A Murder of Crows (18 page)

“My understanding is that she needs to stand in the exact spot where the person died.”

“Yeah. That's my understanding, too.”

He looked at her—two straight lines, a truth . . . and lingering cold.

“They've put up scaffolding to get the floor up to the right level and put plywood over everything,” Yslan said.

“We'll start at eleven o'clock.”

“That's my call, Mr. Roberts.”

“Eleven o'clock. She doesn't like people looking at her.”

“Yes, but time is—”

“Special Agent Hicks! She doesn't like people looking at her.”

“I get it.”

“Good.”

“You going to record—”

“What she says? You bet.”

“With your trusty digital tape recorder?”

“It worked just fine in the past; I see no reason to change methodology now. Do you?” He smiled at her.

She did not smile back.

He leafed through the file with the information on the dead faculty members then he asked, “And what about the students?”

“One hundred and forty-seven.”

“That's not my question.”

“Mr. Roberts, we don't have a photograph of them in their seats.
The most we have is the order they were supposed to enter in—and hence sit in.”

“Why just supposed to?”

“Most of them had been drinking at least since Friday, their final exam. This place kicks out kids in their final semester of their fourth year. They crack the whip here and keep cracking it.”

“So at graduation the kids blow off steam and refuse to follow any more rules?”

“Exactly. Shit, I would.”

“Yeah. But you have the names of the dead, surely.”

“Yeah,” Yslan said, pushing another folder across the desk to him.

Decker took the file, then asked, “But without identifiable body parts how are you sure who died in the—”

“Their parents. Their parents reported them missing.”

Decker thought about that for a moment. “But it is possible that one or more of them set the bombs then disappeared to places unknown?”

Yslan nodded. “Anything's possible.”

Decker knew if there was one undeniable truth it was that—that anything's possible.

“Give me your digital recorder.”

“Why?” Decker demanded.

“Just give me the damned thing.” Yslan's voice was hard as granite. He handed it over. She took out a small disk and attached it to the back.

“A transponder?”

“Hardly,” Yslan said. “It's a high-powered transmitter. We'll be receiving everything you and she say. If you need to contact us, just tap the button on the side. It acts like the best cell phone there ever was.”

* * *

When, just before eleven o'clock, he was let into Viola's room, the tiny girl/woman was sitting beside a small lamp—the cone of light didn't illuminate her face but did the book in her tiny hands.

“You like Shakespeare?”

“No.”

“Then why read—”

“This is
Pericles,
a play Mr. William probably didn't write all of.”

Decker had directed the piece a long time ago. A great deal of it was clearly not Shakespeare's writing, no matter what the academics argued. Just put the text in the hands of good actors and it becomes obvious. Shakespeare had been an actor as well as a playwright. If you are in a scene for no conceivable reason—or your character should have exited many lines ago—then you are not in Mr. Shakespeare's writing. If your character has already made his point but there are still dozens of lines to say—not Shakespeare. If your character arrives, says what needs to be said, then splits—Shakespeare. It's actually quite easy to determine—with good actors. The reunification of Pericles with his daughter in the fourth act carried all the hallmarks of the master—concise, incredibly insightful on the nature of human emotion and heartbreakingly simple.

Decker took a step closer to Viola and asked, “Have you read the Shakespeare play with the character who has your name?”

“There is no such play. Don't tease, I don't like it. I don't.”

The force of her words surprised him. And although
Twelfth Night
certainly featured a character named Viola, he wasn't going to press the point.

Then she said, “There are no Shakespeare characters named Viola Tripping.”

He smiled. Of course. For the umpteenth time he reminded himself that inaccurate questions solicited inaccurate answers.

“Are you ready?”

“In a minute,” she said. She turned her face back to the play and for just over a minute continued to read. A single tear came from her left eye and rolled down her cheek. With the tear hanging from her pointy chin she closed the play and said, “I'm ready.”

* * *

Harrison watched Yslan framed in the provost's office door, light behind her, her face in shadow. Then she stepped into the office and the overhead light brought her out of the darkness and literally into
the light.
From out to in, from darkness to light, from there to here—from one world to the next,
he thought.

He looked at her closely. She'd sprouted worry lines on the sides of her eyes since she kidnapped Decker Roberts sixteen months ago. “So they're ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And?”

“They seem to be able to communicate.”

“That's nice.”

“I mean, not everyone can communicate with Viola Tripping.”

“I knew what you meant.”

He turned from her. She saw the sweat stain on his shirt. She'd never seen him anything but coiffed and immaculately dressed. She looked at his reflection in the windowpane. As she did, the first drops of a spring shower hit the glass. The water on the windowpane made it look like her boss, Leonard Harrison, was crying.

It momentarily terrified her—then he turned back to her. His face was without tears, although rage was slowly filling his features. “What else do you need, Special Agent Hicks?”

She hesitated. Viola Tripping could tell them who was thinking what before the explosion and Decker Roberts could tell her which of them was truthful, but if there was a pattern to be found she wasn't sure that these two could find it. Only one of her other gifted synaesthetes could do that—and he was presently housed in Leavenworth Penitentiary. Just thinking of him sent a shiver up her spine.

“Let me see if they can get started.” She turned to go, then turned back to Harrison, “Forensics . . . ?”

“Nothing new,” he said and turned to the now rain-filled windowpane.

Yslan took a quick final look. She was pretty sure that the strongest man she'd ever known was indeed crying.

* * *

In the steady downpour Ted Knight was organizing the final planking over of the seating area while Mr. T, using a photo of the previous year's graduation to guide his work, helped move platforms
to re-form the stage. Some of his men, referring to a chart, were painting numbers in luminous paint on the chair backs.

Yslan approached Ted Knight. “When'll it be ready?” Before he could answer her she said, “I need it by eleven o'clock.”

“Why then?”

“It's dark enough then.”

“And there's no moon tonight.”

“Yeah,” Yslan said, “and there's that.”

SETH GLANCED AT THE SLEEP GOGGLES HE WAS REQUIRED TO
wear. They looked like something out of an old sci-fi film—a cheap sci-fi film.

But the computer monitors that the goggles were hooked up to were clearly state of the art.

It was late. Seth didn't know how late since the clinic didn't permit clocks of any sort—“They attach you to the world that made you sick.”

His day had been filled with clinical examinations—and yet another painful cystoscopy. The nurses seemed efficient enough, but the two doctors who did the exams were sometimes clumsy with the instruments.

Then of course there was the afternoon counselling session; it seemed more like a quiz to Seth than counselling.

He picked up the sleep goggles.

They were supposed to help him lucid dream. Evidently the first step in his cure. He'd told them he didn't need help lucid dreaming, that he'd been lucid dreaming since he was a kid. That he was a dream navigator he was so good at it. He kept reminding them that he had bladder cancer and that's why he was here. They assured him that they knew that and still insisted he wear the goggles when he slept—“As a first step toward balance and health.”

He wondered yet again whether he'd wasted his father's $20,000 in this California clinic.

He'd done his due diligence before contacting the place, although
he couldn't remember where he'd first heard of it. Maybe someone had suggested it to him at the public library in Victoria. Or had it just popped up on his Gmail sidebar? It just seemed somehow ordained. So he'd contacted them and they'd sent him further materials and dozens of testimonials, all of which he'd looked up online and all of which seemed legitimate. All the people had returned his phone calls and spoke in glowing terms of the groundbreaking work of the clinic. Finally he'd had enough looking. All that he really knew was that he had to do something or he'd never see his twenty-fifth birthday.

The particularly virulent form of bladder cancer he had would eventually have to be operated on, but the doctors in Victoria had been clear with him that even if the operation was a complete success his life would be significantly altered. A young man without a prostate is a young man outside the realm of young men. The operation also chanced spreading the cancer to the rest of his body.

He lay back and thought of the ocean—of the surf and wildness of Vancouver Island. Then he threw the goggles across the room—and instantly was deep in a dream he'd had a lot lately, about a world (no, worlds) where there was no dreaming. Where humanity had years before “for fear of nightmares abandoned dreaming.” And the few dreamers who were left hid their “gift” and if exposed were hunted down and imprisoned. Until suddenly something happened and the world—no, worlds; there were many worlds in his dream—woke up to the need for dreamers, for people like him.

THEY WERE THE ODDEST COUPLE WALTER'D EVER SEEN. THE
hunch-shouldered tall guy walking hand in hand with the little girl—no, she was a little woman. A dwarf or a midget maybe. He didn't know what the difference was. Just short, real short, and the umbrella the guy held to keep the rain off her was one of those huge red and white golf ones—it could have kept twenty of her dry.

Walter had learned over the years working at Ancaster College how to look but not let people know that he was looking. After all he was only the help. He was supposed to be invisible. Invisible when they groped in the corridors. Invisible when they vomited in the urinals—just there to clean up for them. A fixture, no more important than a white-painted wall. Useful but not something you ever thought about—or saw looking at you. So these two didn't realise that he was watching them.
Who the fuck are these two, anyway? And what are they doing? Especially at this hour of the night—and walking right toward the blast site—my blast site.

Then the girl or woman or dwarf or whatever she was pulled on the man's hand and both turned in his direction. He stepped back into the storefront and pretended to look at the chocolates there, a box of which cost more than he made in a day. What was wrong with a Baby Ruth or a Mars bar—why did these people have to have
chocolates like this shit in the window? He counted to one hundred like he used to do when the kids laughed at him in school and then turned back to the street. The two of them had disappeared behind the barrier that now hid his masterpiece.

The fucking Arabs had ground zero. Well, Walter Jones had ground one thousand.

YSLAN HAD ARRANGED TO HAVE THE POWERFUL ARC LIGHTS THAT
overhung the blast pit dimmed to their lowest level. The few remaining streetlights in the town had been unscrewed, and heavy curtains covered every street-side window that remained.

With no moon the darkness was as Viola Tripping had requested.

A quick glance at his illuminated watch face told Decker it was just past 11:05 p.m. He understood they had about six hours until the dawn's light would interfere with Viola Tripping's work.

The rain came down harder.

The woman/girl's slender fingers intertwined with his as she led him—as if it were brightest day—onto the creaking boards that were bolted to scaffolding and now covered the blast pit.

Rows and rows of stacking chairs had been set up—a few of which, those whose student occupants the NSA had been able to identify, had numbers in luminescent paint on their backs.

She led him down the centre aisle toward the raised stage.

It seemed an unbelievably long walk to Decker—and filled with images from a specific day in his past: a happy day in a May long ago when he and Sarah had walked down an aisle hand in hand, before her ALS, before Seth, when he thought his life was going to travel a simple, straight path. Long ago.

He found it hard to orient himself in the pitchy black, and he wasn't pleased with the springiness, let alone the groaning, that came from the rain-slick plywood boards that covered the pit. Then
they were mounting steps to the reconstruction of the stage where the professors had sat.

He had no idea why she wanted to start on the stage, but this was definitely her show, and only she knew the rules by which she worked.

She tugged at his hand and he stopped.

He reached into his pocket and turned on his small digital tape recorder.

“Here?” he asked, not knowing if he ought to whisper. It certainly felt like he ought to; the air seemed somehow thick.
With the presence of souls?
he asked himself.
No,
he answered his own question. He knew that death didn't leave a thickness—it left an emptiness. Like when Sarah died in Crazy Eddie's arms, like when his house was torched, like when he found that Seth had left. With a shock he realised that much of his life was constructed around a profound emptiness.
To keep it at bay?
he wondered.
To stop me from falling into it? Like you could fall through a portal?