“A former federal employee is alleging the government is not only listening in on phone calls and reading emails and texts between suspected terrorists or suspicious types in other countries,” Remy explains, “but that they’re doing it to everyone here in the U.S. too, regardless of who they are. They’re just doing it with everyone and collecting these massive amounts of information on the population.”
They’re watching you through the phone.
“Seems hard to believe,” I tell her, my heart suddenly racing.
She arches an eyebrow. “Does it?”
“That would have to be one hell of an undertaking, given the number of people, phones and computers in this country.”
“But not impossible.”
I shrug, feigning indifference. “Be nice if government was that efficient, but…”
“I don’t know, Cam. Big Brother and all that, it’s getting out of control. Privacy is becoming a thing of the past. We have the right to talk on our telephones or email and text without worrying about the government listening in on every conversation.”
“Why would they care what you’re talking about on the phone?”
“Not the point.”
“Unless it has some bearing on national security, why would they care or waste their time?”
“It’s like the argument that if you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide,” she counters. “That may be true, but it’s hardly the point. It’s about the basic human right to privacy.”
Visions of the young man drift through my mind. Why didn’t he say they were listening to us through the phone? He said they were watching…
“It’s not exactly easy to get a court order to listen in on someone’s phone line. Believe me, it’d make my job a lot easier if we could monitor these people that way whenever the hell we wanted, but we can’t. There are laws, Remy.”
“You think these types care about laws?”
“What types?”
“Probably some shadow group hiding behind national security like they all do.”
“Shadow group?”
Remy gives me a coy smile. “Too tin foil hat of me?”
“Little bit.”
“Hey, you never know,” she says with a wink, “you know?”
“Come on, you really believe we’re under government surveillance?”
“Well, no. But it’s not like it’s never happened. Look what the Stasi accomplished back in the East Germany days. And that was years ago. With the technology available now…”
Don’t use the house phone. They’re watching you.
“This isn’t East Germany.”
“Doesn’t matter, we’re all human beings. Same flaws, same weaknesses, same susceptibility to corruption and abuse of power.”
“That much is true anyway.”
This time it’s Remy who shrugs, her attention drawn back to the TV and the local weather report now being delivered by a perky blonde meteorologist in a skintight yellow dress. She reminds me of a giant misshapen lemon.
“Honey?” Remy asks suddenly.
I look to her. She appears concerned.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I—I’m fine. Just a little tired is all.”
She smiles and pats the section of couch next to her.
“Actually, sweetie, I’m going to skip the news this morning if you don’t mind.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Think I’ll grab a shower a little earlier than normal. I’ve got a long day ahead of me at work today, and a backlog of paperwork to get done.”
“You’re not going to be late tonight, are you?”
“Don’t plan to be, no.”
“Good,” she says, smiling again. “I’m making chicken stir-fry for dinner tonight.”
“Sounds great,” I tell her as I start for the stairs.
But she’s already back under the spell of the television, and I’ve slipped under the waves surrounding me of late, waves that pull me down beneath the surface, where they surely intend to drown me.
As I ascend the stairs, I begin trying to convince myself that the strange man in the yard is nothing to worry about.
I fail. Miserably.
* * *
The lone window in the master bathroom overlooks our backyard. I stand there watching the fire pit and the chairs and the fence, as if expecting them to yield pertinent information that will help me understand what the hell took place out there earlier. The steam from the shower engulfs me, fogs up the mirror over the double sinks and fills the room with a ghostly mist. I want to hide in it, but there is false solace here, no means of escape. Like whispers in an empty house, echoes of unanswered prayers heard by no one, it hisses in my ears and reminds me how dangerous it is to balance one’s life on the edge of a razor blade.
There’s nothing you can do, Cam. There’s nothing anyone can do.
I turn away from the window and back into the fog; watch my distorted reflection in the mirror. I look so old, so tired. Yes, that’s it, tired—hopelessly, irreversibly tired—and it makes me think of the young man and the black bags beneath his eyes. His face comes to me, then fades away. But he remains, because he’s never truly left.
Already nude, I open the stall shower door and step inside, into the hot water. It feels good on my tight muscles, pulsing against my stiff neck and down across my shoulder blades, so I give myself to it completely.
“What’s happening to me?” I mutter the words, but the water running over my bowed head and across my open mouth even further slurs my speech. “Am I awake?”
I feel a sudden tightness in my chest, and wonder if I’m having a heart attack. Once a person hits forty these things become a concern. I tell myself it’s likely gas or simply stress, as I’m experiencing none of the other symptoms everyone always says they have. No tingling sensation, no shortness of breath, no sweating, no shooting pain down my left arm, no jaw pain, just pressure on my chest, like someone’s sitting on it with all their weight. Before I can think any more about it, I let out an enormous burp, the baritone sound bouncing along the shower walls and echoing all around me.
The pressure lessens, and by the time I’ve stepped out of the shower to dry off, it’s gone completely. But as I reach for the towel on the bar a foot or so away, I see red smeared across the top of my hand. I raise both hands closer to my face. My knuckles are scraped raw and bloody and look as if I’ve been punching a cement wall.
Shocked and confused as to how I could’ve missed this prior, I go to the sink, turn on the hot water and reach for a bar of soap on the counter. My hand freezes above the soap dish, and then begins to tremble.
The scrapes and blood are gone. Frantically, I inspect my other hand. It’s fine. But it’s shaking now as well. I step back from the sink and drop down onto the toilet.
Sitting there on the closed lid and dripping on the floor, I stare at my hands and concentrate hard as I can. A moment later, the shaking ceases.
The mirror is completely fogged over from the steam, but somewhere within all the blurry mess, I can see the vague outline of my body reflected back. Not quite me, but something similar…close…
And above my reflection, written with a finger in the condensation, is a perfectly legible sentence.
Something bad is going to happen.
CHAPTER TWO
After a thirty-minute commute to Boston, I park in a lot our department uses not far from South Station, then walk the remaining three blocks to my office. I force myself to admit that the writing on the mirror could only have been written by me. Apparently I’d forgotten doing it, didn’t realize I had, or blocked it out somehow. There is no other reasonable explanation. I’m losing my grip on reality, and it’s getting worse. That’s the point. I feel like a thief slipping through the world trying to appear inconspicuous and undetected but all the while knowing it’s only a matter of time before I get caught. And I know Remy is beginning to worry, she’s becoming suspicious. She’s noticing
the signs, the changes in me, and I’ll only be able to put her off for so long.
The morning air is brisk but not too cold yet, and the walk does me good, allows me time to pull myself together and ready myself for the day ahead. All that awaits me is eight hours of hanging on and pretending everything’s fine when it’s anything but, I know that all too well at this point, but there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.
When did this all start? I haven’t always been like this, but I can’t pinpoint a jumping-off point. It just…happened. No warning or known reason. Is that even possible? Do people simply lose it; just suddenly begin to slip away into madness?
I always used to wonder if insane people knew they were crazy. I suppose some have no idea whatsoever, but maybe that comes later. Maybe the actual process of losing one’s mind is different. I can feel myself drifting away, things making less and less sense, and with every passing day I feel less like myself. That’s worse, because it’s like someone else is slowly taking over. He looks and sounds like me, but he’s not me. He’s someone else. Someone I don’t know. And I can’t stop him.
Briefcase in hand, I hurry across the street, dodging cars as I go, and move through the double front doors of my office building. After crossing a small lobby, I wait for the elevator with a couple other people who work in the building but not in my department. Though I recognize both, I don’t know their names. We’ve never said a word to each other. Our interactions are always the same, slight nods of recognition followed by brief noncommittal smiles and then a silent ride to our floors.
My office is a satellite, a branch of the Office of Public Safety and Security, and is located on the sixth floor of a nondescript government building in the Back Bay section of the city. It’s a small office (and one of a few others in the Commonwealth), that specializes in registering and tracking registered sex offenders. Our office houses six caseworkers (including myself), and our supervisor, Rosalind Calhoun. It’s a relatively bare bones kind of office, but I always spend more time in the field than behind my desk anyway. It’s a personal preference in how I do the job. It varies from employee to employee. Even though the procedures we must follow are written in stone and cannot ever vary legally, we still have our individual styles in terms of how we best implement those procedures and get the job done.
I haven’t even reached my desk when Rosalind signals me into her office.
A cramped and cluttered area, her workspace is essentially a little glass cube positioned at the rear of the office. As Rosalind is notoriously disagreeable until she has her first few cups of coffee, being called into her office first thing in the morning is never a good sign. When she closes the door behind me, I know it’s even worse.
“Morning,” I say in what I hope is a pleasant tone. “What’s up?”
“Have a seat,” Rosalind says evenly, motioning to one of the chairs in front of her desk. “We need to talk a minute.”
Without making eye contact, she moves around to her high-back leather swivel chair and, with a sigh, drops into it. In her midfifties, she’s been working for various government agencies for over thirty years, and this one in particular, for the last twenty. Divorced, she has two children and five grandchildren, and lives in nearby Revere with her boyfriend. Except for a four-year stint in the military, she’s worked as a public servant for the Commonwealth in one capacity or another for her entire adult life. Although we’ve worked together the last twelve years, except for the occasional department-related function or Christmas party, we never socialize, so I really don’t know her outside the office. As a boss, however, she is fair and effective and someone I’ve always gotten along with quite well professionally.
My hope is that her need to see me is related to some new case, improperly filed paperwork or something equally mundane. But when she still doesn’t make eye contact, and instead snatches a pen from her desk and taps it repeatedly against her blotter, I know this is something more, as she only does this when she has something serious to discuss or is about to hand out a major ass-chewing. I sneak a quick peek over my shoulder. Although everyone else has arrived, no one looks in our direction.
“How’re you doing, Cam?” Rosalind asks with an air of what can only be caution.
“I’m fine.”
“No. I mean it.” Her dark eyes finally meet mine. “How are you?”
“Roz, I’m fine,” I assure her. “Why?”
“The last week or so you…well…you haven’t exactly been yourself.” A trim, fit and orderly woman with a penchant for pantsuits and high heels, her black hair is styled in a super short Afro she’s likely worn since her days in the military, although in the last few years it has become flecked with gray. Except for her power red lipstick, her makeup is hard to detect, if she wears it at all, and when I look at her, I am always drawn instantly to the intensity of her eyes. Both beautiful and somewhat intimidating when she wants them to be, they stare at me now with an unwavering sense of purpose. Cool, detached, all business. “You’ve been acting peculiarly. You seem distracted…troubled.”
“I’ve had a heavy caseload lately, that’s all.”
“The budget cuts have made more work for all of us,” she reminds me as she sits back in her swivel chair. “But that’s not the issue here. Is everything all right at home?”
The question catches me off-guard. “At home?”
“Yes, at home. Is everything all right?”
“I don’t understand. What’s this all about?”
“Are you having problems at home, Cam?” she presses.
“Frankly, Roz, it’s inappropriate for you to question me about my personal life.” I offer a smile but can tell by the way it feels that it’s likely coming off as stiff and forced. “But yes, everything’s fine at home. What’s going on? Have I done something wrong?”
“I’m concerned.”
I feign confusion. “About what?”
“You,” she answers. “Obviously I’m concerned about you. You’ve been at this job a long time and I’ve never seen you act like this before.”
“Your concern is appreciated—sincerely—but what have I done to warrant it?”
“Remember our talk last week?” Rosalind sits forward again and this time plants her forearms on her desk. “When I asked if you were feeling all right and you told me everything was fine, that you were just tired?”
A vague memory of this comes to me, a brief conversation in passing I hadn’t given much thought to. “Yes, I remember.”
“Well things have only gotten worse since then.”
I want nothing more than to get out of her office and to be as far away from this conversation as I can get, but I’m trapped. At least for the time being, I have to stay even and do my best to come off like none of this is a big deal. “If I seemed distracted or—I’m sorry—what was the other word you used?”
After a beat she says, “Troubled.”
“Right. Troubled. Okay. If I’ve seemed distracted or troubled, I apologize. I’m swamped with this current caseload and I’ve been working too hard, I guess. Maybe I’m overdue for a vacation, just need some rest and a break from all the…”
“Yeah,” Roz says, sighing again. “Thing is, it’s not just me. Your coworkers have noticed your behavior of late as well, and it’s having an effect on the entire office. You’ve been mumbling to yourself and you act like you’re somewhere else entirely. People ask you questions or try to talk with you and oftentimes you walk right past without even acknowledging them, and not because you’re being rude, but because—at least this is how it appears, correct me if I’m wrong—you simply don’t hear them or in some cases don’t even realize they’re there.”
“Roz, I—”
“The other day Marianne said you were sitting at your desk staring into space with tears running down your face.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I say, laughing lightly. “I did no such thing.”
“Are you suggesting Marianne’s lying?”
; “No, but—I don’t know, I—maybe she misinterpreted what she saw.” As I fumble for more answers, I remember coming to in the office a few days before and wiping tears from my face. I thought I’d fallen asleep, but couldn’t explain the tears, then or now. “The point is—”
“There’s also been a complaint.”
“Someone’s made a complaint about me?” I ask, mystified.
She looks away, disgusted. “Yes, a registrant. Alfred Copeland.”
My mind races and quickly locks on the name. A new registrant I visited a few days before. But I can’t come up with any reason why he’d complain, I remember it going smoothly, a routine visit and registration. “Is it a formal complaint?”
“No. I spoke with Mr. Copeland’s attorney on the telephone and—”
“He has an attorney? How’d he manage that so quickly and with no money?”
“Evidently, and I have no idea. Regardless, I apologized for your behavior and he didn’t push the issue, but if what he told me is accurate, he had every right to, Cam. Whatever we think of these people, we still maintain a level of professionalism and—”
“Come on, Roz, seriously?” I place my briefcase on the floor next to me and fold my arms across my chest. “In the twelve years I’ve worked here, have you ever known me to behave unprofessionally?”
“No,” she says.
“What was it I supposedly did?”
“He claims he allowed you into his apartment with no resistance and that you were in the process of welcoming him to the Commonwealth and going over the normal procedures when you suddenly became hostile.” Roz shuffles through some papers on her desk until she finds a small notepad. After flipping through several pages, she apparently lands on the notes she took while speaking with Copeland. “He said you became very quiet, and he thought you might be having some sort of seizure as you wouldn’t answer him and apparently became completely unresponsive. Then he says you suddenly snapped out of it and turned hostile, telling him he was evil and that the Devil was there in his apartment with the two of you. He said you told him you knew this because you could see the Devil watching him. Then you took your paperwork, angrily demanded he sign it and exited the premises.” She tosses the pad aside. “Can’t imagine why he’d want to complain about that, can you?”
Rogue Page 2
