Delirious

by Daniel Palmer

  Charlie pulled off the blankets and worked himself up into the middle of the backseat. He put his arms around the front seats and gently touched both Joe’s and Rachel’s shoulders with his hands.

  “Thank you,” he breathed. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank anyone yet,” Rachel said. “We’re not out of this. Not by a long shot.” She avoided eye contact, and he could detect in the tone of her voice more than a hint of regret. Perhaps the adrenaline of the moment had worn off. Perhaps she had a chance to question her actions more objectively. It was clear Charlie had a long way to go before he was a free man in her eyes.

  “I understand,” said Charlie. “But what you did back there for me is something I will never forget.”

  “You’re my brother, Charlie. You’d do the same for me,” Joe said.

  Charlie squeezed Joe’s broad shoulder with his left hand. They drove west without speaking for a while. Rachel finally broke the silence.

  “I want to see those notes,” Rachel said. “I can’t drive with you any farther until I see this for myself.”

  “Take this exit,” Charlie said, pointing right.

  Joe pulled off the MassPike and into a large service area just past Exit 7W in Framingham. Given the volume of cars pulling in and out of the parking lot, the service area offered terrific cover. It had all the trappings of what made a Mass Turnpike service center the ultimate pit stop: McDonald’s, Honey Dew Donuts, and a bunch of other fastfood restaurants, all inside a large shopping complex. They parked the Camry near a picnic bench and got out.

  Charlie sat on the opposite side of the picnic table from Rachel. The disappointment in her eyes overpowered the fear she should have been feeling, given her involvement with a fugitive. Charlie wanted her to believe in his innocence. He wanted her to believe the way he believed.

  Joe, however, needed no convincing. He operated on something much more persuasive. Instinct.

  “Show me the notes,” Rachel said.

  Charlie fished in his front pants pocket and pulled out two notes. The first was the Post-it note he had found in his BlackBerry holder. The other was the one on the Seacoast Motel stationery. From his other pocket he took out the photograph.

  “Joe,” Charlie said, “this photograph is very upsetting. I just want you to know that I didn’t do this. I know that you’ll believe me. But I have to show this to Rachel.”

  Charlie slid the notes across the picnic table. Rachel picked them up and put a hand to her mouth when she turned the photograph over and read the writing on the back. Joe saw the photograph and pulled it from her hand.

  “Joe …,” Charlie said.

  Joe read the back of the photograph and gave Charlie a ferocious and terrifying stare. “You wouldn’t hurt her.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “I would never hurt our mother,” Charlie said. “I would kill myself before I’d do that. In fact I almost did. I was in my car at the Seacoast Motel. Don’t ask me how my car got there. I have no idea. Anyway, I had a gun, loaded, ready to pull the trigger. These notes stopped me.”

  Rachel continued to read the notes. Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a pen and piece of paper. She put them in front of Charlie.

  “Write,” she said.

  “What do you want me to write?” Charlie asked.

  “Write the note we found at Walderman,” she said.

  Charlie did as instructed and showed it to Rachel. She studied it with the intensity and focus he found so attractive.

  If only …

  He let the idea pass before it hollowed him out even more.

  “Amazing,” Rachel said. “I don’t know what to make of it.”

  “There is only one possible answer,” Charlie said. “These notes are machine made. They’re computer-generated.”

  Joe looked at them and nodded. “The u is the only letter that looks different. But each u looks exactly the same in each note. Only one different is the note Charlie just wrote. It doesn’t have the darker extra lines at the base of the letter.”

  “Because I didn’t write these notes,” Charlie said. “The only note that I know I wrote is this one.” He held up the note he had just written.

  “I don’t understand,” Rachel said. Her voice was hard to hear over the trucks and cars roaring past. “I agree, Charlie, this doesn’t look right. These letters look exactly the same. Now that I’m looking at them together, they look too similar.”

  “Sort of like type?” Charlie asked.

  Rachel thought a moment. She nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Like type.”

  “But how is that possible?” Joe asked.

  “If somebody were smart enough and made a font library out of my handwriting, they could write any note that they wanted. It would be indiscernible from my penmanship,” Charlie explained. “Except that this program had a bug with the letter u. Perhaps it was a glitch in the software the author didn’t notice. It’s really only evident when compared to other samples.”

  “And now that you mention it, Rachel,” Joe said, “these notes are almost too similar. Real handwriting would always have some variation in it, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not a handwriting expert,” Rachel said. “But I’ve been around them enough. Psychiatrists use it all the time, same as the police, when we build psychological profiles. I have examined samples from different cases and patients. But I agree with Joe. Penmanship is never this perfect.”

  Charlie felt a wave of relief wash over him. He no longer saw doubt in Rachel’s eyes. Doubt had been replaced with confusion. Still, it was progress.

  “But there’s so much more that doesn’t make sense,” Rachel said. “At least one person is dead. They have the body. And the incident with Anne Pedersen, how do you explain the paranoia? It’s symptomatic of somebody with schizophrenic or paranoid delusional thinking. That came from you, Charlie, not these notes.”

  “It came from experiences I had,” Charlie said. “But I agree I can’t explain any of it.”

  “So where do we go from here?” Joe asked.

  “If it wasn’t me who wrote these notes,” Charlie said, “we start by figuring out who did.”

  Chapter 60

  They continued their westward drive along the Pike, away from Boston. Charlie sat in the front passenger seat, while Joe drove and Rachel had a seat in the back. Rachel had the notes, the ones they now believed were machine produced, fanned out on the seat beside her. She was deep in thought, tapping into her limited experience with handwriting analysis to see if anything else might be learned from them. Joe had fished out a baseball cap from the Camry’s trunk for Charlie and had also given him an extra pair of sunglasses he kept in the glove compartment. With the added cover, Charlie felt it was safe to sit up front. Even so, he never looked at passing motorists and kept a keen eye out for the police.

  They listened to 1030 WBZ news radio for updates on the investigation. The Yardley murder and Charlie’s unknown whereabouts were, of course, the lead story. Urging listeners to contact police with any information on Charlie’s whereabouts, the report dominated most of the five minutes of news coverage before the station went to commercial. Charlie turned off the radio using a touch screen button on the InVision control display.

  Rachel sighed from the backseat. “I can’t do anything with these,” she said. “What are you going to do, Charlie? Run forever? You’ll get caught.”

  “I’ll make a new identity. I’m a computer guy. I can do that easily,” said Charlie.

  “But you might also be sick,” Rachel said. “We haven’t figured out everything yet. For all I know, you wrote the software used to write these notes.”

  Charlie lowered his sunglasses and gave Rachel his best “you don’t really believe that, do you?” look.

  “Well, all I’m saying is we have no plan,” Rachel pointed out. “And I’m not sure I can support just letting you run. If we’re wrong, things could get much worse. More people could get hurt.”

>   “What are you suggesting, Rachel?” Charlie asked. He kept his eyes focused forward.

  Joe stayed silent.

  “I’m suggesting that you turn yourself in to the police. Let’s get them to look at this. We need more help to piece this together.”

  “There are other things I haven’t told you,” Charlie said.

  Rachel leaned forward so her body extended into the front seat area. “Like what?” she asked.

  “Like, I found body parts in my motel room. Two hands. And they weren’t from the same person.”

  “Jesus,” Rachel whispered.

  “Not to mention my car was parked outside the motel,” Charlie added. “Our father’s gun and a bloody hacksaw were in the trunk. The police probably have already recovered the body parts, and they have the car, because I crashed it.”

  “Charlie, that does it. You have to turn yourself in,” Rachel insisted. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to call the police.”

  “Rachel, please,” Charlie said, but not forcibly. In a way, the idea of turning himself in felt like a relief. Once in custody, he could get Randal to help. Whoever or whatever was responsible for framing him, Charlie didn’t have the time or freedom to figure it out. “They’ll charge me with murder.”

  “You’ll plead not guilty. You’ll get a lawyer, and then we’ll work together to try to get to the truth.” Rachel paused. “No matter what that truth might be.”

  Charlie took in a deep breath. He held it a moment before exhaling. What choice was there? He could run. The question was, for how long? “The longer this goes on, the worse it is for you and Joe,” he said. He sounded like a man resolved to his fate.

  “Good. Good.” Rachel nodded.

  “There’s a state police station a few miles down the road,” Charlie said. “We can go there. I’ll explain everything. We just need to make sure we have a consistent story that absolves you both of any accountability. Sound good?”

  “Yes,” Rachel said.

  “Joe, what do you think?” Charlie asked.

  Joe didn’t answer. Instead, an unexpected sound filled the car. The sound wasn’t strange because it was unfamiliar. No, it was very familiar. It was music, jazz music. But the idea of Joe listening to jazz music after all these years, given the effect it had on his brain, was as incongruous as the sound of seagull cries in a Midwestern city.

  The music continued to spill out of the InVision speakers. Charlie checked and confirmed that the radio was turned off. Yet the music continued to play, even growing louder. Charlie saw that the CD player was empty, too. Where was this music coming from? Charlie wondered. Then came a bright flash of white light, not unlike the powerful strobes underneath an airplane’s wings. The light pulsed in regular intervals and seemed to emanate from the large quartz In-Vision display screen.

  Charlie could identify the song. Its melodic theme was unmistakable. The blue notes defined its unique melody, which was expertly played on the trumpet by one of the all-time jazz greats. Behind the melody, he could hear the syncopated rhythms that gave this particular tune its infectious and unforgettable groove.

  This had been their father’s favorite song. It was this song that had inspired their father’s passion for jazz in the first place. The notes of this song were in many ways an extension of their father’s heart. Joe and Charlie had listened to this very song while they read the note he had left for them on the kitchen table. It was the song that Joe’s doctors eventually concluded had both a tonal uniqueness and emotional context capable of triggering powerful seizures in Joe’s brain. Musicogenic epilepsy. Joe never had another seizure after he stopped listening to that song. The song playing was the Miles Davis classic “So What.”

  Charlie knew the symptoms well. Joe’s past episodes had been forever implanted in his memory. He was afraid Joe had regressed and had had a seizure the night they fought over the kill list. Now he was certain Joe was having one. The patient first lost track of time as they entered into a trancelike state. They could respond to verbal commands but most often were not aware of their actions, as if they were sleepwalking. They might hallucinate as well, the result of extreme neurological changes in the front temporal lobe.

  “What’s going on?” Rachel asked from the backseat.

  “I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Joe?”

  Again, Joe didn’t respond. But a hollow, mechanical voice answered in his place. It was a terrifyingly familiar voice at that. It was the emotionless, computer-programmed voice of InVision. But it was saying something Charlie had never even contemplated possible, an action it was certainly never programmed to perform.

  “Joe,” InVision said, “Charlie and Rachel are not your friends. They are going to kill your mother.”

  Joe nodded.

  InVision continued to speak. “You must trust me. I know what is going to happen. It’s up to you to stop them.”

  “Joe, what is going on?” Charlie shouted.

  InVision answered for him. “Joe, prepare to exit highway in three hundred yards. Then prepare to kill them.”

  Chapter 61

  Joe took Exit 7A, as InVision instructed. He had no idea where he was. He was driving but knew nothing more. How had he come to be in a car, or his intended destination, he couldn’t recall. His feet worked the gas and brake expertly. That was good. He didn’t want to get into an accident. He wasn’t sure that he even had his driver’s license. Mother wouldn’t want him to get in trouble about that.

  Joe looked to his right and saw a man seated next to him. The man looked familiar. Joe processed the man’s face. He squinted to help sharpen his focus. Then it came to him. It was not because he recognized the man. He actually didn’t. But the voice of his friend told him who he was. Yes, of course, Joe thought with a smile. How could I forget? The man was his brother. This was Charlie.

  He glanced in the rearview mirror. A woman was sitting in the back. She, too, looked familiar. Same as with Charlie, he couldn’t recall her name. Her name was Rachel, he suddenly remembered. She was his doctor.

  Joe came to the end of the ramp and turned right. He followed the flow of traffic. His brother and Rachel were shouting at him. They were talking too fast for him to understand. Their voices were loud. His ears rang as if he were hearing the loud crash of pots and pans dropping to the floor from a good height.

  Then they went silent, though their mouths continued moving. They looked at him as though they were in a Buster Keaton film. The image made Joe laugh aloud. When he laughed, they looked afraid. That made him laugh even louder.

  But what was he doing, and where was he going?

  Something was wrong, but what?

  If only … if only … if only his friend would talk to him.

  Then, as if a mind reader, his friend spoke. Unlike with Charlie and Rachel, Joe could hear his friend’s words clearly. They were like focused sonic beams directed into his eardrums. There wasn’t a word he couldn’t understand. Yet what his friend said made little sense.

  His brother and his doctor were going to kill his mother? How could that be?

  “I don’t believe you,” Joe told his friend.

  His friend didn’t give up that easily. “The doctor has drugs. Your brother has motive. He didn’t want to live with you anymore. With your mother dead, he could leave you all alone. He and Rachel will run away together. They will leave you all alone, Joe. That is, unless you stop them. Will you stop them, Joe?”

  There was nothing erratic about Joe’s driving. He drove with the flow of traffic. Out of the corner of his eye, Joe caught a glimpse of Charlie leaning forward and reaching for the InVision system. Joe couldn’t allow that to happen. That was where his friend lived. If Charlie shut off InVision, he would shut his friend off, too.

  What would happen then? he wondered. To his mother?

  Joe couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t. He needed more answers. There was no reason for him not to believe what his friend had said. These two were evil. And they had to be stopped. />
  Joe made an arching motion with his arm. With his hand held flat, palm facing down, he cut his arm through the air like a knife. The side of his hand connected with the soft flesh of Charlie’s throat. He saw his brother’s head snap backward. He seemed unconscious, but the seat belt kept Charlie’s body upright, while his head slumped forward until his chin rested against his chest.

  “Yes! Yes! You will save your mother, Joe! Yes!” his friend said.

  The doctor. Her name again … What was her name?

  Joe tried, but he couldn’t remember her name. Just when he thought it was coming to him, a flash of light made him lose his thought again. It didn’t matter. She was evil, too. No different than his brother. Her mouth was open wide, and it looked to Joe as if she was screaming. If she was, he couldn’t hear any noise coming from her. For all he knew, she could just be singing loudly. An opera star, like the ones he had watched with his mother on PBS. He thought again of his poor mother. He could remember the hospital where she lay.

  Did the voice just remind him of that? He wasn’t sure if his friend had just spoken to him. Everything was so confused. How long had he been driving? Where was he going? It didn’t matter. His mother mattered most of all. She didn’t deserve to die. He would never allow them to kill her.

  The woman started to reach for the door. He wondered if she could survive the impact of leaping out of the moving car. He didn’t care about that. But he wanted to know what she was going to do to his mother. If she got out of the car, he might never know. Joe pressed the automatic door lock and then the window lock. He made certain the woman couldn’t unlock the door from the backseat. She was his prisoner.

  “Let’s see you hurt Mom now,” he said.

  Then he turned off the main road and drove a quarter mile down another street. Why did he turn? Then he remembered. His friend, the voice, had told him to turn. It was guiding him.

  “Turn right on Drum Hill Road,” InVision directed.

  Joe turned right.

  “Follow road to the end,” InVision said.