Innocent Bystander (25 page)

Having encountered the same unmarked police car at the end of Hamilton Road, Burnett had once again circled the block and approached Desmond’s house from the south.

He paused at a bend in the road. On the far side of that bend, just beyond a slight rise, lay the sprawling ranch. With Emma nowhere in sight, he lifted his shirt, reached back, and slipped the Beretta from his pants. Moving forward again, he gripped it in his right hand. He was struck by its weight. In his palm he clutched a formidable weapon.

He reached the top of the rise and neared the driveway. A dark Ford sedan sat diagonally across the street. He stopped between a pair of streetlamps.

A chilly wind at his back, he darted between two houses and into the woods behind Desmond’s home. He found it difficult to believe he’d been here just hours before. In a subtle, yet still profound way, the grounds seemed different. In reality, it was the circumstances that had changed. He refused to leave the house until both Desmond and the equation no longer existed.

He still didn’t know if he could execute the professor in cold blood. He recalled how he’d long considered the man a father figure. Had Desmond’s support been an illusion?

His right temple throbbed.
Not now
, he pleaded. The last thing he needed was a migraine.

He stopped at the edge of the woods behind the ranch. Lights glowed in several rooms. The cold wind rustled the leaves. His shirt, still damp, clung to his arms.

I wonder how Emma’s doing
.

The last thing he needed was a distraction, but his brain refused to cooperate. Her confession had resonated with his feelings; his lie had sparked dissonance.

If he told her the truth, he doubted she would believe him. If he knew the truth, he doubted he would believe it.

It didn’t matter. In a short time, both he and Desmond would be in body bags.

Michael Burnett thrust his mind into neutral. He knew what had to be done. No further debate was necessary, and no further deliberation was needed. He stuffed the Beretta into his pants and took the first step of a hike across the spacious yard.

* * *

Professor Desmond stood behind his desk. Three of Henri’s unfinished works sat in the printer tray. He scooped them up and deposited them in the safe beside the desk.

He had deleted everything from the computer’s memory except the time travel paper. Although he planned to smash the computer into pieces, and dispose of each piece in a separate location, he thought it prudent to erase every file in the event someone managed to locate all the parts.

Would that be sufficient?
Specialists existed, he suspected, with the skill to restore a computer’s memory even after all the information had been deleted and the hardware damaged. Scattering the pieces in Long Island Sound would have been his first choice. Regrettably, numerous episodes of seasickness had convinced him to sell his boat.

Each time he extended his index finger to erase the paper, the same set of muscles retracted it. Once he tapped the button, once he purged it from the Recycle Bin, he knew of no sure way to recover it. There was no possibility he could re-create the paper. Certain portions he could reproduce, but not the entire five pages.

To erase it would be a crime against science. As a life-long man of science, it proved more difficult than he had anticipated to strike the delete key.

He shut his eyes, covered his face with his left hand, and located the delete button with his right index finger. Still, he could not bring himself to press it. He could not, fully sober, erase the greatest scientific paper he had ever read, arguably the greatest piece written in the last century.

An image of himself seated in a prison cell appeared in his mind’s eye. To spend the remainder of his life behind bars, in addition to not publishing the paper, was a pain more excruciating than he could bear. He focused on the image and all the anguish it produced.

He tapped the delete key. When he opened his eyes, his brilliant young student’s discovery had vanished from the screen. His place in history had vanished as well. To his surprise, a tremendous weight lifted from his shoulders.

Beyond that, it had a clarifying effect on his thinking. He recognized that from the moment he had slammed De Stefano’s face against the glove compartment, he no longer had any possibility of publishing the paper. He had been blinded by obsession and undone by rage. An acute lack of sleep had clouded his judgment as well.

The first step had been taken toward disentangling himself from the mess that had been created.
If only Audrey had listened to my instructions. If only she had followed the simplest of directions.

He had no desire to trudge down that mental path again. The situation existed, and he had to extricate himself from it. The next two steps involved disposing of Greta’s body and the computer.

The doorbell rang. He jumped back.
The police?
The body still lay in the living room wrapped in a throw rug.

Something about the doorbell sounded peculiar. As he rushed into the hallway, he realized it was the back doorbell that had rung.
Burnett
. He had still heard nothing from Ryder, and nothing from the police about Burnett being captured.

Desmond arrived at the rear door and peeled back the flower-painted curtain. There, in the dim moonlight, stood Michael Burnett. His student had returned sooner than expected.

Greta’s gun, he noted, sat in the bottom left drawer of his desk, the perfect instrument with which to orchestrate a timely murder-suicide.

He snapped the lock and pulled the door open. Burnett stood in the doorway, a determined look on his face. The young man took a single, silent step inside.

Desmond poked his head outside, spotted no one else in the dark yard, and leaned back in. “And Miss Blankenship? Waiting somewhere with instructions to contact the police if you don’t return with Mr. Laroche’s computer? My fingerprints all over it. I must admit you’ve impressed me with your persistence.”

Burnett said nothing.

Desmond shut the door. “What makes you think I still have it? Even if I did, what makes you think I would happily hand it over to you?”

“It’s time to end this,” he finally said. “Where’s the computer?”

Before Desmond could manufacture a lie, the solution to several problems dawned on him:
Give it to him
.
No one else knows I was ever in possession of it.

Any DNA on the device would be easy to justify. Henri had brought the computer to his office and requested he preview an early draft. Greta would still have to disappear, much like De Stefano. The pictures she’d spoken of continued to breed anxiety. If they existed, it would no doubt cost him his marriage, but he could still claim Burnett had tried to frame him. It was far-fetched, but with luck it would not come to that.

When he emerged from his thoughts, he saw Burnett leveling a Berretta.

“Where is it?” Burnett said.

“There’s no need for violence.”

“Then get it.”

Desmond guided him into his office.

“There it is,” Desmond said, a finger directed at his desk.

Burnett jogged to the side of the desk. He spun the computer around and appeared surprised to discover it turned on. The Beretta pointed at Desmond, his attention ping-ponged from the screen to the professor and back again.

As Burnett pushed buttons on the keyboard, Desmond wondered what his reaction would be when he discovered the memory had been erased.

He did not have to wonder long. Burnett’s gun-hand fell, and the Beretta’s handle banged the desk.

“Why?” Burnett asked.

“Why did I delete everything?” He did not feel compelled to reveal why he had emptied the computer’s memory. Burnett would soon be dead or in the hands of the police. Likely unaware of Henri’s incomplete works, even from a prison cell he would not be a bother, not like he could have been had Desmond published the time travel paper.

“No,” Burnett said, and spun the computer so Desmond could view the screen. “Why did you delete everything except this?”

The peculiar arrangement of numbers, letters, and symbols that formed the final equation of Henri Laroche’s time travel paper glowed on the screen.

Desmond was certain he had deleted the entire paper; at least he was fairly certain. His success at lucid dreaming had offered him a glimpse of the equation’s significance. Perhaps he unconsciously could not bring himself to delete it.

Staring at the equation, without the rest of the paper, granted it an other-worldly aura. The pixels that lit up the lines, curves, and angles shimmered and danced against the milky white background.

“No,” Desmond said. He knew Burnett intended to delete it.

“You know it’s the key,” Burnett said.

“I didn’t.”

Alone, the equation’s influence proved far more dramatic. Electricity charged the room. Desmond’s heart leaped. His sweat and salivary glands pumped with abandon.

This changes everything
. “Look at it. By itself. It has an almost hypnotic effect, don’t you think?”

Burnett faced the screen.

“A certain elegance.” He needed to convince his student not to delete it. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“No one has. No one will.”

“
This
is mathematical poetry.” He thought about leaping at him, but the young man turned to him. “You don’t have to grasp the full meaning of a poem to appreciate the poet’s genius. Sometimes only the author truly understands.”

“Well, this author’s dead.”

Or someone as brilliant
. Regrettably, he knew no one of comparable genius.

As he allowed the poetry of mathematics to work its magic on him, he understood: The rest of the paper merely suppressed the power of the equation. “Extraordinary.”

“We’re not ready for this,” Burnett said, clearly affected as well.

“If you mean the human race, I disagree.”

“The dream.”

“A warning. Nothing more. The future is not set. Now that we know, we can take steps to change it.”

“It’s not worth the risk.”

Burnett wiped a bead of sweat from his brow.

Desmond followed suit. “Who left you in charge of deciding what mankind is or is not ready for?” As he lowered his arm it momentarily blocked his view of the screen. For that half-second his elbow blocked the equation, its effect was negated.

Now, as he gazed once again at the computer, his heart rate climbed and his glands kicked back into high gear.
What the hell had Henri discovered?

He felt flushed and lightheaded. He tried to look away, but could not. Like a hypnotist’s pocket watch, the equation dragged his attention in deeper and deeper.

Moments from his life paraded before his mind’s eye:

The time Henri had asked him to preview his paper. He caressed the first page between thumb and index finger, sensed the infinitesimal weight of the other four pages in his lap. He felt the thunderous awe of discovery … heard the buzz of overhead lights … savored the acidity of the orange juice he had been sipping.

His first night with Audrey, her youthful flesh the antidote to the poison of mediocrity. The flavor of her lips—tangerine; the scent of her neck—wild strawberries. Her uneven breasts, magically firm yet soft beneath his fingertips. Her cackle, so grating it made nails on a chalkboard sound like Mozart.

The publication of his first paper. A positive remark lifting his soul into heaven, a negative one hammering it down to hell.

These were no mere memories. He was there, all five senses engaged and alive.

Only Burnett’s leaning close to the computer drew him from his trance. He tried to speak, but no words came.

With two quick jabs at the keyboard, his student obliterated the future.

The electricity in the room now unplugged, his heart rate slowed. The furious pump of his glands subsided.

What just happened?

Rather than get upset, he sought to rationalize it. Perhaps it was for the best. He tried to conjure up the jail cell image. This time, however, it proved ineffective. The three papers he had printed from Henri’s computer sat meaningless beside the grandeur of the equation.

He would get it back. No matter what it took, he would find a way to retrieve the equation.

Burnett slammed down the computer screen, startling him.

After a brief silence Desmond said, “I know you felt it. You cannot tell me you’ve ever experienced anything like that before.”

Burnett shook off the statement. “I need to know something. If you had to re-create it, could you?”

“What? Why?”

“I need to know,” Burnett yelled, the Beretta trembling in his hand.

“I don’t think so.” Portions of it remained clear in his mind, but even having viewed it again, there was no chance he could reproduce every element on paper.

Burnett leaned into the side of the desk. “I should kill you right now, you lying son-of-a-bitch.”