Meghan flipped through DeMeo’s experiment notes, all of which were neatly typewritten and separated into three categories: positive, negative and “questionable.” The negative files were thick, and had taken up most of the drawer. The questionables were comparatively slim. And the positives were thinner still.
We more or less read in silence, as if we were both engrossed in the same 500,000-page novel that had gushed itself out of the desk. Only, we were on wildly different chapters, trying to piece together the story out of order. At one point Meghan looked up at me.
“Okay, so Dr. DeMeo was researching out-of-body experiences. As far as we know, Billy Derace is still locked up, under heavy sedation at the Adams Institute. So this means the Derace we saw last night was what…an astral projection?”
“Which will make it very interesting to explain to the police.”
“True.”
Then I thought this through a bit more.
“Wait wait wait—that doesn’t make sense. Say he has the same pills I do. And let’s say he can do the same things I can do. Does this mean he’s come back from some future year just to mess with me now?”
“Maybe the whole going back in time thing is specific to you. According to these papers here, it was all about astral projection. Harnessing it. Making it predictable. Finding people who were predisposed to it. Maybe you, and maybe your father, could only project into the past.”
“What makes you say that?”
Meghan held up the positive folder.
“Because in this folder is Dr. DeMeo’s one proven success. And his name is Billy Allen Derace.”
“You’re kidding. He ran drug experiments on a twelve-year-old boy? The son of the woman he was banging?”
Meghan opened the folder, handed it to me.
“I don’t think he was twelve. These notes are dated from early 1980. That would make Derace, what, eighteen years old then?”
I skimmed the notes. Meghan was right. Derace had been an unqualified success. Able to walk around outside his body and identify objects in other rooms with ease. DeMeo was practically gushing. He also noted that his success was “no doubt linked to the extreme dosage administered to subject over a short period of time.”
In short: Derace had been pumped full of these pills in order to make the out-of-body experience work.
But why do this to Billy? Had he volunteered? Had Erna coerced her son to do it to stay in the good graces of that fat pill-pusher?
Meghan found my father’s page after a short while. He had been in the “questionable” folder, and it seemed that the pills had the same effect on the father as they did the son. He was hurled back in time, too, only to his birth year—1949. DeMeo’s notes were snide, dismissive. My father insisted what he was seeing was real, and asked for more time to prove it. DeMeo let him have a few more sessions, then abruptly bounced him from the experiment. “Subject W. clearly wanted to milk the system for more money.”
I shook my head.
“DeMeo didn’t believe him. But my father was telling the truth.”
Oh hell—my father.
Billy.
“What?”
The pallet full of cinder blocks that had been dangling over me finally broke free and smashed down on my head. I scrambled across the room, nearly tripping, and pulled out the death scrapbook Grandpop had made.
“Mickey, what is it?”
I flipped, found the Bulletin article. Billy Derace hadn’t just disappeared from the scene of the crime. He had never really been there. It was his astral projection that had shown up, and it was strong enough and real enough to be seen and shown to a table and order a steak and a beer to bide his time. He’d ordered the steak because he wanted the knife. He couldn’t bring one with him, because his physical body was locked up in the Adams Institute.
I don’t know what I sounded like as I explained it to Meghan. It came out as a tumble of ideas and words. Somehow, though, it made sense to her. I think she was finally believing me—believing that those pills could do what I said they could.
“But what’s the connection between Derace and your father? They were both experimented on, but eight years apart. What made Derace pick up a knife and stab him to death in a bar?”
“I don’t know.”
“I heard him talking to you last night. I heard him say, ‘I killed him because I thought he was you.’”
“I have no idea.”
After a while, Meghan hit my crappy laptop for some Google searches and we filled in some pieces that the notes from the desk couldn’t. First, she found a death notice for DeMeo.
“Says here in the Inquirer that Dr. Mitchell DeMeo died in 2002. When did your grandpop move here?”
“A year later.”
“Oh shit. He didn’t just die. He was stabbed to death on Frankford Avenue at…Sellers Street? Is that nearby?”
“Just a few blocks away. Did you say stabbed?”
“He was walking to his car. Had the keys in his hand. Police say robbery wasn’t a motive, as his car keys and his wallet were still on the body when he was found.”
“Billy.”
“Yeah, I’d say that was certainly a possibility.”
Meghan kept typing; I kept digging. As a reporter I used to love printed sources. They were puzzle pieces. But now, there were too many pieces. Nothing seemed to match up or make sense.
“Um…”
“What?”
“I had somebody in my dad’s office do a little checking for me—and he just e-mailed back. This building is still owned by the U.S. government. I think your grandpop was squatting. Which means that technically, you’re squatting.”
Somehow this news wasn’t the crushing blow it should have been. I was already thinking that there was no way I’d be spending another night in this apartment. Not with Billy Derace knowing where to find me.
And Meghan.
A half hour later, dawn crept up over the Frankford skyline. We’d been digging and reading and throwing questions at each other all through the night. But now, with daylight here, I told Meghan she should probably go home.
“Are you kidding? Just when this is coming together?”
“It’s not safe here.”
“Don’t tell me—Frankford’s a bad neighborhood.”
“You know that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about Derace. Hell, I’m thinking about swallowing my pride, packing up my crap and asking my mom if I can crash in a spare bedroom for a few days. Just until I sort this stuff out.”
“No way am I leaving you now.”
“Seriously, Meghan, I’d feel a lot better if you kept your distance. I promise, I won’t leave you out of this.”
And I wouldn’t. There was nothing I wanted more than Meghan to stay with me right now. To stay with me forever, actually. But I couldn’t risk her life, not because of my selfishness. Billy Derace wouldn’t know who she was, where she lived. To him, she was just another woman. The only connection he had to her was through me.
“I don’t believe this. All of this time, and you push me away now? Seriously, Mickey—what the hell?”
She couldn’t stay. She couldn’t be anywhere near me. Not now.
“I’ll call you.”
When she left this time, she didn’t kiss me. She made sure I saw her face for a moment, her angry eyes, and then she left.