City Dark(16)

The process had already begun, and he was continuing it tonight. Using his thumbs deftly, he typed out a message to one of his contacts. This contact was particularly valuable, and Hathorne had to handle him with skill and care.

Have you spoken with him yet?

While he waited for a reply, he turned his head toward the sliver of yellow light coming in through the door gap. A hospital attendant made regular rounds on his floor, but Hathorne knew when, even if they changed up the schedule, and he could hear the footfalls, in any event. There was no one around. He turned back to the dim white screen.

A single word moved across it.

Yes.

How does he seem?

Spooked. Good enough for you?

Hathorne grinned. Yes, that was very good indeed.

They were not using the iPod’s built-in text program. Instead, to communicate with this contact, Hathorne had created something far simpler but equally effective. It was beyond “old school,” as people said nowadays. In creating it, Hathorne had mimicked programs from the early days of computing itself. The program was his own creation, just a simple messaging application. There were no screen names, even, just eerie green text on a black square. His contact had been given an old laptop computer with the same program. Hathorne had loaded the program on to the laptop right there in the psych center and then arranged for the laptop to be smuggled out.

This contact, Hathorne knew, was not computer savvy. He knew only enough to leave the computer on during certain times, usually around midnight, and then wait. When Hathorne chose to reach out, the program would open and produce a simple ding to alert the user. They would communicate until Hathorne decided the session was over, and then the program would disappear.

The contact had no idea who Hathorne was, other than a person who, for a few small favors, would significantly enrich him when the favors were done. Hathorne knew the contact’s name but never used it. In fact, to keep his mind ordered, he even banished it from his own thoughts as much as possible. He referred to this contact, in his thoughts and in his exchanges, only as Reaper.

He is guilty, Hathorne typed. Know that, and that he will pay. Soon.

What now? came the reply.

There will be further instructions. How are your circumstances?

My what? My life? It sucks. When do I get my money? I’ve done what you asked.

Soon enough. You’ll be able to do whatever you want very soon.

There was a long pause and then: Really not sure this is worth it. Who are you, anyway? Who’s the guy who gave me this computer? I get orders from him through text messages, but I haven’t seen him since.

You’ll know what you need to know when it’s right for you to know. And it’s almost right. You’ll get what you want. Every bit of it.

What do you know about me? What do I want, anyway?

Hathorne narrowed his eyes and stared at this for a few seconds. There were the distant sounds of a toilet flushing and a man coughing down the hall. Otherwise, the ward was deathly quiet and dark. His thin fingers hovered over the little device on his chest. He clicked his tongue and typed out, Light.

Then he turned off the program, and the word and the light vanished.





CHAPTER 14


Sunday, July 16, 2017

Bay Thirty-Fourth Street

Bath Beach, Brooklyn

2:45 a.m.

Joe lay in his oversize bed, sweat soaked and dry mouthed. He had just woken from a dream in which he was floating in black water, down a river in darkness, toward some loud, rushing sound he never reached. It was unsettling, but it hadn’t scared him. What was scaring him was the sand in his shoes, the shoes he had, by all appearances, recently worn to a beach nearby.

Yes, and perhaps the same beach where a woman who is apparently your mother was found murdered by some guy with strong hands. She is a woman you have seen somewhere else, but cannot place.

She was there again, in his mind’s eye, the discarded-looking creature at the medical examiner’s office. The one he was never supposed to have recognized. He had seen no familial resemblance. He had felt no deep stirring, nothing that told him he was attached to the dead woman in any way. Still, he had seen her before, and not long before. That was undeniable.

I didn’t kill that woman, he thought for the thousandth time, and then corrected it to I didn’t kill my mother. He cursed himself for even entertaining the idea. God, of course I didn’t. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t pick her out of a lineup! The internal dialogue went on, the warring voices in his head relentless.

Then why was the woman familiar? Who was she?

I don’t know! I don’t know, but there’s an explanation. I didn’t kill my mother. Why? Because I haven’t seen her in forty years, and I haven’t cared in probably thirty. I would have no reason. I would have no desire, no ability.

The dead woman is your mother, though. And she was someone you had seen before recently.

So what? At some point I saw a woman, somewhere, who got murdered near where I live. I did not know her by name, or by any other identifier. I told them truthfully that I did not know who she was. And if—if—I did go for a walk on a beach somewhere? So what? I live near a beach. That’s it. End of story. I’m not a killer. Of anyone. The worst that happened is I took a walk, and I don’t remember it because I was soused.

That wasn’t really the worst, though. The worst was that he couldn’t remember a goddamn thing about the night in question.