Cont.
"What the fuck?!" I demanded, idiotically.
"Quiet," he said. His voice was breathy and soft, almost toneless.
"WHAT THE FUCK!"
He must have relished cocking the hammer, feeling the grated metal lock into place. My veins shook with pressurized blood.
"You know why I'm here." His breath streamed onto my neck. It smelled like Burger King.
I imagined the trajectory of the bullet. Its path from the snug launch chamber through a tight tube of air, forging an empty column in my medulla and banking into the crust of my frontal cranium. The brain has no nerve-endings ― would I even feel anything? How would I know that I was dead?
"Please, just do as I say and this will all be a memory."
Would it. Would not the memory be cut loose in the very near future by a pellet of hot steel? What use would he have for me once he'd retrieved the disc and disposed of my computer? I imagined the memories that would never form. I imagined the shattering crack of the combusting gunpowder I'd never hear.
We passed a truck. Before I could think of how to get the driver's attention, the opportunity had vanished in a froth of snowdust.
"What do you want." My voice cracked.
"That's better," he said, with no change in tone. "I want you to keep driving, like I said."
"Where are we going."
He was silent.
My mind became an unspooling reel of measurements. The distance to the nearest car. The distance to the curb. The time it would take between yanking the wheel hard left and the centripetal force that would knock my killer off balance.
I felt the flow of shifting proportions subcortically. I could feel them teetering beneath consciousness, summing faster than I could think of them. Perhaps this was how Autistic savants worked their magic. I felt the speed of the wind outside, the length of time before I had the police on the line. The force of gravity on my car. The curvature of the earth.
"Up ahead," he said. "The road just past the bridge."
The bridge ― this bridge, rapidly advancing ― I'd crossed it before, though I couldn't remember when. It stretched over a frozen river. Beyond it lay New Sunderland in rumpled silhouette. The bridge intoned like a buzzing Junebug in alternating thirds as we raced over its various textures. Iron, salt, ice.
"Slow down," he said. How long had it been since I was spoken to in imperatives? I was a helpless child awaiting punishment. "You're going to make your first left once we've crossed."
Just then I remembered ― I knew the road he was referring to, it led to a dump for biohazardous waste, I use to have to make deposits there. I said nothing. I felt the deadly knowledge cross the synapse between us, invisible channels, infrared waves. He'd bring me to the dump, have me park, shoot me twice in the back of the head, dispose of my body, take the computer and drive away. We both knew it.
Blinking yellow lights gleamed through a plume of smoke on the other side. Construction.
Land loomed ahead, its shadowy hills menacing and woebegone. I felt I was crossing the river Styx. In moments it would be too late. He'd take me down the road, reduce my frontal lobes to a deflated mass of grey cartilage, dispose of my lifeless body and drive off in my car.
The crunching and gnawing of warlike instruments grew louder as we approached the construction site. Giant white arclights beamed through the dustfog. Vague descending sparkles ― was it snowing? A semi-circle of orange cones dipped into the lane. I slowed. Brightly lit faces gleaming. Sparks skittered across the pavement from an unseen machine.
This was my last chance. My gaze panned by the workers, who looked as if they moved in slow motion. The noise was deafening. A sequence of resounding metallic thuds. Of all the options ― stop and cry for help, swerve into their cement truck ― none of them seemed within my power to execute.
Shadows flickered in vivid streaks. Sandy tar-soot and cinder-ash swept aloft. It was now or never, and I chose never. Even if I made it through this alive, could I ever forgive my cowardice? The construction crew receded into my rearview, into the past.
And that was when I heard the faintest exhalation from the backseat. Relief? Had Pascal been nervous?! This thought warmed something in me ― he was human. His thug persona, could it be an act?
At the end of the bridge there was a narrow bank between the guardrails and the suspension cables. Another subconscious assessment: the speed of my car and the force of its impact upon the rock-studded ramp of the shoulder. Would it be... do you think... ? Do it! said my limbic system to my motor cortex, over-ruling both the judicial and legislative branches. And my body responded faster than I could veto the signal. In a quarter-second the Subaru was spinning out along the frost-coated periphery. Its wheels squealed and slid, mashing through knotted brush and icy gravel.
Ow.
In another quarter-second the tempered windshield was obliterated; bits of glass slashed my face and wrists and thighs. The sonic bang came next ― more like a pop ― the gun, the hammer, the powder, the bullet, whatever breaks the sound barrier broke it, and my tympanic membrane shuddered. Then the roil and snarl of industrial materials under heavy friction; rubber, metal, fiberglass squawks.
There was a scream. Him? Me? Who first? Now that time has passed and I am looking back, I wonder if I'm altering the event by collating the actions into sequence. At the time, it was as if there was no time. I fell out of the loop, saw myself from afar, subject to object. For a strange feverish moment I was in Planck Time, a moment of irreducible compression where measure had no meaning. Seconds and minutes were smeared into a milky fog, like the sound of underwater chimes, the same backwards and forwards.
A beat. There was a settling, a sudden rich gravity.
When the car came to a fierce halt, we were engulfed in smoke and steam and the smell of burnt things. We were under a dull, bleachy fluorescent street lamp, a plasma. Plasma is the chemical state reached when molecules are so hot that the atomic nuclei lose hold of their electrons. Which was exactly how I felt ― formless, volatile.
I looked into the back. Pascal was gone. Just a shiny spattering of blood across the seat. The door was open. I felt around frantically for my satchel, my ears still knocked unconscious from the thunderous boom. Where was it? Lodged under the seat? Or had Pascal snatched it on his way out? My fingers groped along the floormat until they found a metal object ― the gun. I held it up, the handle still warm and sweaty from my killer's grip. Shockingly heavy, this little thing. It seemed to hum and vibrate. It was an organism. A virus.
My ringing ears blocked out all sound. If I hadn't seen his shadow stretch over my lap I'd be dead. The door swung open. Blood was drizzling down Pascal's chin ― he must have broken his nose on the back of the head rest. He muttered something foreign-sounding as he lunged toward me. Instinctively, and without even pointing, I squeezed the trigger. Another crack, the kickback shaking the gun loose from my hand. The sound waves cascaded and overlapped through the car's interior as Pascal recoiled with a yelp, staggering backwards into the dust. He wasn't hit ― the bullet had tanked into the glove compartment ― but the bang was enough to stave him off another moment. I grasped the gun and sprang up, feeling needles of glass bite into my legs. Pascal hobbled to his feet and wiped the blood from his lip.
"Why did you do that?" he said.
I almost laughed.
Snow fell slowly over the scene. It felt like a scene, like a performance in a children's theater. Goofy and magical. Sparse dobs of languid starflakes raining through the hot smoke.
He smiled.
I aimed the gun at his head.
"Who is Wilder Knotts?"
My feet were like anvils as I stepped forward. My legs tingled.
"You've done your homework."
"It's what I do."
The thing about holding a gun is that it fits very snugly into your hand. I don't know if it was that particular make or what ― a Lugar, I want to say? ― but it seemed to belong there. The weight of it. It seemed to want me to shoot it, to handle it.
"No one knows for sure. There are a thousand Knotts' in a thousand cities."
"What does that mean?"
"It means this thing is bigger than you or I. I'm given very little information."
I felt an aching for bloodsugar. A different kind of hunger coursing deep within, beneath veins, meridians.
"Let's start with the Knotts we do know. What exactly was his relationship to my father?"
"You think I would know this?"
"I know you do."
"You overestimate me. I'm just the messenger."
"Listen, you can either tell me what I want to know or you can explain to the cops why you killed Susan Luka. Got an alibi, do you?"
With my right hand, I removed my cell phone from my jacket pocket. Pascal looked hard at me. His eyes were black. Beautiful, in a way, like splotches of fresh ink. His cheeks were pale and closely shaven, in fact I could make out several tiny razor traces on his neck.
"Your father was an informant," he said gruffly, as though he was accusing me by association.
"What are you talking about?"
"That's what they thought, anyway. But an arrangement was made."
"I don't understand."
Curls of wind nicked my naked and bleeding wrists. I tightened my grip. To kill, I thought, is to absorb the life-force of the dead. The feeling is a kind of negative exaltation, almost divine; it's as if by weilding an instrument of death we gain some ethereal mastery of mortality itself, the power of commanding destiny and time. We are transfigured from character to author.
"I don't know much about it," said Pascal, "but while your father was stationed in Daru, his unit was ambushed and he and two others were taken prisoner. The Viet Cong interrogated him. No one knows what happened. Perhaps he was tortured, perhaps he talked, perhaps he kept his mouth shut, perhaps they played Charades and called it even ― we'll never know." The snow shifted angles with the icy wind. "What is known is that he was M.I.A. for two weeks, and when released he was suspected of having informed."
"Then what?" I said.
"Then he was given a choice. Either face the conviction, meaning indefinite imprisonment for treason, or agree to take part in a secret program."
"Secret program."
"I don't know the details. I truly don't."
I chose to believe him. My ears were beginning to regain a bit of sensitivity, though the air warbled and groaned. Thumping machines echoed across the frozen bay.
"Behavioral sciences?" I prodded.
"In a sense. But not the sort the CIA was investigating in the 50s. These experiments were far more invasive. They were neurological, not psychological."
"How was Knotts involved?"
"He was originally a codebreaker, like your father. But when the program was dismantled in the 80s, he went on with the research privately."
"But no one would finance his work."
"Not in this country, no."
Diamonds of snow flaked his graying hair, his narrow shoulders.
"So he looked for backing in Eastern Europe?"
"Among other places. Pharmaceutical companies abound in war-torn, second world countries."
"Because they have no infrastructure to regulate them."
"And what's left of it is corrupt. So there are enormous opportunities for independent contractors. Everyone wants to work. Ergo: SynTech."
"SynTech?"
"The front company Knotts engineered in Croatia."
I studied his suit. It was a double-breasted grey pinstripe with wide lapels, closely cut. A white linen collar protruded from his charcoal vest. His pants sat high on his hips, nearly to his navel, right out of a Preston Sturges film. A dapper guy, really. Lupine. Perhaps he had a wife somewhere.
"Tell me about the research," I said. "What are they trying to understand?"
"The same thing you are. The search for the secret algorithim underlying all of consciousness."
What for? What did this even mean? I felt a confusion entwined with fury. Speechless and burning. "And they use human subjects?"
He nodded. "They're called Sleepwalkers. These patients are exposed to the manufactured poison in one form or another ― liquid, dust, whatever."
"And what happens to the Sleepwalkers once they've completed the task they were controlled to perform?"
"The same thing they do to the rats and cows and monkeys and everything else that's experimented on ― they're usually sacrificed."
"And that's your job?"
He didn't answer. Icy water was soaking through the tips of my shoes, through my socks. Every negative sensation in my body was feeding my antipathy for this man.
"There's something else, though," he said. "It's not going to be easy for you."
I shot him a look that said try me.
"Something you don't know about your father."
"Tell me."
"Not yet. This information is valuable."
"Don't fuck with me, Pascal."
There was a weariness to him, a quiet yearning, a lethargy ― he was nearly spent, like an insomniac or a real estate agent. The things you see when you hold a man at gunpoint.
"I'm trying to barter," he said. "We each have something the other needs."
"You expect me to let you go?"
He tilted his head slightly, eyebrows raised.
"You must be joking. You're a menace, you're a killer."
"A killer with immunity."
Snow fell dreamily over our theater set. The air was dense, magnetic, charged. I heard a rustling from somewhere.
"I don't believe you."
"Walk away and I promise you'll never see me again."
"No information is worth the risk."
"Catherine," he said, his voice hovering above a whisper. "Your father was never sacrificed."
A horrible swelling in my throat. "...What?"
"His memory is nearly gone but he is kept alive. The years he'd spent working on the project exposed to him toxic levels of the dust, and he slowly wore away. They were worried that in his dementia he might reveal their secrets, so they took him to a remote location where they continue to study him."
A hot scratchy throb. "Fuck you."
"He's treated well."
I felt my palms moisten with rage.
"Stop."
"Give me your bag."
"Pascal--"
"Your computer, the disc, everything. Put down the gun and hand me your bag and I'll tell you how to find him."
"That you would even try that."
The heat was in my ears now, swelling.
"I want it all. A clean trade."
"You deserve to die."
I was gripping the pistol hard. I could feel the crosshatched plastic pad making its impression in my skin.
"Catherine, listen to me..."
"Shut up, just shut up."
A shadow spilled over us.
"You okay down there?" called a husky voice. This startled me; I turned to see the outlines of two construction workers as they emerged from the snowy fog at the bridge's incline.
"The fuck's goin' on?" the other huffed, wide-eyed as he took in the scene.
Instantly, I knew the distraction would cost me, that Pascal would seize hold of his momentary advantage. Call it precognitive knowledge. He slapped the gun from my hand. It flew into a brittle patch of frosted weeds. Before I could even follow its trajectory with my eyes, Pascal threw a heavy fist into my jaw. My neck whipped back from the force and my head smacked against the roof of the car.
I'm not sure what happened next. I heard a series of sounds, mostly voices, people yelling. A searing pain rang through me; my limbs turned to water. I remember being on the ground, my hands soaked in freezing prickly slush, and, as I struggled to get my bearings, a colorless light fell over my visual field. From the cold wet grass I saw Pascal fishing for the gun. In another moment a blur of yellow and red swooshed past me. I tried to yell but I heard nothing ― which organ was failing me?
Shuffling, yelling. Finally, another gunshot roared into the night. There was a blip of blackness followed by a vague and gruesome image which may have come seconds or minutes later. A worker, the taller of the two, swiped an implement from his tool belt, possibly a cat's paw, and swung it once over Pascal's frame; his lean body buckled and fell. I closed my eyes and heard an awful sound, a toneless thud like the cracking of a coconut.
Half-thoughts jostled through me.
i must get back
dad
are you alive
i must get back to the lab
collect my files
find out
who has been...