The Hysteria: Book 4, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (7 page)

Pater went back to the desk and sat on the corner. “There is usually an environmental trigger that causes MPIs. People in a unique setting, be it a school or an office, believe they’ve been exposed to something, either a germ or a poison. Someone begins to experience real symptoms. Others observe this and react, beginning to experience these same, very real symptoms.”

“I don’t think you can say usually. Nobody understands the illness and it seems to be a last resort diagnosis. If they don’t think it’s anything else, they call it MPI.”

I stood. My legs felt rubbery.

I said, “Most often the looming presence of extraordinary, systemic anxiety across a group is enough to trigger symptoms.”

Pater smirked. “So what’s causing this one?”

“You talk like you’ve ruled out an organic cause. How do we know it’s not something in the environment?”

Pater shook his head no. “We don’t. This is speculation.”

“In that case, I don’t know that I care. The trigger won’t help me find Megan.”

“But the trigger—”

I cut him off. “Won’t help us predict the symptoms or attendant behavior in any way. The girls in Africa suffered from anxiety and nerves due to political upheaval and social turmoil. So they started laughing. You can ID cause and effect after the fact but foresight is blind. And besides, we know what the symptoms are already.”

Pater held out a palm. “If we remove the trigger, the symptoms might resolve quickly and Megan will return to her old self. We won’t need to find her.”

“Yeah, sounds peachy, but I’ll leave that to you guys, the experts. It’s likely something you can’t fix, like the lunacy of the current North Korean leadership. In the meantime I’m going to look for Megan in case that doesn’t work out for you.”

Pater grew serious. “There are more people at stake than Megan here, Eddie.”

“I’m not the man for that job, Pater. I’m the man for the job I’m on. I’d love to save the world but I can only do it one person at a time. I have no background in psychology, epidemiology, sociology, predictive or regressive modeling. You don’t put a kicker on the O-line.”

Pater ignored what I’d just said. “Assuming worst case scenario, we think Patient Zero became Patient Zero three weeks ago. Our predictive modeling tells us we’re overdue for the spike. We’re headed for a major event, I’d say sometime in the next couple of days.”

“You talk like you know it’s going to happen here. But Megan could be anywhere by now.”

He nodded. “A reasonable assumption. But we are dealing with an unreasonable situation. We have reason to believe that Megan and her companions cannot leave this town.”

“Why?”

Pater said nothing.

I looked at Riehl. “Why do you think they don’t leave town?”

Riehl just stared back at me.

I shrugged. “Okay, don’t tell me. That just means I should get back to work ASAP. So are you going to help?”

Patterson narrowed his eyes and studied me. “There’s one more thing about the model, Eddie. All recorded MPIs come with a variety of symptoms, some of which don’t manifest until much later in the disease process. We may not have seen the worst yet.”

“So we use a two-pronged approach,” I said. “You look for the trigger, I look for Megan. Everybody’s happy, at the end of the day we can all sign each other’s yearbooks.”

“I agree a two-pronged approach would be for the best.”

I nodded at Riehl. “Great. I’ll take Riehl then. We’ll find Megan before you find the trigger.”

Riehl gave me a flip smile and exchanged a look with his boss.

Pater said, “You still haven’t explained how you’re going to find Megan. And I need Riehl to continue with the work I’ve already assigned him.”

“Which is?”

He didn’t answer. “Manetti will be your handler.”

“Handler my ass. She can be my partner, but only if the juice flows both ways.”

“I don’t want to be his handler or his partner.” Manetti stood behind me in the open doorway. “This guy’s Little League.”

“It’s always a good idea to introduce an element of unpredictability into the equation so your enemy has to be wary of the wild card,” Patterson said.

“You speak of the enemy like it has a brain. I thought this was an MPI,” I said.

“That’s our working hypothesis, but we’re not ruling anything out.”

Manetti stepped between me and her boss. “No hits on Ken Hernando.”

“Alias?” I said.

She laughed derisively. “If it was an alias we would have found it.” She looked back at Patterson. “If it’s deep cover, it’s deep deep cover.”

Riehl cracked his knuckles. It made a sound like walnuts getting smashed. “Or it’s nonsense. Just a code word for the initiated.”

“Could be both,” I said.

Patterson nodded. “First order of business is to run that down. Second is to find the man who laughs. Working assumption is they’re one and the same but we blow that up if it gets us nowhere.”

The man who laughs?
This was getting better and better.

I said, “You want to fill me in?”

Manetti’s eyes narrowed. “Not really.”

I shook my head. “Fine. We’ll do it the hard, inefficient way. Or should I say the federal government way?” I turned to Patterson. “Or you can you tell me where you’ve already looked so I don’t waste my fucking time.”

He smiled. “Where
would
you look?”

“Known friends, associates, old places of employment, local motels, local short-term residencies. With your resources you can look for an electronic trail. I assume that’s turned up nothing.”

He kept that smile in place. “We’ve already run all those dead-ends down.”

“I thought you were short on people, long on expensive hand-me-down DARPA tech.”

“My personnel are my best resources, tech included.” He smiled appreciatively at Riehl and Manetti. “I can say with absolute certainty that Megan Turner has not stayed with any of her friends, relatives, or associates in the last two days. And if she does, we’ll know about it pretty quickly.”

“You questioned all these people?”

“Only some.”

“You bugged up their places, you’ve got recording devices?”

“No.”             

I couldn’t help but be intrigued. “I’ll bite. How can you say that with certainty?”

The smile slid off Riehl’s face. He looked from his boss to me and back again.

“Pater,” Manetti said. “This isn’t a good idea.”

“I know you disapprove.” He smiled at her. “You’re always the voice of reason. But I’m going to ignore you for the moment because I’m terribly interested to see what happens. Everything is a social experiment.”

“That’s what you’re always saying.” Manetti shook her head.

I was on my guard. Door number one led to the vomitorium. Door number two led to an adjoining room where Manetti had used a computer. I’d been thinking door number three led to the outside world, but now I had a bad feeling about it. Like I wanted to see, but didn’t want to see, what was behind it.

“Social experiment?”

“Try to remain calm,” Pater said.

“I am calm, can’t you read my blood pressure?”

Pater pointed to door number three. “Eamon Moriarty is in there.”

Before anybody could stop me, I burst through door number three, ready to kill or be killed.

It was a large room. A glass partition divided it in half. And separated me from the boy who’d killed my one and only brother. Except the boy was no longer a boy. He was a young man.

Eamon Moriarty.

He was tall. Broad-shouldered. Handsome. He had brooding, intelligent eyes that held steady against my glare. He didn’t move a muscle as I rushed the glass. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink.

He wasn’t scared of me.

There was a transparent door carved into the glass partition. It was locked. And I couldn’t break it down.

I gave up trying to get in. And looked at him.

We studied each other through the door. He was nineteen or twenty, no boy left in him now. The softness had gone out of his face. He was all angles and hard edges and there was no innocence in the eyes, if there had ever been any.

“I never thought I’d see you again.” His voice was a baritone. I could see a little bit of his uncle in his face, the man who’d almost killed me on a wintery day not so long ago. Some resemblance in the mouth and the eyes.

“I’m the ghost of Christmas Past, motherfucker.”

He nodded, grew thoughtful. “For what it’s worth, Eddie, I’m very sorry about what happened.”

I almost broke my hand trying to force the knob. “You’re sorry.”

“I was just a boy. A wounded, tortured boy with a lot of problems. I needed help.”

“This isn’t endearing.”

He went on. “I know that doesn’t take away any of your pain, but it’s the truth. If I could undo what happened, if I could go back in a time machine, I would. It haunts me every day. It will haunt me for the rest of my life. But that must be nothing compared to your hell.”

“Why don’t you open this door, and I’ll show you my hell.”

“I can’t open the door, only Pater can.”

I looked over my shoulder. The three federals had come in. Manetti had her gun out, angled at the floor. Riehl spaced himself, forming a triangle with Manetti.

Pater approached, much to the surprise and consternation of his two agents. This guy was always doing the opposite. It made him predictably unpredictable. I made a mental note.

Pater came up to the glass and gave me one of those paternal looks. “Eddie, why don’t you listen to what Eamon has to say?”

“I’d be happy to. But I can’t hear him that well through the glass. Can you open the door?”

“Eddie,” Eamon began. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you feel.”

“Sure you can. You let your own brother die, didn’t you?”

His lip twitched. It was the first trace of real emotion, the first sign of human-ness. “I only have myself to blame for that. I’m forced to live with it.”

“You’re not forced to live with anything. Anytime you want to punch your own ticket, go ahead.”

“But you have me to blame for Tim’s death—”

“Murder.”

“—and so you must feel an obligation to see vengeance is done, if not justice.”

“Keep talking, you’re just digging your own grave.”

Pater clamped a hand on my shoulder. “Eddie, there is no way I will allow you to harm Eamon.”

I shoved his hand away. “I’m not going to kill him. I’m just going to kick his ass till he can’t breathe anymore.”

The initial shock of seeing Eamon was wearing off. I realized I wasn’t getting any closer to him. Manetti with her piece drawn was ready to put two in my back. Riehl had about seventy pounds on me and at least eight inches more of reach.

And Pater had all that second-hand DARPA tech. There were probably a half-dozen ways he could incapacitate me with impunity.

So I screwed up a smile and imagined I was Philip Marlow. “There is no such thing as coincidence, Pater.”

“Sometimes there is.” He smiled back. “But not in this case.”

***

Megan Turner had always harbored an interest in the occult and paranormal and had gotten her hands on
The Unearthed
while finishing her undergraduate thesis. That goddamned book continued to haunt me, no pun intended. After reading it in one sitting, she’d looked me up online and found my fledgling practice.

Not long after graduation, she’d landed a spot on Pater’s ragtag team of Mulder and Scully wannabes. Using her newfound government connections, she’d looked into my investigations and taken an interest.

“She took that same interest in Eamon.” Pater looked at Manetti and Riehl. “Would you both give us a moment? We have some issues to work through.”

Manetti wanted to object but bit her tongue.

Riehl winked at me. “Let me make something clear. You’ll be dead before you even think about trying anything.”

They left me alone with Eamon and Pater.

Behind the glass, Eamon took a seat at a desk. He had a few furnishings. It reminded me of Hannibal Lecter’s set-up.

I said, “Why’d you spring Eamon from the shrink tank?”

Pater motioned with his hand. “Eamon is hardly sprung. He has been remanded into my custody and does not go anywhere without supervision.”

“Yeah. For how long?”

“Until such time as his treating physician declares him ready for outpatient care.”

I spoke to Pater but I looked at Eamon. “Don’t forget to drop me a note when that’s about to happen.”

“Eddie, let’s have a seat.” Pater gestured toward a couch against the wall.

“I’ll stand. Tell me why he’s here.”

“He’s here to help us, and in so doing he is here to make amends.”

Eamon watched us from his desk. The kid hardly moved. It was creepy, made him seem alien.

“How can he help you?” I said. I was starting to get an uneasy feeling.

Pater’s eyes flicked from Eamon back to me. “Have you heard of RV?”

“Sure, it’s a horrible movie.”

Nobody laughed.

I continued. “I assume you mean remote viewing. It’s the idea that we can use our minds to see or sense a distant object or location. The government funded research into it when they found out the Soviets and Chinese were dabbling.”

“That’s exactly right. Joseph McMoneagle was Remote Viewer Number One and actually assisted the Army on a number of missions.”

“Don’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia, Pater.”

He grinned. And waited.

Until it hit me. Sometimes the obvious is the hardest thing to see.

“You thought Eamon could remote view.”             

He nodded.

I looked at Eamon through the glass. His eyes were still deadly sharp, appraising.

I said, “That’s what he was doing, with his old house. He just didn’t know it.”

“He was doing it subconsciously,” Pater said. “Or so we think.”             

“That what he told you?” I kept my eyes on my brother’s killer.             

“It’s the truth,” Eamon said. “The dark part of me had separated from my conscious mind and continued to reside in my house, even after the Rossellis moved in. When you and Tim pushed against that darkness, it was forced back to me. The psyche is like energy. It can’t be destroyed, only—”

“Bull-fucking-shit.”

Eamon Moriarty’s family had lived for a short time in the same town where I’d grown up. They made local headlines and got some national attention when mom, dad, and Eamon’s brother William ended up dead one night. The prevailing theory was that dad had offed mom, brother William had killed dad, and William had succumbed to injuries sustained in the fight before the police could arrive.

Just one little problem with that scenario.

The deadly fight had started around eight-thirty, eight-forty-five and only lasted a few minutes. Eamon did not call the police until nine-fifteen.

After what became known as the Moriarty Massacre, Eamon had gone to live with his uncle in a neighboring town. A new family, the Rossellis, had moved into the Moriarty house and right away experienced paranormal phenomena. Led by my brother Tim, our paranormal team discovered that the activity in the house was at least in part being caused by Eamon through possibly psychic means. Some experts referred to it as the world’s first “living haunting.”

Eamon had been a minor when he killed my brother. He’d been declared insane by the court and remanded into the care of the state’s criminal psychiatric facility.

“Eamon maintained a presence in the Moriarty house after he’d moved away,” I said.

“You’re absolutely right. So we don’t call what he has remote viewing. We call it remote
presence
.” Pater looked through the glass. “There are times where Eamon can influence a distant environment through psychic means.”

“And you decided to
harness
that ability?”

“Because he’d made real progress in therapy and has shown genuine remorse. And he continues to make amends by helping us. My team is small, our budget severely hamstrung by all the defense cuts. Eamon’s human tech as we call it compensates greatly for our limited resources.”

“Ever hear of what happens when you let the fucking genie out of the bottle?”             

Pater gave Eamon a look. “You have no idea how much he’s helped us in such a short time. With his unique skills, we were able to complete two very dangerous investigations successfully, quickly, and without casualties. He was the sine qua non for both.”

“Or hear what happened when Faust made his deal with Mephistopheles?”

“Eddie,” Eamon said. “I understand where you’re coming from. But I’m here to help. It doesn’t absolve me of guilt but this is my penance. I’m just asking for a second chance.”

“A second chance with Sally Pastrana.”

For a moment Pater’s placid smile slipped but he quickly screwed it back into place.

I said, “Eamon’s squeeze. He plans to find her. Didn’t he share that with you, Pater?”

Patterson frowned.             

Eamon looked as innocent as a baby. “I told Sally I’d find her if I
could
.” He looked at Pater. “Meaning if the terms of my supervision were ever loosened. I had to leave things vague because I couldn’t share the details of my release.”

Pater kept his eyes on Eamon. “You and I will have to have a little chat.”

Eamon suddenly had the look of a kid being called to the principal’s office.

Pater turned back to me. “But on to more pressing matters. How do you intend to find Megan?”

I wagged a finger at him. “Hold your question for now, I need some answers first. So Eamon’s how you know Megan hasn’t been staying with friends or known associates? Because he can remote view the places you think she might go?”

“That is correct.”

“You’re going to elaborate on that a bit for me.”

“Periodically Eamon will tune in, as we call it, to these locations.”

“Can he tune in anywhere he wants?” I wasn’t thinking about Megan so much as I was myself at this point. I didn’t want this psycho following my every step in his mind.

“There’s a process.” Pater folded one leg over the other and went more mysterious than the Sphinx.

“Walk me through it.”

“I’m afraid that’s confidential.”

I looked at Eamon. “If you really want to help, you need to answer my question.”

Eamon got up from his desk and began unbuttoning his shirt.

“Eamon… “ Pater looked real worried.

Eamon tugged off his button-down shirt and began untucking his undershirt.

“Fine, Eamon. This is your decision.”

Eamon pulled his shirt up. Fresh red welts decorated his stomach. He held his shirt up for a long moment, like showing me his wounds would make me feel sorry for him.

It didn’t work.

I looked at Pater. “Did you do that to him?”

“He didn’t.” Eamon approached the glass, stomach still exposed. “Sometimes, pain is the only way.”