Jack was a curious man. Smart in some ways and a true expert on Civil War history. But he’d never quite figured out the rules of the game: that whoever got into the library first got the armchair.
I’d been looking forward to sitting here today and catching up on my reading.
But then something happened to disrupt those plans. I opened this morning’s paper and noticed a reference to the prosecutor in the case against me, Glenn Hollow, whose name, I joked with my attorney, Ed Ringling, sounded like a real estate development. Alarming Ringling somewhat since I wasn’t sounding as crazy as he would have liked — because, of course, I’m not.
The article was about party officials pulling all support for Hollow’s bid for attorney general. He’d dropped out of the race. I continued to read, learning that his life had fallen apart completely after failing to get me convicted on murder one. He’d had to step down as county prosecutor and no law firm in the state would hire him. In fact, he couldn’t find work anywhere.
The problem wasn’t that he’d lost the case, but that he’d introduced evidence about the existence of spirits that possessed people and made them commit crimes. It hadn’t helped that he was on record as stating that nemes were real. And his expert was a bit of a crackpot. Though I still hold that Pheder’s a genius. After all, for every successful invention, Da Vinci came up with a hundred duds.
In fact, Hollow’s strategy was brilliant and had given me some very uncomfortable moments in court. Ed Ringling, too. Part of me was surprised that the jury hadn’t bought his argument and sent me to death row.
These revelations were troubling and I felt sorry for the man — I never had anything personal against him — but it was when I read the last paragraph that the whole shocking implication of what happened struck home.
Before the Kobel trial, Hollow had been a shoo-in to become the attorney general of the state. He had the best conviction record of any prosecutor in North Carolina, particularly in violent crimes, such as rape and domestic abuse. He actually won a premeditated murder case some years ago for a road rage incident, the first time any prosecutor had convinced a jury to do so.
Reading this, I felt like I’d been slugged. My God…My God…I literally gasped.
I’d been set up.
It was suddenly clear. From the moment Annabelle Young had sat next to me in Starbucks, I was being suckered into their plan. The nemes…they knew I’d take on the mission of trying to become her therapist. And they knew that I’d see that the neme within her was so powerful and represented such a danger to those around her that I’d have to kill her. (I’d done this before, of course; Annabelle was hardly the first. Part of being a professional therapist is matching the right technique to each patient.)
And where did the nemes pick their host? In the very county with the prosecutor who represented perhaps the greatest threat to them. A man who was winning conviction after conviction in cases of impulsive violence — locking away some of their most successful incarnations in the county: abusers, rapists, murderers…
Well, that answered the question that nobody had been able to answer yet: Yes, nemes communicate.
Yes, they plot and strategize. Obviously they’d debated the matter. The price to eliminate Glenn Hollow was to get me off on an insanity plea, which meant that I would be out in a few years and back on the attack, writing about them, counseling people to guard against them.
Even killing them if I needed to.
So, they’d decided that Glenn Hollow was a threat to be eliminated.
But not me. I’d escaped. I sighed, closing my eyes, and whispered, “But not me.”
I saw a shadow fall on the newspaper on my lap. I glanced up to see my fellow patient Jack, staring down at me.
“Sorry, got the chair first today,” I told him, still distracted by the stunning understanding. “Tomorrow…”
But my voice faded as I looked into his face.
The eyes…the eyes.
No!
I gasped and started to rise, shouting for a guard, but before I could get to my feet, Jack was on me, “My chair, you took my chair, you took it, you took it…”
But then, as the razor-sharp end of the spoon he clutched slammed into my chest again and again, it seemed that the madman began to whisper something different. My vision going, my hearing fading, I thought perhaps the words slipping from his dry lips were, “Yes you, yes you, yes you…”
THE WEAPON
MONDAY
“A new weapon.”
The slim man in a conservative suit eased forward and lowered his voice. “Something terrible. And our sources are certain it will be used this coming Saturday morning. They’re certain of that.”
“Four days,” said retired Colonel James J. Peterson, his voice grave. It was now 5 p.m. on Monday.
The two men sat in Peterson’s nondescript office, in a nondescript building in the suburban town of Reston, Virginia, about twenty-five miles from Washington, D.C. There’s a misconception that national security operations are conducted in high-tech bunkers filled with sweeping steel and structural concrete, video screens ten feet high and attractive boys and babes dressed by Armani.
This place, on the other hand, looked like an insurance agency.
The skinny man, who worked for the government, added, “We don’t know if we’re talking conventional, nuke or something altogether new. Probably mass destruction, we’ve heard. It can do quote ‘significant’ damage.”
“Who’s behind this weapon? Al-Qaeda? The Koreans? Iranians?”
“One of our enemies. That’s all we know at this point…So, we need you to find out about it. Money is no object, of course.”
“Any leads?”
“Yes, a good one: An Algerian who knows who formulated the weapon. He met with them last week in Tunis. He’s a professor and journalist.”
“Terrorist?”
“He doesn’t seem to be. His writings have been moderate in nature. He’s not openly militant. But our local sources are convinced he’s had contact with the people who created the weapon and plan to use it.”
“You have a picture?”
A photograph appeared as if by magic from the slim man’s briefcase and slid across the desk like a lizard.
Colonel Peterson leaned forward.
TUESDAY
Chabbi music drifted from a nearby café, lost intermittently in the sounds of trucks and scooters charging frantically along the commercial streets of Algiers.
The driver of the white van, a swarthy local, stifled a sour face when the music changed to American rock. Not that he actually preferred the old-fashioned, melodramatic chabbi tunes or thought they were more politically or religiously correct than Western music. He just didn’t like Britney Spears.
Then the big man stiffened and tapped the shoulder of the man next to him, an American. Their attention swung immediately out the front window to a curly-haired man in his thirties, wearing a light-colored suit, walking out of the main entrance of the Al-Jazier School for Cultural Thought.
The man in the passenger seat nodded. The driver called, “Ready,” in English and then repeated the command in Berber-accented Arabic. The two men in the back responded affirmatively.
The van, a battered Ford, sporting Arabic letters boasting of the city’s best plumbing services, eased forward, trailing the man in the light suit. The driver had no trouble moving slowly without being conspicuous. Such was the nature of traffic here in the old portion of this city, near the harbor.