“Charlie, how did you stay free so long?”
“Charlie-hey, where did you hide out?”
My gaze went from voice to voice, catching glimpses of the scene around me. I saw a shouting woman with a microphone. I saw my own face reflected in the lens of a camera. I saw a crowd-a crowd of frowning faces-00-watching me. They were people from the town, people who’d gathered to see the bad guy taken away to jail. The troopers ahead of me pushed the people back, forcing a way for me across the sidewalk.
All of this was mixed up with the brightness of the morning sun as it touched the tops of stores along the street and glared in their storefront windows. It was mixed up with the sweetness of the open air and the terrible frantic desire inside me to drink in this single moment of being in the world because I knew I would never be in the world again. Not for twenty-five years or more. In all that time, I would never see the sun as a free man, never take a walk in the park or go fishing or take a girl to the movies. Twenty-five years to life in prison. My eyes sought out the sun. My lungs sucked in the air.
There was a patrol car in front of me, I saw now. It was parked right in front of me at the curb. A trooper was pulling the rear door open. Now he was holding it open, waiting for me.
Hungrily my eyes went over the scene again, trying to drink it in, make it last, my final moments in the free world. Faces, cameras, microphones, the sun, the street, the sky.
“Charlie-look over here!”
“What tripped you up in the end, Charlie?”
“How do you feel about going back to prison?”
Then two things happened, very quickly, one right after the other.
As I turned my confused gaze this way and that over the scene, I saw a face go past, one of the faces in the crowd. I just caught a glimpse of it. It was the face of a good-looking young man with thick blond hair that flopped down on his forehead. My eyes passed over him and I felt a kind of jolt inside me. It was a jolt of recognition. I didn’t remember ever seeing that young man before, and yet all the same I thought to myself: I know him!
My eyes went back to find his face in the crowd again. But he was gone. Or at least I couldn’t find him among all the other faces, and the cameras and the microphones and the shouting voices.
We were almost at the cruiser now, almost at the open door. The lead troopers were clearing the last couple of yards, pushing the people back to make a way. There wasn’t much time. I scanned the faces desperately, but the face I’d recognized was gone.
Then it was too late. We had reached the car. The troopers were gathered around me, keeping back the crowds. Someone was putting his hand on the back of my head to guide it in through the door.
That’s when the second thing happened.
Someone-I didn’t see who-pressed in very close behind me. I felt a quick, painful pinch on my handcuffed wrists. At the exact same moment, I heard a man’s voice, very low, whisper right into my ear.
It said: “You’re a better man than you know. Find Waterman.”
I tried to turn, to see who had spoken, but the next moment, I was pushed down into the backseat of the car. The door slammed shut. I looked out the window, but I couldn’t see anything except a wall of khaki uniforms as the troopers crowded against the car. When I turned to face forward, I was staring at a security grate between me and the front seat. Through the grate, I could see the driver at the wheel, another state trooper. Then the front passenger door of the cruiser opened, and Detective Rose got in and sat down next to the driver.
“Let’s move,” he said.
The cruiser’s siren let out a quick blooping noise and the car started forward.
As it did, I felt my hands shift strangely behind me and I realized: my handcuffs were sliding open.
Somehow, someone had broken the lock.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Radio News The jail was in the city of Centerville. I stared through the window as it slipped past. We went along a row of shops. We went down a shadowed corridor of office buildings. I saw a green sign for the interstate go by. Then we were on the highway, gathering speed, and the blue sky was opening before us and the skyline was falling away behind us as the cruiser sped north.
I watched all of this, but barely noticed any of it. I was still dazed from what had just happened. My heart was going a million miles a minute. My thoughts were going just about as fast.
I worked my hands behind my back. I found that I could slide the handcuffs open and closed without any effort at all. Someone-the same man who had whispered to me, I guess-had somehow stripped the lock on them. That must’ve been the pinch I felt on my wrists. That must’ve been when he did it. Just before he said those words to me:
You’re a better man than you know. Find Waterman.
What did it mean? What could it mean? Waterman. I didn’t know anyone by that name. But then, I didn’t know much of anything anymore. I wasn’t even sure I really knew myself.
Still, the words burned like a flame inside me, like a small flame in the roiling darkness.
You’re a better man than you know.
Did that mean I wasn’t a killer? Did that mean my whole life wasn’t a lie, as Detective Rose had said? But who had said that? Who had freed my hands? A friend? An enemy? Someone who knew the truth or someone with a reason to lie?
The cruiser raced along the highway. The thoughts raced through my head, coming so fast they seemed to jumble together. Outside, vast stretches of forest went past, a sea of leaves rising and falling on the hills like waves. The leaves were changing color. Their reds and yellows mixed with the evergreens against the bright blue of the October sky. I stared out at them, but I barely saw them. I worked the handcuffs behind me, opening and closing them.
You’re a better man than you know. Find Waterman.
Waterman. Who was he? How could I find him? Was he another part of my life that was lost? Was it gone forever? Might there still be a trace of memory, a clue buried in my mind that I was overlooking?
Again-obsessively-I went back over the events of yesterday, trying to force some fresh detail to the surface of my consciousness. The torture room. The faces of my tormentors. The voices I’d heard outside the door.
Homelander One.
We’ll never get another shot at Yarrow.
Two more days.
We’ll send Orton. He knows the bridge as well as West.
There was more. There were names. The voices mentioned names. I strained to find them, but I couldn’t. I just remembered that one voice saying, Whatever the truth is, the West boy is useless to us now. Kill him.
I let out a sighing breath in frustration. It was all crowding together in my mind. The things I remembered, the things that had slipped away, a useless mess of half-understood words and images. What did I know? What was I supposed to believe? What was I supposed to do now?
Find Waterman.
I worked the handcuffs, opening and closing them- and the answer came to me.
I was supposed to escape. Of course. That must be it. That must be what the man had meant when he whispered to me.
You’re a better man than you know.
He must’ve been telling me that I wasn’t a criminal, that I should make a break for it and “find Waterman,” whoever he was-or whatever.
I looked around the backseat of the car. It was really just a moving cell. There were no handles on the doors. No locks I could open. Even if I took my handcuffs off in here, there’d still be no way I could get out. I would have to wait, look for a chance. I would pretend the handcuffs were still locked until I saw the right moment. But then what? Once I got out of the car, I would be surrounded by police. Handcuffed or not, I would never be able to get away…
I shook my head. Too many thoughts, too many questions. I was beginning to feel overwhelmed. I needed to calm down and stay calm. I needed to think. I needed to make a plan.
That sleepy sadness I had felt in the cell-that passivity and despair-they were gone suddenly. I had ho
pe again. I was thinking again. Trying to take control of things, trying to find a way out.
I remembered how I prayed for help in my cell. How I’d thought there’d been no answer. I was wrong.
Now I had a chance. All I had to do was figure out how to use it.
“Hey, Detective Rose,” I said.
Detective Rose hardly glanced back at me. He grunted.
“Are we going straight to the prison?” I asked.
It took him a while to answer. I could tell he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to talk to me at all.
Finally, though, in a kind of grim, slow voice, he said, “No. Winchester. State Corrections sends a van to the jail there in the morning. They’ll take you up to the prison.”
“Winchester,” I said. “How far is that?”
Detective Rose snorted. “What do you care? You’re in no hurry. You got all the time in the world.”
The driver gave a heavy laugh. “Twenty-five years, at least.”
“Right,” I said. “I was just wondering. You know, how long a drive it was.”
Detective Rose gave a shrug. “Not long. We’ll be there soon. Now shut up. I can’t hear the radio.”
“The radio’s not on.”
He turned on the radio. A strain of country music played very low. It barely reached me in the backseat.
I sat back, thinking. If I was going to escape, I would have to do it before they put me in another cell. Once we reached Winchester, once they saw that my handcuffs were loose, I would lose the advantage of surprise. I had to find a moment to break away before we reached Winchester.
“When will I be able to call my parents?” I asked.
Detective Rose turned and glowered at me. “Hey, is my memory going or didn’t I just tell you to shut up?”
I pushed on. “I mean, those cameramen outside the jail. I’m gonna be on TV. My mom and dad’ll be worried about me.”
“You probably should’ve thought of that before you committed murder.”
“Have you seen them? My parents. I mean, you work in Spring Hill…”
“Your parents don’t live in Spring Hill anymore,” said Detective Rose.
I felt my stomach twist a little at that. I remembered how I’d tried to call home at Mrs. Simmons’s house. I remembered the recording: This number has been disconnected. Now I knew: my mom and dad had moved away. My home was gone.
“Where do they live now?” I asked.
“How would I know?” said Detective Rose. “What am I, a phone book?”
With that, he turned the radio up louder, as if to drown me out. I could hear it more clearly now. The music had ended, and an ad for mattresses had come on. When the ad ended, the news began.
“Winchester County is preparing security for the arrival of the secretary of homeland security on Saturday,” the newsman said. “Richard Yarrow will meet with President Spender at his vacation retreat in the Green Hills. The dynamic new secretary, who has completely reorganized the Homeland Security Department, says he and the president plan to discuss what he called a ‘bold and uncompromising new program’ to fight Islamo-fascist terrorism at home.”
I sat up straight, listening intently. The newsman stopped talking and the secretary of homeland security came on.
“The president and I are both strongly committed to rooting out the evil of religious extremism, and we will destroy the specter of terrorism that has arisen in the Middle East and is threatening this nation at home. Our country was founded on the principle that people should be free to worship God as their conscience guides them. We will protect that freedom from anyone who wants to destroy it.”
Then the newsman came back with another story: “A fire at the Brandon factory just outside Winchester injured seven people yesterday after a boiler exploded…”
His voice faded into the background of my thoughts. I was still sitting up straight in the backseat. Staring into space. Seeing nothing.
Secretary of Homeland Security Richard Yarrow. That’s what the newsman had said. And I remembered those voices speaking outside the torture room:
We’ll never get another shot at Yarrow.
Secretary of Homeland Security Richard Yarrow was arriving to meet with the president at his vacation home on Saturday.
Two more days.
“We will destroy the specter of terrorism,” Yarrow had said. He and the president were discussing “a bold, new initiative” to fight the terrorists. On Saturday…
Two more days.
We’ll never get another shot at Yarrow.
“They’re going to kill him,” I whispered.
I hadn’t even meant to speak aloud. The words just broke out of me almost before I could think them. And yet the minute I spoke, I knew it was true. I could feel it. It made sense of everything. The people in the compound, the people who had captured me, tortured me, hunted me through the forest-they were terrorists. That had to be it. I don’t know how I’d gotten involved with them or what they wanted from me, but I felt sure now of what they were planning. They were going to kill the secretary of homeland security, to derail his new initiative against them.
My eyes focused on the seat ahead of me. The grate holding me. The two men up front, the backs of their heads.
“Two more days,” they’d said.
Saturday.
Only one more day now. Saturday was tomorrow.
We’ll never get another shot at Yarrow.
One more day and they would assassinate the secretary of homeland security.
I stared at the back of Detective Rose’s head as the cruiser sped along the highway.
How could I explain it to him? How could I ever get him to believe me?
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Seconds
I had to try.
“Detective Rose… ” I said.
Detective Rose shifted in the front seat, twisting around to look at me. I could see those sharp, cold eyes of his staring through the diamond spaces in the grate.
“Listen, West,” he said. He had to talk loudly so I could hear him over the radio. “I know you’re not stupid, right? You had an excellent grade point average in high school before you left all that behind and began your illustrious career as a murdering piece of garbage. So I know you got some brains in you.”
“Detective Rose, listen… ” I said.
“So when I say something to you, I expect you to understand me.”
“Detective…”
“And I’m saying something to you now. I’m saying to you: shut up. Is that unclear somehow? Well, let me explain myself further. Shut up or I’m gonna slug you. Got it?”
The driver gave another heavy chuckle.
“You want me to spell it for you too?” asked Detective Rose.
“They’re going to kill Richard Yarrow,” I said. “The guy they were talking about on the radio. The secretary of homeland security. They’re going to assassinate him.”
Detective Rose looked at the driver. The driver glanced over at him. I could see Detective Rose’s unpleasant, humorless smile through the grate. He reached over and turned off the radio. He turned those eyes on me again.
“What?” he said.
“They’re going to…”
“Who? Who’s going to kill the secretary of homeland security?”
“The men. The men in the woods.”
“Oh yeah,” said Detective Rose. His round face went up and down as he nodded. “The little men in the woods. I almost forgot about them. Well, relax, Charlie. Maybe they won’t kill him. Maybe they’ll just carry him off to their magic tree and bake him some cookies.”
This time, the driver laughed louder.
“It’s true!” I said. “You have to believe me. It’s all true. Where do you think I got these bruises, these burns? They captured me. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it. I can’t explain anything. I just know I woke up there and heard them talking. They said they’d never get another shot at Yarrow. They said two more days. That’s
when Yarrow’s coming to meet the president. Don’t you see? They must be terrorists. They must be planning to kill him.”
Now Detective Rose turned to the driver. “What did I tell you?” he said.
The driver shook his head. “Amazing.”
“He’s good, isn’t he? He’s a good liar. I can almost forgive myself for believing him the first time.”
I saw a TV show once where this evil doctor declared this guy insane in order to have him locked up in a mental hospital. The guy tried to tell everyone he was sane, but because he was in a mental hospital, no one would believe him. They just thought he was saying he was sane because he was crazy. The guy got so frustrated trying to explain that he was sane that he nearly went crazy…
That’s pretty much what I felt like now.
I threw my head back against the seat, thumping it. I closed my eyes, trying to fight down my feeling of helplessness. What was I going to do? If I couldn’t convince him, Secretary Yarrow would die. I would spend the next twenty-four hours locked away, knowing what was going to happen, powerless to stop it. I couldn’t. I had to do something. Get away. Warn someone.
Find Waterman…
Something…
“Here,” said Detective Rose.
I felt the car glide over to the right. I opened my eyes. I looked out the window. There was a sign up ahead on the freeway. Winchester: Next Four Exits.
“We’re here already?” I said.
“Yeah, too bad,” said Detective Rose. “I was so enjoying our little chat.”
My heart started racing again. Here we were in Winchester already and I hadn’t come up with a plan. I had no idea how I would try to escape. Soon the chance would be past. I had to think of something.
I pressed my face to the window and looked out. I saw a long street with no people in it. Grim warehouses and abandoned brick buildings loomed on either side. I saw garbage in the gutter and paper blowing along the sidewalk. When I turned and looked through the windshield, I could see smokestacks rising up ahead.
The cruiser turned a corner. There was another street, not much different from the last. Old buildings with broken windows. Empty lots littered with papers and metal and cans. Three old men were gathered around a garbage can. There was fire coming out of the can, and the men were holding their hands out to the flames to warm their fingers. I could tell by their scraggly beards and their torn clothes that the men were homeless. They lifted their hollow eyes to watch the cruiser driving past.
The last thing I remember h-1 Page 14
