“You are different.”
What about the sergeant, or the captain, you talk to...
“Do not explain!” interrupted the strong voice.
“But he needs to know,” said the softer.
“He will know what to do when the time comes. We will guide him.”
Will she be hurt? thought Jon.
“We don’t know,” said a new voice.
Please don’t let her be hurt.
“The police will let you go soon. It’s up to you, but we will help.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
To say Karen Knight was unhappy would have been a gross understatement. One would have had to blatantly ignore the tight folding of her arms, the unmistakable clenching of her jaw, and the incessant clipping of her high heels on the concrete floor of the janitorial room. One would also have had to ignore the incessant muttering and occasional outburst of, “Collins can’t keep us here!” By David’s estimation, she was well past unhappy and barking on the heels of livid.
He sighed. “He said he’d be back in a second.”
She chewed her lip. “He’s up to something, probably covering things up. There’s something in that locker room he doesn’t want me to see.” She tried the doorknob again. It was still locked. Funny that.
“It doesn’t help anything to get all worked up about it.”
She shot him a look like a prowling animal. “He locked us in a janitor’s closet!”
“It’s hardly a closet.”
“I should scream bloody murder and bring the whole police department down here.”
David picked up the receiver of the phone sitting on the desk behind him. “Or you could call them.”
“I’d prefer to scream,” she said, irritated with his assumption that she was unaware that the room contained a phone.
He had seen Karen in just about every emotional state possible, but this was a new one. It wasn’t simply irritation or frustration, there was a hint of something else. Was it fear?
“You ah... You gonna be okay, Karen?”
“No, I’m not okay!” she snapped.
He rephrased. “There’s something bothering you and it isn’t just Agent Collins.”
She continued to pace, and offered no response.
“Are you claustrophobic?”
“No,” she said, disgusted.
“Well you’re worried about something.”
She twisted around. “Aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Worried?” she said.
“About what?”
“About whatever made that sergeant lose his mind in that locker room?”
“Well, since I’m not currently taking bath salts...”
“Bath salts.” The words spit from her lips. “You believe that garbage?!”
“Only slightly more than the extraterrestrial thing.”
“The government is doing something creepy, David, and this guy, Collins, is their clean-up guy. I have a very bad feeling about this.” Her eyes scanned the room.
“You think Collins is going to kill us?”
She clip clopped over to the window and looked through the blinds. “I don’t fear death, but whatever happened to Sergeant Gram is worse than death, like some kind of zombie lobotomy.”
The thought of being injected with a lobotomizing drug caused a reaction in David’s gut, but it was immediately suppressed as the words Eye Care flashed in his mind. It was true. He knew it. God did care. As hard as it was for him to cling to that understanding intellectually, he knew the message was true. He could feel the emotion behind the words, like those emotions were his own. God cared for him. He would protect them. “I don’t know, Karen. I think if we were about to be lobotomized, God would have given me the heads up. I really don’t think there is anything to worry about.”
She turned and studied him. “Maybe he did. Maybe you missed the message.”
“Trust me, he doesn’t let me miss them.”
“Maybe he...” She froze in mid sentence as the door knob began to jiggle. She moved briskly to the desk and sat on the edge, near the phone.
Agent Collins came in and put his finger to his lips. He shut the door and pulled an electronic wand from the inside pocket of his suit coat. Slowly, he circled the room, waving it high and low as they watched, speechless. The way Agent Collins manipulated the wand was mesmerizing, so much so that even Karen was unable to interrupt.
“It’s clear,” he said, at last, sliding the device back into his pocket. “We can speak freely.”
“Who do you think is listening to us?” said Karen, clearly not buying the performance.
“Extraterrestrials,” he said, with no hint of humor on his face.
Karen slid off the desk. “Are you kidding me?! It never ends with you.”
Collins stood like a grim statue.
“How about we talk about what is really going on here? How about we talk about what kind of drug can make a human gain the strength of ten men.”
“How about you relax and let me explain,” he said. His voice was commanding and even-tempered.
Her eyes stayed locked on his, and a silence descended upon the room. Collins stood, stone faced, waiting. Finally, Karen backed down. “I swear,” she said, “if you throw that extraterrestrial line at me one more time...” Her stiff finger floated in front of his face.
He pulled a black device from his pocket. It had an illuminated screen with an image of a man’s face. “Do you see this man?” he said, showing it to Karen.
She peered at it. “Oliver Cloverfield,” she read from one of the lines of text below the image.
“Oliver Cloverfield,” said Collins, “born 1953 to Charles and Thelma Cloverfield. He lived a normal, low-profile life until one day he was found dragging the body of his dead mother through the woods in back of his house. He told authorities he had blacked out, and when he woke he was standing over his mother’s dead body.” He flipped to another photo. “This is Elizabeth Carter. She was a school teacher until she showed up at the police station covered in the blood of her neighbor. She claimed that she had no memory of what had happened.” He flipped again. “This is Gordon Singleton. He was a scout leader until he pushed a U.S. Senator off a mountain ledge.” He dropped his hand and locked his eyes on Karen’s. “He said he lost five minutes of time. He didn’t remember even meeting the Senator.”
“All of them blacked out?” she said, dumbfounded.
“I have fifty-seven cases, if you would like to see them.”
Karen’s aggressive stance melted.
“Those are just the cases where murder was involved. We’ve tracked over four hundred cases of amnesia-related crimes worldwide, but nothing we’ve seen compares to what’s going on here in Massachusetts. And that’s saying something, since the most violent and news-worthy cases seem to be coming out of Colorado.”
Collins read the questioning look on Karen’s face. “Do you remember the man who opened fire in the shopping center, killing eight?” He lifted the device and showed his picture. “He has two things in common with Ross Blake. He doesn’t remember the event, and he has no remorse for committing murder.”
“Ross Blake has plenty of remorse,” she said.
“Don’t confuse regret with remorse. That man doesn’t care that his girlfriend is dead. He’s not sorry he killed her, he’s just sorry he had no control over how it happened.”
“I don’t believe Ross Blake would kill anyone,” she said.
“Only for fear of the repercussions, but if something were to numb that fear and remove his inhibitions, I assure you, he is a cold-blooded killer.”
As Karen struggled to unravel what Collins was implying, David took the opportunity to interject. “Are you saying there’s a drug that suppresses a person’s natural inhibitions to do the evil they are capable of?”
“I wish it were that simple, David. If all we had to go on were the incidents we’ve all seen in the media, I would say yes, but there’s more to this than I’m al
lowed to say.”
Karen’s chin lifted. “Then why tell us anything at all? Why the sudden partial honesty?”
“We need the help of David’s messages.”
Karen shifted to a more poised posture. “Then you’ll have to give a full disclosure. David won’t go into this thing blind. You need to be straight with us. How is all of this connected?”
A loud pounding startled them all. Collins peeked out the shade on the door, his hand slipped inside his jacket and pulled out the dart pistol. He held it down by his leg as he opened the door. Captain Jackson’s face appeared in the opening.
“What are you three doing in my janitor’s office?”
“Having a private conversation,” said Collins, evenly.
“Well do it somewhere else; this area is off limits.”
“We won’t be long,” said Collins.
“I’m not going to ask you again, Agent. You do not have jurisdiction here. If you don’t get yourself back up to the lobby, this is going to turn into something your superiors will find most uncomfortable.”
“I imagine it will,” said Collins, slipping his pistol under his suit coat into the back of his pants. “Well, we don’t want to have an incident, do we?”
David wasn’t sure if he was imagining it or not, but the captain’s voice seemed to take on a deeper, darker quality. “Not if one can be avoided,” he said, “But the days of avoiding conflict are almost at an end.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
David sat down on the marble stairs in front of the police station and watched as Collins spoke with a group of serious-looking men standing at the bottom of the stairs. Based on their suited attire, tight haircuts and all-business demeanor, his guess was that these men were from Collins’ agency. Over his shoulder he could see Karen, still pacing, and five officers standing in front of the police station with hands clasped on the buckles of their utility belts. Had something dangerous just been averted? The group in front of the stairs began to disperse, and Collins strolled up to where David was sitting.
Karen stopped pacing and faced off for another round. “What was that all about?” she said, locking her hands onto her waist.
David lifted a hand. “Karen, back off.” His voice sounded weak, even in his own ears.
“I need you two to come with me, please,” said Collins, discreetly, “where we can speak privately.” He didn’t wait for a response, but pivoted and started down the steps. Karen looked weary, but she followed, and David picked up the rear.
They followed Collins down to one of the black SUVs on the curb. He opened the door and motioned for them to climb in. Karen looked less than pleased with the idea of going anywhere with Collins or his men, but he was quick to address her unspoken concern. “If we intended to kidnap you, Mrs. Knight, I assure you, you wouldn’t see it coming.” His expression made his unwavering confidence apparent.
Karen acknowledged his dig, stooped down, and climbed in.
The back of the SUV felt more like a limousine with its plush seats facing toward each other. Collins sat in the rear. David and Karen sat with their backs to the driver in the three piece suit. The door made a hollow thump.
Before Collins could get a word out, Karen started right in. “Do you mind telling us why Captain Jackson went all Invasion of the Body Snatchers down there in the janitor’s office? That voice was not normal.”
“Karen, we’ve already been down this road. You don’t want to hear my answer.”
“Not if it has to do with little green men from space.”
“We don’t know what color they are,” he said, without the slightest hint of humor.
That set Karen off. “Seriously? Why are we bothering with you?” She clutched David’s wrist. “Come on, David. This was a bad idea. We’ll get more information out of Captain Jackson.”
He resisted her grip. “I’d like to hear what Agent Collins has to say.”
Collins and Karen locked eyes. Both were unflinching.
“I have an idea,” said David. “Why don’t we just agree to disagree.”
“How about this,” said Collins, “we stick to the facts and let the truth reveal itself.”
Karen gave a suspicious glower. “What facts? All you’ve given us so far is misdirection.”
He looked at David. “As Karen has demonstrated so candidly, the general public is not ready to hear our position on these strange occurrences, so, at the very least, we would like to keep imaginations from running wild. That is why my superiors believe it is in our best interest to have someone in the media see what we are doing from behind the scenes in order to play damage control. But, clearly, this will have to be handled delicately.”
He could tell Karen wanted to say something, but instead chose to hear him out.
“How about I lay out the facts as we know them, and you make your own assumptions as to what you think they mean?
She folded her arms. “Fair enough.”
“All right, here’s what we have. Ross Blake killed his live-in girlfriend Sandra Pinkerton, whose sister happens to be award-winning chemist, Kathleen Peltz. He says he doesn’t remember doing this. We also have an amnesia-related incident at the lab of Dr. Peltz, as well as three more blackout victims related to the Blake case. One was taken into custody this morning near the 7-Eleven just after he shot Ross’s long-time friend Peter Hargrove. His name is Adam Gordon. Gordon was seen at the bowling alley last night during the time Ross Blake and Peter Hargrove had the conversation that caused Blake to go home and execute his girlfriend. Gordon, like the others, claims he has no memory of shooting Peter Hargrove. Then we have Sergeant Gram going crazy in the locker room, and now Captain Jackson is showing signs of contamination.” Collins paused.
Karen couldn’t help herself. “Contaminated with what?”
Collins chose his words carefully. “We don’t know. It isn’t a drug; we’re sure of that much, because we’ve run toxicology tests on several victims and found no traces of any substance that would cause this. There have been many cases where illegal substances were found, but there is no correlation between victims. Our tests have also shown no evidence of a physical parasite.”
“So—something is controlling these people—but you don’t know what it is.”
Once again, Collins was careful to direct the conversation back to the empirical. “What we’ve learned has been from the mouths of the victims themselves and cannot be trusted.”
“How many cases are there, total?”
“Dozens, over the course of the last forty years.”
“Forty years?” said David.
Karen’s lip curled. “This has been going on for forty years?”
“I don’t know why you’re surprised. These stories are all over the news, look them up yourself. We aren’t hiding anything. They’re in the newspapers, the tabloids, on the Internet.”
“I’ve never heard of anyone talking about an epidemic of crime where all the criminals claim to have amnesia.”
“That’s not because of us. These are closed-off individuals who don’t understand what is happening to them. Most of them aren’t willing, or maybe aren’t able, to explain their actions, and the ones who are usually won’t admit they can’t remember. The few that do speak up get ridiculed by the press and the public. The last thing anyone wants to hear is that a murderer claims they can’t remember. They want justice to be served. They want people to be held accountable for their actions.”
“So what you’re saying is that this is happening right under our noses?”
David shifted in his seat. “Hold on a second. If something is controlling these people, how does a prominent police captain like Jackson walk around like a puppet without anyone noticing?”
“It is apparent that he is only being controlled for short moments of time. Most of the victims we’ve tracked experience short disorienting events where they get turned around or lose only a couple of minutes. I doubt the captain has lost enough time to even realize that anything
is happening. And if the controlling force is discreet, no one around him will be the wiser.”
A dark thought began to creep in from the cracks in the vehicle and soak into David’s veins. Could they control him? Could they make him do something horrible without his consent? His pulse started a soft pound in his neck and his fingers began to tingle with fear.
No. Collins said that none of these people ever did anything they weren’t predisposed to do. Whatever this was, it couldn’t control him unless he let it. Right? The thought comforted him, but the question still found its way to his lips. “They can’t control us, can they?”
“That’s an unsettling thought, isn’t it? But no. As I said before, these perpetrators aren’t doing anything they weren’t already considering. So if you’re not thinking about blowing up The Federal Building, they can’t make you.”
“But do they influence us?”
“We don’t know what they are capable of.”
Karen shook her head. “When you say ‘they,’ you believe it’s extraterrestrials.”
There was no noticeable ruffle in the agent’s feathers. “We agreed to stick to the facts, and the fact is, we have an enemy, and that enemy is controlling these people.”
“Why?” said David. “Do you know what they’re planning?”
“Not yet, but we believe Jon Blake is important to them. He is being herded toward something, but we don’t have a target yet.” His strong eyes connected with David’s. “We were hoping you would help us find that target.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Jon Blake sat in the midst of a sea of desks, waiting for the officer who’d been taking care of his out-processing to return from whatever errand he had been given on the phone. The room was busy with activity, but mostly on the far end toward the front of the station. No one was paying any attention to him.
Now what? he thought.
“Wait,” they said.
A tall, black police officer walked by. He gave Jon a friendly smile, but Jon did not reciprocate.
Are they going to hurt Canary? he thought.
“Wait,” they whispered.
VOICES: Book 2 in the David Chance series (Suspense, Mystery, Thriller) Page 17