by David Beers
"Yeah, his heart or something else will give out."
No one else stood in the room with them.
"What about Brand, are there going to be any lingering effects for him?"
"Yes, I would imagine so. There were in the animal trials. Nothing permanent, but he's going to be moving rather slowly over the next few days."
"Too bad he probably isn't on foot," Allison said, turning away from the prisoner to look at the empty Silo again. "So how did he get out, Dr. Riley?" She leaned over and stuck her head inside the Silo, looking around as if she would see something new.
"We don't know yet. We're checking right now, looking through every bit of data we have, but it's not theoretically possible. The patient is asleep. I mean, we can even see their dreams."
"Yet here we are, looking at an empty jail cell, huh?"
Dr. Riley nodded but said nothing.
Allison pulled herself out of The Silo and looked at him.
"You know we're going to be operating out of this place for a while, right? You'll be able to continue with your work, but you'll be expected to contribute to the investigation in that we need you to discover how he got out. Anything else you find out too. Can you do that?"
"Yes, of course."
"Good. Now if our people shouldn't be setting up somewhere, let me know and I'll make sure to move them somewhere else. We're in charge but we're also guests and I'll remember that."
Riley only nodded again. He didn't look good, like a kid just finding out that his first day at Disney World was going to be rained out. A sadness the kid hadn't known was possible until that very moment. He wasn't crying, but Allison wasn't sure that would be true for the entire day.
"Okay, doc, let's get started."
Chapter Three
If there was one thing he shouldn't be doing right now, it was this. Still, Matthew couldn't stop staring at the pay phone. He knew her number, or rather, knew how to find it. Matthew figured out a couple decades ago that phone companies didn't assign numbers randomly. They wanted the customer to think that, of course, but it didn't make a lot of sense in the larger picture of the world. It would be easy to have a computer program come up with endless amounts of permutations of ten numbers and assign them at random, crossing them off the list of possibilities when they were used, but how would that help the government track someone? That meant the government had to go through courts and obtain warrants and any number of other things. So a few decades ago government officials sat down with the CEOs of the phone companies and made a deal no one could resist.
Matthew hadn't figured this out by studying history; he figured it out by studying the numbers. What he discovered was that they are assigned using a combination of a person's name and social security number. Different letters combined with different numbers gave different possible combinations, so even when someone changed their number, the government could track them down if necessary. Today? He imagined all they needed to do was press a single button and see every possible number for each person they were looking for, then ping them to see which one was active. Each person probably had around ten possible numbers they could use in a lifetime. Matthew still knew the permutation of how the numbers were created, even after ten years of practically living in a dream. Rally had only ten numbers she could be using, and he remembered the three she had used before he went into The Wall.
He was sure she had it changed after his arrest, so there were seven combinations left to try.
And yet, to call them would be the dumbest thing he could do. Why call her? She'd report him the very minute they got off the phone. They would trace the number to here and then know he was heading east. If they had any sense, it would be easy to find out a Greyhound Bus went through this route and stopped at this gas station to fill up and let people grab something to eat. The call wouldn't throw him back in cuffs but it would move him a lot closer to that point.
And yet, here he was looking at the phone, holding two quarters someone on the bus lent him.
When it came down to it though, he knew he couldn't tell himself no with Rally.
He walked to the pay phone, picked it up and dropped the quarters in. He ran the permutation in his head, coming up with the most likely candidate for his ex-wife's phone number and then dialed.
Matthew knew he was right when he heard the first ring; the number was active and he would soon be talking to the last person on Earth he loved and at the same time setting himself up to see an actual gas chamber, one where he would die instead of float in a coma.
This is your problem. Right here. This is why you were caught and this is why you'll be caught again. You're addicted to idiocy. You're addicted to doing the dumbest possible thing you can at any given moment and then hoping your brains can get you out of it. You're going to die because you couldn't leave Rally out of this. Because you have to let her know you're getting your son even though she will never come along. She'd rather turn you in than help you.
Matthew didn't hang up.
"Hello?"
She'd aged. He could hear it in the slight strain of her voice box. What had he thought would happen? That she would remain unchanged while time went on around her, looking the same as she did when they gassed him ten years ago? That maybe she was gassed too and had just recently escaped her prison as well? No, only he looked the same; Rally went ahead and did what was normal, she aged.
"Hey, Rally," he said.
She said nothing for a few seconds and then, "Is this a joke?"
"No. It's no joke."
"How?" She spoke only that one word.
"It doesn't really matter, does it? Not by any legal means, which is all you're really concerned with."
More silence permeated the line.
"What are you going to do?" He didn't hear any fear in her voice. Had he thought he might? That she might be frightened he would come for her? There were reasons for him to, of course, but Matthew wouldn't. Not ever—and apparently she knew it too.
"I'm going to do the same thing I've been trying to do for twenty years. I'm going to get our son back."
Matthew could hear the tears over the phone as she wept.
"You can't get him back, Matthew," She said.
"You know that's not true. I'm going to bring him back. I just wanted you to know."
He heard her trying to stifle the tears, probably wiping her face and nose with a tissue. "I'm going to hang up, Matt, and then I'm going to call the police."
Matthew breathed in deep, closing his eyes. He didn't know if he would love her like he did if she had decided to do anything else but that. He was here, outside of The Wall, because he was going to see his son again. He wanted her to know that, but he also wanted to know that not all of her had changed.
"You using your maiden name now?" He asked, eyes still closed.
"I'm remarried, Matthew."
"Oh."
Neither spoke for a few seconds.
"I have to go," Rally said. "You don't have to do this. You can disappear. You can live any life you want, solve any number of problems you see, but you don't have to go through with this. You can let it go; I have, Matthew. I've let the past go and I've forgiven. You can too."
"There doesn't have to be any such thing as the past, Rally. Our son can live and there's no reason he shouldn't."
"Fine then. Goodbye, Matthew. Don't call again—you know the line will be tapped."
He heard the click from her side of the line. He stood next to the pay phone, looking at the large bus in front of him, watching the travelers walk slowly back to it with bags of pork rinds and plastic bottles filled with soda. None of them noticed him.
Matthew Brand hung up the phone and went to his seat at the back of the bus.
Chapter Four
The Devil's Dream
By Jeffrey Dillan
Prologue
It was so hot you almost wished they had waited until winter to have the funeral. Everyone in the cemetery was sweating, some through their
clothes. Women fanned themselves even as they cried. Men hung their heads low and continuously wiped their brow. The temperature had risen to one hundred degrees, but still the gravesite could hold little more. All of these people had come to watch a casket lower six feet into the ground, to bury Sargent Michael Murray.
His wife was dressed in the appropriate black, her child's hand in hers. She didn't cry and I think that was mainly because of the seven year old next to her leg. An effort I know I couldn't have matched.
I didn't know Michael Murray but I stood and watched everyone sweating and crying. Perhaps it's morbid of me, but the entire time, I kept thinking that they need not have the funeral during the height of summer. That, they could, because of the body's advanced decomposition, have the funeral on Christmas Eve if they wished. They didn't wish to though and I understood. Sargent Michael Murray had been missing for a year, a horrible, horrible year for Mrs. Murray. Now, she had her husband's bones and she wanted them buried so that she and her son could finally begin to mourn.
"He didn't mean to," Sophia Murray told me after the funeral, finally letting the tears flow that she had locked up in her head for most of the day. "He cried at night about it to me. It was a legitimate accident and that's why he was found not guilty. He hated what happened." She paused to blot her eyes. "I even thought he might commit suicide over it."
A fresh bout of tears appeared and I told her we could do this later.
"No. No. We'll do it now. He didn't mean to kill that boy and that fucking psycho deserves a lot worse than what he's getting. My husband was a good man who made a mistake. That doesn't mean he deserves to die. It doesn't mean I should have to bury him."
Mrs. Murray broke down then and her crying didn't stop. I imagine, two years after our brief interaction, a part of her is still crying. Begging for her husband to return, begging to stop her husband from going to work on the day he shot a black boy on a street in Atlanta, Georgia. Gunned him down, because, in all honesty, he looked like a thug that the police were after. A thug that had allegedly raped two women the past week (both of them white, and did that play into any of the officer's decision?). Four officers had been there that day, and all four had unloaded their weapons on the boy heading home.
Did the black kid, Hilman Brand, do everything he could to avoid dying? Certainly not. He didn't listen to the police. He continued walking, although he didn’t start running—but as many white, conservative commentators made known after the shooting: he was dressed like a 'thug'.
Hillman Brand wasn't a thug, though.
Does any of it matter now? Does Hillman Brand's death matter at all? Does Michael Murray's? Do the other three cops who opened fire matter? People die every day and police officers kill plenty each year. Trials are publicized weekly and crazies are born every day. This story, when compared with the thousands of others in the past decade, should float on as the rest have before it. Except it won't. Not even the government, who ailed for years trying to find Matthew Brand, will let this thing pass because they won't put him in an electric chair and be done with it.
This story isn't different because Hillman Brand was an adopted black boy, or that he was adopted by a very wealthy family. This story isn't different because the killer targeted only cops. This story, and thus this book, is a love story between a father and his son, and the depths that such love could take them. I didn't know that when I began writing. I thought Matthew Brand was insane and the cops were probably criminals.
Maybe Matthew Brand is insane, but if so, love brought him there.
I dedicate this book to the four cops that lost their lives.
I dedicate this book to the person who killed those cops, Matthew Brand, who lost his son.
Chapter Five
The first night without Allison and Jerry already wasn't sleeping. He spoke to her around ten and told her he was getting in bed, which he had, but now he just lay there with the television on in front of him. Around midnight, the Brand stories began. He couldn't remember what he had been watching, maybe reruns of Friends, but it was broken up by a news alert.
He changed the channel, wanting to stay away from it, but that did little as every channel he went to had basically the same story.
Matthew Brand escaped from The Wall.
Matthew Brand last seen in Texas.
Somehow though, they managed to take those two sentences, the only thing they really knew, and stretch it out into hour-long segments. They weren't simply going to report the news and let it go until more information arrived. No, they were going to whip the public up into a frenzy. He left the television on, unable to find anything worth watching and unable to fall asleep. He thought about grabbing the book off the nightstand, but he finished it last night and didn't want to restart it.
Might as well learn about what Allison was up against. He remembered a good deal of it, more than he thought when she woke him up this morning telling him she had to go. He was already sure that every major station would have some kind of recounting of Matthew Brand's life playing within the next couple of days.
What Allison was up against.
The words echoed through his head like it was a canyon. As if his wife was going into hand-to-hand combat with Brand. She was directing a massive team trying to monitor his whereabouts and all his communications. She wasn't up against anyone. She was leading a large force against one man, and for some reason, that made Jerry just the slightest bit bitter. Maybe it was because by the time Allison called tonight, her daughter was already in bed. Maybe it was because Marley didn't even ask today if she'd be able to talk to her Mom. Maybe it was because he sat here unable to sleep because she had left again.
He closed his eyes, took a big breath, and let it out slowly.
None of that was fair. He knew her career when he asked for her hand. He knew what it entailed. None of this was a surprise to him. Even so, this time felt different. It felt like what was supposed to be a rare thing. The type of manhunt that made careers. These were becoming a regular part of their lives. He didn't mention it to Allison this morning because she knew as well as he, but this was the third in a year. The third time she'd left him and Marley and gone off to another life that he couldn't ever truly understand. Most spouses, they could relate to a day at a job. They could relate to the reason the spouse went to that job. Bills to pay, mouths to feed, and the all-consuming struggle to make ends meet. Not in their case though. This wasn't about meeting ends each month, not for Allison—he understood that part—what he didn't understand was the nearly fanatical dedication for this job. The willingness to sacrifice almost everything if need be for it.
It was dawning on Jerry, after fifteen years of marriage, that he might not understand his wife. That he might not know the person he slept next to each night.
"Stop," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the drone of the television. You know Allison. You're just upset because Marley and you are here and she's not. That's all.
He reached for the remote and turned the television off. Brand would be on until Allison brought him in and there wasn't any need to sit here and watch it tonight. Just lie in the dark until you fall asleep.
Eventually his worrying stopped and he found the sweet darkness of rest.
* * *
Ten years had passed since Jeffrey Dillan wrote a book. Eight years since it was published. He didn't need to write another book, didn't really need to do anything ever again as far as money was concerned, but that didn't mean he didn't want to.
He had tried to write. Three separate times. Three separate murders in which he went to three different towns and interviewed hundreds of people. Jeffrey did the leg work, knew the murders inside and out, knew the murderers as if he were their parents, and nearly wept for the victims. Months on each project, collecting hundreds of pages of notes, all for naught. He sat down to write countless times, on each of the novels, and for a few days the words would come—once they even came for a week. Then they stopped, just dried up. He t
hought it was something inside him for a while, that he had lost the ability that he honed since the age of twelve. It took him three novels to understand he had nothing to do with it. Matthew Brand commanded his writer's block. After The Devil's Dream what was the point of continuing? What could he have to say, writing about second rate murderers, that hadn't been said before? There were no other Matthew Brands and so there were no more books for Jeffrey.
After the third try, he put away the notes and retired.
He still wanted to work, to reignite that passion that had consumed so much of his life. He couldn't though, so instead he drank. It was a slow process, replacing the research and writing with the bottle, but it was a process that he enjoyed. If he wasn't going to be writing, he might as well do something else fun. At eight in the morning, he had a bottle of vodka and a bottle of orange juice sitting on the counter. His head didn't hurt because he took it easy the night before. He'd gone to dinner with his agent, out of friendship rather than any hope of a book. He last spoke to Lecia six months ago and no mention of a book had come up, nor had it last night. She no longer considered the great Jeffrey Dillan a part of her work, he supposed. She would never drop him, of course not, because if for any reason he decided to actually put something out, millions of dollars would rain down on everyone involved. So she never mentioned him writing but she never mentioned him finding another agent, and Jeffrey was pretty much determined that she would never need mention his drinking, either. No one need mention that.
Looking at the juice not yet poured and the vodka an inch deep in his glass, he thought (not for the first time) that it might be a problem. Not just yet, because obviously he hadn't had a drink last night, so he could stop if he needed—or at least put it to the side. Plus, what did it matter? He had no book in the hopper and he had the money to drink Belvedere for the rest of his life. He could probably even hire a little Mexican to come in here and squeeze fresh oranges for the juice if he wanted. The checks weren't nearly as big as they had been eight years ago, but were still deposited every single quarter.
