I’d aimed high, and judging by the pitch of his scream and the volume of blood that sprayed in all directions, I must have hit something important. He released the faucet and staggered back, howling. I didn’t see what happened next. All I heard was a hollow thud, then silence. I sat up cautiously, still gasping for breath, and peeped over the edge. The guy was sprawled out on his back, one leg—the one I hadn’t stabbed—tucked awkwardly beneath him, his arms pointing straight out, and a crimson halo of blood crowning his head.
I had no medical training. I didn’t physically examine him. But there was no doubt in my mind. He was dead. He had the same subtly relaxed contortion I’d seen once before, in the body of a guy who’d thrown himself on some electrified train tracks.
There was only one difference. The other time, the cause of death was suicide.
This time, the cause of death was me.
Thursday. Evening.
IT HAD NO LOCKS OR BARS, BUT FOR THE NEXT HALF HOUR THE bathtub held me as securely as any jail cell could have done.
In the end it was the relentless dripping of the water that forced me out. I’d turned my head to stop the drops from hitting my face, but the sound—one splash every second, like clockwork—was driving me crazy. So I stretched up to turn off the faucet, and whether it was the movement, or the sudden silence, the spell was broken. I climbed over the side and, stiff from the beating and the cold, I hobbled away from the bathroom.
I’d gotten almost to the front door when one of my senses finally returned. I couldn’t go outside in those clothes. They were sprayed with blood, soaked in water, and covered with fragments of glass.
I returned to our bedroom and pulled on clean clothes, not really concentrating, just grabbing whatever was closest to the front of my closet and transferring my few remaining possessions. But before I could leave again a strange force drew me back to the bathroom door, like I was a mawkish spectator at the scene of a grisly car wreck.
I looked in at the body, steeled for a wave of revulsion, but it never came. The guy’s remains no longer looked like a he. More like a thing. And then a practical, dispassionate voice started to whisper inside my brain. Things can be useful, Marc. Turn over a rock, and you never know what you might find.
I didn’t take the dead guy’s gun. That would be like inviting the police to shoot me, if I did get caught. I did take his wallet, though. There was no ID, but he wouldn’t be needing the cash anymore. And his credit cards would be safer to use than mine, if I needed access to more funds.
Rifling through his jacket was one thing—I could lift it up, away from his body—but his jeans were another proposition altogether. Sliding your hand into another man’s pocket seemed way too intimate. Inappropriate, even. More so when you’re the one who just killed him. In fact, I nearly walked away without doing it. I would have, if it weren’t for one more insistent thought at the front of my mind. I needed transport. Especially now that a man was dead. The stakes had skyrocketed. I couldn’t risk using my Jaguar, even though it was sitting invitingly in the driveway. And this guy must have had wheels, to follow me here.
My hand hovered above his hip for a moment, then shot forward to grab his keys. He had two sets, clipped together. One was from a rental car company, with a logo I’d never seen before. The other bunch was bigger. And very familiar.
Because it belonged to Carolyn.
Thursday. Evening.
ALL THE FIGHT HAD GONE OUT OF ME, WHICH LEFT ONLY ONE option. Flight.
The last thing I did before running out of the house was grab my passport from the downstairs safe. South America. Europe. Australia. I didn’t care. I just knew I had to get far, far away.
IF THERE’D BEEN ENOUGH gas in the dead guy’s car to take me all the way to JFK, maybe I’d have gone through with it and tried to get on a plane. To put the maximum distance between me and his corpse and Carolyn and whoever else she was hooked up with. But when a little red light started flashing on the dashboard, that brought me back to my senses. Not all the way, but enough to persuade me to pause. So when I neared the next intersection and saw signs for accommodation, I pulled off the highway. I found the smallest and drabbest of the motels that were clustered around the sprawling cloverleaf. And I let the dead guy’s credit card stand me a night’s room and board.
I had no desire to eat or watch TV or even to get undressed. I just threw myself down on the bed. On top of the covers. The light was off. The curtains were open. My mind was still blank. But sleep refused to wash over me, so I lay still and stared up at the ceiling. It was stained. Maybe from a water leak. The line of vaguely round marks looked like the instrument panel in the dead guy’s car. They reminded me of my first product. My life had seemed on such a promising track, back when I was developing that. How on earth had it led me from there to here?
Despite all the miles I’d driven that night, I felt like I was only going backward. I couldn’t see the way ahead at all. And that made me think of something Roger LeBrock had said, a hundred years ago, back on Monday morning. He’d justified his decision to fire me by claiming I focused only on the past. That I had no eye for the future. I could have punched him for it, at the time. But now I was wondering if he had a point. Because my entire career was based on understanding what people did. Not who they were. Like myself. Was I a criminal? A thief? A fugitive? A murderer? I had no idea what the truth was anymore.
MY BODY HADN’T MOVED by the time my eyes opened the next morning—sleep having crept up on me at some stage—but my brain had been busy. It was telling me that things were nowhere near as hopeless as they’d seemed in the wee small hours. Because I had a key advantage. The memory stick. It was still safely tucked away in my pocket. And assuming the virus was on it—and it had survived the ordeal in the bathtub—that meant my lifeline was still within reach. The drawback was, I’d need help making sense of the secrets it held.
Asking for that kind of help wouldn’t be easy. And wouldn’t come cheap. I had to call Information to get the number I needed, because it wasn’t a friend’s. What would have been the point? And it wasn’t a colleague’s, because I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have the stomach for what I had in mind. Greed can only take you so far. Instead, I asked the operator to connect me with a guy who’d be motivated by something else. The chance to step out of my shadow, once and for all.
The number I asked for was Karl Weimann’s. I’d used him before, to torpedo Carolyn’s career change. It seemed poetic to use him again now. And if Carolyn got caught in the crossfire, so be it. All was fair, after I’d almost been killed in our own bathroom.
“Karl?” He took an eternity to pick up. “Marc Bowman. Got a minute to talk?”
“A minute for you, Marc. Then I have to run.”
“I’ll keep it brief. The deal is, I’m working on something new. It’s big.”
“The Supernova?”
It was interesting he should ask that. The Supernova was the idea I’d had on the back burner when I started at AmeriTel. The one I’d been talking to Carolyn about, right around the time the photo of her and Weimann must have been taken.