The Meridians(64)

Scott nodded. "Me neither. I think that Mr. Gray was a hitman, pure and simple, who got caught up in this somehow just like we did. But," he said, and reached across the table to take her hand as though the importance of what he was about to say demanded physical contact, "here's a tougher question: do you think John Doe might be from another dimension?" Before Lynette could answer, he continued, "I mean, think about it: he disappears and reappears, seemingly at will; he knows things about the future, like where and when you and Kevin were going to move into the area; and he frankly just seems slightly off to me, like he doesn't belong somehow."

"I thought you said he was nice."

"Oh, he seemed nice enough, with the exception of knocking me down and drugging me. But he just seemed...I don't know. He seemed like he didn't belong here somehow." Scott leaned back. "I could just be talking out of my behind."

Lynette glanced below the table. "It's not a bad behind to be talking out of."

Scott blushed, which Lynette would have thought was immensely cute if she had not been intensely blushing herself.

What possessed me to say that? she thought to herself.

The she looked down and realized that, although Scott had just leaned back, he had not relinquished his hold on her hand. As though he, too, realized the same thing at that instant, Scott started to withdraw his hand. But she clenched her fingers tightly around his and did not let him go.

Her son was suddenly writing mathematical equations so complex that she had no chance of doing more than figuring out the general idea of the general idea of what he was typing about.

A man known only as John Doe had apparently decided to serve as some kind of part-time adviser from another dimension.

And there was a madman after her, Kevin, and Scott, who apparently had supernatural abilities and certainly had the will and skill to kill.

But in that moment, all of that seemed very far away. All that seemed up close and important, right then, was his hand. His fingers intertwined with hers. His eyes looking closely at her.

And his smile resting as light as a cloud on her face.





***





30.

***

Scott finally left Lynette's house at a bit past three in the morning. And didn't want to.

But he knew that they both felt that they had played out their "research" for the time being when, still holding hands, Lynette asked, "What about Kevin?"

"Well, he's what started this whole line of questioning, obviously," answered Scott.

"'Obviously,'" Lynette quoted, and stuck out her tongue in mock anger. "What a perfectly male answer." But he noted that she didn't pull her hand away from his. In a way it made him nervous: he hadn't held anyone in any way since Amy's death, so to suddenly find himself holding hands with someone as intelligent, beautiful, sassy, and bright as Lynette was the very definition of jumping in at the deep end.

Even so, as nervous as it made him, it didn't come close to making him nervous enough to withdraw his hand.

"Did you have something more in mind?" he asked.

"Yes. Have you forgotten today?"

Scott pursed his lips and mulled that over. He knew Lynette was no longer talking about the complicated mathematical information that Kevin had typed - and probably had been typing for some time before today. Even he knew enough about autism to know that some autistic children had gifts of extreme intellectual ability. Though he doubted that, if investigated, either of them would be able to find an autistic child who was gifted to the level that Kevin had shown himself to be.

No, he knew she was talking about the other thing. The thing that had brought them together today. The event at the supermarket where Kevin had stopped a family from dying, and probably more from being injured, by his actions.

How had he done that? Though autistics possessed prodigious mental abilities in some arenas, he doubted that foresight would be listed as one of them on any of the many autistic support groups or listservs that Lynette had told him about.

So how had it happened? What had Kevin done? Had he merely seen the future in some way? Or was it more than that; more complex than that?

Scott did not know. Though he suspected that, if revealed, Kevin's "gift" would not show itself to be something as simple or easily explained as mere foresight. No, something much deeper - more fundamental - than a psychic trick had to be involved. Scott didn't know how he knew it but he felt it in his bones. It was the same feeling he would have had if someone had asked how he knew he was human. Of course there were characteristics that could be examined, DNA samples that could be taken, other tests that could be run. But the simplest and most convincing answer to Scott was that he simply knew he was human; that he simply thought it, and simply was.

He didn't say all this to Lynette, however. For one thing, he didn't have the words to express it in a way that would drive home the certainty that he had in this area. For another, he would have felt silly even trying, since his certainty amounted to no more than a certainty of a negative: that Kevin was not merely a mind reader or a fortuneteller, but something of much more fundamental importance than that.

So he shrugged, and said, "You got me there. I have no idea what to make of Kevin." He tapped a pile of papers: a printout of some of the work they had discovered on Kevin's laptop. "Though I think we should send this to some college professors or something as soon as possible to be tested."