Head Rush (17 page)

My heart pounds. He’s in a dark, silk-brocade robe that I usually find dashing, but now it seems like a dangerous artifice, like one of the bug-eating flowers in his night garden, all lush, exotic petals and a sweet scent, drawing the flies and bees in close, only to be trapped and eaten alive. “Your favorite,” he says.

“What?” I ask.

“Lemon scones.”

“Sometimes.” I take one and break it apart, thinking about a squirming bug I once watched in the gluey center of one of the flowers; the more it struggled, the more caught it got. I wanted to rescue it, but its little wings were too damaged by the time I had the impulse to do it.

I take a bite. “Yum.” There’s this weird silence until I think to ask him how he slept—a question we ask each other a lot, code for “how’s your head,” without directly asking. If there are no head issues, then it’s just a sleeping question.

He raises an eyebrow. “Rather well, considering the active and dramatic night. You? I take it the knee’s okay? And so forth…”

“Okay enough.” I reach across the table and grab the copy of the
Midcity Eagle
that’s folded next to him. Henry Felix is pictured on the front page, lifting a copy of the Midcity Charter above his head, peering victoriously through his little, round, silver glasses at the crowd around him. It’s another one of his Rights Rallies where he outlines all the ways Otto is robbing citizens of their rights.

“Forty people,” I observe.

Otto shrugs, but I can’t imagine he’s that indifferent. The crowds around Henry Felix are growing, and most of all, Henry Felix has a point.

“At least they’re not running a photo of me from last night.”

“And they won’t,” he says.

Of course. It was only police involved, and the police are keenly loyal to Otto. Not the most comforting thought at the moment.

“Have they caught the copycat yet?” I know they haven’t, but I need to get the spotlight off me.

“Not yet,” Otto says. “But we will.”

“I’m more than happy to identify him in a lineup, you know, if…”

“We’ll see.” He spreads butter on his scone. The knife flashes and shines.

Of course, the man won’t make it to a lineup. He won’t make it into the system at all. “Just what you need,” I say. “Another prisoner.”

Otto grunts. His noncommittal but significant
mmph
. What is he not saying? Does the Butcher copycat have importance I’m not aware of?

I get a new, disturbing thought as I watch him eat: if Otto was so willing to kill Avery, why not just kill all his highcap prisoners? That would certainly release pressure on his head.
I make the choices nobody else has the guts to make,
he said the other day. Is it possible he’s become judge and executioner?

Carter and the others would be valuable alive, as life insurance, in case his personal force fields fail—if Otto dies, everybody he’s imprisoned is trapped forever. But somebody like the Butcher or the Butcher copycat wouldn’t be anything but a drain. I think about Fawna’s prediction of danger. Would that spur him to kill his prisoners?

Otto turns to me. “You seem so preoccupied.”

“I was just going to say that to you!” I smile. “Jinx.”

“I suppose so.” He stands up, touches my chin, and takes his leave—he has to handle a few e-mails in his office before he goes into work. I’m relieved, though needless to say, I would’ve preferred that he head directly off to the government building.

Kenzo grins. “You climbed down the fire escape?” He
tsk
s. Like he thinks it’s amusing.

“The bride was feeling a bit wild last night,” I say. “A bit off the chain.”

Kenzo bustles around and I sip my coffee. I’m the spy now. The double agent.
I’m
the dangerous flower, goddammit.

Back when I was a disillusionist, my agenda was simple: infiltrate somebody’s existence, and zing them enough times to leave them destabilized for the next disillusionist. My agenda now is less specific—I have to find a way to free my comrades, not an easy task considering we don’t even know where they are. And considering that Packard, a brilliant mastermind, was imprisoned for eight years before he got free. And we
knew
where he was.

And then there’s item number two on my agenda: destroy Otto. A man with an impenetrable personal force field.

Both tasks require information; his office would be the place to start if he weren’t in it. My mind goes to my car. Otto didn’t want me searching my car. Simon and Shelby did.

“I have to go down and get something from my car,” I say to Kenzo.

He smiles and continues on with his work.

I ride the elevator down with Norman and find my bodyguard Max in the lobby. “Just getting something out of my car,” I say to him.

“Okay.” He turns a page of his newspaper.

My excitement rises as I enter the cool, dim garage—will I find clues to my lost hours? Do I even want to? Why was Packard so reluctant to tell me what happened that day?
It’s not something I can just tell
, he’d said. Why not?

I approach, keys in hand, feeling this sense of dread. It’s like another self put things in there. As I draw nearer, my heart sinks. A section of the back of the car shines, as though it’s been washed. The car was covered in grime when I picked it up. Who would come and wash part of it? Then I realize: fingerprint dust. Otto’s people have been here, and they dusted for fingerprints, and then wiped up their mess. I shove my key in the trunk and open it up and my heart sinks. The trunk is nearly empty. In fact, it seems emptier than before, like some of the junk I had in there is gone—I’m pretty sure a couple of old plant pots were in here. And it’s cleaner. I run my hand over the carpet that lines the trunk. Vacuumed recently.

I go around and unlock the passenger door and slip in. The dashboard is clean too. Dusted. Inside the glove compartment there’s nothing but the old change, papers, and my emergency Chap Stick.

I feel so angry! Something in here might have connected me to what I lost that day. Maybe other awful things happened that day. Maybe I’m better off not knowing—obviously Packard thought so—but still, something more of mine that was taken away and it makes me mad. I twist Gumby around, bend his arms to his hips, putting him in the maddest possible Gumby position.

What did I lose? On science fiction shows, when you change one feature of a timeline, everything after it is altered. That would go for memory too—you change one memory and everything reconstructs wrong. Tears begin to cloud my vision. My memory was violated, cleaned. And now my car.

I sink back into the seat. Can I even do this? Stay? Fight? What am I even fighting for? Angrily I scrub the tears from my eyes.

“My sweet?”

Otto’s just outside the open door, briefcase in hand. “Oh,” I say.

“What is it, Justine? What’s wrong? Sammy said you were out here…”

I get out of the seat and slam the door. “I wanted something,” I say. “I had this idea it might be in the car.”

“Is this your book again? You’ve been looking for that book for weeks. Let’s get you a new copy. I’ll get you fifty new copies. I’ll track down the author and see if I can get an advanced copy of her next release. None of this is a problem.”

“I don’t want a new one. I want the one I had!” I straighten my hair, trying to put a lid on my distress. “I liked that one. It was mine.”

Silence.

“Your guys dusted. Did you find anything? Any clues?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry.” He tilts his head. “This isn’t really about the book, is it?” He comes near, rests a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay to feel traumatized.”

“I’m not traumatized.” I shake him off, cross my arms. “I’m mad. Just about the wrongness of it.”

“We’ll make it right,” he says.

Damn right we’ll make it right. I force a smile. “Fifty copies?”

“As many as you please, okay? I have to go.” I try not to be too wooden when he kisses me. “I’m looking forward to tonight,” he says. “See you at five.”

I paint on a smile and watch him stroll up the parking garage incline toward the wintry morning sunlight.

Tonight. Good lord, I’d almost forgotten. We’re taking the limo the hour out of town to pick up my dad and bring him back for a private dinner at the penthouse; then we’re putting him up at the Midcity Arms Hotel, right down the street from our building. It’s not much of a wedding dinner, but my dad is the only relative we have between us, aside from my brother, who is unreachable in Bolivia. Otto and I plan to have a grand banquet after the wedding, and several hundred people are coming to that.

I lean against the car trunk and try Shelby. Voice mail. “Me again,” I say. “I might come over to your place later. We need to talk.” Then I try Simon. Voice mail. “I don’t know if you know about my…er…disagreement with Shelby last night, but if you see her, I was just wrong. I want us to make up.” I click off. My calls probably aren’t being monitored, but I’m going to err on the side of never being stupid again.

After a chat and an elevator ride with Norman, I’m back in the cool, quiet expanse of our penthouse. Alone. Kenzo must have left to do marketing. Time to look for evidence.

I try the door to Otto’s office. Locked. But I happen to know we have a master key—Otto had to use it once when a party guest locked the bathroom door from the outside. I remember his going into the kitchen to get it, but I didn’t see where in the kitchen. I head in. Key, key. I root through the drawers. Nothing. I even look under the silverware tray. I check the junk drawer twice, pulling stuff out, until I discover a box of utility matches that contains something more than matches. Keys.

I head to the master bath and turn on the shower and shut the door. If Kenzo comes back and needs to talk with me, he’ll wait until the shower is off. Then I skulk across to Otto’s office and let myself in, locking the door behind me.

Otto’s office is tidy, masculine. There’s a hollow,
whoosh
ing quality to the silence of it, though maybe that’s the cars in the distance. Heavy, wooden furnishings and bookcases line the walls, and a closed laptop rests on his big, old wooden desk. I can see the gold-embroidered edge of his mayoral robe through the slightly ajar closet door; his police dress uniform and sash of medals probably hang in there too.

I sit in his chair and start opening drawers, searching the insides and underneath, like they do in the movies. Sometimes Otto seals people up where there are built-in food sources—Packard in the Mongolian Delites restaurant, for example. And he has the Belmont Butcher in the back room of a butcher shop. But sometimes he puts people in places with no food source, and then he has to make arrangements. Rickie the telepath was imprisoned in a low-rent apartment in northwest Midcity, and food was delivered to her weekly. When Ez was in the coat-check booth, he had some sort of agreement with the bar owner. I’m thinking he’d have Carter and the other disillusionists somewhere isolated. Watchtowers, cabins, places requiring regular food deliveries. And with dozens and dozens of prisoners out there, and now disillusionists being held, surely he’s documenting things. And if he’s documenting things, it’s on paper, not on the computer. Otto doesn’t like to do important things online—he trusts the tactile world. It comes from being a force-fields guy.

I discover bank records in the top drawer of his filing cabinet. There are monthly recurring debits with initials next to them. What do they mean? I copy them down, along with other numbers that seem related. After that, I paw through election files. Donors, promo plans. Some government and police documents. All very innocent looking. Would he keep a list or map down on the seventh floor? I’m thinking Shelby did a pretty thorough search down there.

I move to the bottom file drawer, hating that Shelby never leveled with me. Yes, I understand why; I understand it wouldn’t have gone well, but I still hate it.

I think again of the kiss, of Packard’s expression when I recognized the memory as a revise. And the way he’d said my name. I want to think he was happy to have my good regard and even affection back, and not just happy that the truth was finally out. Is that pathetic? Is it wishful thinking? He certainly didn’t care about my regard or affection when he conned me into giving up my life to be his minion.

In back of the filing cabinet I find a folder that contains papers covered in strange squiggles and symbols, which I recognize as Vindalese, the native language of Vindahar. Vindahar is the remote, mountainous region of Asia where Otto spent all those years in a cave under the tutelage of a wise sage. Documents from that era? I’m about to stuff them back in the file, but then I stop and pause; the paper is new, high quality, maybe even linen, and there are no creases or curled corners. Hardly what you’d expect from documents written years ago, or carried across the ocean. Some of the papers look like lists. I hold a sheet up to the light and find the watermark. I pull a sheet of paper out of his printer and hold it up and find the same watermark. They were written recently. My heart starts pounding and I shuffle through the sheets. Lists, numbers. Ten sheets in all.

I pull out my camera phone and start snapping photos, then I stuff them back. Lord knows where we’ll get them translated. Is there an online translator for Vindalese? That’s when I hear the footsteps. I freeze, except for my heart, which smashes against my throat. A key in the door.

Quickly and quietly, I slide the two still-open drawers closed and slip into the closet, as far back as possible. A creak. Footsteps.

Otto.

The chair squeaks. He’s sitting. Damn. I hear his computer go on.
Tap
-
tap
-
tap
. I cross my arms and wait, like a turtle, pulled into its shell. And then a bad thought comes to me. I pat my pockets. Empty. I left my cell phone on top of his filing cabinet. My heart beats a trillion miles an hour. It’s not in his direct line of vision, but if it rings, he’ll know I was there. Here. Wildly, I think he already knows.

Tap
-
tap
.
Tap
-
tap
-
tap
. A sigh.
Tap
. A
ping
. E-mail. Office chair
creak
s.