Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) (18 page)

He crossed Lexington and headed east.

Behind him, inside the van, one of the men in blue painting coveralls whispered something into a small microphone embedded in his collar.

The Cop Almost Made It

Gun Two saw the cop coming out of the corner of his eye. From his left. The blue uniform made him stand out. He was not a fat cop, Gun Two decided, but he was not especially fit either. He might be able to move fast if you gave him some time, sure. But he was not a man who looked as if he could change directions quickly.

He would not be much of a dodger, and that was all Gun Two cared about.

The cop stopped walking at the corner of the intersection, waiting for the light, and Gun Two shifted the F-150’s automatic transmission out of drive and into second gear. The engine’s soft, idling whine went up another notch.

The light changed, and Officer Hulse proceeded across the intersection.

There was no one else crossing the street – an unlikely event in Manhattan, and one that Gun Two considered unfortunate – but there was nothing to be done. He would have preferred to kill the cop
and
a pedestrian or two, so that the hit and run could plausibly be called random. An accident. He gave a little shrug, and then he floored the accelerator.

The pickup jumped forward with a startled roar, its engine forced into high-RPM torque output by the low gear setting on the transmission. The Ford traveled the 15 feet to the intersection in less than three seconds, picking up speed all the way.

Officer Hulse saw the truck coming at the last second, and he
did
move. He was in better shape than the Gun thought, and he lunged with surprising agility. But Gun Two had been expecting a lunge of some sort – if not one quite so acrobatic – and he was already turning the wheel when Hulse tried to get out of the way.

Still, the cop almost made it.

The pickup’s right fender caught him on one side. It shattered his hip and sent a bolt of such blinding pain through Hulse’s body that he felt as if the very air around him had been ignited. But his hip was the least of his problems, and in any case the pain would end soon. The impact laid him out and spun him, and his head hit the side of the truck hard, cracking his skull. Then he was on the pavement, and Gun Two was still turning the wheel, still moving the pickup in the direction the officer had tried to dodge. The Ford moved a critical half foot to the right as the main chassis passed over Hulse, the wheels still accelerating, so that in another moment the rear tires were there, and when they met his head the darkness came all at once.

Gun Two kept his foot all the way down. He drove for just one block before slamming on the breaks and swinging left on 75th, heading west. When he reached the intersection at Lexington, he brought the pickup to a quick stop, jumped out of the cab, and then stepped quickly into a little coffee shop on the corner. He strode into the bathroom without looking around.

He emerged thirty seconds later wearing only the well-tailored gray suit and tie he had been wearing under his blue coveralls. His blue hat was gone too, replaced by an old-fashioned bowler hat that effectively obscured his black eyes and bandaged nose. He stepped out of the coffee shop and then walked across the street, sparing a curious glance for the pickup truck that seemed to have been abandoned there at the corner. Already there was a yellow taxi behind it, honking its horn.

Gun Two turned smartly on his heels and headed west.

He was breathing easier now.

He had redeemed himself.

Numb With Fear

Two minutes after Officer Hulse’s death, Kevin Brooks reached his apartment. He let himself in and headed for the living room.

Straight for the bookshelf.

“Good day at school?”

Kevin stopped himself from jumping this time, though Andrew’s approach had been no less stealthy than the day before. He waited before answering.

Good day? Well, that kid with the bad hair cut would say no. On account of all the blood coming out of his forehead. Then again, he did end up in Emily Beck’s lap.

“So-so,” Kevin said finally.

“
I’ll
be in the kitchen
.
”

Kevin nodded and
turned his attention back to the bookshelf.

I saw it here yesterday.

Over here near the middle, with all the non-fiction stuff he couldn’t remember owning.

There.

Spanish.

It was a huge textbook,
and i
t didn’t look like something a student would use; there were no comforting scenes of the Barcelona countryside on the cover, and the pages were thin, too delicate for repeated use at the hands of school children. He brought it with him to the study
and put it
on the desk. It had been a while since he could remember trying to learn something completely new, and he hadn’t worked on a l
anguage since 6th grade French.

He wondered if he should take notes.

He was on the point of pulling out a sheet of paper when something occurred to him. It was an image, the moment in class earlier
in the
day when he had recalled
the
exact page – and
the
exact example –
he had needed
to
answer
one of his
student’s
question
s
.

Maybe notes aren’t part of my routine anymore.

“Andrew, what time is it?”

From far away in the kitchen: “Five past three.”

Kevin nodded to himself. The entire concept of time was frightening to him now, and the more he could involve Andrew, the better. He opened the Spanish book, adjusted himself in his chair, and got to work.

The room grew gray and silent around him.

Nothing moved.

He looked up and sat back quickly, taking in a very sudden, very deep breath.
He
felt as if someone had just shaken him from a daydream. As if he had not been paying attention. He experienced a quick surge of that anxiety, that
get-ready
feeling in his head, but just as quickly it was gone. His breathing returned to normal.

He looked back down at the book.

Page 190.

Wait, when did I – ?

“Here you are.” Andrew appeared beside him, and he slid a small plate onto the desk. A turkey and chees
e sandwich, lettuce and tomato.
“A bit of fuel before you begin,” Andrew said.

Kevin put his hands up, then placed them slowly down on the desk. As though he were worried the polished wood might just float away. “Andrew, what time is it?”

A brief pause, as Andrew took a moment to deliver a precise response. “Eight past three,” he said, and left the room.

Kevin fought the urge to bring Andrew back and call him a liar.

Three minutes. Plenty of time to make a sandwich. Or to read 190 pages of a Spanish textbook. Either one
.
T
ake your pick.

Kevin grabbed the sandwich
and
took a bite. Delicious, of course. Fresh bread, good turkey.

190 in about three minutes. One page per second, give or take. Including the time to actually turn each page. A slow business, that page-turning thing.

He chewed his sandwich methodically, trying to enjoy it.

His body was working normally. His
senses
were working normally.

But what part of me senses time? Which section of my brain? And by the way, did I actually absorb all 190 pages?

H
e looked up at the ceiling,
as if preparing to recite his social security number or a line from a favorite movie. He had no idea where or how memories were stored, but he did know that everything had its own little trigger. If you tried to say your social security number star
ting in the middle, or backward
, you were done for. But start from the beginning…

“Spanish is a very straightforward language,” he said to the ceiling. “The rules for conjugation, agreement, and pronunciation are consistent, and include relatively few exceptions. Let’s begin with the simple concept of cognates…”

He looked back down at the textbook, his eyes wide.

It’s all there. It’s an unbelievably boring textbook, but it’s all there. Everything up to page 190, anyway.

He shook his head in wonder. In another minute he had finished his sandwich, and he pushed the plate to the side. He centered himself in his chair and leaned forward over the textbook. There were several hundred pages remaining.

“All right, you son of a bitch,” he whispered. “What else?”

He focused.

A
gain the room went gray around him.

When he was done, Kevin stood up from the desk. He felt light-headed. He blinked several times, glanced around him as if to get his bearings, and then looked back down at the Spanish textbook.

It was closed.

He turned and left the room, then headed straight back toward the main entryway. He heard Andrew’s soft footsteps behind him in the study as the empty sandwich plate was collected, and Kevin spoke over his shoulder as he was letting himself out the front door. “What do we have? 3:13?”

“Quarter past on the nose,” Andrew replied.

Kevin nodded with satisfaction
as he walked out to the elevator.

Another 310 pages in 8 minutes. Slower than before, but still pretty good. Maybe my page-turning hand was getting tired.

He
left the building and
headed downtown again.

Toward the testing center. Time to have a real conversation.