Fatal Tide Page 9

  “Tommy,” she began.

  “You’re absolutely right. One is plenty.”

  “You already ordered another one, didn’t you?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “But I can cancel the order.”

  “What did you want to show me?”

  “Well,” he said, clicking on a file, “first, here’s a plain old visual of East Salem. The resolution is amazing. I was flying at ten thousand feet, and I could see that Gail is buying Eddie a pair of Sorrels, size ten, for Christmas—I could look right into her shopping bag.”

  Gail was the owner of the Miss Salem Diner, and Eddie, her father, was the former owner and now the cook. Dani saw her little town on the screen, the broad commons with the gazebo in the middle, the diner, the Pub, the church, the library, the Grange Hall, the shops, all made more lovely by the new-fallen snow. Several cars had Christmas trees tied to their roofs with twine.

  “Okay,” she said. “Very Norman Rockwell.”

  “Yeah. Except Norman Rockwell never painted anything like this. The next thing you’re going to see is from the infrared camera,” he said, and changed the view. The people on the street appeared as hot spots ranging from yellow to orangish-red. Tommy told her people appeared warm to different degrees, depending on how well insulated their clothing was. “Now watch what happens when I slow the whole thing down thirty times.”

  In the new view, the orange and red and yellow human outlines stood still, while blue shadows raced among them, dozens of them.

  “Those are demons, aren’t they?” Dani said. Demonic entities, she knew, registered deep blue and cold to the infrared cameras and were nearly invisible in real time. “What do you think they’re doing?”

  “No idea,” Tommy said. “Probably not Christmas shopping. Let me show you one more.”

  He clicked to a different file, footage showing the outline of a house. The outline looked vaguely familiar.

  “Where is that?”

  “That’s your house,” Tommy said. Dani hadn’t been there in over a week. The roof was a cool green color. There seemed to be heat leaking from one of the basement windows. “Now I slow it down.”

  In the slow-motion footage she saw her house infested with blue creatures moving in and out of it. For a moment she felt nauseated, the way she’d felt as a girl when her father had turned over a large, flat rock to show her the bugs and worms living beneath it.

  “What are they doing?” she said.

  “Looking for something?” Tommy guessed. “I don’t know. Maybe looking for your father’s computer.”

  Dani’s father, Fred, had been a pediatrician with medical records on most of the children in town, children who were now adults.

  “Could be.” She turned to face him. “How about here? Are they here too?”

  “This house is safe,” Tommy said. “They know it’s protected. They’re keeping their distance after what happened in the courtyard.”

  It was in Tommy’s courtyard where, with all his might, knowing it was hopeless, a test of faith, he’d fought a demon that had been sent to kill him, and then Charlie and Ben had revealed themselves in their full glory. The demon was no match for their power, not even close.

  “So far so good,” Dani said, rapping her knuckles on the table.

  Tommy glanced at her.

  “I’m not superstitious. It’s bad luck to be superstitious.”

  “That’s my line,” Tommy said.

  “I know,” Dani said. “I’m learning from the best.”

  He moved behind her and rubbed her neck and shoulders. She hadn’t realized how much tension she was carrying.

  “Something else,” he said. “I flew over St. Adrian’s. I won’t bore you with the infrared, but watch this—I pasted these two clips together.”

  He reached over her to click on a file. The first clip was of Wharton and the school psychologist, Ghieri, standing side by side on a balcony.

  “That’s an HD clip—normal camera,” Tommy said. “Then I flew the drone back and switched payloads. This next clip I took with the infrared camera.”

  Dani recognized the balcony again. There were two figures standing there once more, in what looked like the exact same location. One was red and one was blue.

  “Is this slow motion?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “I thought demons only showed up if you slow it down?”

  “That’s if they’re moving,” Tommy said. “If they stay in one place, they show up in real time. They shimmer a little bit.”

  The blue figure, Dani saw, was indeed shimmering or vibrating, its edges blurry.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked Tommy.

  “Only one of them is human,” he said. “Has to be Wharton. Ghieri—”

  “He’s a demon. We knew that,” Dani said. “The way he disappeared when he caught you trying to break into his office.”

  “Yeah, but we didn’t know Wharton wasn’t—not for sure. Not until now,” Tommy said. “The headmaster’s a nasty piece of filth, but he’s a human nasty piece of filth. Reese says his nickname at school is Goat Boy.”

  “Hey, guys—I could use your opinion.”

  Dani turned. Cassandra stood in the kitchen entrance dressed in a low-cut Max Mara cocktail dress made from black Lurex, and opaque black tights.

  “Wow,” Tommy said.

  “Yikes,” Dani said. “Are you sure it’s legal for you to go out on the street looking that pretty?”

  “Let’s hope my date—and Herr Bauer—agree,” Cassandra said, spinning once in place to model the outfit.

  “They’d be crazy if they didn’t,” Tommy said. “Then again, considering who we’re dealing with …”

  “Where did you get the Jimmy Choo shoes?” Dani asked.

  “Ridgefield.”

  “Ridgefield?” Dani and Tommy said, almost at the exact same instant.

  “Yes. A little place on Main Street. You’ll recall, Tommy—shopping is very much within my skill set.”

  Cassandra had clearly learned a few things from the hair and makeup experts she’d worked with over the years as well; Dani had attended her share of fancy parties in the city, but she’d never seen anyone as put together as Cassandra looked right this second.

  “So what’s your plan?” Dani asked.

  “I have no plan,” the actress said. “Usually saying hello and looking someone in the eye is enough. They start talking to me and telling me all about themselves, on and on and on, and all I have to do is pretend I’m listening and say, ‘Really?’ or ‘That’s so funny!’ I’ve had men talk about themselves for hours, and when they’re done they say, ‘I feel like I’ve known you all my life,’ when they haven’t asked a single thing about me.”

  “Maybe they say that because they’ve been watching your movies since you were a child star?” Dani said.

  “So if you watched Hamlet, would you walk up to the actor who played him and say, ‘Listen—I was sorry to hear about your dad’?”

  “Good point,” Dani said. “So is Jürgen Metzler, a.k.a. the Sexiest Man Alive, going to pick you up in his limo?”

  “He’s sending it to the Peter Keeler Inn,” Cassandra said. “I didn’t want anyone to know I was staying here. Ruth said she’d give me a ride to the Inn.”

  “He’s sending a limo? He couldn’t come himself?”

  “Athletes think everything has to come to them, just because they’re good at some idiotic sport.”

  “I’m right here in the room, you know,” Tommy said from where he leaned against the kitchen sink. “I can hear everything you’re saying.”

  “You’re the exception to all the rules,” Cassandra said. “Except one.”

  “Which one is that?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said with a coquettish smirk.

  Dani walked her out to where Ruth was warming up Tommy’s Jeep. It had stopped snowing: the sky was already dark, though it wasn’t even five o’clock yet.

 
“I think I’ve spent half my life wearing uncomfortable shoes inappropriate for the weather,” Cassandra said, stamping her feet against the cold.

  “It’ll be warm at the party,” Dani said.

  “Cocktails with Satan-worshiping fiends out to destroy the world.” Cassandra smiled. “And Germans. The sad thing is, it still won’t be the worst date I’ve ever been on.”

  “You’ll do fine,” Dani said, realizing how scared Cassandra was. “Just take it one fiend at a time.” Cassandra opened the Jeep door and started to climb in.

  “By the way, which one?” Dani asked.

  “Which one what?”

  “Which rule is Tommy not the exception to?”

  “I don’t know,” Cassandra confided. “Hopefully I’ll think of something. I just felt like I needed to score a point.”

  “Oooh—you’re good.” Dani smiled. “Be careful tonight.”

  11.

  December 21

  6:23 p.m. EST

  Reese, alone in his room, closed his eyes and tried to concentrate.

  Why won’t you talk to me anymore?

  He waited for a response.

  I swear I’m not trying to hurt you. You have to trust me.

  Again, the only voice he heard in his head was his own.

  I’m safe now. These people aren’t like the others. They’re good people. They’re not going to hurt me. You don’t have to worry about me anymore.

  He heard only the sound of the heat moving through the radiators and the distant sounds coming from the kitchen downstairs where dinner was being served. He was late, and he needed to get to the table before anyone became suspicious.

  I’m not giving up, you know. I’ll never give up. Dubbo di zubbo.

  At dinner Reese listened as Dani explained to Quinn what the medical examiner’s tests had shown. Quinn thought the idea that demonic possession could leave an actual readable imprint on brain tissue was fascinating. He wondered out loud if there was a way to reassemble from other sources the data Banerjee had lost.

  “Someday when we establish a true international medical database, and everyone’s genome is taken at birth and becomes part of your permanent medical record, we’ll be able to write a program that lets computers look at a million chest X-rays side by side, or cross-reference a billion proteomic assays to search for statistical anomalies—then medicine is going to take a gigantic leap forward,” Quinn said. “The potential for abuse is enormous, but so is the promise. Right now we’re lucky if the right clipboard full of paper charts gets attached to the bed of the correct patient so that the surgeons don’t perform the wrong operation on the wrong person. We spend billions of dollars on new surgical or diagnostic technologies while basic record-keeping technologies are practically in the Stone Age.”

  “What sorts of medical facilities did you have at the school?” Dani asked Reese. “You said everybody was medicated? Where did you go to get your prescriptions filled?”

  “The school has an infirmary,” Reese said. “We have to get a physical at the beginning of every year. And provide urine samples once a month. Which is weird, because they said they were testing for illegal stuff like marijuana or cocaine, but I know some guys who do that and they’ve never gotten caught.”

  “That’s one thing I was wondering about,” Quinn said. “If the school was running drug trials, apparently without any concern for peer review or FDA approval, I don’t see how the student body would provide a large enough population to make the data they’d collect statistically valid. When they gave you your physical, did they by any chance take a cotton swab and run it across the inside of your cheek?”

  Reese nodded. “What was that for?”

  “DNA,” Quinn said. “You can personalize medicine if you know somebody’s genome. I’m still not sure how you’d test such a small population.”

  Reese made a decision. He needed help, and he had no choice but to trust them. They were all genuine Christians, and while he hadn’t finished educating himself about the Bible and the people of the Book, he understood what making a leap of faith meant. It meant risking the unknown by believing in the unknowable.

  “I might know the answer to that,” Reese said.

  The others at the table all looked at him.

  “Twins,” he said. “Identical twins.”

  “Well, I suppose that would work if you were testing genotropic compounds,” Quinn said. “You’d give one twin the drug and the other a placebo and then watch what happens.”

  “Back up a second,” Tommy said. “Are you saying that’s what they should do, or that’s what they do do?”

  “That’s what they do,” Reese said. “They study identical twins.”

  “Well, even so,” Quinn began, then stopped himself. “How many pairs of twins are there on campus? Three? Four?”

  “I think there’s over a hundred,” Reese replied.

  “Oh my goodness,” Ruth said.

  “I think you’re speaking for all of us,” Dani said to the older woman. “Over a hundred? They intentionally recruit identical twins?”

  “It’s one of the school’s better kept secrets,” Reese said. “Only one twin at a time is allowed to leave campus. They don’t allow us to live together after the first year. The idea is to make every student the best possible student he can be. Sometimes twins hold each other back. You don’t want to outperform your twin.”

  “You said ‘us,’” Tommy said. “Do you have a twin?”

  Reese had come too far to turn back now.

  “I have a brother,” he said. “Edmond. Technically he’s six minutes older because he came first, but only because I let him. My parents left it in their will that the estate should pay for us to go to St. Adrian’s. He’s the reason I contacted you. He’s one of the Selected.”

  12.

  December 21

  9:00 p.m. EST

  The limo picked Cassandra up right on time; she found a bottle of champagne on ice in the back with a note from Jürgen Metzler that said: This is to get you started. More to come. Jürg.

  There was a day when she might have emptied the bottle during the trip to New York, a way to make herself numb enough to endure what was coming, or rather, a way to pre-absolve herself of any responsibility for her actions and say, “I’m sorry—I must have had too much to drink.” There was no need for that anymore, though. She opened the champagne and poured the contents out the window, first wetting the inside of the glass to make it look like she’d finished the bottle.

  “Henry,” she asked her phone, curious. “How much is a bottle of Dom Perignon 1966?”

  The GPhone Tommy gave her came with a male avatar named Henry, similar to the female avatar that came with the iPhone but more advanced—“The Highest Level of Personal Assistance,” according to the app’s welcome screen.

  “Dom Perignon 1966 sells for $1,965.00 a bottle,” Henry said. “Would you like me to find you a store that carries it?”

  “No, thank you,” she said.

  The limo brought her to Trump Tower, where Jürgen Metzler kept an apartment. She stayed in the back of the limo, out of view of the paparazzi who were taking Metzler’s photograph, bathing his rugged physique in flashes of light. In his tuxedo, he looked like a blond James Bond.

  Metzler opened the door and leaned in. He asked if she wanted to skip the party and come up to his apartment and watch a video of a soccer game he’d recently performed in.

  “I scored a hat trick, you know,” he added. “It’s quite a remarkable performance, if I do say so myself.”

  “Alberto scored five goals once,” she said. “Get in. I’m in the mood for a party.”

  On the way to the German consulate on First Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets, the German promised her he would make her forget about Alberto the same way he’d already made the soccer world forget about Alberto. She knew women, plenty of them, who might have fallen for that sort of cocksure bravado. Briefly, she regretted that things hadn’t worked out with T
ommy—that she’d let something valuable slip right through her fingers—but it had all worked out for the best. For him and Dani, at least.

  The consulate facade was an emphatic statement in glass and stainless steel and chrome, with two flags flying from the marquee: one the black, red, and yellow flag of Germany, the other the blue flag of the United Nations. As the limousine passed through the police barricade blocking off the street, Cassandra steeled herself for the publicity to come, someone somewhere saying, “Morton Rebounds with Another Soccer Star,” though for the first time she realized how inconsequential it all was.

  The foyer was filled with uniformed police officers and men in black suits checking identification and logging the comings and goings of the guests in their tablet computers. No one, it went without saying, asked to see Jürgen Metzler’s identification, nor did anyone need proof of who the actress on his arm was. When Cassandra’s clutch set off the metal detector, she held it above her head and gave the man who wanted to examine the contents a sly look that said, Oh no you don’t, followed by her biggest smile, while her “date” assured the man that all was in order. In the clutch, she carried only the makeup she needed for touch-ups, her phone, and Tommy’s Boy Scout pocketknife, which he’d given her for good luck.

  She’d done as much research as she could on Udo Bauer and the pharmaceutical empire he’d inherited. The company had a past that was more than a little checkered, with allegations, never proven, that they—when Bauer’s grandfather headed up the company—had a hand in the death camps during World War II, or at the very least that they’d tested drugs on the prisoner population. Sixty years of public relations since the war ended had recast the company as “the BMW of medicine,” a super-efficient, super-effective corporation striving to make the world a better place.

  The banquet hall was filled with men in tuxedos and women in their finery; there were diamond earrings and pearl necklaces, gold bangles and jewels of great size. Cassandra sported a display of costume jewelry she’d picked up at the mall, but it wasn’t what you wore, she’d told Dani—it was how you wore it.