My God, this is for real.
If this wasn’t a delusion, then these men, men he knew well and liked, were both dead. Their murders should be on the news. Charlie’s name would be at the top of the list of suspects. The owner of the Seacoast Motel would know just where to find him. Room 224.
Chapter 49
Charlie’s remaining time depended largely on the Seacoast Motel owner’s interest in the morning news. If the murders were the lead story, as he suspected they would be, it was only a matter of time before the owner called the police.
Charlie turned on Channel 5 and stood in front of the television. It was the start of the 6:30 morning edition, and the graphic accompanying the story said it all: BREAKING NEWS—MURDER IN CONCORD. Charlie turned up the volume, keenly interested in the details reported by the anchor.
“Breaking news out of Concord this morning. Police are investigating the brutal murder of SoluCent CEO Leon Yardley. He was discovered early this morning by his wife, at around 5:00 a.m. It’s unclear at this time if she was held captive during the assault, although we have heard some reports suggesting she might have been drugged. Details are still coming in, and we will provide updates on this tragic story as they become available. Meanwhile, police are asking for your help. They are interested in locating Charlie Giles, a former employee of SoluCent, wanted for questioning in connection to the murder. Police are describing Mr. Giles only as a person of interest at this time.”
Charlie’s picture replaced the “breaking news” graphic. He assumed the news desk had pulled that photo off Google; he recognized the picture as one taken by a PR firm nearly two years ago, after the acquisition. The man in the photograph was a phantom from Charlie’s past. He was strong, full of fight, and looked like a winner.
“Channel Five’s investigative team has uncovered some interesting, but still unsubstantiated reports that Mr. Giles was involuntarily committed to Walderman Mental Health Hospital in Belmont and that he recently escaped from a secure floor, pending a judge’s ruling on the status of his commitment. We want to emphasize that Mr. Giles has not to our knowledge been charged with any crimes. However, if you do know his whereabouts, you are asked to contact the Concord police immediately. He may be armed and dangerous, so police are also urging caution should you happen to come into contact with him.”
The next stories recapped much of the news he had watched the previous night. There was no mention of Simon Mackenzie, although Charlie had no doubt the man was dead. It was only a matter of time before his body was discovered. As he thought of Mac’s corpse waiting to be found, he thought, too, of Rudy Gomes.
Was his murder imagined? he wondered. If not, what happened to the body? And who was the man on the tape Randal played for me?
The more he thought, the less he understood. The truths that remained painfully obvious were the putrid smell of death in the room and the manila envelope still unopened and taped to the box top. Charlie extracted the envelope from the top, half-expecting to hear sirens blaring and the door exploding inward as police burst in. The envelope was sealed same as the envelope that contained the kill list he found under the sofa. Charlie carefully peeled away the tape, his meticulous nature unwavering even when tested beyond limits. He saw only one item in the envelope. He pulled it out and held a photograph in front of him.
The photograph, of Charlie with his brother and mother, was the same one he had framed and put in his mother’s hospital room. The same one he had scanned and hung on the refrigerator door. Charlie and Joe stood like bookends with their mother between them. A ballpoint pen had scratched out Charlie’s face and made large, irregular circles around his mother’s head. Through tearing eyes Charlie read the words scratched into the back of the photograph, written in his penmanship.
Surprise no more. Good-bye, Mother.
Chapter 50
Charlie threw the photograph and envelope to the floor, asking himself one unanswerable question.
Why her?
Clearly, a deeply disturbed and divided man lurked inside him. The names on the kill list were the names of those he blamed for his downfall. Could it be that his mother represented some deep-seated anger over his lost childhood? Was this twisted retribution perhaps for the attention she’d given to Joe and not to him?
Finding the truth would require a conversation with a part of his mind that was unavailable to him. Nothing about the Charlie present in the room wanted any harm to befall his mother, any more than he had wanted the murders of Yardley, Mackenzie, and Rudy Gomes. But the evidence against him was overwhelming.
To follow through with that gruesome promise seemed impossible, given the manhunt to find him. Yet that notion brought little comfort. His private Mr. Hyde seemed capable of following through with any plan, even under the most challenging circumstances. Charlie picked up the photograph. He tucked it in his pants pocket. His mother’s fate, so long as he lived and roamed free, was in a peril far greater than a coma.
Charlie heard the siren wail of a police cruiser’s or fire engine’s approach. He raced to the window, peeling back the curtain to see if the sirens were headed in his direction. One police car, then another, sped past the motel on Ocean Avenue. They were heading west toward the Wonderland train station. Then something else caught his eye. Parked out front of his motel room was a BMW. It was without doubt his car’s make and model.
Charlie hesitated before opening the motel room door. He half-expected a hail of bullets to greet him. When he realized that might just be the greatest gift of all, he threw open the door and stepped outside into the cool fall morning air. Frost from the night before encased the BMW’s windows. As a gesture of brotherly affection, Joe had repaired the broken window after retrieving the car from the tow yard. Without opening the BMW and looking inside, it would be impossible to conclude if the car was his own.
He looked around and noticed nothing unusual or alarming. The parking lot was mostly empty, as it had been the night before. No other motel guests milled about. Ocean Avenue was just beginning to fill with morning commuters.
Charlie wondered what day it was, and sighed. The day of the week, like his life, felt irrelevant.
He approached the driver’s side door and peered into the window. The car was equipped with the latest model InVision system. Charlie tried the door and found it unlocked. The interior was devoid of any papers, coffee cups, pens, or loose change. It was exactly how he kept his car. He didn’t bother to check the glove compartment. He already knew. This was his car. The key was still in the ignition.
Sitting in the driver’s seat, Charlie envisioned a scenario that held the horrifying possibility of being both plausible and true. In some sort of psychotic split, he speculated, he might have taken a cab or train back to his childhood home in Waltham. There he could have slipped inside the house, using a key hidden under a rock in the backyard. Once inside, he could have taken his car key hanging on a hook by the front door and driven to Concord or to Lincoln, where he knew Mackenzie lived. Then he would have driven back to the Seacoast Motel, parked the car in front of his room, and fallen asleep on the bed. At some point, he took the photograph from the frame in the living room, inscribed the death threat to his own mother on the back, and taped it on top of the box filled with body parts, which he slid under the bed. Lastly, a note taped to the TV would remind him to look in the morning.
Though he had no conscious memory of having done any of that, the timing would have worked. All the notes, from the very first Post-it note he found on the inside flap of his BlackBerry case, were perhaps his own personal silent alarm—a plea to stop before it was too late.
Unlike all the mysteries haunting him, the route driven by his car was verifiable. InVision would have a record of his travels. It was a product feature he himself had championed and consumers seemed to like. In a number of instances, clients had used the trip-log feature to verify infidelity and other unscrupulous behaviors. At no point when he planned the work for the current model did h
e ever imagine it would do the same for him.
With a turn of the key, the car came to life.
“Hello, Charlie. I hope you’re having a great day,” InVision announced in its programmatically cheery default greeting.
With a couple of keystrokes, Charlie retrieved the trip log. It showed, as he had already suspected, a thirteen-mile drive from Waltham to Concord. The next trip was an eight-mile drive to Lincoln, Massachusetts, that ended near Flint’s Pond. The trip to Concord occurred at 2:20 a.m. this morning. The trip to Lincoln started at 4:00 a.m., with the last trip logged from Lincoln to Revere. Most of that drive took place along Route 2, and it was finished just after 5:30 in the morning. Simon, Charlie knew, ran at an obscenely early hour every morning. It was part of his type A, take-no-prisoners personality.
Mackenzie’s body, Charlie believed—without any conscious recollection—would be discovered in the woods surrounding Flint’s Pond. His wife had probably already reported him missing. The time line, according to InVision, had given Charlie plenty of opportunity to write the notes and put the box under the bed.
Charlie scanned the interior of the car for any evidence of blood. Nothing was noticeable. He popped the trunk with a pull of a lever under the dashboard casing and exited the car. He didn’t need to open the trunk to detect a smell coming from inside that was not unlike the smell from underneath the motel room bed. Once the trunk was opened, he peered inside it and staggered back a few steps at the sight of the bloodied hacksaw inside. There was blood all over the trunk’s carpeting, too, but at least no other body parts were visible.
The only other item in the trunk brought him a feeling of relief. There was a way out of the nightmare, and he now knew it. His mother’s life would be spared. Joe’s life, too, in a way, for her death would shorten his brother’s life substantially. He couldn’t face a lifetime in prison. He was certain of that. Especially having to live each day without any memory of the crimes for which he’d be convicted. There was, however, a simple way out. And he was looking right at it. Charlie reached down and pulled out his father’s .38 Special. He must have taken it from the house when he went there to get the keys to his BMW. The chamber was loaded.
There wasn’t any note to guide him on what to do next. Eddie Prescott didn’t speak to him. But now none of that was necessary. Only one course of action made any sense.
With the gun in hand, Charlie climbed back into the front seat of his BMW. He felt comforted by the gun’s steely weight and coolness. It was the first time since he was a kid that he had touched the gun, at least the first time he remembered. His mother had kept it in a shoe box in the attic. It was a memento from her former life, but she wasn’t one to let go of much. The house, with its old furniture and appliances, was testament to that.
Charlie hoisted the gun to his head. His finger trembled on the trigger.
How much pain will I feel? he wondered. How much pain have I caused?
With the gun pressed against his temple, Charlie closed his eyes and prayed that the end wouldn’t hurt as much as he imagined.
Chapter 51
Bill Evans, the great jazz pianist, once recorded a cover of the Johnny Mandel and Mike Altman classic, “Suicide Is Painless.” The song became famous as the theme for both the movie and TV series M*A*S*H. Toward the end Charlie’s father seemed to favor the eerie Evans rendition, perhaps expressing his darkest thoughts without words. It seemed fitting for Charlie to remember that song at this moment. He had even learned to play the tune note perfect on guitar, but his father had been unimpressed. He had never been one to gush, but toward the end he’d been void of all emotion. Perhaps his father had followed through with his secret wish. Perhaps they would meet soon.
That his life would come to an end in the parking lot of a decrepit motel in Revere was as stunning and disappointing to him as the horrific crimes he had committed without memory. In newspaper articles about his life reporters would portray the events as they saw fit. It would be a sad and tragic tale that would feed an insatiable public’s hungry appetite for sensational stories. It would catch fire the way a match could vaporize a tank of gasoline. His legacy, all that he’d worked so hard to achieve, would not only be wasted, but he would forever be associated with some of history’s most notorious psychopaths. For a man who had risen to the top, not because he’d let other people dictate outcomes for him, but because he’d controlled everything around him, this end was hardly a fitting one. The thought of the press having a field day at his expense, tearing apart his life and what little legacy he had, was nearly as revolting as the act of suicide itself.
Charlie set the gun down on the seat beside him. He was going to die. Given the risk to his mother’s safety and his own unwillingness to live his days behind bars, no other alternative was acceptable.
But his unyielding need for control would not allow him to disappear from earth without at least some say in how he would be portrayed in the press. Charlie reached into the glove compartment to retrieve the pen and paper he kept inside for recording his BMW’s maintenance history. Extracting the notebook from the glove compartment, Charlie set it down next to the gun and opened the notebook flap.
He would write a short explanation of events. It wouldn’t be a confession, as he had no memory to confess. It would be, as best as he could offer, an explanation and an apology. Rather than admit or deny guilt, an expression of remorse would at least leave the impression of a sorrowful man and not just a wretched, unspeakable evil.
Charlie noticed the yellow Post-it note stuck to the inside flap of the notebook. It caught his attention. It was the first note that he had written to himself. The one he’d found attached to the inside flap of his BlackBerry. The words were as cryptic and prophetic now as they had been then.
If not yourself, then who can you believe?
The words blurred as tears welled in his eyes. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the folded picture of his family. He unfolded it and looked down at his mother’s head circled in pen. He and Joe stood on either side of her like dutiful guardian sons. A wave of hopelessness swept through him. The idea of leaving an explanatory note behind now seemed ridiculous.
What difference does it make how the public sees me? he thought. I am a monster. What good could come from leaving a note behind?
Charlie set the photograph down on his left leg, turning it over so that the photographic visages of his mother and Joe wouldn’t bear witness to his death. The Post-it note he tacked to his right leg. The messages written rested on his legs like signposts of his confusion. He hoisted the gun again to his head. This time he pressed the barrel of the gun harder to his temple until he felt the steel end boring painfully into the bone of his skull. His head dropped and his eyes closed. His finger began to tense, and he drew the trigger toward the pistol grip.
“I won’t die with my eyes closed,” Charlie said aloud.
He was looking down at his lap when he opened his eyes. He saw the two notes, the one written on the back of the photograph, the other penned on the yellow Post-it note. The words on the back of the photograph seemed fitting last words to see before he died.
Surprise no more. Good-bye, Mother.
He read the yellow Post-it note again, as well, believing for a moment that he could remember having written those words down.
If not yourself, then who can you believe?
He stared at the two notes side by side, one on each leg. Then he held his breath.
Something about them is wrong, he thought.
He set the gun down again and picked up the notes to examine them more closely. As he did, a stunning similarity became evident. As individual writing samples, they were both unmistakably his penmanship. But they also had something else much more significant in common. On each of the notes, the letter u had a slight bulge at the letter’s counter, the unenclosed part of the u. It looked to Charlie as if the pen had made two or three passes at that part of the letter, leaving behind thicker and darker lines,
which weren’t present on any other letters. More disturbing was the exact similarity of the markings on the letter u in the two different notes. It wasn’t just a close similarity; the bulge and thickness of the line beneath the counter of the u in each note were identical. That sort of precision similarity had only one possible explanation. Whatever it was that wrote these notes, it wasn’t human.
Leaving the gun on the seat, Charlie jumped out of the car and raced back into the motel room. He picked up the note that had been taped to the TV from the top of the bureau, where he had left it, and dashed back out of the room. Stepping back into the car, Charlie held up the three notes in his hands to compare them.
Surprise no more. Good-bye, Mother.
If not yourself, then who can you believe?
Look under the bed.
The markings beneath the counter of the u in each note had the exact same thickness and bulge. All three were identical typographical mistakes. And the only thing capable of making the same exact typographical mistake, without variation, countless numbers of times was a computer.
Still, he had to be sure. And for that, there was only one place he could check. Turning the car on again, the InVision system, as designed, hummed back to life.
“Hello, Charlie,” InVision cooed again. “I hope you’re having a great day.”
“Call,” Charlie said.
“Please confirm,” InVision said. “Did you say ‘Call’?”
“Yes.”
“Who would you like to call?” InVision asked.
“Dr. Rachel Evans,” Charlie said.
Chapter 52
Rachel Evans had had a hell of a day yesterday, and this one wasn’t shaping up to be much better. She had spent seven exhausting hours with the Walderman top brass, reviewing security procedures in the aftermath of Charlie’s escape.
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