Kill Switch

by Gordon Bonnet

  My God. There’s a part of me that can’t really believe this.

  He thought for a while this time before writing back:

  I know. I hate to be the one who has to tell you all of this. You mentioned having wanted to get back in touch. I’ve thought the same thing about you, many times. It isn’t fair that this is the way it’s happened. It isn’t fair that all of our friends are gone. It’s horrible, and there’s no way around it.

  The FBI men keep pressuring me to tell them what it was we were up to, back in Field Biology. It really does seem to be the only connection between the seven of us, so they’re convinced that something happened during that class. I keep telling them that there was nothing to it but hiking in the Cascades while wearing packs that were way too heavy, and putting bands on birds’ legs. Can you think of anything that might be the explanation for this? Something the seven of us did, that the rest of the class didn’t do?

  She responded with one line.

  Could this have something to do with the cave Gavin found?

  Chris stared at the single line in complete incomprehension for some time, and then wrote back only two words:

  What cave?

  There was a thunk from the dining room, and Chris looked up to see Baxter making off into the kitchen with the remains of his steak. He stood up, but the epithets he considered shouting died on his lips as there was another ding from his computer, and Elisa’s response popped up.

  You don’t remember that? It was up at Lake Ingalls. Not surprisingly, you and Gavin were the most gung-ho about it. Both Lewis and Mary took some convincing, I remember.

  Chris wrote back immediately, ignoring the sounds of contented chewing coming from the kitchen.

  I have no memory of that at all.

  This time the response took a few minutes. Chris sat, staring at the computer, waiting, as if his rapt attention would somehow make her click Send faster. Finally there was another ding and her response appeared.

  It was the last time we went up to Ingalls, right before the snows started. We’d spent the morning working, and after lunch Dr. Garcia gave us the afternoon to relax. We sat around for a while, and then Gavin suggested going further up the trail, past the lake. There were some really pretty alpine meadows, and it didn’t look like it’d be too strenuous a hike. You wanted to go right away, I remember. You always hated hanging around doing nothing.

  I think it was just the seven of us. I’m pretty certain about that. We did tend to hang out together more than we did with the others in the class. I remember that Mary didn’t want to go, at first, but she was never very enthusiastic about anything, and someone—maybe Glen?—finally talked her into it. So we let Dr. Garcia know where we were going and took off.

  We’d been on the trail for maybe an hour, maybe a bit less, I can’t remember for sure. It wasn’t very long. There was a rocky hillside, and Gavin decided to climb it. He was showing off a little, I think, mostly for Deirdre. I always thought he had a crush on her. So he goes off up the hill, and in a moment, he says, “Hey, look! It’s a cave!”

  You climbed up. And I think Deirdre did, too. I remember you saying something like, “It’s a big lava tube.” Finally everyone had to come up and take a look. And it was this dark opening in the hillside, big enough to climb into. And then you and Gavin said you were going to go inside.

  Gavin went first, and then you went in, and we could hear your voices. I recall one of you saying that once you got a few yards in, it was tall enough to stand up and seemed to go a long way in.

  But then, Gavin’s head popped out of the entrance, and he said, “It’s big, but there’s no light. It’s too dangerous without flashlights, there could be a dropoff, and we wouldn’t see it until we fell in.” And a moment later, you came out.

  By this time, it was getting time to get back to camp and make dinner, so we just climbed down the hill, and struck off back down the trail.

  So it wasn’t anything too exciting, but it’s the only thing I can remember from the class that we seven did that didn’t involve everyone else.

  Chris read her email three times. He felt as if he was reading a description of something that someone else had done in a place he knew well. The setting was so familiar that he could picture every detail, but the events were entirely foreign.

  He wrote back:

  Why don’t I remember this?

  The response was almost instantaneous:

  I have no idea.

  Chris leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his face with one hand. Could this be another trap? Was this really Elisa Howard he was chatting with? Something about the way she wrote felt authentic, like the real Elisa he had known thirty years earlier. The quiet, friendly, determined young woman who had spoken so calmly about having promised her half-brothers to stay at school over Thanksgiving for her own safety. It was hard to be certain over the internet, but there was a tone in her writing that rang true. He scrolled back and read her email describing finding the cave for a fourth time, and then clicked Reply.

  This is really freaking me out. It’s like there’s a hole in my memory. I remember the trip you’re talking about—for one thing, it was really cold at night, and I recall being pretty uncomfortable trying to sleep. I can remember there being ice on the lake edge in the morning. That was the trip that Dr. Garcia said would be our last time there for the season, because there was no telling when snow would hit the passes.

  But that day hike? Nothing. I don’t remember anything about the hike past the lake that you describe, and nothing whatsoever about finding a cave. To me, that all feels like it never happened.

  And there’s one thing that strikes me, here, and I don’t know if it’s important, or if you’re remembering wrong. Certainly, after all this time, it would be understandable if so. But you said we left right after lunch, hiked for less than an hour, and found the cave, and were down there for minutes, came out, and then “it was time to get back to camp and make dinner.” Wouldn’t it have only been about two in the afternoon?

  Okay, maybe I’m grasping at straws?

  There were crunching noises from the kitchen. Chris sighed, stood up, and went to take the denuded steak bone away from Baxter, who gave him an aggrieved look as he deposited it in the trash can.

  “You should be thankful I don’t yell at you for stealing it. Plate robber.”

  There was another ding from the computer, and he went back and sat down.

  You’re right, of course. I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me, because it seems obvious now that you’ve pointed it out. I mean, it could be that I’m remembering wrong, but that’s the way I recall it. We were standing around the cave entrance—you’d just come out, and were brushing dust off your clothes—and someone, I think it was Deirdre, said, “We’d better get back to camp. We’ll get all kinds of grief if they hold up dinner for us.” And someone said, “Nobody here on cooking duty tonight, I hope?” And nobody was.

  I have this vivid picture of it all, like it happened yesterday. We got back to camp, and it was dusk. But how could that be? Maybe we left later than I thought. I don’t know.

  Aren’t there all kinds of studies that show how unreliable memory is? Now I’m confused.

  And Chris wrote back:

  If I remembered this at all, I would be more likely to shrug it off as your simply not remembering the details right. To me, this feels more like we both have pieces we don’t remember, but you remember more than I do. I’d bet you cold hard cash that Gavin and I, and maybe some of the others, were down in that cave for longer than five minutes.

  This has to be significant.

  Now, the million-dollar question: should I tell the FBI about it?

  She responded:

  It’d mean telling them that you got in touch with me.

  Chris wrote:

  Not necessarily. I could tell them that I just recalled it myself. I won’t tell them about you unless you explicitly give me permission to.

  Her next res
ponse took a little longer:

  I appreciate that, and it might make sense for you not to tell them about me, for the time being. I’m going on intuition, here. You probably will think this is silly. After all, you seem to think they’re trustworthy. I have a sense, I’m not sure why, that it’s better if they still think I’m MIA. You can always tell them later, but you can’t untell them, you know?

  As far as telling them about the cave; you need to make the call about that one. You’d have to make it convincing, or they’ll think you’re lying. I’m saying this because I’m a terrible liar, so it’d be really hard for me to pretend I’m remembering something that I didn’t. But it’d be interesting to see what they say about it.

  The more I think about it, though, the more I wonder what on earth could have happened up there that would be worth killing all of us thirty years later? Even if I’m not remembering some of it, there doesn’t seem to be anything that happened that could be a rationale for murder even then, much less three decades afterwards.

  Chris responded:

  That depends on what it is we’re not remembering.

  The remainder of their exchange gradually faded into small talk about their current lives, and from Chris’s perspective, became awkward. It was as if neither of them knew how to draw the conversation to a close, and neither wanted it to end while focused on the deaths of their classmates and the terrible, omnipresent question of why it was all happening. But finally, after a clipped, self-conscious mutual goodbye, it was over.

  Chris shut off his computer, retrieved his plate of cold broccoli from the dinner table and scraped it off into the trash can. His head still spinning, he went into his bedroom and flopped down on the bed.

  He didn’t expect them to be able to pick up where they’d left off. And in any case, these were bizarre circumstances to have to reconnect over. Part of Chris wanted to ask her where she was so he could rush in and protect her. Part of him wanted to have a friend who knew what was happening, who could hold his hand and make him less scared. The habit of complacency and ease was not so easily shucked.

  But despite his fear, he knew he’d done the right thing in telling her not to mention where she was. Technology-wise, he was a dinosaur, and something of a legend in that regard in his school. Still, he knew enough to know there was certainly a way to monitor the content of emails, so anything she told him about her whereabouts could lead them back to her. He hoped there was no way to trace where emails are coming from, but he had to take that risk. He’d had to warn her.

  Whatever happened now, she was better off knowing, and taking precautions, than she would have been simply unaware of everything that had happened.

  But he’d promised Hargis and Drolezki to let them know if he remembered anything else. He’d held out on them once, and it had resulted in Adam being poisoned. Elisa asked a good question. Did he, or did he not, trust the two FBI men? He had responded that he did.

  So he had to call them now. Maybe tell them that he had just remembered about the cave. He didn’t have to mention Elisa’s name. But he needed to either play by the rules and let them protect him or tell them to fuck off and take his chances. What he was doing right now was trying to play both sides and impeding their investigation for no particularly good reason.

  The problem was, he had also promised to tell them when or if he got in touch with Elisa.

  Dammit.

  He climbed out of bed with a groan and went to living room, where he’d left his cell. Hargis’s card was still next to it. He dialed the number, and two rings later, a familiar voice said, “Hargis.”

  “Mr. Hargis, this is Chris Franzia. I’ve remembered something that I think might be relevant, and I wanted to let you know.”

  “Yes?”

  “I was thinking about the field work the class did, and I remembered something that the seven of us did together. It might be the only thing that we all did together, with no one else involved, so if you’re looking for something that links us, maybe this is it.”

  “What is it?”

  “It was on one of our field trips up in the Cascades. We had the afternoon off and went exploring. We found a cave in a hillside, probably an old lava tube. We spent a little while exploring it.”

  “And what did you find?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it?

  “Nothing, really,” Chris said. “I mean, it was only a cave, and we didn’t have flashlights on us. We didn’t even bring day packs. We were just off for a walk, not even a serious hike, and weren’t more than a mile or so from camp.”

  “What makes you think this is relevant?”

  “I don’t know. But you told me to let you know if I thought of something that connected the seven of us, and this is the only thing I can come up with.”

  “And you don’t remember what happened, when you were inside the cave?”

  Chris frowned. “That’s a weird question to ask. What makes you think I can’t remember? I said nothing happened.” He shivered. It was like when he talked to the false Elisa. Something felt wrong.

  Hargis didn’t answer for a moment. “It seems odd that you had a sudden recollection of something that you all did together, and made a point of calling me, only to tell me nothing happened.”

  “Look,” Chris said, “I’m doing what you told me to do. I’m being a good soldier, okay? You said to call you if I remembered anything. I remembered something, so I called you. It is the only thing I can bring to mind that connects the seven of us and excludes the rest of the class.” He paused. “And by the way, are you sure that the rest of the class should be excluded? How did you narrow it down to the seven of us?”

  “We’ve followed up on everyone on the class list, with the exception of one foreign student who was from South Korea. She left the country upon receiving her master’s degree and returned home, and it seems far-fetched to connect her to this. Of the rest, one of your classmates died in an automobile accident in 1998. Other than that, they’re all still alive. We also have Gavin McCormick’s email, remember, which mentioned you seven by name, and no others.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “And as far as your memory of finding the cave, I appreciate your letting me know. I apologize for sounding suspicious, but in this job, suspicion is more or less an occupational hazard. You did the right thing by calling.”

  “Okay. Keep me apprised of any further developments, all right?”

  “I will.”

  Hargis hung up.

  Chris stood there with the phone in his hand, looking down at Hargis’s business card, for several minutes.

  Elisa said that her intuition was not to let Hargis and Drolezki know she was alive, and he’d told her that he trusted them. So why, then, did he feel like he had put himself in further danger by telling Hargis about the cave?

  He set the phone back into the charger, and headed back into his bedroom, trying to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach and the thought bouncing in his skull.

  But after hearing Hargis’s voice again, he was sure. He didn’t trust the G-man at all. Maybe the whole ruse was a set up, and everything, including Adam’s death, was part of a plan to get Elisa and find out what she knew.

  And maybe by calling Hargis, he’d just signed his own death warrant, and Elisa’s along with him.

  Chapter 6

  The waitress at Paul’s Tavern—We Serve Good Food! Best Breakfast In Town!—greeted Chris with a smile the next morning.

  “You’re becoming a regular, honey,” she said. “Coffee?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Room for cream?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You’d think I’d know that by now,” she said, with a raspy laugh, and went off to get his coffee.

  Chris opened up the newspaper he’d purchased from the Save-a-Lot, and looked at the front page. More trouble in Syria. More controversy about the state budget. More people outraged over deservedly obscure celebrities trying to gain notoriety i
n outrageous ways.

  Funny how none of it mattered when you might be dead in a few hours. How could he know how far they’d infiltrated? Maybe one of them was in the back of the restaurant right now, slipping poison into his coffee.

  As if on cue, the waitress reappeared, still smiling, carrying Chris’s cup. She set it down in front of him.

  “Know whatcha want, hon?”

  “Two eggs over easy, bacon, toast.”

  “White or wheat?”

  “Wheat.”

  “Comin’ right up. Anything more to drink?”

  “Small orange juice, please.”

  “You got it.” She snapped her pad closed and went off toward the kitchen, leaving Chris staring at the coffee, his newspaper forgotten.

  He couldn’t be afraid of everything, could he?

  The key was to pick up on the important things, notice what’s different. Even if guessing wrong, or missing something, meant he was dead.

  “Well, I’m not going to start suspecting my morning coffee,” he said quietly, and picked it up and took a sip.

  After consuming his coffee and then his breakfast while showing no signs of heart attack, stroke, or fatal lethargy, he smiled and paid up, thanking the waitress for not killing him by leaving a nice tip. Chris left the restaurant, pressing the electronic unlock button on his key ring as he approached his car.