Dead On Arrival

by Matt Richtel

  “A witching of a night,” Mayor Ron McCloud said. He added that he was praying for the sergeant, eight-year-veteran Leonard “Len” Parker.

  Lyle saw plainly that the unusual night being described matched the date of his landing in Steamboat. He drifted over the article again and again and kept settling on the words electrical problems. He felt the liquor clouding his thoughts. His head lolled with exhaustion. He fought it and scrounged for his laptop.

  He looked up Dr. Jennifer Sanchez, the darling of the infectious disease department. She had moved her office from Parnassus to Mission Bay, the new UCSF research headquarters. She had taken the title of associate dean. Just days earlier, he dismissed the idea of going to talk to her and now backtracked, considered it.

  He next went looking for his former assistant at UCSF. Searching through various disciplines and using Emily as a keyword, he eventually found Emily Chase. That was her, his former assistant in his lecture class. That was someone he’d have no problem talking to; she’d always seen him for what he was, guileless, rather than cunning, in his less conventional tactics. Maybe she could help guide him through the department if he needed expertise, and maybe she could make sense of this text about a student he might’ve made reference to.

  With blurry eyes, he pulled up Eleanor’s text. He put his fingers on the keyboard to respond and typed Let’s meet again and fell asleep before he hit send.

  For two days, that was it. He slept and sat, and thought. Repeat. He ate there, too. He looked to be waiting. He looked in the direction of the refrigerator but his mind’s eye often went to Steamboat, the little of it he could recall. Little by little, his efforts gave way to images and reflections of Melanie. He dreamed about her.

  When he could no longer take the company of the stench of his dead ardor, he took a shower. Long beneath the hot water he scrubbed. He shaved away the itchy stubble. He put on khakis and a clean T-shirt.

  He emerged into the kitchen, walked to the refrigerator, and stared at the magnet where the note had been. Now the magnet once again held a note. Lyle glanced around the apartment. He saw no one, heard nothing. He walked to the refrigerator and read the note. It was the same piece of paper as before, but it was turned around and a new message had been written on the side opposite.

  It read:

  I’ve got your back this time.

  And there was a little red drawing of a heart.

  Lyle carefully plucked the note and read it again, and again. The handwriting was neat, careful. As to meaning, Lyle couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Only briefly did he wonder if the note had been written by Eleanor. No way, he dismissed the idea. Equally briefly, he wondered if he, somehow, had written the note himself. Could he be truly losing his mind—truly?

  In fact, the opposite was true. Lyle was completely about his wits. Through his inaction, he had prompted the note to be written, smoked out a move by an invisible adversary. He smiled sadly. On some level, it’s what he had wanted, hoped for, manipulated, even if he wasn’t fully conscious of his tactics. If only subconsciously, he’d sensed a pattern that entailed a foe, an enemy—his match?—trying to get his attention, and when he lay fallow, it provoked him. A car followed him, or a note disappeared, and then reappeared. Still, this reappearing note hardly qualified as a victory because Lyle didn’t exactly know what he would do with this new data point. He didn’t know if he could muster the energy to pursue the answers.

  He had to look at his phone to discover the date, day, and time. It was a Tuesday in early December at 10:20 in the morning.

  He pulled on a leather jacket and headed down the stairwell.

  Thirty-Nine

  Mission Bay’s campus had exploded since he’d abandoned his life. High-rises had sprung up in clusters belonging to different medical specialties. A wide promenade ran to the water, bisecting the sprawling campus. Open space braced one side of the promenade and shops anchored the other. Lyle drained black coffee at a café and listened to researchers bitch and moan.

  He found Dr. Sanchez’s office on the eleventh floor of the new Kartling Immunology Center, a modern building that, despite its large windows and curved middle, came across as boring, lacking creativity. Dr. Sanchez wasn’t in her office and Lyle didn’t leave his name with her assistant. He did pick up that she’d be back in an hour.

  Thirty minutes later, he found Emily Chase, his former assistant, in the Neuroscience Department, a long block away. She was a postdoc now, which entitled her to a small, shared office with desks along opposite walls. She was alone when Lyle poked his head in. She practically leapt from her chair.

  “Dr. Martin!”

  He looked bewildered and she laughed. “I forgot: you never grasped how appreciative your fans are.”

  He smiled and looked down and realized that his assistant had changed. Her tone now came across not as unctuous or adoring but, rather, as confident enough that she could speak freely and candidly. She was all grown up.

  “What brings you in? Are you coming back? What are you up to, Dr. Martin? I get asked all the time.”

  He waved his hand and said, “Long story.” Which was true. “I could use your help.”

  “Of course.” She picked up his seriousness and adjusted. She sat in her swivel chair and gestured to a plastic black chair against the wall. “I’ve got a subject coming in fifteen minutes. You want to talk now or will it take longer?”

  Lyle sat and explained with as little fanfare as he might that he needed to get a list of the students from his last survey class. Did she have something like that? She pursed her lips, thinking about it, and, Lyle figured, considering about whether to ask him why he needed such a thing. But, in the end, she didn’t. She pulled her chair up to her computer and she clacked about on the keys.

  “Something like this is probably the best I can do without working through the administrative system, and, even then . . .”

  He stood so he could peer over her shoulder. Her screen showed an old e-mail that she’d dug up. It was titled: Martin, Section II; Population List.

  Lyle, looking at the screen, realized he’d been copied on the e-mail. Naturally, he’d not paid attention; no point in a survey class like this and the e-mail had been little more than a formality. Emily clicked open a spreadsheet. It included names, student ID numbers, and affiliation as med student, postdoc, fellow, or audit/other. Lyle looked for a tab that might indicate there were pictures, though he was not surprised to find no such thing.

  “Can you print it out?”

  “Of course.” She clicked the command. In the corner, a printer hummed to life.

  Lyle sat back and looked glassy-eyed.

  “The deep-in-thought look,” Emily said. She laughed.

  “Sorry. Sorry. Congratulations. Neuroscience?”

  “All the rage these days,” she said.

  “What’s your area of research?”

  “Attention, prefrontal cortex, with some emphasis on the default network. Gets granular from there.”

  “Good for you,” Lyle said and meant it. He cleared his throat. “You know much about seizures, electrical activity, ion channels?”

  She studied him. “Only in passing.”

  The printer came to a stop. Lyle could see her desperate curiosity to understand his reappearance. There would be gossip.

  He stood. “Thank you, Emily.”

  At Dr. Sanchez’s door, he didn’t have a chance to consider a strategy. She’d already seen him. An instant of concern-colored surprise crossed her face as she stood beside her assistant’s desk holding an opened manila folder. She snapped the folder shut and quickly reoriented as the best politicians can do.

  “Look what the cat dragged in. Dr. Martin. Come in!” She pulled reading glasses from her nose and let them hang by the cord around her neck. “Ernie, hold my calls. Dr. Martin, can I get you a cup of coffee? Come in, come in.”

  Once a world-class cyclist, Dr. Sanchez had grown sturdier and matronly. She sat behind a thick desk and of
fered him the chair across from her. She smiled. It was warm but affected.

  “How are you?”

  He nodded, fine, fine. “I know I’m barging in.”

  “Not at all.” She could see he had something on his mind. She was accustomed to doctors with time pressure. “What’s up? What can I do for you?”

  He smiled himself and touched his forehead with the folded pages of single-spaced names, signaling he wasn’t sure where to begin. He exhaled.

  “I’m rusty,” he said.

  She raised her hands as if to say: No problem. Shoot.

  “Channelopathy.”

  She laughed. “That’s the last thing I’d have ever guessed would come out of your mouth.”

  He sat there, awkwardly. “It’s obviously not virulent.”

  “Sorry?”

  “You can’t catch it.”

  She shook her head. No, of course not. She gave the standard doctor caveat that she wasn’t an expert. Some people, she said, were more susceptible than others, almost certainly on a genetic basis. She told him what he already knew about ion channels.

  “What is its relationship to seizure?”

  “If memory serves, they are distinctive but related. Some seizure disorders, epilepsy, are caused by channelopathy. Okay, my curiosity is piqued, Lyle. What’s up?”

  Her voices carried all the harmonies and dissonance of her personality: genuine interest, intensity she tried to quiet, envy that she might be missing something or that Lyle could wind up discovering or getting something she might want, however unknown or irrelevant that thing might be to her.

  “I was wondering if there are any signs that we’re seeing more of this. Any papers on growing incidence of electrical disorders?”

  She thought about it and whether to take him at face value on such an unusual question. “Hmm.”

  “Maybe related to your phone or all the electromagnetic fields from cellular technology.”

  Now her eyes widened. It was true that there had been some talk about the potential for electromagnetic radiation, EMR, as a source of cancer. Nothing had been proven. It was more conspiracy chatter at this point than anything else. And she hadn’t heard anything regarding EMR and seizure. So her eyes were wide not from curiosity or recognition but from the thought maybe Lyle had revealed himself with a kind of desperation. From her standpoint, the proper order in this room had been established.

  “Are there ways to prevent or short-circuit a seizure?” Lyle asked.

  “Like phenobarbital?” Her eyes went wider now as she mentioned the barbiturate. Lyle knew that some of these drugs could be used to slow or prevent seizure but that wasn’t what he was asking. Of course, he wasn’t thinking he’d give everyone in the world a barbiturate, if that even would work. Now he was startled by what she must be thinking: he might be trying to get drugs. Or maybe she was going to make it look that way, to herself, even others.

  “Is everything okay, Lyle?” she asked.

  He gritted his teeth. She wasn’t going to make this easy. He felt the old irritations bubble; she was playing three-level chess—one level being gamesmanship—and he didn’t want any part of it. Fatigue overtook him.

  “Anyhow, thanks for your time,” he said.

  Outside, he couldn’t breathe. Forces he couldn’t name grappled for control of his body and brain. He leaned against a wall with paralysis, physical, emotional, spiritual. He knew what he needed to do. He knew what he had to do. A growling sound escaped his throat. A passerby moved inches away on the sidewalk. Lyle looked at his hands white with blood loss as he held furiously to the paper with the names. It took everything not to rip it to shreds.

  He put it in his pocket. He pulled out his phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Melanie.”

  “Lyle? I’m right in the middle—”

  “Please.”

  “Lyle, okay, hold on.” He could hear Melanie cup her hand over the phone. “I need five. Can you just take ice to the guy in 210?” She withdrew her hand from the phone. “Is everything okay?”

  “No.” Lyle had moved himself to the backside of the building, opposite a parking structure. Were he paying attention, he could see the water and across the bay in the direction of Melanie.

  “I’m in a room. I’ve got five minutes. What’s the matter, are you sick?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What?”

  “Melanie, I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for—”

  “Everything, all of it. It is on me.”

  He heard first silence and then the sound of them crying for both of them. He invited the sound in. He closed his eyes. A minute passed.

  “I love you, Mel. I will always love you.”

  Sobs overcame her.

  “I’m happy for you,” he said. “You have a beautiful family.”

  “Thank you, Peño.”

  At a café off the promenade, Lyle ignited his laptop. He pulled out the piece of paper with more than two hundred names. As the machine booted, he closed his eyes and listened to the memory of Melanie crying. He’d owed her an apology for more than three years. He probably owed her three years’ worth of apology. He owed it to himself too. At some point, whoever was to blame—him—no longer mattered. He felt the poison, the toxins, release from his body. He looked at the computer screen.

  He typed the first name into Google.

  Two hours later, two things were clear to Lyle. This was not a smart strategy. Second and more important: he was eager to keep going. The feeling reminded him of the old days, when no clock or skeptic deterred him. His idea had been to call up the names, look at current jobs and their pictures, which almost all of them had in some form or fashion. He’d hoped that one of them might trigger recognition. Or he’d see, or intuit, a pattern. Maybe one of them worked with Google cars. Had a Steamboat connection. Involvement with seizure research. Along those lines, there had been one former student, Dr. Mischa David, who worked at the Epilepsy Center at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. Lyle spent a few minutes poking around about her and decided nothing else about her struck him.

  Another woman, Jackie Badger, was unusual in that she had not followed a medical path and had, as far as he could tell, no further medical training. She worked at Google as an engineer. There had been no other information about her and the tiniest image. So he’d moved on.

  Now he was only on the H’s.

  He stood up and stretched. Walked outside and stared at people walking by. Most of them lost in their devices.

  In the middle of a promenade stood a lone protester with a placard. It pictured a separatist with an automatic weapon. It read turncoat.

  “Look up!” demanded the protester as he nearly got knocked into by a student reading his device. The student bounced off like a pinball and kept on. Lyle looked at the placard and the man holding the weapon. He had a memory flash that left him wobbling. A man with such a gun, shots fired, a body in a doorway. He clung to the image, tried to. It wavered, flickered. Shifted. A woman, standing with her phone. Clicking on it. Short hair, a hat. Flicker, flicker. Then again, two children in the backseat of a car.

  Flicker. Gone.

  He practically ran back to his laptop. He sat and clicked away. He called up the picture of Jackie Badger. He enlarged it. He held his breath. Dark hair, a light face. He cocked his head, tried her face on with different color hair, a hat, a worried look, a smile. He was sure he didn’t know her. Same as he didn’t feel like he’d known Eleanor when he met her at a café, but, on some level he did know her.

  Just like he knew this woman.

  He looked around and, outside, saw a man with a fish-looking face peering at him through the window.

  Forty

  Outside the café, the fish-faced man didn’t run this time. Instead, he sat on a half wall near the bike racks, arms crossed. Lyle approached him, feeling immediate irritation. The guy wreaked of smugness and self-satisfaction. A cowboy wannabe looking for a gunfight. Not just
metaphorically; the guy wore a puffy windbreaker that Lyle intuited hid a gun in a back holster. There were probably five conceal-carry permits in San Francisco, and surely this guy didn’t have one. So he was some mix of stupid and dangerous and scared, or just 100 percent stupid, and yet Lyle felt undeterred.

  “You’re the copilot,” Lyle said.

  “The correct phrase is first officer, Dr. Martin.”

  A shiver of distant recognition braced Lyle. He knew that obnoxious tone from somewhere. The man stood nearly a half foot taller than Lyle but less than that with the hunched slant of his shoulders. His eyes bulged, red tinged.

  “Good timing,” Lyle said. “Is it Jeremy?”

  Jerry gritted his teeth, then tried to affect a cool-guy smirk. “I’ll let you figure my name out.”

  “Jerry,” Lyle said guilelessly.

  “Very good, Lyle,” Jerry said. “Now what the hell is your game? You and Eleanor trying to bring me down, is that it?”

  “Let’s go talk about it, Jerry. And you can tell me why you’re following me. Did Jackie send you?”

  Lyle watched Jerry’s face squeeze in irritation, like he had no clue what Lyle was talking about. This guy is too stupid, Lyle thought, to fake confusion. Stupid, and dangerous. Armed.

  They sat in Jerry’s red Miata on a side street and talked. The car was twenty years old, at least, and impeccable. A police scanner tucked in a compartment below the radio squawked with static and an occasional report. Lyle told much of the same story he’d told Eleanor—being on the flight, not remembering much. Jerry half listened, less interested it seemed to Lyle in figuring out what happened than in looking for flaws. Lyle patiently talked, waiting for his turn to listen, which is why he was here. Jerry didn’t seem interested, though, in sharing. So Lyle had to infer Jerry’s story, and his appearance outside the café, from his salty questions.