Innocent Bystander (28 page)

A muted light illuminated Burnett’s hospital room. Machines flashed and beeped as they monitored his bodily functions. Eighteen hours earlier, doctors had successfully removed a bullet and two fragments that had lodged near his stomach wall. Despite a great deal of lost blood and his critical condition when he’d arrived, Burnett had made what one doctor called an astonishing recovery. He’d further added, unnecessarily she thought, that he would have died had the ambulance arrived five minutes later.

His body shuddered from time to time, and she assumed he was having the dream. She didn’t know if his dream was a vision of the future or simply a nightmare. She didn’t know whether Henri had written a paper that would one day enable mankind to travel through time, but at that moment she wished very much she could turn back the clock.

She wished she could undo the scene on the street when she’d spoken so harshly to her father. Too many sentiments had been voiced in the heat of the moment—sentiments one would like to take back, but can’t.

She wished she could undo the moment in Mr. Frank’s office when she’d injured him to obtain the phone number where Burnett was hiding. He
had
double-crossed her, but it had been drilled into her head from day one that her martial arts skills were only to be used defensively.

Most of all she wished she could go back and prevent Henri from leaping off his balcony. He had a rare gift, and his death was a tragedy—not just for her, but for all humanity.

At that moment her mind posed a question so frightening she refused to answer. The question surfaced again and she tried, unsuccessfully, to force it from her head. The question demanded a reply.

She knew, without hesitation, that given the opportunity, she would return and save him. But what if she went back without the awareness she had gained since? Would she be willing to spend her life married to the wrong person?

Despite her best mental defenses, an answer wormed its way into her brain. It made her feel selfish, mean, and unworthy. She chose not to believe it. It didn’t matter anyway. She couldn’t go back, she couldn’t change the past, and time would proceed forward from this point.

Burnett’s body spasmed again. She gazed at him and hoped what she felt was genuine, and not merely a product of the adventure they’d shared.

It was tragic that Henri had to die for her to realize she’d been in the wrong relationship. Would she have married him if he hadn’t jumped? Probably. Would she have been unhappy the rest of her life? Possibly.

Since that scenario no longer existed, she allowed the thought to drift from her brain. The guilt floated away with it. The past couldn’t be changed; the present and the future could. Henri Laroche would always hold a special place in her heart, but Michael Burnett now held a more important spot.

As she struggled to grasp the significance of it all, the door to the room opened. Her father stood inside the door frame.

Neither of them moved.

There were a million things she wanted to say, a million things she needed to say, a million things she didn’t know how to say.

Her father rushed into the room and enclosed her in a bear hug. Knowing him to be a man of contradictions, she waited for him to step back and slap her face. He didn’t, and instead continued to hold her in silence.

* * *

Burnett awoke from his medicinally assisted sleep about midday and took in his surroundings. From his slightly inclined position, he could see only a small portion of the room. The TV high up on the wall was off, yet he heard voices.

He tried to sit up, but his body wouldn’t cooperate.

“Here, try this,” said a beautiful, familiar voice. A moment later Emma’s face slid into view in front of the TV.

She placed a device that felt like a remote control into his right hand, then she guided his index finger to the correct button. Gradually the bed inclined to a forty-five degree angle.

His father, seated in a wheelchair, the helmet still covering much of his head, rolled up to the bedrail. Dr. Stone stood at the foot of the bed.

His father leaned in close. “How do you feel?”

“About as bad as you look.”

His father smiled and leaned closer. He spoke in a whisper. “Upon further review, I’ve decided I may have been a little premature in my criticism of you and Mr. Laroche.”

Burnett briefly closed his eyes. He knew his father’s formal tone and word choice concealed disappointment, this time in himself.

To his right a hospital computer had been unfolded from the wall. He lifted his eyes and saw, to his horror, the final page of Henri’s paper on the screen. “Why?”

“Please don’t be upset,” Emma said. “I just wanted another opinion on the paper.”

“How many people have seen it?”

“Just the three of us,” she said.

“It’s beyond description,” Dr. Stone said. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t experienced it myself. Like some bizarre electric current passing through my body. At first I thought it was just my reaction. Then Miss Blankenship and your father had the same response.”

“How could a mathematical equation cause such a thing?” she asked. “I didn’t even understand it.”

“It can’t,” Stone said. “At least I’ve never heard of it happening before.” He paused. “I’d like to get Dr. Hofstetter’s thoughts on it.”

Burnett had been only half-listening to the exchange. Her betrayal had been both inexcusable and unforgivable. At the very least she should have waited until he’d awoken before revealing it to anyone.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“No one else is going to see it,” Burnett said with a touch more anger than he’d intended. “Erase it now.”

“It’s just an equation,” Stone said. “An extraordinary one, but still just an equation.”

“So was the formula for the atomic bomb,” Burnett said.

“There’s no need to get so upset,” she said. “This’ll be Henri’s legacy. He deserves it.”

“His legacy will be mankind’s self-destruction,” Burnett said. “I thought you wanted to save the world, not end it.”

“You’re overreacting,” she said.

“Erase the damn thing or I will.” He labored to lift himself from the bed. Dr. Stone restrained him. He thrashed about trying to free himself. At the same time he heard Emma yell for a nurse.

“Settle down, Michael,” his father said.

Moments later a sharp prick stung his shoulder. A powerful need to sleep overcame him.

* * *

That same evening he awoke, alone in his hospital room.

An hour later he was informed about the tragic death of Detective Mayweather, and the less than tragic loss of Professor Desmond. Mr. Frank had survived his gunshot wound.

Burnett felt partly responsible for the detective’s death. Following his discharge, he would sit down with Mayweather’s son. The boy deserved to know what had happened, from someone who’d been there, and why his father had been killed.

He wondered if he had in fact overreacted earlier. Of course Emma wanted to publish Henri’s paper. A work for which he’d be remembered for centuries to come—if the human race survived that long—it would stand as the perfect monument to his genius.

A food tray of Jell-O and water rested on the table alongside his bed. Next to the phone sat the silver and black memory stick.

He picked it up and stroked it between his thumb and index finger. Could the survival or self-destruction of the human race really be decided by this tiny piece of metal and plastic?

He wasn’t a hundred percent certain deleting the equation would even stop the dreams, let alone determine the course of history. He just didn’t know what else to do.

With an unsteady hand he set the memory stick back on the table and stared at it.
We think we’ve learned so much. Truth is, we’re still waiting to get into grade school.

He dared consider, for just a moment, what the world might be like had Henri Laroche not leapt from his balcony, or if he’d survived the fall. No doubt he would have uncovered more secrets, though none more surprising than the mysterious equation that closed his time travel paper.

Burnett snatched the memory stick and held it in front of his face. A tear welled in his eye, then trickled down his cheek. All Henri’s lost potential felt unimportant at that moment. Even the significance of the equation dimmed in his mind. What mattered most was how much he missed his friend.

The next morning Burnett awoke early. Curious to learn how his three visitors from yesterday would respond to the dream, he chose not to erase the equation.

Within an hour all three had returned to his hospital room. Both Emma and his father pleaded with him to delete the paper. They could find no rational explanation for the nightmare, and were stunned by how real it had felt and how much it had upset them.

Dr. Stone had the opposite reaction. He became obsessed with deciphering the dream and grasping its relationship, if any, to the equation. With an aggressive, almost belligerent tone, the calculus professor insisted on reading the entire paper again.

With great reluctance Burnett granted his request. After Stone finished, Burnett deleted the equation despite his protests.

Much to Burnett’s relief, the recurring nightmare at last stopped. The mundane dreams, and even the nightmares that replaced it, provided a welcome change.

After his discharge, he and Emma had the opportunity to get to know each other. They had the chance to do the things ordinary people do and talk about the things ordinary people talk about, without the fate of mankind or a lengthy prison stay dangling over their heads. The engagement ring he’d carried in his pocket the past week bore testament to their compatibility with no external pressure on them.

Burnett found himself intrigued by the challenges of developing solar power into a practical form of energy. It wouldn’t happen overnight, he accepted that; but he made the decision to see it through.

Even without the mystery equation, the peer reviews of Henri’s time travel paper were glowing. Word had apparently spread, and several prestigious journals had already expressed interest in publishing it.

On a humid summer evening six weeks and a day after Desmond had been killed, Burnett sat on the edge of his bed and kicked off his shoes. He placed the box containing the three-quarter-carat diamond engagement ring on the night stand. Tomorrow, he promised himself; tomorrow he’d present it to her. Tomorrow they had plans to meet for dinner at Emma’s favorite restaurant in Manhattan.

He leaned against his pillow. The weight of his eyelids closed them in seconds.

A sickening rush of destruction billowed out from the center of downtown Chicago. Burnett heard voices: “
Why have you done this to us?”

“I haven’t done anything,” he protested. His reply only infuriated his accusers. Their number and intensity grew.

Just when the voices reached a volume he could no longer tolerate, he sprung up in bed. Orienting himself in his dark bedroom, he wrung his sweat-drenched hands together.

Dr. Stone
. Stone had re-created Henri’s equation. Burnett had suspected he might attempt it, but hoped he was wrong.

* * *

At six-fifteen a.m. Burnett banged on the front door of Stone’s ivory colonial. Mrs. Stone opened the door and beckoned him in.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“What makes you think something’s wrong?”

“That look on your face, for one thing.”

“What else?” he asked. He knew there was more to her answer.

“He’s been locking himself in his study for weeks. As soon as he gets up, he disappears in there. Sometimes he doesn’t even come out for dinner. What’s going on?”

“Wait here,” Burnett said, and raced up the stairs.

He found the door to Stone’s office locked. He rapped on it twice.

“It’s Michael. Open up.”

No response. For thirty seconds he pounded, but still got no answer.

“You have a key?” he called to Stone’s wife at the bottom of the stairs.

She shook her head.

Burnett kicked the door over and over, harder each time. By the sixth kick the top hinge started to break loose. By the eighth it broke free. He shoved the top of the door and it crashed into the room.

Stone lay on the floor in the corner of the room, balled up in the fetal position. Burnett ran over and knelt beside him. He checked for a pulse, and found it.

He faced the empty doorway, and shouted, “Call an ambulance.”

Stone’s laptop sat on a desk in the corner of the room. On the screen glowed Henri’s mysterious equation.

When his eyes met the screen, electricity charged the room. The hair on his arms rose. His heart raced, and his sweat and salivary glands pumped wildly.

He stood, shaky, and stared at the screen. He wobbled two steps toward the desk, then stopped. The equation seized his attention, as it had at Desmond’s house. Somehow the thing plucked a memory, a potent memory, from his unconscious.

In his mind’s eye, he sat beside Emma on the spare mattress in Stone’s garage. He felt her lips against his, relished her strawberry lip gloss, licked his lips to savor it a second time. He gazed into her eyes, aglow in the dim light. This was no mere memory. He was there again, reliving the experience.

Then he was at his father’s hospital bed the evening of his car accident. Medical equipment beeped and hummed and clicked behind him. The ubiquitous antiseptic odor sought to gag his sinuses. He extended his arm and grasped the cold metal bed railing after a doctor informed him his father might never walk again.

Without warning he found himself in the kitchen of his parent’s house, a young man fresh from college, ready to take on the world. When the phone rang, he knew who it was and tried not to answer. But he’d answered before, and had no choice but to answer again. His father informed him of his mother’s death. The pain, so real, it sent tears streaming down his cheeks.

A girl’s shriek wrenched him from his hypnosis.

“Daddy!” Stone’s daughter cried. She ran over to her father.

Shielding his eyes from the screen, Burnett sprang toward the computer, lifted it, and heaved it against the wall. The device split in two, the screen separating from the keyboard. When it struck the floor the screen shattered.

Burnett, fighting to maintain his balance, staggered over to Stone. His heartrate and glands slowly retreated to normal.

Stone awoke. His daughter tried to help him up, but Burnett waved his hand, indicating he should stay down.

Stone propped himself up on his elbow.

“You alright?” Burnett asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What happened?”

“My God. I thought I was dying and having a life review. It went all the way back to …”

Burnett leaned forward, waiting for him to finish the sentence.

“You were right,” Stone said. He grew agitated. “Delete the equation. Now. Delete it.”

“It’s okay,” Burnett said, casting a glance at the broken laptop. “It’s gone.”

Stone sighed deeply.

“How far back did you go?”

Stone shook his head.

“I need to know.”

Stone refused to even look at his student.

Through the window Burnett noticed a woman watching them from the street. He recognized her as the woman whose station wagon he’d car-jacked six weeks ago, the woman who’d walked by with the German shepherd as he and Emma had approached Desmond’s home. Different hairstyle and different clothes, but he had no doubt it was the same woman.

“I have to run,” Burnett said. “I’ll be right back. An ambulance is on the way.”

Stone lifted his head. “We do have much to discuss.”

Burnett nodded and backed out of the room. As he descended the staircase, he wondered who the hell she could be.

After he exited the house, he stopped at the sidewalk. Looking left, then right, he spotted the woman several hundred feet away. He took off after her at a fast jog.

She cut down a side street. Burnett turned down the same road, and narrowed the gap between them.

From a hundred feet behind he yelled, “Hey!”

She didn’t respond. When he finally pulled up alongside her, she stopped. She briefly hid her face.

“Who are you?” Burnett asked. “That was you with the German shepherd, right?”

“And in the park. I had to get you out of there a little early. So you could ‘borrow’ my car.”

“You put up a good fight.”

“One of my better performances.”

“I know I said I’d return it. I just couldn’t.” He immediately realized how stupid his statement sounded.

“Don’t worry.” A broad, motherly smile spread across her face. “You were supposed to take the next car. But I didn’t want the guy to knock any teeth out. Not after the night you’d had.”

“I can’t for the life of me figure out what you’re talking about or why you’re here. How you knew I was here.”

She glanced at her watch. “I have to go soon.”

“Go where? I don’t understand. Who
are
you?”

“I’ve waited a long time for a chance to be here.”

“If you really have to leave, please tell me what you’re talking about.”

“I’ve come to watch you. I’ve come to watch you do what few people could have done.”

“Come from where? To watch me do what?”

“You’re too modest. Think about it for a moment.”

As with Audrey, every answer that popped into his head seemed more implausible than the previous one.

“You’re not …?” Burnett asked, unable to finish the question.

“Think of me as an old—I mean pre-elderly—woman who wandered out of Bellevue.”

It was the first thing she’d said that made any sense. “So I can ask you anything?”

“Of course.”

“What is that goddamn equation?”

“How hard would you laugh if I said it was the solution—or key, if you prefer—to the greatest mystery of the universe.”

“Is that all?”

She smiled and nodded.

“Time travel?”

She smiled again, minus the nod. “Mr. Laroche’s paper
is
brilliant. You and I wouldn’t be having this chat without it. But the equation has nothing to do with the subject of his paper.”

Stunned, Burnett could not speak. After a moment he composed himself, but stammered unintelligibly. Then he said, “What about the dream? Is that the future if the equation is published?”

“One possible future.”

“How? Why?”

“There are countless possible futures. Dreams aren’t meant to be taken literally.”

“What? Jesus, I was ready to kill Desmond because of that dream.”

“And good thing, too. Mr. Laroche wasn’t supposed to figure out the whole equation. Just the first part. If your professor had published it …” but she didn’t finish.

“Then he did discover something before its time.”

She glanced at her watch. “I only have a minute left.”

He didn’t know what would happen in the next sixty seconds, but he needed to get at least one of his ten million questions answered. He faced her, determined not to let her out of his sight. “Tell me, how did Desmond know we were at Stone’s house?”

She gazed at him with her warmest grin yet. “Ah, we think we know so much. Truth is, we’re still waiting to get into kindergarten.”

He returned her smile. “Sounds like a thought I had at the hospital.”

She took a single step back. “I still don’t know how, but Henri Laroche tried to sneak you into graduate school.”

Behind him a low grumble intensified. He was determined not to take his eyes off her. “Can you tell me one more thing?”

A powerful rush of wind blasted his back. He hadn’t intended to look, but his head twisted reflexively. He saw nothing. When he faced forward, the sound had stopped, the wind had died, and she was gone.

He rubbed his eyes and glanced around. With nothing for fifteen feet in any direction, there was no chance she could have hidden anywhere.

What the hell’s going on?
It was a question he had become all too familiar with.

Perhaps he was dreaming and would wake up soon. Since the recurring nightmare, all his dreams had become more vivid.

Perhaps she
had
escaped from Bellevue. She’d probably read the news and knew about him and all that had happened six weeks ago.

Or perhaps …

A warm, gentle breeze kicked up from the southwest. Burnett spun on his heel, hesitated for just an instant, then strode toward Dr. Stone’s house. He picked up his pace. If he wasn’t dreaming, they indeed had much to discuss.