Spark: A Novel (13 page)

As I headed north on the Taconic State Parkway, the world was
transformed into a series of flat images framed by the car windows. If I had stopped and left the car, I could have strolled around a three-dimensional service station, but during the drive my Spark saw reality as pixels on a monitor screen—little bits of light that gave the illusion of solidness and depth.

I drove for four hours, then turned off the parkway and entered the lake district of Warren County. There were patches of snow on the ground and the two-lane blacktop wandered past frozen lakes edged with cattails and dead reeds that jabbed at the sky. Billboards announced that the area was a “playground” for hunters and fishermen, but most of the small white cottages were boarded up for the winter. I stopped to buy gas, and then entered Chestertown.

A memorial to the war dead was at the center of the town square, surrounded by a bank and a courthouse and several other brick and granite buildings. Laura told me to turn right, so I left the square and drove past two-story clapboard houses with gray slate roofs. Old cars with rust bubbles around the wheel wells and pickup trucks with gun racks were parked in gravel driveways. One homeowner had placed a Jet Ski up on sawhorses with a
FOR SALE
sign.

“You’re approaching your destination, Mr. Underwood.”

“Yes. I know. Switch off.”

The Google Maps camera car had photographed a lawn with four apple trees. Since then, Uncle Roland had removed one of the trees and placed a carved sign in front of his house.

LOON LAKE TAXIDERMY
SAVE YOUR MEMORIES

I drove a hundred yards down the road, then pulled over and tried to figure out what I was going to say.

The thermal scanner displayed an image of infrared radiation. It had a pistol grip and looked like a video camera. As I walked up a stone pathway to the house, I raised the scanner and pressed the trigger. Cold areas were displayed on the screen in shades of purple and blue. Warm spots were colored red or orange, and a human face was bright yellow. The scanner showed the building’s
hot-water lines and two active floor heaters. On the ground floor, a single Human Unit moved through a front room and then stepped behind a wall.

I dropped the scanner into my shoulder bag and knocked on the front door. When no one answered, I entered a room that was filled with stuffed dead animals. A worktable was near the wall and, clamped to the edge, there was a premade wooden deer’s head with a set of real antlers attached to the skull. A little bell rang when I closed the door and Roland Jefferies came out of a back room carrying a patch of deerskin. Uncle Roland looked like an older version of the thickset man with stubby legs who had posed for the photograph hanging in Emily’s kitchen.

“Good afternoon, my friend. How you doing?”

“Mr. Jefferies?”

“That’s me.”

“I’m David McCormick, a human resources manager for BDG in New York. Your niece, Emily, works for our bank.”

“Yeah. I got a phone call from some guy at the bank named Evans.”

I nodded. “Jerome Evans is in charge of corporate security. Eight days ago Emily left her desk and never returned. She hasn’t contacted the bank and we’re worried about her safety.”

Uncle Roland kept smiling. “Maybe she got tired of workin’ for your bank. Can’t say I blame her. Sounds like a boring job … making deals and pushing money around all day long. My work might look easy, but it’s a real challenge. It’s not so easy to make a dead cocker spaniel look like he’s happy.”

“Do you know where Emily is?”

“Nope.”

“Aren’t you worried?”

“Should I be?”

“People don’t usually disappear like that.”

“Hard to vanish when the EYE program is tracking everything we do. But I’m not worried about Emily. My niece is as tough as nails. When she was thirteen years old, she left her crazy parents, bought a bus ticket, and came here to Chestertown. Then she called me
up on a phone and told me to pick her up at the post office. Her parents thought she was possessed by the Devil, so they didn’t fight me when I went to court and became her guardian.”

I was aware of the revolver strapped to my ankle and the automatic concealed beneath my jacket. “The bank wants to find Emily. We’d like to make sure that she’s safe.”

“Sorry you had to drive all the way up here, Mr. McCormick. But I appreciate your concern. If I hear from my niece, I’ll tell her to call you guys. Have a safe drive back to New York City, and watch out for that speed trap in Warrensburg.”

I stepped back out into the cold air and smelled the blue-green scent of pine trees. When I reached the
LOON LAKE TAXIDERMY
sign, I stopped and pointed the scanner at the house. If Emily was hiding in an upstairs room, Uncle Roland would have immediately reported my appearance. I peered through the walls for a minute or so, but Roland continued to stand alone at his worktable. The thoughts in his brain were transformed into a glob of blurry yellow light surrounded by a grid of hot-water pipes.

The trip to New York was a straight line south dotted by a series of discount shopping malls and Indian casinos. After dropping off the rental car, I should have waved down a cab and returned to Chinatown. Instead, I stood on the corner of Eighty-Third Street and let the wind touch my collar and the hem of my coat. Usually my Spark manipulated my Shell like the construction worker sitting in a cage on the back of a truck-mounted crane. But that evening my Shell was in control. It wanted to return to Emily’s apartment and lie back down on her bed. I felt like I was watching a computer screen as my body marched down to Eightieth Street and entered the brownstone.

The only light in the stairwell came from the wall sconces on each floor, and I climbed upward through patches of darkness and illumination. Voices leaked through closed doors, and I smelled the slippery odor of fried onions. Key in the lock. Push open the door. Switch on the light and—

Everything in the room had been destroyed. The lamps were smashed and the papers from the little desk had been scattered on
the floor. Someone had slashed open the chair cushions and cut the bear’s neck—exposing a tuft of yellow padding.

Entering the kitchen, I stepped on broken dishes, then glanced into the bathroom and saw that the angel shower curtain had been ripped off its pole. All the suits and blouses hanging in the closet had been slashed with a knife and the clothes from the dresser were scattered across the room. The mattress had been cut open and the foam rubber pushed out—like fat from a wound.

I picked up a night lamp, switched it on, and turned to the wall. Someone had used a can of spray paint to cover the message on the wall. Red paint had dribbled down the plaster to the baseboard. It looked like the residue from a shotgun blast that had cut through a target’s body.

I centered the mattress on the box spring, sat on the edge of the bed, and tried to figure out who had done this.

Lorcan Tate. That was the only logical conclusion. Miss Holquist had given him the address and he had searched the apartment while I was visiting Uncle Roland.

I held up my phone and whispered to Laura, “Are you there?”

“Yes, sir. How may I help you?”

“Display most recent photo.”

And Emily’s letter appeared on the phone screen, the words glowing in the dark room.

I read this message several times until it was absorbed by my Spark. Why was the word “Home” capitalized? Was that important? Was she telling her uncle a secret that I needed to understand?

Home.
The word meant nothing to me. Sometimes, when I wandered
through the city at night, I peered through windows framed by half-open curtains and saw families eating dinner or watching television. I assumed they were doing those activities in a home. It looked warm, and there was light.

I returned to the living room, got down on my knees, and found the little music box with the bear, the logger, and the shack with two doors. The shack was a home—the only one to be found in the apartment. My fingers fumbled with the roof until it clicked open. Inside, I found the music box cylinder and—taped to the wood—a flash drive wrapped in a slip of white paper.

The dead animals seemed alive at that moment, gazing down at me with emotions that I couldn’t understand. I remained on my knees.

I took the subway back to my loft, photographed Emily’s note to her uncle, and then sent the image and a short description of what had happened to Miss Holquist. Outside, an ambulance was racing down the street—its siren sound rising and falling and echoing off the buildings. I took a shower and lay down on my bed, but my thoughts darted around like a firefly in the darkness.

When a patch of sunlight touched the bed frame, I got dressed and switched on my computer. The Pradhani Group turned out to be a large, family-owned corporation in India. I didn’t know what was stored on the flash drive, but Emily wanted the data sent to We Speak for Freedom. This turned out to be a Web site created by a former MIT professor named Thomas Slater.

We Speak for Freedom never asked for contributions, held a news conference, or issued a press release. But once or twice a week, the site would offer a wide range of confidential documents or clandestine videos. Currently the site displayed photographs of a dissident being tortured in Kazakhstan and a memo from a Japanese computer company about child labor in one of its foreign subsidiaries.

My phone beeped and I slipped on my headset. “Where are you?” It was Miss Holquist’s voice.

“In my apartment.”

“Get your passport, both handguns, and the flash drive. Then walk outside.”

I slipped the revolver into my ankle holster, dropped the automatic into a shoulder bag, and let gravity pull me downstairs and into the street. A black town car was parked at the curb and a woman’s hand emerged from a three-inch gap above a tinted window. Her fingers wiggled—beckoning me forward.

I got into the backseat and found Miss Holquist with a computer pad on her lap. Instead of her usual business suit, she wore a red cotton jacket, a white blouse, and black pants. A Plexiglas shield separated us from our driver—an older man with a flushed face. It felt strange to sit beside Miss Holquist. I usually faced her directly with a desk or a table between us.

“Good morning, Mr. Underwood.” Miss Holquist offered me a smile. “I must say that I’ve been pleasantly surprised by your unexpected talents. During the last forty-eight hours, you’ve displayed a wide range of skills.”

She rapped on the shield with her knuckles and the town car began to force its way through the crowded streets of Chinatown. It felt like we were sitting inside a barge floating down a weed-clogged canal.

“Give me the flash drive.”

I handed the flash drive to her and she attached it to her computer. “Now tell me exactly what happened. I want to know how you found this.”

I described my second visit to Emily’s apartment as Miss Holquist watched a list of files being copied onto her computer. The smell of her rose perfume was very strong at that moment. It felt as if my Spark was wrapped in yards of blue satin.

“Why did Lorcan destroy her apartment?” I asked. “Was there a reason?”

“He did that? Really?” Miss Holquist sighed and shook her head. “I asked him to search the place one more time and paint over the message on the wall. Lorcan always follows my orders, but he can be somewhat aggressive. He’s not as controlled and efficient as you are, Mr. Underwood.”

“All files copied,” said Miss Holquist’s Shadow. It was a young man’s voice—not precise like Laura’s, but soft and calm.

“Thank you.” Miss Holquist detached the flash drive and gave it back to me. “Take this. You’re going to deliver it to a client.”

“So how do we know that Emily Buchanan is still in the country?” I asked. “She had enough time to fly anywhere in the world.”

“Ms. Buchanan hasn’t used her passport since she disappeared. All we know at this point is that she went to the Financial Futures conference in London last summer. This is an annual event hosted by the bank for our international clients. Senior executives give presentations about new bond offerings while everyone nurses a hangover. Anyway … it turns out that a young Indian man named Jafar Desai was also at the conference. Desai married into the Pradhani family and worked for their companies. He and his wife disappeared two weeks ago, and it seems probable that he’s the person who sent the e-mail from Dubai.”