“Because you had a car.”
Max nodded.
“Had he told you what I’d done in Hyde Park?”
“Yes, he had. Like him, I believed there was more to the story than met the eye. Mind you, Peter, I’d gotten to know you during my visits to your family’s apartment, and you impressed me as a fine fellow and not some little serial killer in waiting. Anyway, I rushed over with my car, and your father and I loaded the dead man in the trunk. We hauled him to a vacant lot in Brooklyn, where we planned to dump him.”
Peter found himself shaking his head. Max and his father were the two most important men in his life. The idea that they’d dumped a dead man in a lot in order to save him from the police brought out an emotion that he could not describe. He took a deep breath.
“Wow.”
“Wow is right. And that was when I had a eureka moment,” Max said triumphantly.
“Your victim was wearing a turtleneck sweater. As we dragged him out of the trunk, it got pulled down, and I spied a shimmering silver tattoo on his neck.”
Peter gasped. “He was a member of the Order of Astrum.”
“Indeed he was. He wasn’t a burglar, as your parents originally thought, but an assassin who had been sent to kill them.” Max paused again. “And you stopped him.”
“You think I knew who he was?”
“Of course you did-why else would you have killed him?”
Peter wrestled with what Max was telling him. Why couldn’t a few memories of these events have remained? It would have made it so much easier for him to deal with this. But the memories had been erased along with the violent emotions that had gone with them.
“So these killings weren’t random acts of violence, but served a purpose,” Peter said.
“That was the conclusion your father and I came to,” Max replied. “As you know, your parents were founding members of the Order. They left the organization in their teens, got married, and moved to London. One day, the three remaining members of the Order paid them a visit, and asked them to rejoin. Your parents said no, and they threatened them. Your father said he hadn’t taken the threats seriously. Now he did.”
“What about the man in Hyde Park? Was he an assassin as well?”
“Excellent deduction. Yes, he was.”
“How can you be certain?”
“I have a friend in London whose brother is with Scotland Yard. I called my friend, and asked him to ask his brother to check the autopsy report of the dead man to see if he had a shimmering tattoo on his neck. Not surprisingly, the man did.”
“So the man in Hyde Park was sent to kill my parents. When he failed, a second assassin was sent to New York, and he failed as well. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“You’re stealing my thunder.”
“Finally, the Order got fed up, and the other members came to New York to do the job themselves,” Peter said. “Only this time, I wasn’t able to protect my parents, and they were stolen out from under me. I went into a rage, and ran around New York killing bad men in retaliation. Is that the deal?”
“You make it sound like you were a monster,” Max said. “That was not the case.”
“From what you’ve just told me, I killed eight men before I turned eight years old. What would you call it?”
“They were bad men, and got the fate they deserved.”
“I was a child. Children are not supposed to kill. It was wrong. Please don’t justify it.”
“But they were trying to kill your parents.”
“Why didn’t my parents stop them? They were both psychic. How could they have been so blind to the danger they were in?”
Max shook his head, clearly frustrated. “Your mother and father left the Order of Astrum because they wanted to lead normal lives. They were psychics, but it was a small part of who they were. They kept their powers turned off most of the time, so to speak. That was why they didn’t see the danger.”
But their seven-year-old son had seen the danger. Unlike his loving parents, Peter had not turned off his psychic powers, and when danger had come calling, the demon inside of him responded in a way that was so horrible that the memories had been repressed.
His chair made a harsh scraping sound. Standing, Peter tossed his napkin onto his plate. Why couldn’t Max’s story have been different? Something easy for him to digest and come to grips with? He could have accepted just about anything, except this.
Max looked into his student’s face, and saw his pain. “What’s wrong?”
“I want to have a normal life, too,” Peter said, and walked out of the restaurant.
41
Peter got out of the cab at the Centre Street entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge.
“Keep the change.”
The driver smiled at his good fortune and pulled away. It was not every day that a passenger gave him a hundred bucks for a twelve-dollar fare.
Peter zipped up his leather jacket and climbed the stairway to the elevated pedestrian walkway that ran the length of the bridge. Day or night, rain or shine, freezing cold or unbearably hot, there was always a mob of people walking and jogging and enjoying the sights from the bridge. And then there were poor souls like him, who needed to clear dark thoughts from their heads.
It was a half mile to the bridge’s center. Upon reaching it, he gazed up at the main tower, which was as tall as a skyscraper. Many times, he’d imagined climbing over the railing, crawling on a beam to the tower, taking the stairs to the top, ripping off his clothes, and diving into murky depths of the East River. Not to kill himself, but simply as a way to change, believing that the Peter who came out of the water would be different from the Peter who’d jumped in.
But he hadn’t done it. In the end, something had always held him back. He gripped the railing with both hands and gazed at the water. He’d read once that everyone desired to be someone else. For him, that person was someone totally ordinary. He yearned for a morning when he’d wake up and not have had a vision the night before which foretold the future, or step into an old building and not be confronted by a ghost. He wanted a life with the normal daily ups and downs, happiness and pain. Was that too much to ask for?
“There you are.”
He released the railing and spun around. Liza came toward him wearing stone-washed jeans and a wool sweater, looking as radiant as the day he’d first laid eyes on her.
“How did you know I was here?”
“Because this is where you come when you’re in the dumps. Did you get my texts?”
He took out his Droid and saw the message icon flashing in the upper corner of the screen. Had his cell phone buzzed in his pocket and he’d not noticed? That was no excuse, and he said, “I haven’t been myself today. What happened to Sierra and his friend?”
“They left right after you did.” Liza saw something she didn’t like, and placed her hand beneath his chin so she could stare fully into his eyes. “You look despondent. Please tell me what’s going on. I want to help.”
Where to begin? Start by how you feel and take it from there. “I used to think that the day my parents died was the worst day of my life. I was wrong. Today is the worst day of my life.”
“Because of what Dr. Sierra and Hunsinger told you this morning.”
“That was just the beginning.”
He edged up to the railing and resumed looking at the river. Liza clasped his hand and stood beside him. They shared the same view, but he doubted they were seeing the same things, and he found himself wishing that Liza could read minds, for he would have given anything not to repeat the things that Max had told him.
“Sierra and Hunsinger were the tip of the iceberg. I killed eight different people when I was a little kid.”