Devil in the Wires

by Tim Lees

  A map flicked up on the screen. I recognized the place. We got a potted history of Mesopotamia, then some shots of the site itself—­a ­couple of soldiers standing by the Tahira gate, some beautiful photographs, barren land, and blue sky. No suggestion anybody lived nearby, though. No houses, roads, nothing like that.

  “In 2003, when US and allied troops entered Iraq as part of the liberation forces, troopswere stationed to protect the valuable archaeological sites throughout the area, several of which are deemed World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. And in Assur, one of the most ancient cities in the world, they discovered something even more extraordinary. Here, in the ruins, was a source of energy that had lain dormant for many centuries, unknown even to the ­people living close by. Negotiations were entered into, and we gratefully acknowledge our debt to the Iraqi government . . .”

  Her talk ended. Someone wanted to take my photo against a green screen, but I declined. We were ushered through into the compound itself.

  It changed the place, seeing so many ­people there. It changed the whole dynamic of it. A ­couple of small kids were playing chase around the adults’ legs. A woman with a double stroller tried to edge into a better view, using the stroller like a weapon to gain ground. There were office workers dressed in suits, a woman in a big Victorian-­style hat, a man in Parks Department uniform.

  I had visions of them all struck down within a single moment, wiped off the Earth. A flash, a roar . . .

  It didn’t happen. Something shifted in the compound—­a flicker in the light—­and the conversation slowly died, the way it does when the lights change before a theater performance. ­People were craning up to see. It was like looking for some hidden creature in the zoo: is it there? Is it hiding?

  The murmur of talk began to rise again. A man in a Chicago Asthma T-­shirt was quizzing an attendant: “How clean, though? How clean?”

  That’s when the fireworks went up.

  Everyone was caught off guard. A flash of light, like a conjuror’s stock-­in-­trade, bounced off the ceiling, seeming to leap around the room, then drop back to the compound. Something was smoldering there in the shadows; something without shape or substance, like an afterimage floating in the eye.

  The attendants were all very calm. “This is normal. Please don’t be alarmed . . .” It was like being smiled at by a flight attendant when the plane goes into nose-­dive. The guests here, though, were not alarmed. To them, it was all son et lumière. This was what they’d come to see. This was what they’d paid for. This was a show.

  To me, though, Assur had shaken his mane. The crowd had roused him. It was tricky to interpret, dangerous to pin human feelings and responses to a creature so remote. But to me, this was the closest it had come to worship in a thousand years. The crowd had oohed and aahed. Like feeding it the finest rib-­eye steak.

  Backstage, there were no doubts.

  “Did you see that? You see that?”

  The spike was visible, on every screen, on every printout, in every face I saw.

  “It was excited! Did you see?”

  I bumped knuckles with a ­couple of them. The ones who’d talk to me. I put a grin up on my face, hoping everything was just as simple and straightforward as they all seemed to believe it was, and knowing, somehow, that it couldn’t be. Pretending, for a few minutes, it could.

  The pop of a champagne cork made me jump.

  “Chris is all nerves.”

  Kuehl gave me a nod. I crinkled up my mouth in what might possibly have passed off as a smile.

  The drink was poured. “To the project,” we all toasted.

  “It was—­it was provoked. Check out the readings there—­”

  It was provoked. Excited. And they drained the power, as usual, and stored it.

  It was two days later when the second body came to light.

  Chapter 43

  Bad-­ass Dog

  “You wanted it to go wrong, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “No?” She slid her key into the lock, pushed the door open. “Sure looked like it.”

  “Well, I don’t see how.” I looked around, at books piled floor to ceiling, a piano top stacked with boxes, manuscripts, and CDs. “Has this place got smaller?”

  Riff came cannonballing from the back room. He squeaked and barked and leapt up at her; ran to me and stuffed his nose into my crotch, then back to her, his back end swinging like a bell. I moved a copy of Lone Star Ballads from the sofa and sat down.

  She had once called the apartment her external hard drive. “For everything I can’t fit up here,” she’d said, tapping her skull. Now, looking around, I asked her, “Jesus, Angie. How d’you live in this?”

  “Knowledge is bulky. Sue me.”

  I kicked a dog toy out of the way to make room for my feet. She produced a bottle of wine and a ­couple of glasses. Riff jumped up between us, dropped his head in my lap. It was as heavy as a bowling ball. “He wants you to tickle his ears.” So I did. He lolled, a dopey, jag-­toothed grin across his face, his long pink tongue hanging, and dribble pooling on the seat between my legs. I’d scratch his ribs and he’d kick his back legs in delight.

  She said, “You changed the subject.”

  I took a drink, shrugged.

  “A bit wrong,” she said. “A little, tiny bit.”

  “Christ, Angie . . .”

  “Ha. Touched a nerve?”

  “No! I’ve seen what happens when it goes wrong. Nobody’d want that. And with all those ­people—­”

  Riff pawed at me. I’d stopped tickling him.

  “I mean a little, tiny bit. So you can ride in, strut your stuff, and save the day.”

  “That isn’t what I do!”

  “You’d like them all to think it is, though, wouldn’t you?”

  Later, she said, “You’re pissed, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Yes. A bit.”

  “At me?”

  I shook my head.

  “I was kidding with you, Chris. Just—­” She poked her finger at the air. “Just giving you a hard time, you know?”

  “I know.”

  I stroked Riff’s head.

  “Forgiven?” she said.

  “Forgiven. And . . . yeah. Maybe you’re right, too. A little bit.”

  “Uh-­huh?”

  “I don’t like being the spare wheel, that’s the thing. I thought it’d be more . . . more teamwork, more kind of, in-­this-­thing-­together, and . . .”

  “ ‘Share your wisdom with us, oh great Field Op.’ Right?”

  “Not quite. But I did think . . . No. They’re not even interested in fieldwork. To them, it’s just irrelevant. Dead and gone. And—­well. Perhaps it is.”

  “You got the decant time changed. That’s something, all right? They must have some respect . . .”

  Only for Shailer, I was going to say. But then I took another drink, said nothing. It was easier that way.

  “He’s a year old,” she said. “A little bit more. Someone threw him over the wall at the pound.”

  “Over the wall?”

  “Better than abandoning him. Costs fifty bucks to leave a dog. I guess he didn’t have it.”

  “Christ.”

  “Damn thing is, I wanted a guard dog. Big, ferocious. Ended up with—­” She rubbed his ear.

  “Yeah. Real killer, here.” Then, “Why? Why a guard dog?”

  “Huh.” She sucked her lip. “Few reasons, really. You met the main one, a week or two back. That jerk trying to doorstep me.”

  “Angie—­”

  “Oh, don’t fret. He’s no big deal. Not now. Hey—­another glass.” She raised the bottle and poured.

  I said, “I’ve seen him since then,” and I told her what had happened at the dollar store.
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br />   “Scumbag,” she said.

  “Total, yeah. But how d’you—­I mean, how d’you run into somebody like that, to start with? He’s not, I mean—­” I wasn’t even serious when I said it. “Don’t tell me he’s an ex or something, eh?”

  But the way she looked at me, I could tell that that’s exactly what he was.

  The news took some accommodating. It made me wonder just how well I’d known her after all.

  “He’d hang out at the University, in the coffee bar. Always had a book or two, always reading. Never tried to pass himself off as a student, though—­not to me, at least. Just making up his education, he said.” She shrugged. “I kind of liked that.”

  The sun was going down outside, red fire gleaming in the windows of the building opposite. Angel’s room sank into shadow. Neither of us made to turn on the lights.

  “After you left,” she said, “I hit a kind of low spot. No, don’t say anything. It wasn’t about you. Don’t get ideas above your station. Mostly it was too much work, not enough money, you know? I’d started at the Registry, and I had, oh, problems with my supervisor up at U. of C. A heap of stuff. So I met this guy. And he was kinda quiet, and a bit out of his depth. Sort of charming. Yeah. Hard to believe, right? But he was. And more than that. He was fun. No art movies, no Mahler concerts—­and, you know, I love that stuff, but with Paul, we just did normal things, you know? Went out for brunch. Went bowling. Went to the Pier. They had this mad haunted house there and I screamed all through and he just held me and he laughed. That—­well, in retrospect, I guess that could have said a thing or two. Not at the time.”

  “Jesus, Angie—­”

  “Blame my hothouse childhood. Ballet lessons, singing lessons, English lessons, math lessons. With Paul, I tell you—­it was like being a kid. Or what I imagine it was like, being a kid. I sort of missed all that. And he knew it, too. Like he could see exactly what was missing from your life, and give it to you. He told me once, You need to be easier on yourself. Give yourself a break sometimes. And I thought, yeah, yeah—­why not? Every adult should take time to be a child. That’s what he said.”

  “But—­I still don’t see. Someone like you—­smart, and, you know, I don’t see how you—­”

  “How I fell for it? I told you. He worked out what was missing in my life, or what I thought was missing, and he gave it to me. That makes him sound like Charles Manson, I know. And maybe he was. Then one day, I saw the other side of him. I’m not gonna talk about that.”

  Her face was unreadable now in the dark, but I heard the click of her tongue, the hiss of an indrawn breath.

  After a time, she said, “Anyhow. After that, I did what I should have done right off. What I’m trained to do, God damn it. I did research. You know you can check a guy’s arrest record on line? You pay a few bucks, and . . . yeah.” She shook, a sudden tremor running through her. “Told me he was separated from his wife. Didn’t tell me it was pending an assault charge, or that he had a string of them, mostly against women, going way, way back.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Ah. I talked to him. In a public place, you know, for safety. Then I called the cops. Got a restraining order. One thing I did know, thank the Lord—­is not to give that type a second chance. They’ll weasel back, tell you it’s different this time . . . He tried that once.”

  The sound of drums and angry rapping drifted through the window from a car stuck at the crossroads, three floors down.

  “So,” she said. “I thought I’d get a dog.”

  She put her hand on Riff’s neck, and her fingers touched mine, and she kept them there.

  “Big, ugly, bad-­ass dog, ’bout this high, ear chewed off, all tusks and fangs. That’s what I wanted, right?”

  “Makes sense.”

  “And first thing I see is this little guy. He’s three or four weeks old, you could pretty much hold him in your hand. Feet so big he’s tripping over ’em, and his little tail gets going and—­God damn, but I was hooked.”

  “Lucky dog.”

  “Love at first sight,” and her fingers covered mine, and squeezed. “Love at first damn sight, hey?”

  Chapter 44

  Pilgrims

  The crowds collected in the gallery, watching the compound.

  “Can you feel it?” and, “There!” and, “Oooh, that’s gooood,” drawn out in a long, near-­sexual moan. They seemed to egg each other on, the murmur of their talk rising and falling like the waves. “It’ll help in my career. They told me it’ll help, I don’t see how.” Parents held their children up to see—­no, not to see. To bathe in whatever special radiation they imagined might now fill the air. Old ­people pressed forwards, using the privilege of age, treading on toes and jabbing with their canes. What were they looking for? Happiness Excitement? Wisdom? Youth?

  There was a fierce concentration here, a blink-­or-­you’ll-­miss-­it tension, a fervor bottled up, ready to blow. I had downplayed it to Seddon, maybe. The Beach House was now crammed with ­people. They had pressed in, ignoring the attendants, sliding past the box office, filling the place. Waiting. Wanting. Demanding . . .

  The god moved. You could see the air roll like the sea, turning over and over. You could see the light bend round it, and if you moved up close, near to the shield itself, there was an odd sensation, as if everything slowed down; the noise of the crowd became a long, slow sound, like waves. There was a sense of everything being a long way off.

  To feel this, though, you had to get inside the barrier, where the general public couldn’t go.

  And everything was new. Everything was shiny, bright, and wonderful.

  And we’d had a body dropped, less than a hundred yards away, and a cop already looking for connections.

  And I walked Angel’s dog with her. Most nights. And sometimes I just walked him on my own.

  And one night, when I came back, she kissed me . . .

  Emotions heightened. I had written it myself. Yet none of it felt false. Just more intense, more ­meaningful . . .

  Chapter 45

  The God Is Felt

  For days, it seemed that we were going well. ­People had died, but in a city this size, ­people died, died every day; and even Kuehl’s obnoxious self-­assurance soon seemed rooted in reality.

  The crowds flocked to the Beach House, and the park was filled with sunbathers and picnickers, and devotees who lingered simply to be near the presence of divinity, and summer settled on us in a fierce, indolent blaze. The sky was a deep, chemical blue, untouched by clouds. The lawns grew dark and the earth beneath them dry and firm. The light was fierce, and yet deceptive. If you stared into the shadows of the trees, stared long enough and hard enough, even in daylight, the shade would seem at last to peel back, and what you had at first imagined to be darkness became, in fact, a glow all of its own, a kind of negative illumination, holding the light within itself rather than releasing it into the world. You could see this in the Beach House itself, on the sands round about, but most of all, in the parkland behind us. It gave the landscape an unusual perspective, and made distances sometimes hard to judge.

  Once, when I should probably have been at work—­though doing what, I was no longer sure—­I watched a cardinal bird flitter back and forth among the trees next to the East Lagoon, its scarlet plumage shining like a flag. Yet every now and then, as it flew among the shadows, it would wink out, simply vanish for a moment, only to reappear elsewhere, just as bright and lively as before. I watched this for some minutes, and I was certain that it hadn’t merely been obscured by leaves or branches. It vanished as if it had been swallowed by that glowing dark, and then spat out again, back into the sun, all unaware. A trick, I was sure, an optical illusion, though one that I could make no sense of, nor find any explanation for, no matter how I tried. After a time, the bird flew off and I lost track of it. I found a length of cane, part of a bundle stor
ed beside a workman’s hut. I must have made a strange sight, batting at the tree leaves in an effort—­somehow—­to reduplicate the bird’s peculiar flight.

  Such oddities were localized, and by the time I reached the streets near my apartment, they had almost wholly vanished. Other signs, though, were still much in evidence.

  If the park became the epicenter of these new phenomena, its ripples had already spread across the city, though mostly in the fashion for graffiti that had sprung up everywhere. I recognized a variation on familiar themes:

  Forever and forever every moment opening

  and,

  Infinite

  and,

  opening and opening

  the same few words recycled like some weird minimalist poem. But the calligraphy became increasingly elaborate, beyond even the usual complexities of US street art. Letters would explode in almost fractal patterns, elaborated to the point of near obscurity; I wondered how the artist found the time to draw it, without being moved on or arrested by the cops. There was one I passed repeatedly, in an alley just off 57th, before I realized there were words in it, and realized what the words were.

  This was new, but other things concerned me more.

  There were killings. More killings. Not so close, perhaps, but all of them the same: torture, murder. Bodies were dumped along the coast, or on waste ground, or once in the Dumpster of an otherwise respectable South Side tenement. Woollard phoned me, now and then. I stalled. I’d nothing for him, nothing concrete; just that weird run of peaks and troughs during the daily readouts, that would quiet for a while and then begin again . . .

  I spoke to Shailer. “You’re my eyes and ears there, Chris,” he said. “If you’ve got something concrete . . . ?”

  “Who’s your expert?”

  “Chris . . . ?”

  “Your expert. Your consultant?”

  “Chris, that’s got nothing to do with this. You’re . . . not going to be difficult with me, are you?”

  Sometimes, at the Beach House, I would go out to the public areas and watch the crowd, wondering what a killer looked like. I imagined there’d be something, some telltale sign, a distance in the eyes, perhaps, a lack of feeling, a failure to interact . . . or else the opposite, the overactive sociability of a born psychopath, as if trying to conceal the emptiness inside. Neither of these things was apparent to me. Or they were apparent everywhere, depending on my mood. At times I would have wild, inflated dreams of solving the murders all on my own: seeing a face, seeing and knowing, yes, it’s him. My heart would start to knock just thinking of it: a heady, adolescent thrill, the prospect of becoming feted, celebrated, the star of the show . . .