion-dollar weapon might be compromised. Even by its creator. That should have been a strong motivator not to kill with it.

  Even with all its complexity and sophistication, MIRA’s microwaves, beamed at varying megahertz, could not help but leave telltale signs of its destructive biological incursion, which affected the victim’s cellular structure, glands, visual systems, central nervous system. While it might be prudent to let an old woman shoot herself in the head in a hick town like Stockton, too many suspicious deaths and one scholarly medical examiner familiar with the capabilities of microwave diffusion would lead the NSA directly back to him. And that he could not allow.

  Sherry would learn of the news about Carla McCullough Corcoran soon enough. Hopefully after he had time to get her house key and to see her suicide through.

  He knew there was a possibility she might be tempted to return to Stockton when she heard about Carla’s untimely death, though it was doubtful they were close acquaintances.

  For now it would be smart to wait a few hours and then call Sherry to ensure she was still going to Case and Kimble headquarters in the morning. That was where his last plans for Sherry Moore would unfold.

  Tomorrow was going to be a very big day for both of them.

  28

  Sherry sat in silence in an Adirondack chair, overlooking the river. She wore a wool fisherman’s sweater and a drab blue plaid blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

  She realized how quickly she had thrown aside her convictions and common sense. A month ago she had had everything she wanted. How quickly the world’s eye candy had dazzled and overwhelmed her. How quickly she had come to rationalize that she should be living for today rather than tomorrow. Why had she chosen to expect the worst, instead of trying to get her life back to normal?

  It really was possible, after all, that in spite of all the excitement of being exposed to radiation and regaining her sight, that nothing else had changed. That there really could be good news in the future and that getting caught up in the drama of defeat was the thing that felt so wrong inside.

  She remembered the time she sat here with John Payne. It was funny, she thought, the power of memories. After a while you could push them back down, put them where they couldn’t hurt you anymore. But every now and then, and from the strangest places—a song on the radio, a face in the
crowd, or a long shadow cast by a tree in the fall—and suddenly you were right back there and that wave of emotion passed through your body like an electric current full of melancholy and despair.

  She wiped the tears from her cheeks and fixed her eyes on the bridge to the south. If she had said anything different two years ago when her friend John Payne was still alive he might not now be dead. She might not even be sitting here right now. Anything could have happened, good or bad, but it would certainly have been different, and being different by a minute could mean being different by a lifetime.

  That was the audacity humanity was resigned to. To question why life worked out the way it did. She had been torn throughout the morning over the meaning of happiness. Had she been happier before she regained her sight? Was she feeling depressed today because she’d lost her gift and was unable to help find a missing trooper in New Jersey or was she depressed over being ungrateful for regaining her sight? Over the way she had been acting?

  She just wanted to be herself again, to be in control, to have some conviction that this or that was true. And she didn’t feel that way now. She felt cheap. Like she had learned to use her eyes as an alternative to her heart. That she could retreat from responsibilities to others, because she was damaged, ill, unlikely to be good enough.

  Brian had never said a word about New Mexico in his earlier messages on the answering machine, but the question was always hanging there. He wanted to know what was going on with her. He wanted to know if she was all right. And if they’d had a conversation, he would have asked about her eyes and the tests and she would have had to tell him she could see again. And he would think it was wonderful.

  What could she say to him now that he hadn’t already seen for himself? She had sight. She had a new friend and she was being unfaithful to Brian.

  Maybe she wasn’t thinking clearly, but yes, she’d considered the implications. There was no real excuse. Brian would never know now that she’d looked at his picture every day since she’d regained her sight. That she thought he was more beautiful than she had ever hoped for. That she loved his eyes and ears and dimpled chin and the shadow of his beard in the evening light. He was no pretty boy like Troy. They weren’t even close. He was the big quiet bear and Troy was the eloquent fox, sleek and confident and mysterious. The kind of man she would have shied away from under other circumstances.

  It was almost like being stabbed, the pain of seeing Brian. It was an image that she could not get out of her head.

  Was there something psychological about her decision to pursue something with Troy? she wondered. Was she trying to sabotage her own happiness?

  Sherry swore after the death of John Payne—and that troubled year that followed—that she would never again succumb to depression. And yet the mind was like a theater, with a penchant to feature episodes that we would most want to forget.

  “Sherry?”

  “Mr. Brigham.” She smiled, wiping the last of a tear away with her sleeve.

  “I thought I’d find you here.”

  “Just watching the sunset,” she said softly.

  “It’s overcast,” Brigham said.

  She shook her head. “But there’s still a sunset behind the clouds. I knew that not so long ago. I knew that when I was blind.” She turned and looked up at him. “And I didn’t have to see it to believe it.”

  He sat next to her. “How are you feeling?”

  “Confused,” she said honestly. “And bad.”

  He nodded and sat in silence and they watched the clouds getting darker.

  “I’m heading up to Boston this evening,” he said.

  She nodded. “Breakfast club?”

  “The FBI switched the records at Nazareth Hospital. Monahan’s body is on its way to Walter Reed in Washington.”

  “You know, his brain might be wired exactly like mine?” She attempted to laugh, but the sound came out as anguish. “What about the journal?”

  “The FBI is seeing me tomorrow night, after my meeting. They’ll be doing the lab work on it themselves. We’ll know for sure if it’s Monahan’s handwriting and blood within a day. If nothing else we have his body. Nobody can dispute the DNA.”

  “And your friends will pull the records?”

  “The journal speaks for itself, Sherry. Once they match it to Monahan, they’ll start to pull the army’s records on Korea. There are half a dozen other soldiers named in Monahan’s journal. You and I both know that they’re going to turn up killed or missing in action.”

  “You said yourself that whoever did this has friends.” Sherry looked at him.

  “You mean friends who might intervene.”

  Sherry shrugged.

  “The breakfast club”—he smiled—“remembers Korea. We all made mistakes, but I can assure you there is not a man in that room that’s going to tolerate a cover-up of murder. If anyone is still alive that was involved in Area 17 and they went beyond the scope of their authority, they’re going to pay the ultimate price. And if there are any more rogue researchers out there, they can bet the new vice president will be chairing a review of all military records of the Cold War.”

  “Jesus,” Sherry said. “You know that already?”

  Brigham shrugged. “There is also going to be some excavating going on around old Area 17.”

  “You know, it’s funny that you turned out to be the one person in the world I most misjudged.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I don’t know.” Sherry smiled, looking up at the clouds. “I just always had this impression of you over in your big old home ironing shirts and sweeping your porch with a broom. Just a nice older gentleman with his memories, trying to keep busy.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  “I don’t know.” She made a face. “Why don’t we call the vice president and ask him?”

  Brigham laughed. “What about you?”

  “One more day with Troy.”

  “Why?”

  “He invited me to see Case and Kimble the day I met him. I figure it’s a good day to tell him it’s over.”

  “Your blood tests are looking good?”

  “Salix is happy.”

  “You started the therapy early. You’re going to show up negative.”

  Sherry nodded. “Maybe you’re right, and trust me, I know I’ve been acting like a child.”

  Brigham remained silent.

  “I’ve never been a pessimist before.”

  “Not since I’ve met you,” he said firmly. He looked out over the river and the sun started to descend from the clouds in the west.

  “I don’t know what to say to him”—Sherry folded her arms and tucked her feet under her behind—“even if Brian does talk to me again.” She sniffed. “I’m just so sorry.”

  Brigham turned to look at her. “Then tell him that,” Brigham said flatly.

  She began to cry again. “Life isn’t easy, is it?”

  “Nope,” Brigham said.

  “I was always going to be honest with him.”

  Brigham looked at her carefully.

  Sherry looked back at him. “Mr. Brigham, he was standing right there looking at Troy in my living room. He doesn’t know what happened in there.”

  “Sherry, you didn’t sleep with the guy. Don’t confuse guilt with right and wrong. Don’t go trying to sabotage your future because you think you’re not deserving of Brian…. What I’m trying to say is that Brian knows the pressure you’ve been under. Brian is smarter than that. Tell him everything. Don’t leave anything out, and if it was really meant to be, you’ll find him right back at your side.”

  “I don’t know,” Sherry said softly.

  “Sherry, sometimes people feel bad about themselves and they go out and do dumb things to prove themselves right. They create a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  Her cell phone rang and she wiped a tear with one hand. “That’s probably Troy now,” she said, sniffing.

  Brigham nodded and started to get out of his chair. �
�I’ve got an eight o’clock flight. You be safe tomorrow.”

  “Aren’t I always?” She waved good-bye.

  29

  “He won’t be home,” Troy said. “She told me he’s in Boston.”

  Case wheeled his chair to the window and looked out at the darkness. “Everything is at stake, Troy. Do you understand what I mean? Everything of mine and everything that will be yours, all of it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want her dead, suicide, and I don’t want to leave them anything to autopsy.”

  “What about the admiral?”

  “I think you know what has to be done with the admiral.”

  “Sir?”

  “Oh, don’t think I don’t know the little games you play with MIRA. Have him set his house on fire, I don’t give a good goddamn what you do, but when this is over there will be no more games, no more attention drawn to this company or me. What about the New York State Police?”

  “The old lady wrote a suicide note, in her own hand. What can they say?”

  “They will say autopsy her and then some doctor will see that her sinuses are half cooked.”

  “She put the gun to her head. The coroner will run tox screens. He won’t even give her skull a second look.”

  “He might if your friend starts making noise, and you can bet the day will come when they ask themselves the question.”

  “If anything, Sherry Moore will feel guilty about the old lady’s death. I mean, she brought up the subject of her husband after all these years.”

  “Yes, today she’ll be in shock, but tomorrow she might consider what she read in that journal and then put two and two together, between the journal and the fact that husband and wife committed suicide sixty years apart.”

  “She doesn’t suspect me,” Troy said. “That’s what matters in the end. All I need is another day with her.”

  “I’ve worked too hard in this life to have some halfwit army private crawling out of the grave to haunt me. And mark my words. If Monahan’s name hits the newspapers, there will be someone out there who’s going to remember him from Korea. Once that happens”—he spread his arms—“these walls will come tumbling down.”