Former resident and regional sales director Kevin died on February . . He was forty-three years old and had moved from in 2000.
Born November 17, 1963, he was a longtime employee of . As a young person, he was elected president of his high school debate team. He was an Eagle Scout. He loved to play golf and fish. He graduated cum laude from University and married his college sweetheart in 1991.
He will be remembered as a loving husband, son, and friend with a wide smile and jovial sense of humor. He showed compassion to everyone.
He leaves behind his wife his father, and his mother Martha as well as other loved ones and friends.
Mr. was reposed at the Funeral Home on . A Religious Service was held at the Funeral Home followed by cremation.
Donations in Mr. name can be sent to the Suicide Prevention Center, or the Special Olympics, 1225 G Street, NW, Suite 500, Washington, D.C. 20005-3140.
Scott leaned back against the kitchen counter and stared at the opposite wall, letting the words in the letter soak in. He had a twin brother.
Grace pushed the back door open and charged into the kitchen carrying two handfuls of plastic bags. She hefted them onto the kitchen counter.
“Hi, hon,” she said, pecking him on the cheek. “Are you okay? You look pale.”
“Aren’t you going to ask if I’ve seen a ghost?”
“I was getting to that.”
“I did.” Scott handed her the photographs.
“When were these taken, dear? Where were you?”
Scott locked Grace’s eyes with his own. “They aren’t pictures of me. They are of my twin brother.”
Bewilderment, followed by shock and then surprise covered her face. “Is that true?”
Scott handed her the letter. She read it while backing up to the kitchen table. Without looking, she dragged out the chair and sat down. She read the obituary. Then she picked up the pictures again. “These are incredible,” she said. “He looks so much like you.”
“That’s what they say about twins.”
Scott pulled a bottle of water out of the refrigerator and took the chair opposite Grace.
She looked up from the photos. “So the visions you saw were of Blackwell killing your brother, not you. Right?”
“It seems that way. But first, I want to do some online research to see if I can figure out if this is real or not,” Scott said. “It could be a hoax, maybe from one of our test subjects.”
“But the pictures…”
“They could have been altered,” he said.
“And if it turns out to be true?”
“I don’t know.”
“She painted a very ugly picture of Dr. Blackwell,” Grace said.
“He was a very ugly man.”
***
Newspaper obituaries are deceptive. Sure, they reveal information about the deceased but that information is selective. Family members, friends, and clergy may suggest or even insist on those items that ultimately end up in the obituary. If a person died of certain illnesses, that may be left out. If their success was in an area that others might find offensive, that information might be excluded. Some information might be embellished. Scott had to carefully inspect the obituary to gather the correct information.
Research was easier than Scott thought it would be. He pulled key phrases out of the obituary, like, “Forty-three years old” and “Special Olympics, 1225 G Street,” surrounded them with quotation marks and performed an internet search. A link to the original, un-redacted obituary appeared.
He discovered Kevin’s last name was Martin. He had lived in Pennsylvania. A photograph on the original obituary looked identical to Scott, confirming he was a twin.
Two groups had been identified as recipients of gifts in Kevin’s name. He contacted both, but neither would give out information. He contacted his wife, saying he knew Kevin in college, but she sensed something was wrong, said she had never heard of Scott Moore, and threatened to call the police. He assumed she thought he was some slimy ambulance chaser.
Ultimately, he came away with three confirmations: Scott had a twin brother, he was no longer living, and Dr. Blackwell killed him.
Scott felt somewhat relieved to know for sure Paul Blackwell was an evil man. It lessened the guilt Scott felt about not preventing his death.
This chapter of Scott’s life seemed over but he would enter the next with new knowledge of his unique ability.
He wondered how his life might be different.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Scott returned to a half-assed effort of job hunting. The bottle of Alprazolam sat on the top shelf of his medicine cabinet.
One morning he received a call from his old college friend, Jeff Gray.
“Long time,” Scott said. “What’s up?”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I thought I might ask for some of your Human Resources advice,” Jeff said.
“Sure,” Scott answered. “But can’t you go to your own HR department?”
“Those idiots don’t know anything about HR. Besides, I’d rather talk with you. I’ll buy lunch.”
Jeff seldom offered to buy anything and Scott felt this unique opportunity could not be missed. He agreed and met Jeff at a nice restaurant near Jeff’s office. While dining on over-priced salads among other office workers, Jeff explained his situation. “It’s this new kid, Chris,” he began. “He’s okay—very bright—but I get a bad feeling that he’s not legit.” Scott couldn’t help but notice Jeff ate like a recently-freed starving man, shoveling lettuce, olives, croutons, and whatever else lined the salad bar into his mouth.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I just believe he’s an illegal alien.”
“Didn’t HR do a background check? Didn’t he file the proper forms.”
“Forms can be faked,” Jeff said. “A talented kid could create a forgery with the software on a laptop.”
“So what makes you think that he’s an undocumented worker?”
“First, none of his family speaks English. You’d think they would have learned the language if they were here permanently.”
“That’s not necessarily true these days,” Scott reacted.
“It’s just a feeling I get. He never talks about long-term plans. He hangs that damn Mexican flag from the mirror of his car.” Jeff threw his hands up in the air. “I just don’t trust him.”
“How’s his work?” Scott asked.
“I can’t argue with that. He’s got some ideas about solar energy that have surprised some of our best engineers.”
“If he’s doing great work and his paperwork checks out, what do you care?”
“Solterra could get into serious trouble, right? They could be fined by the government. We might lose some grants.”
“But you have nothing to go on—no reason to doubt his status.”
“It’s just a feeling—my gut.” After a long pause, he added, “I don’t trust him. I…uh, I think he’s hitting on my wife.”
“Has he done anything to make you believe that? Any evidence?”
“She talks a lot about him. And, whenever she’s with us, he can’t seem to take his eyes off her.”
It was Scott’s turn to pause. “Personally, I think you should trust Amy. She loves you.” He stabbed a tomato. “But, if you really have doubts, go to your HR group and ask them to investigate him more completely. Talk with the advisor from Tech. Certainly both groups have vetted him thoroughly.”
“Like I said, our HR is a bunch of bozos and I thought the people at Tech were losers back when you and I went to school there,” Jeff said. “Do me a favor, first. Talk with the kid. Feel him out. Maybe he’ll spill the beans to you.”
Jeff seemed desperate. Scott wasn’t sure why he agreed to do it, but he did. “All right. I’ll talk to him. But paybacks are hell,” he said. “Keep your eyes peeled in your HR department and let me know if anything opens up over there, okay?”
“You come to work in our HR department? You�
�re so far above them, I don’t think they’d consider you.”
“Just let me know if anything opens up, okay?”
The two men agreed and Scott lined up a dinner with Chris Azorin at their house. He’d ask a few questions and see how Chris answered them. And maybe he’d pop a pill of Alprazolam and do a reading after Chris had gone home. He’d get to the bottom of this one way or the other.
***
Grace could barely contain her excitement when she heard Scott had invited Chris for dinner. “Fun! He seemed like a nice young man.”
“Yeah. I thought we’d just check in and see how things were going.”
“It’s too cold to grill out,” she said. “I’ll cook a roast.”
Scott was surprised. Now that he was no longer on a payroll, luxuries like roast dinners were rare. But he knew he couldn’t change her mind. The plans were set.
***
Chris arrived a few minutes late, with flowers in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. A cream-colored shirt embroidered with two columns of blue flowers hugged his muscled chest. He looked like he had bulked up. His black goatee had morphed into a tightly-trimmed beard. Grace met him at the door and he gave her a warm peck on the cheek.
Scott, who had just taken one of the Alprazolam pills, stepped forward. “Welcome,” he said, extending his hand.
Chris shook it warmly and said, “Thank you for inviting me to dinner and thank you again for helping me get this job.”
“That’s what we do,” Scott said. “Dinner, that is. You got the job on your own merits.”
Grace’s roast beef was tender and succulent. Chris raved about it throughout the meal. “You should taste my mother’s arroz con pollo. It’s not as good as this, but I’m sure you’d like it.”
Pouring a third glass of wine, Scott asked how things were going at Solterra.
Chris swirled the wine around in his glass and said, “Amazing. We are tapping into some solar concepts that aren’t even in the journals at school yet. I will surely include them in my doctoral thesis.”
“Really?” Grace asked.
“Yes, ma’am. We’ve found a way to increase energy output, to amplify it, if you will, exponentially. This will drive down the cost of solar energy. It will reduce the need for fossil fuels and for our presence in the Middle East. No one in our industry can touch us.”
“Sounds like Solterra is going to grow fairly rapidly,” Scott said.
“If that happens,” Chris said, “I will tell them they need to bring you onboard to manage all of the new employees.”
He sensed a tinge of insincerity in Chris’ words. “That would be nice.”
“It would brighten up our company to have you and your beautiful wife attend our corporate parties,” he said, winking at Grace.
Scott deemed the flirting harmless. It really didn’t hurt for Grace to hear she was beautiful from someone other than Scott. Still, his charm set him off a bit. “Do you smoke cigars?” he asked Chris.
“Rarely.”
“Well, this is a rare occasion. Let’s step out onto the back porch and light up a stinker.” Then in a lower voice, “Grace won’t let me smoke inside.”
Gumby followed the two men onto the back porch where they settled into comfortable chairs. Scott offered one to Chris and the two men lit up, inhaling the strong aroma. As soon as they exhaled, the poor dog’s nose began running like a faucet and he started sneezing as if he’d snorted pepper. Scott tugged him back inside and closed the sliding glass door so he wouldn’t bother them. “Better for him and for us,” he said, returning to his chair. The dog pressed his wet nose against the flat glass, fogging it.
“Where do you see yourself in ten years, Chris?”
“Oh, I’d like to still be working at Solterra, maybe in an upper management position.”
“That could happen. You don’t want to go back to Mexico?”
“Oh, I’m not from Mexico,” Chris said. “My parents came to the U.S. before I was born.”
“That’s right,” Scott said, shaking his head. “I thought you’d come here for Tech.”
“Oh, I like Mexico,” Chris continued. “We still have relatives across the border and I go back to visit them every couple of years, but America is my home. I’m an American and I’ll never move away.”
“Never say never,” Scott said. “Who knows. Solterra may ask you to head up their new solar farm there.”
Chris chuckled, scrutinizing the smoldering tip of his cigar. “It could happen.”
***
Chris left for home about 9:00 P.M. and Grace finished loading the dishwasher. Scott went into the living room to read Chris. He leaned back in the chair and relaxed until he could see Chris’ images. The more he read people, the easier he found it to do. He could maneuver in and out of scenes, at will. He chose a scene to view.
He instantly recognized it. He had viewed it before. The day he had met Chris and had passed out at the gym, the images had come to him piecemeal, fuzzy, and confusing. Now, everything was crisp and clear.
Again, he heard the honking of a car horn outside. Back in the dirty little house watching a young man and a woman pack to the light of a streetlamp through a bedroom window, he heard the woman—his mother?—say something about his shoes. “Rápidamente. Poner los zapatos.” Then he bounced along a dirt road in the back of a pickup truck while his parents talked excitedly about going to America.
As in the first time, his butt hurt from bouncing on the floor of the old pickup truck.
That all seemed pretty conclusive. It looked to Scott like Chris had not grown up in San Antonio as he had said, but slipped across the border as a young child.
Scott had found what he wanted, but some voyeuristic instinct inside urged him on. He slipped into one of the other images.
Squeals of pleasure filled his ears. Hers were punctuated with diamond earrings. She urged him on and everything he did only served to raise her desire. She lowered her head almost to his chest, letting her long, blonde hair fall over his face. He had to turn his head to the side to spit the stringy mass from his mouth. She jerked her head back up, flinging the hair back over her shoulders and groaned with ecstasy. Then, she reached back and slapped him across the cheek. “More. I want more!”
He obliged.
Scott moved out of that scene and by-passed the scene of the woman breast-feeding a baby in the hospital and slipped into a new, unfamiliar one.
Voices were whispering about love and heat and passion. “I’ve wanted you since I saw you at the picnic at your house,” Scott heard Chris say. “I can’t keep myself from you.” He saw Amy, Jeff’s wife, lying on a large bed, sweat glistening between her naked breasts. Her lips were quivering and her eyes were locked onto Chris’ eyes. “Yes,” she moaned. “Oh, my God.” She pulled him into her.
Scott felt like he was peeping in on forbidden territory, so he moved from that scene and into another.
Hundreds of people applauded Chris. He stood on a stage flanked by huge logos for the Nobel Prize. Someone spoke from a podium, describing the radical new process Dr. Chris Azorin had championed. The process enabled solar cells to generate far greater energy than ever before, paving the way for people around the world to use clean energy. The spokesman described how Chris and the engineering staff of Solterra had begun an energy revolution that would change the world. Applause again rang through the excited crowd.
Impressed, Scott slipped into another scene. He felt compelled, as if driving by a traffic accident and not being able to remove his eyes from the wreck. He had to see…
He heard a familiar voice speaking softly. He also heard Chris’ voice, telling the woman how attractive he found her. “I knew you were exquisite the first moment I saw you, at the picnic.”
Scott thought he had re-entered the episode with Amy by mistake.
The woman said something about how she shouldn’t be there and he realized it wasn’t Amy’s voice, but it was familiar. “Please stay,” Chris said.
“But Scott needs me,” he heard Grace say. “He lost his job a year ago. He needs me.” Chris hugged her tightly, kissed her neck, and rubbed against her. He pressed her back against the wall and held her face in his hands. “Scott ignored you, searching for some dream that didn’t exist. I would never do that to you. You deserve so much more—so very much more.” He kissed her on the lips, tasting her. “I would worship you, Grace.”
Scott burst from the reading and lay exhausted in his chair. There may have been other scenes he had not read, but he could not go back. His hair dripped sweat. His fingers trembled and his heart pounded.
Grace was somewhere else in the house. He could hear her moving things about.
Gumby pranced into the room to where Scott sat and licked his hand, tugging him back to reality. He flipped his hand over and gently stroked the dog’s head and Gumby responded by leaning into Scott’s hand.
“Gumby” Scott said. “Let’s go for a walk.”
***
Frustrated, shaking, scared, he took the dog for a marathon walk. Scott had to clear his head. Gumby was crazy-happy, with night smells and sounds to keep him busy. Scott, on the other hand, was disturbed beyond control. With no one else to talk to, he attempted to carry on a conversation with the happy-go-lucky hound on the end of his leash.
“So, Gumby. What do we know? We know Chris is a brilliant kid. He has potential. He can change our world for the better.”
The dog huffed and puffed down the sidewalk, dragging Scott with him.
“I’m glad we agree on that. Also, we know that Chris can’t keep his dick in his pants. The whole fucking world would be a better place if he’d just find a live-in girlfriend or two to keep him occupied and away from other men’s wives.”
Gumby stopped and plunged his nose into a bush.
2nd Sight: Capturing Insight Page 11