Vision (19 page)

G
abe and Max brought Bobby straight to the Woods’s cozy old house in the center of town. It was ablaze with light, warm and welcoming, as always.

Aaron came running onto the porch and straight into his arms. Bobby hugged him fiercely. He wasn’t ready to tell him the news yet. Wasn’t sure how you tell a kid that pretty soon his big brother, the guy he’d always looked up to, wouldn’t be able to look back.

“Where’s Coco?” Bobby asked. “He okay?”

“He’s quiet,” Jerry said, “if that’s what you mean. Just lying in his bed, staring at the walls. Frankly, I don’t know what to do with the boy. The town is going nuts. The sheriff is on a bender. Bobby, I don’t know how to tell you this—but he’s telling everyone who’ll listen that it’s you. That you killed Dana.”

A shiver raced up the back of his neck. Bobby reached for something solid to grab hold of. “Do you—you don’t believe that, do you?”

There was a deep exhale. “No, Bobby, of course I don’t believe it. But there’s nothing. No leads. The killer’s a phantom. It’s driving Barclay mad, chasing his tail like this.” Jerry’s big hand rested on his shoulder. “Look, never mind all that. How are you, Bobby boy? What did the fancy doctor say?”

Bobby didn’t answer right away. He wasn’t sure if Aaron was in earshot or not. But Jerry must have read his expression and squeezed him into a bear hug. “Whatever it is, we’ll all face it together, like we always do. When you’re ready, you’ll tell me. But you gotta promise to tell your dad right away.”

“When he’s out of the hospital. He’s got enough troubles of his own right now.”

Jerry’s tiny Thai wife, Tula, bustled about, setting down trays of food.

“Bobby. You eat,” she said.

“I’m stuffed, Mrs. Woods. Thank you. Can I see Coco now? I shouldn’t have left him here like this.”

“Sure. He’s upstairs.”

Bobby had spent his entire childhood racing up the steps to Coco’s room, jumping on his bed. He held the rails and climbed, made a left and followed the stream of light spilling from under the door.

Coco sat on the bed, staring at his phone.

“Hey, man.”

“Dude! I shouldn’t have left you alone. There’s no excuse. You okay? I heard you went to some fancy-pants doctor in the city for a miracle cure.”

Bobby sat on the bed. “There’s no miracle cure, Coco. You might as well know. I’m going blind. It’s definite.”

“Jeez, dude. I thought it was… I don’t know what I thought. God. Could this week get any worse?”

“Probably,” said Bobby, “if the killer murders someone else.”

“I can’t stop thinking about Dana. How terrified she must have been.”

Bobby sat silently, staring at the shadows on Coco’s wall. “If I told you I knew how to track down the killer, what would you say?”

“I’d say that, along with your sight, you might also be losing your mind. Is this that psychic thing again?”

“Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, if I told you that with your help, I
could
track down the killer, would you be in?”

“Of course I’d be in. I’d like to get my hands on him and rip his head off. But how?”

“We’ll talk tomorrow, then. Let’s get some rest tonight. We’re going to need it.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Dead serious.”

Jerry Woods tried to get Bobby to stay the night, but he argued that he had to get back to let Pete out and feed him. He insisted he was okay on his own and wanted to keep his independence as long as he could.

The next day dawned clear and bright. Before he’d gone to bed, Bobby had taken the sample medication the doctor had given him, and was pleased to find that his light sensitivity was almost under control. He could walk around without the glasses, which made everything considerably brighter and more vivid. Thrilled, he threw a cap on his head and ran outside with Pete, tossing a stick as far as he could throw.

But there was no avoiding the sorrow that crashed like snow sliding off a roof. Scratch Lake. No more misty mornings, swirls of fog over still water. No more minnows dive-bombing for bits of bread. He could, he supposed, still hook a worm, sit on the dock and wait for a bite. Maybe he’d get someone to take him out in the boat. He remembered his, which was currently rusting on the opposite side of Scratch Lake. Nothing he could do about that in his present condition.

Still, he had to go there. Had to fish while he still could. He ran into the house, got his fishing rod, the last container of nightcrawlers from the fridge, and a water bottle. The clock on the coffeemaker told him it was way early enough to get there, get some fishing in, and be back in time for his outing with Coco. He whistled for Pete.

“C’mon, boy!”

It was a three-mile walk to Scratch Lake and Bobby was determined to enjoy every inch of it. Pete prancing by his side, he stopped to study the blue-green shadow carpeting the morning woods, the way the light studded the leaves in glittering clusters of pale yellow.

It was a May morning. He didn’t want to think about death. He didn’t want to think about murder. But most of all, he didn’t want to think about living in endless night.

It felt good to get out and move. To breathe in the fresh, damp air. He didn’t see how people could live like sardines in the city, stacked on top of each other. He could certainly understand why Gabe would want to escape here.

Gabriella. Her name sang through his mind, a sequence of notes. He still found it hard to believe she could actually care for him, especially now. He didn’t understand it. He just knew that, like with his busboy job, he was going to make the most of what he had while he still could. He’d deal with the darkness when it came.

He made it halfway down the dirt road when the nearly silent rumble of a car heading his way stopped him in his tracks.

The door on the driver’s side opened. A tall, blond man in a suit stepped out, came around to the passenger side and helped a red-haired woman with dark glasses out of the car. From her bone structure, even without the detail, Bobby could tell the woman was beautiful. The man took the woman by the arm and guided her toward him. Bobby knew at once, by her stiff posture and the way she held her head. The woman was blind.

“Robert David Pendell,” she said. “That
is
you, I presume?”

“What do you want?”

The woman flipped open a white cane and walked toward him, her other hand extended. “I’m Agent Maura Reston, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This,” she gestured over her shoulder, “is my partner, Agent Bradley Whitworth.”

“The FBI? You’re
blind
.”

The woman smiled. “This is true. Rumor has it that you are also, or at least are well on your way.”

Pete began to bark. Bobby started to back away quickly, but the man lunged and grabbed him by the arm. “Not so fast, Mr. Pendell. We’ve heard about your troubles. And in light of the ongoing murder investigation, I think you might want to speak with us.”

“What do you want with me? I didn’t do it, I swear—I didn’t kill anyone.”

“We know that, Bobby,” the woman said. “That’s not why we wanted to talk to you.”

Bobby noticed the blind woman’s hand was extended toward him. “Won’t you shake my hand? It’s rather rude of you not to.”

Reluctantly, Bobby placed his hand in hers and was met with a sharp shock that reverberated through his spine. Shivering, he had the distinct feeling that the woman was looking not
at
him, but
through
him.

She smiled. “You can’t outrun the dark, Bobby.”

“You,” he said. “You’re like me.”

“Very astute, aren’t you? What if I told you there’s a cure for your impending blindness? Does that pique your interest?”

“If there’s a cure, why are
you
blind?”

Maura drew her hand away and snapped, “If you want answers, you’ll have to come with us.”

“What about my dog?”

The next thing Bobby felt was something cold prick his neck.

Then nothing.

B
obby surfaced slowly, like a deep-sea diver who’d gone too far below the waves. He pried his eyes open to see a featureless room pulsing with colored lights that seemed to glow from behind the walls.

Agent Reston sat across from him, her form a silhouette against the shifting colors. “Hello,” she said. “Was your nap pleasant?”

“You drugged me and kidnapped me. That’s illegal.”

“We’re the people who enforce those laws, Bobby, so it’s hardly a worry.”

“I’d like to go home now. My head hurts.”

“Home,” Maura said in a mocking tone, “is a ramshackle modular outside a dying town. Your father is a disabled Iraq vet, and until your eyes started to fail, you were the sole breadwinner and head of the family. At age seventeen. Very impressive. Why would you want to go back to
that
?”

“I don’t care where you take me. I just don’t want to be here.”

“It’s understandable that you’re scared.” Maura’s voice softened. “I was, too, when they came to me. I was twenty five, just having completed law school at the top of my class and prepping for the Bar when my doctor found the tumor. By then, I was just about blind, but I hadn’t told anyone. I suffered from crushing headaches, my hands shook uncontrollably, and I always smelled cinnamon. I’d thought it was stress. Then I started hearing the voices.”

Maura sat completely still, her hands folded in her lap. “I didn’t tell anyone about that, either. But one day, I had a seizure, the frothing at the mouth kind of seizure. I yelled out a lot of words that no one seemed to understand. Someone taped my seizure and put it on YouTube. I’d called out the names of every other murder victim in the country that year.” She paused for effect. “The month before they were killed.”

Bobby sat at the edge of his seat, fascinated and repulsed by Maura Reston all at the same time. It had never occurred to him there were other freaks out there, or that the government knew about them. Alarm bells shrieked in his mind. He stood and began to pace.

“I would like to leave. I don’t want to be here.”

Unfazed, Maura Reston continued calmly, “The Bureau came for me about five days later. With my vision almost gone, a tumor growing in my head, I just wanted to die. They found me on the ledge of my apartment building. Brought me here. Explained my choices.”

Bobby reached the wall. There was no door, no way out he could find. His heart raced. “Where’s Pete? What did you do with my dog?”

“No one hurt your dog, Bobby. And no one is going to hurt you. Please, have a seat.”

“Where is he?” Bobby was shouting now. In the dimness of the colored lights, his eyes were useless. He felt his way along the seamless walls, panic rising, his fight or flight mechanism inexplicably triggered. “Where is Pete?”

A sliver of light cracked the smooth walls. Wagging his tail and panting, Pete entwined himself between Bobby’s legs.

“You see, Bobby? No one wants to hurt you. We want to help you.”

He felt himself guided back to his chair, Pete by his side.

“How?” Bobby said finally. “How do you want to help me? You say there’s a cure, yet you didn’t take it and went blind anyway.”

“I’m going to explain everything, and once you understand, you may very well make the same decision I made.”

Maura Reston stood. Shadows shifted as she walked toward him and took both of his hands in hers. A deep, thrumming buzz passed through them. She quickly drew her hands away.

“I’m sure you felt that. People like us are very strongly connected.”

“People like us,” Bobby repeated numbly.

“What we share,” Maura Reston continued, “is a rare form of psychic ability stimulated by the growth of an unusual type of tumor called a
Meningioma Type X
. The tumor is almost always benign and grows in such a way that it activates the latent ability as it slowly destroys the optic nerve. We call the ability Alternative Functional Sight, or AFS.”

Bobby pulled his hands away. “I don’t want this ability. I want to be able to see right and just get on with my life. I’ll take the cure.”

“Not so fast, Bobby. You need more information.”

Maura Reston paced the room, heels clacking on the hard floor. “AFS is an extremely rare and coveted tool. The medical and law enforcement establishment has known about this syndrome for some time. It was discovered and researched in the 1930s as a means of stopping the gangsters who menaced the country during the Great Depression. It even has a name: DeWitt’s Syndrome, or DS, after the doctor, Thaddeus Myron DeWitt, who first identified it in a patient. Leads gained by a team of DS patients helped to bring down the notorious gangster, John Dillinger, in 1934.”

Bobby stared at the woman’s vague silhouette in silence. Though he knew she expected some kind of cue that he was listening, he couldn’t bring himself to utter a word.

She tilted her head. “Silence is the usual reaction I get. You’re probably wondering where you fit in. What your options are.”

Violent shivers traveled the length of his spine. “I am.”

“Dr. DeWitt conducted experiments on live patients, research that would never be legal today. It yielded fascinating results. He perfected a surgery that, in many cases, successfully removed the tumor and restored the patient’s sight.”