Shift: A Novel (15 page)

BC had looked at dozens of cadavers, stuck his fingers in knife and bullet wounds and probed nether orifices for signs of rape or cruder trauma. But never once had he looked a living victim in the face. Never once had he heard pleas for succor or mercy. And even though he knew she was incidental to this story, that Orpheus was the real star—or at any rate the chemical, the project that had made him—it was the girl who haunted him. Somehow he’d tricked himself into believing that victims acquiesced to their fate in the end. That the greatest crime was murder, not the horrible psychic torture that led up to it. But all night long the girl’s screams echoed in his ears, and every time he closed his eyes he saw hers, wide with terror. Long after he’d forgotten she was dead, he remembered how she’d suffered when she was alive.

In an effort to get some sleep he tried to read
The Man in the High Castle
, the book Director Hoover had sent him north with. Among other things, the director expected a report Monday morning—assuming BC still had a job, of course. But he only got as far as the end of the second page.
How easily I could fall in love with a girl like this
. His cheeks reddened, the book fell from his fingers. He filled a rag with ice from the machine down the hall and put it on the bump on his forehead, then lay in bed listening to the rain wash away his chances of finding out what had happened to her.

The storm let up shortly after dawn. By the time the sun crested the
Berkshires he was stashing the Corvair a quarter mile from the front gate of the Castalia estate. A bone-chilling fog filled up the road, the lawns, the space between trees. The reduced visibility seemed to amplify what little noise there was—mostly BC, his shoes crunching over gravel, his breath whistling as he scaled the crumbling stone wall, and then his slip-sliding passage as he made his way up the slick hill toward the main house. Fog ribboned through the deciduous trees on this side of the house, and the ground was cushioned by layers of leaves and mulch. BC, punchy from his sleepless night but wired on two cups of bitter coffee, half felt that he’d stepped into another hallucination. He wanted to tell himself that was impossible, but after yesterday he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to say that about anything again.

There wasn’t a light on in any of the main house’s windows, and the building emitted a pervasive silence, as if its occupants weren’t just asleep but unconscious, suppressed by the gargantuan structure until it chose to recognize a new day. BC skirted the wide lawns and made his way toward the pine forest. His chest tightened and he willed himself to relax. Forrestal was gone, he reminded himself. Orpheus was dead, and couldn’t hurt him now.

The cottage came into view more quickly than he remembered. Without the interference of a shimmering hallucination, he could see it for what it was: a small building outfitted in the same combination of Bavarian and Catskill kitsch that decorated the Big House. He combed the yard first, but Melchior’s team had been thorough. The only sign that they’d been there was the chewed-up ground itself. Inside, the rooms had the distinct look of a scene that’s been gone through by professionals who don’t care about covering their tracks. Books sat unevenly on the shelves from which they’d been taken and flipped through and hastily put back; drawers hung half-open, bits of clothing or paper peeking out; couch cushions bunched together like boxcars on a crashed train. They’d even pulled up the carpet, leaving it in a roll against one wall, and a couple of floorboards had been pulled up as well. BC had no idea if they’d found anything, but the one thing all this effort made clear was that the team hadn’t known what was going on in the house before it arrived.

It wasn’t until he unrolled the carpet that he realized the cleanup
team hadn’t simply been searching for evidence: it had also been eliminating it. A huge hole had been sawn out of the center of the carpet where Logan’s body had lain, ragged-edged, contemptuous even, as though someone had hacked the blood-soaked portion out with the same knife that killed Logan. BC looked at the walls again, realized that all the bloody handprints had been scrubbed away. He was able to find a couple of small stains in the carpet, but doubted there was enough fluid in the fibers to get anything like a usable sample. Nevertheless, he clipped the strands and dropped them into his pocket—his evidence bags had been in his briefcase—then made his way through the rest of the first floor, taking two or three more samples, but not really expecting anything to come of them. Only when he was convinced the lower floor had been thoroughly exhumed did he make his way upstairs.

He’d meant to go through the ancillary rooms first, but the open door lay just past the top of the stairway and he couldn’t help but look in. The bed had been stripped. Naked pillows lay atop the dingy white mattress like seashells on a beach. A strong scent of bleach came to his nostrils.

He stepped in. There was the bureau that had flown across the room and slammed through the wall. It sat between two windows, not a nick on it, and certainly none of the drawers were smashed into pieces; the wall that it had crashed through was unmarked as well. The books and lamps that had flown at him sat on shelves and tables, equally intact, gleamingly clean. Could CIA have repaired the walls, replaced all of the furniture? No, that was just paranoia—the kind of thinking that dealing with CIA brought out in you. Somehow he had hallucinated the whole thing. But how?

He looked at the armoire that had pinned him into the corner. It stood a good three feet from the wall now, but when BC walked to the far side, he saw faint scuff marks on the bare wooden floors. Someone had made an effort to scrub them away—had gone so far as to fill them in with wax. As aha moments go, it was small; but still, it was good to know he hadn’t imagined everything. Now BC saw a deep round dent on the windowsill, flecked with black paint. He looked for the typewriter that had knocked him unconscious; it was missing from the room. More evidence that not everything that happened yesterday had
been the product of his own mind. What was it his mother used to say? The devil mixes lies with truth to confuse you. An image of Melchior’s smug pucker materialized in BC’s head. Yes, he certainly did that.

BC crouched down in the corner. From this position, the armoire blocked his view of the door. Melchior could have stood there, assessing the room, formulating a plan: shoot the girl, then Chandler, then deal with BC. He shifted his attention to the bed. It sat exposed on top and bottom, barren of any sign a body had lain on it. But it was
too
barren. BC strode to the bed, threw the pillows off. The mattress was completely clean. I.e., no bloodstains. BC didn’t care what kind of solvent the cleanup team had used, how hard it had scrubbed: blood always left a mark. Especially when it came from a gunshot wound, especially on white cotton ticking. And besides, the bed was completely dry, which meant the CIA team hadn’t had to clean it. Which meant, finally, that there’d been nothing to clean off. He flipped the mattress just to be sure, but there was no blood on the bottom either.

But what about the girl? BC looked beside the bed. Immediately he saw a smattering of brownish red dots that had soaked into nicks in the old wooden bed frame. Scrubbed, but still visible. So she
had
been shot. There were no stains on the floor, however, and BC wanted to believe she hadn’t bled a lot, that the wound hadn’t been serious. But even if the bullet hadn’t hit anything major, if it wasn’t removed quickly it could easily lead to sepsis.

He put his hand on the wall. The plaster felt cool and slightly damp. It could’ve just been the humidity from the rain, or … He ran his fingers over the wall like a blind man reading Braille. It took nearly a minute to find it. A soft spot about eighteen inches above the mattress. BC pushed hard, and a bullet-sized hole appeared in the plaster. Now he knew for sure: whoever’d shot at Forrestal had aimed
above
his head. The body bag had just been a cover. The CIA wanted BC to tell J. Edgar Hoover that Chandler Forrestal was dead.

He pressed deeper, feeling for the slug. His fingertip bumped against something smooth and hard. He had to wiggle his finger to widen the hole so he could get it around the bullet, and when he pulled it out a chunk of wet plaster fell to the floor. A red gleam caught his eye, and
he jerked his hand back as though it might be a lump of congealed blood. But of course it wasn’t.

It was the girl’s ring.

For a moment all he could do was stare at the dark ruby, wondering why Melchior had chosen to hide it here of all places. But then he realized: Melchior hadn’t hidden it. He’d left it for BC to find. It was both a test and bait, and as BC picked it up and slipped it in his pocket he knew: he was hooked.

Just then a thump sounded from the lower floor—outside. The porch. A moment later the door creaked open, clunked quietly closed.

The bedroom was directly above the living room. If BC moved, whoever was downstairs would know he was here. All he could do was wait. He pulled his gun out. A part of him—it seemed to be centered on his trigger finger—prayed that it was Melchior. He would shoot him in the hip. He would cripple him, then beat the girl’s location out of him.

For a long time there was no sound downstairs. It was as if whoever’d come in was as awed by the cottage as BC was. Then, slowly, steps marched toward the center of the house. The staircase. The person’s tread was heavy, and BC couldn’t help but imagine Melchior’s large form moving through the living room. He sighted on the door and waited.

The steps mounted the stairs, slowing as they neared the top. BC knew the person was staring at the open door, working up the nerve to look in. He could almost hear him counting under his breath. Then, almost as if he’d been pushed, a man’s form filled the doorway.

“Don’t move!”

“Aaah!” Timothy Leary screamed like a frightened child and immediately collapsed on himself, covering his face with his hands. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!”

When Leary could walk again, BC took him downstairs, sat him on the couch (a cushion was missing, he noted now—the one he’d knelt on to keep from getting Logan’s blood on his pants). Even after BC identified himself as an FBI agent, the doctor remained terrified, and his fear only increased when BC, hedging his bets, told him about the three body bags that had left the cottage.

“Chandler? Naz? Dead? Dear God.”

“That was the girl’s name? Naz?”

“Nazanin Haverman. She was Persian,” Leary added, almost tenderly.

“Why was she even here? Was she Mr. Forrestal’s girlfriend?”

BC felt almost jealous as he asked the question, but when Leary shook his head and said, “She was a prostitute,” it was all he could do not to slug the man.

“What do you mean, a prostitute?”

“I only know what Morganthau told me. As near as I can tell, he made her give LSD to her johns in exchange for not having her arrested. She’s been working for him for almost a year.”

BC couldn’t believe it. Even in her emotionally fraught state, the girl had looked like anything but a prostitute—and, as well, the idea that the nephew of the former secretary of defense would have to resort to whores beggared belief. But it also coincided with what Melchior had told him on the train yesterday.

“The girl called him Logan. Was that his first name, or …?”

“We all assumed Morganthau was an alias, especially since he slipped up once and called himself Morganthal.” A little smile flickered over the doctor’s mouth, then quickly faded. “He was a little boy playing at being a spy. Logan could’ve been his real name, or just another alias.”

BC was about to ask if Leary had ever seen Melchior before, but the doctor spoke first.

“Apparently Miss Haverman’s father was what they call a CIA ‘asset.’ In Persia. He provided assistance during the revolution in ’53, but was killed during the fighting, along with her mother and the rest of her family. Naz was barely a teenager then. The CIA brought her to the States and placed her with the Havermans, a wealthy Boston family. They even went so far as to adopt her, but she had trouble fitting in. Morganthau, Logan, whatever his name was, he alluded to the idea that her adoptive father might have behaved inappropriately. She was expelled from private schools up and down the East Coast for drinking and aggressive behavior and, ah, precocity. Morganthau told me he saw her name in a file when he was hired by the Boston office and decided
to check up on her. When he found her, she was living hand to mouth, exchanging sex for cash or drink or whatever she could get. He seemed to think the arrangement he created was a step up for her. That he was helping her out.” Leary shrugged. “It seemed to me he was obsessed with her. Even after he brought Chandler here, it was her he talked about. Her he was fascinated with.” The doctor looked up at BC. “Just like you.”

Even as Leary spoke, BC felt his hand in his pocket, fiddling with the ring that Melchior had left for him. It’s not just me and Logan, he thought. Melchior was also caught in Naz’s spell.

“I was going to get to Mr. Forrestal,” he said brusquely, yanking his hand from his pocket. “It’s just …” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m not really sure what to ask beyond, well, what
happened
yesterday?”

Despite the gravity of the situation, the smile came back to the doctor’s face, and a look of awe gleamed in his twinkling eyes.

“It’s easiest just to say it. Rippling trees. The Mezquita of Córdoba. Furniture flying across a room of its own accord. These images came from Chandler’s head. Somehow he is able to broadcast his thoughts—his hallucinations—into the minds of the people around him.”

An image of the burning boy filled BC’s brain. “But there were other things. Things that came from
my
head. My past.”

If anything Leary’s smile grew bigger. “His ability seems to be related to the amount of LSD in his body. Seemed to be. Toward the end Morganthau was pumping him with thousands of times the normal dosage.”

“But Miss Haverman said he administered the drug with an eye dropper while Mr. Forrestal was sleeping. How do you get thousands of doses—”