Delirious

by Daniel Palmer

  “But what does that have to do with our wet clothes?” Charlie asked.

  Bean looked up at Charlie from his perch upon his high-tech Herman Miller chair with a wide, almost devious smile.

  “Because when this thing hit the water, the OS fried. That little cleaner application never got a chance to clean.”

  Charlie slapped Bean on the shoulder. “Did I ever tell you that I should have promoted you to the Magellan Team?” he asked.

  “No. I don’t think that was mentioned during my exit interview,” Bean said.

  “Look, Arthur,” Charlie said, “I’ll never forget this. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

  “Yeah, well, we’re not out of the woods yet,” Bean said. “I still need to get the IP.”

  Bean worked for several minutes before calling Charlie back over to his desk. “Got it,” he said.

  Using a Web browser, Bean plugged the IP address into a WHOIS database that listed the owner of all registered IP addresses. “A n IP is really no different than your home address,” he told Rachel and Joe. “If this guy uses a static I P, we’ll be able to give you the town, street, and apartment that it is registered to.”

  “And if not?” Charlie asked.

  Bean didn’t answer. He hit SEND and frowned at the search results. “Well, that’s a problem,” he said.

  “What? What?” Charlie asked.

  “This is a Verizon I P. I’d need to get into the Verizon database to pull up the physical address.”

  “Is that hard?” Charlie asked.

  “Hard?” Bean said with a laugh. “Try almost impossible. Unless you know somebody who works for Verizon.”

  “Your hacker club?” Charlie asked.

  Bean nodded. “I have contacts all over the world. It’s what we do for fun. Some people like to go to the movies. We like to find weaknesses in computer systems.”

  “And someone in your hacker posse works for Verizon?” said Charlie.

  “You name a major company and I can find you a hacker on the inside,” Bean said.

  “Arthur,” Charlie said, “I need that address.”

  Bean thought a moment. He looked at Rachel and Joe, who sat quietly and helplessly on his sofa.

  “He really has this …” Bean tried to recall the term.

  “Musicogenic epilepsy,” Rachel answered. “And yes, he really does.”

  “And somebody was controlling him?” Bean asked.

  Rachel and Joe nodded in unison.

  “So you’re saying that you’re being framed,” Bean said to Charlie.

  “There is no other explanation,” Charlie said.

  Bean nodded. “Okay, then let me see what I can do.”

  Rachel and Joe stood up and walked toward Arthur and stood behind Charlie.

  “There’s one more thing, Arthur,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah? What’s that?” Bean asked.

  “When you get the address,” Charlie said, “I’m going to need to borrow your car.”

  Chapter 72

  Arthur Bean didn’t require much convincing. At least, he didn’t require as much as Charlie had anticipated. After all, if things went poorly, then Bean could be charged with aiding and abetting a murder suspect. Perhaps it was the thrill of the mystery, or the power he enjoyed having over Charlie. Whatever his motivation, the only demand he made before handing over the car keys was that one of the three stay behind. It was, as he put it, a little collateral to ensure he’d get his car back. He also insisted that Charlie take one of his cell phones. It had a built-in GPS, so he could track their location. If the car went anywhere other than to the South Boston address, Bean made it clear that he wouldn’t hesitate to call the police. Charlie programmed Bean’s home number on the cell phone speed dial.

  “Why don’t you just go to the police?” Bean asked.

  Charlie had already thought that one through. “There is more evidence against me than I can even imagine,” he said. “The police aren’t going to be quick to believe me, and even if they did, I’m the only person I trust to make sure all the evidence I need to exonerate myself is collected. I’m not burdened with search warrant responsibility,” he added.

  Nobody disagreed with his logic. Rachel volunteered to stay behind, acknowledging that Joe’s physical size and strength might be an asset in what could be an extremely dangerous situation.

  “We’ll track you via GPS,” Rachel said. “If things go bad, call and we’ll get the police to the address ASAP.”

  Charlie thanked her. They embraced briefly. “I can’t thank you enough,” he whispered in her ear.

  She pulled him closer. “Just get what you need and get out,” she whispered back. “I’m looking forward to the dinner date you haven’t asked me out on yet.”

  Their eyes locked briefly. They held their embrace long enough for Joe to do a quick double take. Charlie held up a hand to keep his brother from saying something that didn’t need to be said. Moments later Charlie and Joe were in Arthur Bean’s Ford Taurus, heading east toward Boston.

  Bean’s source at Verizon found the static IP registered to an address on K Street in South Boston. Charlie knew the area well enough to know it was near Summer Street, but that was about it. The GPS would get them there without needing to stop for directions. Arthur also had a FAST LANE tag, which meant they could avoid risking detection by one of the MassPike toll collectors. So long as they drove at the speed limit and didn’t get into an accident, they felt confident they could make it into the city without being spotted.

  A bigger concern was what awaited them on K Street. Charlie hoped that whoever was behind this thought they were dead. Then they wouldn’t be in such a rush to close up shop and make their getaway.

  But who? Charlie wondered. Who had the skills to compromise the InVision OS with such insider knowledge? Who knew enough about the available security holes that enabled the sabotage? Not to mention Joe’s condition and his own history with Eddie Prescott?

  Charlie’s mind raced through the Magellan Team members. The name Harry Wessner jumped to the top of the list. It wasn’t the first time Charlie had considered Harry a suspect. Still, he couldn’t fathom what Harry had to gain from his demise. Then again, Harry had access to a lot of tech talent at SoluCent. Money? How would Charlie’s death help Harry Wessner financially? Charlie believed Harry could have pulled it off. But the unanswerable question remained why.

  It wasn’t until they were driving down K Street, along the wide, trash-strewn boulevard, flanked by tall, seemingly abandoned warehouses and factories, that he forgot all about the questions. He started to focus his energy on the most important thing of all. Getting the answers.

  Chapter 73

  They turned off Summer Street onto East First Street and drove until they crossed over to K Street. The address was on the corner of East First and K. As Charlie drove past K Street, he craned his neck to see if he could make out any of the street addresses on the massive brick-and-stone warehouses. He couldn’t and decided to pull over on East First and parallel park the Taurus behind a green Jeep Cherokee.

  The brothers walked in silence toward the intersection. The streets were eerily quiet, nearly void of pedestrians, and with hardly any traffic to speak of. This wasn’t a bustling part of town. Factories that had once been the epicenter of Boston’s long-ago manufacturing heart were now shuttered or enduring the painfully slow conversion process into condominiums. The area was mostly vacant, a concrete sea of construction sites, replete with trucks and heavy equipment resting aside large piles of rubble from crumbling buildings. It was the perfect place to hide.

  They came to the address and there found a steel door, held partially ajar by a crushed plastic milk container. A rat, only slightly smaller than a Chihuahua, scurried over the chipped and deteriorating concrete landing and slithered its seemingly boneless body into an impossibly tiny crack at the base of the foundation. Charlie jumped and Joe steadied him.

  “That’s a rat,” Joe said. “If that�
�s got you spooked, we’re in big trouble. You okay, brother?”

  Charlie blushed and then laughed at himself. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m fine. You sure you want to do this?” he asked.

  “We’re family,” Joe said. “So yeah, I don’t only want to do this. I have to. Besides, as much as I don’t like people using you, I don’t like the idea of them using me, either.”

  The address was now only an outline of rust from where the numbers once were, but it was still legible.

  “Thirteen thirty-three K Street,” Charlie said. “This is it.”

  They pushed open the door and entered into a dark, dank-smelling hallway that reeked of trash and neglect. Stairs led up into total blackness. A building permit on yellow card stock was taped to the inside wall. The building had been sold recently and authorized for construction. Charlie knew it was a long shot that a name on the construction permit would be somebody he’d know, but he checked, anyway.

  “What is it?” Joe asked.

  Charlie held his hand to his lips to quiet him. “No talking,” he whispered.

  He gestured up the dark stairs. Joe nodded and fell into step behind his brother. They climbed to the first landing. Charlie went over to a large sliding steel door. There was a bolt lock on the outside of the door. He motioned with his head to continue climbing higher.

  Harry Wessner, Charlie thought again. Would he get my job? He hadn’t been promoted in several years. Harry had known Eddie Prescott. So many questions without answers. His pace quickened as he climbed the stairs to the third landing. The door on the third landing, same as the one below it, was a sliding steel door. It, too, was locked from the outside.

  The top landing, however, was different. The door here was a steel door, but on hinges, not rollers. Charlie didn’t see any locks on this door. He motioned with his head for Joe to take a position on the left side of the door. Joe pressed himself flat against the wall. Charlie gripped the door handle and he pulled. The door opened with a soft creak. Charlie peered inside. The space in front of him was too dark to see clearly. Charlie stepped into the room and pressed himself against the wall closest to the door. He hoped it was enough to conceal him. Joe followed Charlie inside and stood in the center of the entrance. A yellowish glow from the stairwell illuminated his figure.

  “Joe,” Charlie whispered.

  Joe didn’t answer.

  “Joe, take cover,” Charlie whispered again.

  “Forget that,” Joe said.

  Joe walked ahead. This time Charlie fell into step behind him. They came to a closed steel-and-glass door. The room behind the door was shrouded in darkness. Charlie could see shapes through the mesh glass of the door’s window. They looked like large metal bookshelves. The door wasn’t locked. They stepped inside. Joe felt along the inside brick wall until he found a light switch. Light from a bank of fluorescent bulbs flickered overhead.

  Charlie stood in the center of the room. His mouth fell agape. If Arthur Bean’s laboratory was a computer scientist’s fantasy, this room was a veritable bacchanal. Racks of computers, five rows in total, ran the full width of the twenty-foot-wide room. The ceiling was almost twelve feet high, and Charlie noticed that the floor was raised. The air in the room was cool from a powerful air-conditioning unit that pumped cold air under the raised floor and kept the computers from overheating.

  This wasn’t just a hobbyist at work, Charlie concluded. It was a professional network operations center. What it was used for, he had no idea. He was certain of one thing: whatever its purpose, it wasn’t good.

  “What is this place?” Joe asked.

  “Evil,” Charlie said. “This is the heart of evil.”

  Charlie pointed, and the brothers crossed the room to the door on the opposite side. It wasn’t locked, either. Whoever owned this equipment was here, Charlie thought. And they weren’t expecting any company.

  The room into which they passed was smaller than the computer lab, with tables of monitors and network hubs that connected them to the computers in the lab. The room was softly lit from the glow of monitor screen savers.

  On one of the tables closest to him, Charlie took notice of a machine unlike any he’d ever seen. It was networked through a USB hub into a computer underneath the table. The machine was like a miniature crane. A metal boom was nailed into a wood platform. A pendulum was attached to the top of the boom. Anchored to the end of the pendulum was a pen, and below the pen, a piece of paper.

  Charlie grabbed the paper and realized it was a photograph. He turned the photograph over and bit his lip. It was a picture of him, Joe, and their mother. The one he’d found in his motel room.

  Charlie moved the mouse until the monitor flicked on. A Word document was open, and Charlie read a familiar and deeply troubling text: Surprise no more. Good-bye, Mother.

  It took Charlie only a few seconds to find the command to print from the machine. Whoever wrote this software had made the command an extension of the Microsoft Word file menu. It was just like a normal print command, only this one read: PRINT HANDWRITING. The machine sputtered to life with the whirling sound of gears churning. The pen scratched out the words from the computer screen onto the back of the photograph. It was a perfect re-creation of Charlie’s handwriting with one notable exception—the letter u.

  Chapter 74

  “Well, that proves one theory,” Charlie said. He handed Joe the photograph. Joe took the photograph and shook his head.

  Staying in position, Charlie looked around the rest of the room. Something on a chair in the far corner of the room, nearest the street side of the building, caught his attention. At first it looked like an ordinary baseball cap.

  He looked closer. There was something underneath it that he couldn’t identify. As he neared, he wondered if the cap was resting on some sort of furry rag. Then something about the baseball cap itself triggered a memory—of the grocery store after he had escaped from Walderman. He had been in Whole Foods when Eddie Prescott spoke to him. Charlie tried to remember the other people in that aisle with him that day: a black woman, two elderly ladies, and an elderly man. The man had had white hair, a dark blue baseball cap, and a cane.

  Charlie reached down and picked up the cap. Sewed into the inside lining of the baseball cap was a white wig. He held the cap and noticed a black patch that was almost the same color as the cap itself and had been sewn into the front.

  Charlie pried off the patch, and out fell a small, flat black disc. Charlie picked up the disc and held it to his eye. He’d never seen anything like it.

  “What’s that?” Joe asked.

  “I have no idea,” Charlie said. “I remember seeing an old man wearing this hat in Whole Foods. But I have no idea what this is.”

  “I do.”

  The voice came from behind Joe. Charlie shuddered at the sound. That voice, Charlie thought. It can’t be.

  Joe whirled around. He took a step forward, then started to back away. Joe continued walking slowly backward toward Charlie.

  “Keep going,” said the man. “Keep going.”

  Joe stood beside his brother.

  In one hand the man clutched a cane; in the other he held a gun. Charlie didn’t know the make and model. It didn’t matter. He knew the most important thing: it was loaded.

  “Eddie,” Charlie said.

  “Hi ya, Charlie,” Eddie Prescott said. “So tell me, did you enjoy your little trip on the crazy train? I know I did.”

  Eddie Prescott still wore his wavy brown hair down to his shoulders. It had always made him look younger than his years. It was an homage to the carefree ′70s, he would say.

  Eddie seemed weak and bone-thin. Not surprising that he walked with a cane. But a gun had a way of giving someone added muscle. He was wearing an olive green army jacket, the jacket Charlie had seen on the lone man sitting in the waiting room at Mount Auburn Hospital.

  Eddie kept the gun perfectly level. He stood fifteen feet away from the brothers. Joe took a step toward him, but Eddie pointed his gu
n at Joe’s head.

  “Now, now, Joseph,” Eddie said. “Let’s not die just yet.”

  “But you died, Eddie,” Charlie said. “The ME identified your remains.”

  “The ME identified remains,” Eddie said. “But dental records are a somewhat unreliable way to name the deceased. All that I had to do was switch the name that came up in the ME’s database search to my own. It didn’t matter that my records and the records they had from some corpse in the morgue were nothing alike. All that mattered was a name on the form, and my little hack did nothing more than put my name on a coroner’s report. And voilà, Eddie Prescott—who, yes, did jump from the Golden Gate Bridge but who survived—became Eddie Prescott, the dead jumper.”

  “Why?” Charlie asked. “Why fake your death? Why not just take it as a second chance at life?”

  “Well,” Eddie said, “I guess you could say I was really disappointed with myself. You see, I should have shot you, Charlie. I was really, really mad that I didn’t. I mean, let’s face it, you screwed me.”

  “You did that to yourself,” Charlie said.

  “Oh, really? I didn’t cut me out of the business, Charlie. You did that. I stood in your living room, this gun pointed at your chest to get my revenge. But I was too weak to pull the trigger. So what did I do instead? I gave up, Charlie. I gave up living, and I jumped off the bridge. What was the point? I was nothing but a failure.”

  “You were never broke, Eddie,” Charlie said. “You had more than enough money to get by. You could have started over if you’d wanted to. You were a gambling addict. You didn’t have to steal our money for your bets. You could have used your inheritance.”