Elsewhere, page 25
A sudden sense of jeopardy made him wonder if he might not be as clearheaded as he believed, which was when Philip Esterhaus came out of the bathroom.
Falkirk had seen the chief before, more than once, but never when the man had been wearing so little. In only a pair of briefs, Esterhaus proved to be a more muscular and impressive specimen than he was in uniform, as if sculpted out of stone.
“You look like a demigod,” Falkirk said, surprised to have made such a statement, though his compliment was sincere.
The chief held a pistol.
The sight of the weapon perplexed Falkirk. How paranoid must a man be to keep a gun in his bathroom?
“What the hell are you doing here?” Esterhaus demanded.
“Smoking,” Falkirk replied, passing the cigarette from right hand to left and taking a draw on it. He thought that was a pretty clever response, but he could see it hadn’t amused the chief. So he blew out smoke and said, “We need to talk.”
“You want to talk? Get your ass out of my house, we’ll talk down at the station.”
Esterhaus wasn’t pointing his gun at Falkirk. He held it down at his side, the muzzle aimed at the floor.
Neither was Falkirk pointing his pistol at the chief. It lay in his lap, but he had let his free hand settle on it when he passed the cigarette from right hand to left.
His lap was in shadow. In fact, lamplight painted only the left side of his face and his arm, and the hand that held the cigarette. He imagined he must be a rather striking figure, like a mysterious character in a movie. He’d always thought he somewhat resembled a young Michael Douglas, although more handsome.
“The reason I intruded on your privacy,” he explained, pausing for a weary sigh, “is that I thought, given what I have to reveal to you, that you would rather hear it in a place more discreet than your office. It involves some embarrassing information about your wife and a man named Charles Pellafino.”
Esterhaus took another step into the room. “What bullshit is this? You think you can—”
With the cigarette still held somewhat languorously in his left hand to suggest an unthreatening listlessness, Falkirk tried a most unprofessional one-hand shot. He squeezed off three rounds in rapid succession, the recoil foiling his aim, and Esterhaus managed to bring up his weapon and fire once, and each of them scored one hit.
Falkirk took a brutal wallop in the torso. Although the slug, which burned a hole in his shirt, didn’t penetrate the Kevlar vest, his field of vision narrowed to the figure of the nearly naked man, the periphery of the room dissolving into darkness, and he couldn’t draw a breath. The impact robbed the Vicodin of its power. Pain splintered through his chest, as if his lungs shattered like glass.
Instead of Kevlar, the police chief had only a pair of cotton briefs. Anyway, Falkirk’s one useful round took Esterhaus far above his Jockeys, in the throat, blowing out his esophagus, severing at least one carotid artery, and separating his spinal cord from the base of his brain.
The demigod collapsed in a graceless heap, but Falkirk wasn’t ready to spring up from the chair and do a victory dance. Perhaps the punch of the bullet wouldn’t have been so bad if his chest had not been bruised by the rounds Harkenbach fired at him point-blank earlier in the day. First, his ability to breathe returned, and he gasped for air, but each inhalation and exhalation felt as if it was being forced through a barrier of pulverized bones. After maybe a minute, the pain diminished, and after another minute, the double dose of Vicodin began to work its magic again.
He had dropped his cigarette. A thread of smoke rose from the carpet. He levered himself out of the chair and stamped out the fire before it could start.
After slipping the pistol into his belt holster, he picked up the empty glass that had contained Coke and brandy. He caned himself into the kitchen. He left the tumbler on the cutting board next to the sink. Mrs. Esterhaus could deal with it when she got home.
He had no concern about leaving fingerprints, DNA, or other evidence. Because this murder would be blamed on Jeffrey Coltrane and because Coltrane was part of the Harkenbach case, over which Falkirk had jurisdiction, nothing incriminating him would be found by the federal CSI team that would probe the premises.
Staring at the empty glass, he considered pouring a bit more cola and taking a third Vicodin. However, he quickly recognized this impulse as dangerous, as a consequence of already being much too far under the influence of medication. He didn’t need another Vicodin. He felt no pain. He was happy. Happier than he’d been since he’d killed his stepmother in another timeline.
Nevertheless, he continued staring at the empty glass, which was mysteriously compelling. The very emptiness of it began to seem ominous. After a minute or two, he realized that the empty vessel was a symbol of failure. It must be taken as an omen, an urgent warning that the assault on Pellafino’s house might go awry, as to some degree had the murder of the chief, which should have been a one-shot kill, without an exchange of gunfire. The SWAT operation might turn out even far worse, end up a catastrophe. Being free of pain and in a rare state of happiness, Falkirk realized that he was so clear-sighted that things he once would have overlooked were now visible to him in their true and overwhelming importance. Like the glass. The empty glass. He must take the empty glass seriously. Some power—perhaps Destiny—was advising him through signs and symbols.
In his heightened state of consciousness, he saw the world as he had not seen it before, but as it had been portrayed in certain movies that had enthralled him, movies that were now revealed to have conveyed the essential truth of existence. Great magic and powers of supernatural potency were contained in such things as a sword locked in stone, in rings forged in Mordor, in a key to other worlds that looked like a smartphone. Spirit oracles spoke of the future through crystal balls and Tarot cards and patterns in tea leaves—and empty drinking glasses.
He was scared. He’d never been truly scared before. For a man who believed that nothing had meaning, it was horrific to suddenly perceive that everything had meaning. Horrific and frightening, but also motivating. If there were signs and portents all around, he who heeded them would surely never fail.
A standard SWAT invasion of the house, executed even with the swiftest and most overpowering force, had at best a 90 percent chance of success. But it couldn’t guarantee that the precious key to everything would be captured, that Coltrane and his daughter would not teleport out to a parallel world.
If Falkirk didn’t nail them this time and seize the key, he very likely would never have another chance. If he failed, his future would be as empty as the glass on the drainboard.
He must set aside conventional thinking, abandon the protocols of standard SWAT assaults, and go big, as the Oracle of the Empty Glass had undoubtedly been instructing him. Instead of armored men battering down doors and shattering through windows and shooting everyone in sight as they exploded into the house, a better plan would be to gas everyone inside. Creep up on the house without alerting those within. Introduce a powerful, rapidly expanding gas that would render the occupants unconscious in a few seconds and dead soon after. Coltrane would have no time to use the key to everything.
When the gas dissipated, Falkirk and crew could enter without personal risk. A story could be concocted to explain the gas as issuing from a device that Coltrane had been cobbling together for a terrorist attack. It malfunctioned, taking out its maker instead of the innocent people he intended to kill. Irony. Karma. The press would never question the story. Most repeated as fact whatever was fed to them by a deep-state source with whom they were sympathetic.
79
Duke mainly listened. As a detective, he’d spent a lot of time listening to moral degenerates denying their crimes, spinning their elaborate alibis, and eventually confessing to mayhem and murder.
His guests had eaten breakfast. A fresh pot of fragrant coffee—the third—finished brewing. Everyone except the girl seemed to be flying on a caffeine jag. She didn’t appear to need a stimulant to remain hyper alert and engaged, as though her body regularly produced caffeine along with new blood cells.
Everyone had stories to tell, amazing experiences to relate. Not a little of the talking was done by Ed Harkenbach. The scientist had a plan. He kept saying that he could resolve all the problems that his key to everything had caused in the lives of those gathered here. But before he would reveal what needed to be done next, he wanted them to better understand the multiverse—how it worked, why the key to everything was an existential threat to everyone in all the parallel worlds, and how he intended to mitigate or eliminate the threat that he—more times than he yet quite knew—had created when pride rather than reason guided him.
So for an hour and then another hour, Duke listened for lies, for evasions, for any indication that Ed was not giving it to them straight. There were more than a few moments when he felt that he had fallen down a rabbit hole and passed through a looking glass to a place where he would never be comfortable again.
Duke Pellafino’s life was one of routines and habits. He moved day to day in a pleasant well-worn groove. Successful police work depended on operating according to proven investigative techniques and procedures. Hotel security was more of the same. In his leisure time, he favored activities—golf, tennis, the piano—that required the development of skills, which demanded routine practice. He loved dogs for the reasons that everyone loved them, but also because they were happiest when they rose for the day, were fed, were taken for walks, and had play sessions according to an unvarying schedule. Aside from those rare moments during his years as a cop when bad guys felt compelled to prove their badness, Duke’s life involved little drama. And zero weirdness. He had no patience for talk of ghosts, reincarnation, fortune-telling. He believed the world was only what your five senses told you it was; there were no unseen presences or mysteries concealed behind mere veils of reality.
But then Ed Harkenbach said that when someone saw a ghost, he might be seeing a person in a parallel world, when timelines for a moment crossed instead of being neatly lined up next to one another or being wound around one another like filaments in a cable.
And in a strange way, reincarnation was real, though not in the sense that after death you returned in a new identity. However, you were incarnate as yourself in numerous timelines, living many lives.
Fortune-telling? Who was to say? According to Ed and quantum mechanics, all of time—past, present, and future—was complete in the instant of the big bang. Therefore the past and the future were contained in the present. If the future of this timeline was here to be known right now, there might be people gifted enough to see what most could not.
If earlier Duke hadn’t been hurled to an apocalyptic parallel world and escaped it with Amity, there were moments during Ed’s explanation that he would have gotten up, stopped listening, and washed the dishes, certain that all this was bushwa. Instead he remained at the table with a coffee mug in hand, in front of a plate on which a residue of egg congealed, and gradually he listened less for lies and more like a child sitting with his troop around a campfire in an eerie wilderness.
At last, Ed got to their predicament, for which he claimed to have a resolution. “You,” he said to Jeffrey and Amity, “can never go back to your bungalow. They know you have the key. Even if you surrendered it, they wouldn’t let you live, because you’d still know the key exists. They’ll never tolerate that knowledge being spread beyond those involved with Project Everett Highways.”
“I wish I’d never met that other you,” Jeffrey lamented. “No offense.”
“None taken. In some timelines I can be a quite difficult genius, given to paranoia and borderline megalomania. Even a mad genius in some versions. Although in my defense, I’ve not yet encountered a me who was a flat-out evil genius.”
“I’m not a guy who can live on the run,” Jeffrey said.
“Might have some cool adventures,” Amity said.
Putting a hand on his daughter’s shoulder, Jeffrey said, “From now on, the only adventures we need are those in books.”
To Michelle, Ed said, “And you can’t go home with Jeffrey and Amity to the bungalow in your timeline, because . . . well, you won’t be able to explain how they came back from the dead.” He glanced at Jeffrey. “Sorry. My condolences.”
“De nada. I’m not sensitive about being dead in other timelines as long as the me in this one stays alive.”
Unable any longer to contain himself, Duke said, “This is the craziest shit I’ve ever heard, and crazier still is it makes sense.”
“But if we can’t stay here in Jeffy’s timeline,” Michelle said, “and if we can’t live in mine . . . where do we go?”
Grinning broadly, Ed made fists of his hands and thumped them a few times against his chest. “I’m so pleased with myself. I found the perfect place for you.”
“There better not be bug-form robots,” Amity said.
“Not a one!” Ed declared. He got up and, carrying his empty mug, went around the table to the girl. He tapped her nose with his index finger, and he said, “Cute as a button,” which she clearly did not appreciate. “It’s a great world, Amity, a delightful timeline. Best of all, Jeffrey’s mom and dad, Frank and Imogene, your much-loved grandparents a few towns north of here—they’re long dead in the world you’ll be going to, and your father was never born there, and neither were you. Isn’t that perfect?” When the reaction around the table was one of baffled dismay, the physicist realized that he needed to explain. “So Frank and Imogene can go with you under new identities. To your new world. Three generations of Coltranes making a fresh start.”
After taking a moment to absorb the increasing immensity of what Harkenbach was proposing, Jeffrey said, “Dad and Mom love the life they have in Huntington Beach. They’re set in their ways. They won’t want to pull up their roots and go to a parallel world.”
Moving to the coffeemaker on the counter behind Jeffrey, Ed said, “Of course, if they stay here, they’ll be murdered. Can I pour coffee for anyone? No?”
Coltrane appeared to be baffled by the scientist’s assertion or reluctant to believe anyone would really want to kill his parents.
Sharing his experience of the psychology of sociopaths, Duke said, “If this Falkirk asshole can’t get his hands on you, he’ll assume you’re still in this world, because he won’t believe you’ve skipped across the multiverse and left your folks grieving, thinking you’re dead. He’ll torture them until they tell him where you are, when you’re coming back, or until they die. So they’ll die.”
Filling his mug with coffee, Ed said, “Anyway, they already agreed to it.”
Coltrane turned in his chair. “They agreed, what do you mean they agreed, when did they agree?”
“The morning of April eleventh, two days ago. I paid them a visit and explained the situation. They were so happy you’d have Michelle again. I gave them a tour of the new timeline, and they fell in love with it.”
Duke never drank in the morning, but he considered setting aside his coffee in favor of Scotch whisky on the rocks.
Michelle said, “In the world I come from, Frank and Imogene are huge Star Wars fans. They’ve seen all the movies. They even collect memorabilia.”
“Here, too,” Coltrane said. “It was because they were so into science fiction that I went more for fantasy.”
“Adolescent rebellion,” Amity noted. “But benign.”
Adding cream to his coffee, Ed said, “Almost forty-five years of Star Wars prepared them to believe. They were very sweet, how badly they wanted me to be a traveler between worlds.” He took a sip of the brew, cried out—“Shit!”—and slammed the mug down, splashing coffee across the counter and onto the floor.
For an instant, Duke thought Harkenbach had burned his tongue. Then he realized the man had been looking out the window and had seen something that shocked him.
“They’re here,” Harkenbach said, and he already had the key to everything in his hand.
80
Ed said, “They’re here,” and even as the meaning of those two words were registering on Jeffy, something detonated softly—whump—rattling the ductwork within the walls. Jeffy was getting up from his chair, reaching for the key to everything, which he’d put on the table, in front of his plate, when a foul-smelling yellowish mist erupted from two vents near the ceiling of the kitchen. The gas must have been released from a highly pressurized container, because it seethed into the room at such incredible velocity that it whistled between the vanes of the vent grills and made them thrum. Jeffy was not yet all the way to his feet before the kitchen was inundated. He realized he shouldn’t breathe, but the attack was so sudden that he had already inhaled as the realization came to him. The vapor was ice-cold in his lungs, which convulsed painfully, and he exhaled violently, with a hoarse shuddering wheeze. He avoided inhaling a second time, or thought he did, but already the sedative or poison or whatever was working on him, his eyes flooding with tears, his thoughts blurring as did his vision. His bones seemed to melt in his legs, so that he couldn’t support himself, and he fell backward into his chair, almost toppling it.
Someone gripped him by the shoulder. Abruptly the kitchen was swept away by the familiar white blizzard, and though his vision remained blurry, he knew his rescuer must be Ed Harkenbach.
