Beyond belief (9 page)

“You and I both know that these people aren't held to the same standard as other scientists.
Real
scientists.”

Joe sighed. “Who does this reporter write for?”

“A magazine called
Nature Extreme.
Are you familiar with it?”

“Sure. I read it whenever I need to catch up on the latest alien abductions, ghost stories, and Bigfoot sightings.”

“Well, the fellow's name is Gary Danton. Be careful what you say to him.”

“I won't say anything to him.”

“How many frauds have you exposed for us, Bailey? Ninety, a hundred?”

“Something like that.”

“I didn't think it would take half that many to convince the board of regents to be done with those idiots.”

“I guess some people will believe only what they want to believe, Reisman.”

Joe had three messages waiting for him at his desk, one from the
Nature Extreme
reporter and two from Cy. Joe called Cy back. Answering machine. He left his pager number.

As he hung up the phone, a clear plastic freezer bag loaded with cash landed on his desk. Howe was standing in front of him, grinning like an idiot.

Joe picked up the bag. “If you're trying to bribe me to walk off the case, it'll take more than this.”

Howe folded his arms in front of him. “Twenty-five thousand dollars. I found it in Nelson's night table.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yup.”

Joe examined the neat, paper-banded stacks of fifty-dollar bills. “Have you checked it against the fi-nancials?”

“It doesn't appear on any bank or investment statement
I
can find. You knew him. Any idea why Nelson would have twenty-five grand sitting in a night table?”

“We weren't exactly buddies. Maybe he just liked keeping cash on hand.”

“He hasn't had it for long. Most of these bills were minted in Denver less than ten weeks ago.”

“And it didn't show up on his financials? With that kind of undocumented cash lying around, I'd usually look to drugs, but that really wasn't Nelson.”

Howe picked up the plastic bag of cash. “How are you coming on your end?”

Joe was still surprised by Howe's news. “I'm still checking with experts about the levitations. I saw a guy today who may have something for me.”

“Good. Pretty strange about that reporter disappearing, huh?”

“Very.”

Howe smiled. “Be careful how you interview that kid, Bailey. Make him mad, and we may be peeling
you
off the wall.”

*   *   *   

Joe hadn't heard back from Cy by the time he left work, but the warehouse was only a little out of the way home. What the hell.

It was dark by the time he rolled to a stop in front of the building. There was a light in Cy's window.

Joe climbed the stairs, cringing at the battle of the bands that had erupted between the alternate-rock-white-boy rap groups rehearsing on the second and third floors. The low bass throbbed through the walls, shaking the floorboards with each pretentious riff. Thank God Nikki wasn't into this crap. Yet.

Cy's large sliding metal door was closed but not padlocked.

Joe rapped on it. “Cy, it's Joe again. I got your message.”

Silence.

“Cy?”

Footsteps. The floorboards buckled and whined.

Thud.

Something hit the floor hard. Joe yanked the door open.

Cy was lying near a futon in the corner of his dimly lit studio. His eyes were open, and he was softly mumbling.

“Cy?”

Cy looked at him pleadingly, then rolled his eyes and vomited.

Joe rushed over and turned him on his side. “Take it easy. Just relax.”

He vomited again. Foamy and white. Christ.

“Hang in there, Cy. Where's the phone?”

Footsteps. Behind him. Joe spun around and saw a
figure in a denim overcoat sprinting out through the open doorway.

“Stop! Police!” Joe yelled. He jumped to his feet, but Cy began choking and gagging. Shit.

Joe turned him over and slapped his back. He tried to clear his mouth, but Cy continued to sputter.

“Hang on. You'll be okay.”

Joe had had a feeling that Cy wasn't going to be okay, but he had never imagined that less than an hour later he'd find himself staring at the levitation-ist's corpse in the Grady Memorial Hospital emergency room.

Cy had been beyond help even before the paramedics arrived at his loft, but they still struggled to rekindle some spark of life. You can always get lucky, an emergency medical technician once told Joe.

Cy had never been lucky.

The emergency room doctor, a tall Latino man, tossed his rubber gloves onto the instrument table. “You knew him?”

“Yeah,” Joe said, still not able to take his eyes off Cy's face. “For a long time. Since we were kids.”

“Did you know he was a drug addict?” the doctor asked.

“No, I didn't.”

The doctor motioned toward Cy's needle-scarred arms and torso. “He was a pincushion. It was bound to catch up with him.”

“Are you sure that's what killed him?”

“We'll have to wait for the test results to be sure, but his symptoms were consistent with a heroincocaine
mix. Unfortunately, we've gotten pretty good at knowing what those symptoms look like.”

Joe nodded. Poor Cy. It was easy to look at his face and see the gawky teenager he used to compete with for those pathetic birthday party gigs and Rotary meeting shows. They had lost touch over the years, but he'd always admired the guy for sticking by his dream. Only now, judging by those ugly needle marks, was it apparent how much it had cost him.

The guy in Cy's apartment was probably his supplier, Joe realized. A cop was the last person a dealer would want to talk to, especially if he had just accidentally administered a lethal speedball. Still, the timing was suspicious. Cy had been trying to call him for some reason.

“Can you help us contact his family?”

“He didn't have any. He's been alone for almost as long as I've known him.”

Joe gently pulled the sheet over Cy's scarred arms.

Lyles spread out the flat ivory squares on the passenger seat of his new Jeep Cherokee, positioning them to form a large circle. He'd purchased the vehicle that afternoon and had the windows down to dissipate the putrid new-car smell everyone else seemed to love.

His hands worked quickly over the squares. Bertram and Irene had given them to him shortly before he left England. He had carved Latin words on each square, even though most Millennial Prophets chose to write them with indelible ink. This was more
real
, he thought. More permanent.

Like the scalp tattoo now buried beneath his thick brown hair.

He didn't let the squares rule his life as he knew some of the other believers did. He thought the squares offered alternatives, another way of looking at life, but nothing more.

He completed the circle and placed his small sport compass in the center. He picked up the squares at due north, south, east, and west, then placed them in a row.

Modo. Mortis. Creo. Vita.
Modo.
Only.
Mortis.
Death.
Creo.
Create, or make possible.
Vita.
Life.

He chuckled.
Only death makes life possible.

In his present circumstances it could have been interpreted a few different ways. But here, parked on this stretch of Corsair Street, the meaning was clear.

Lyles looked up at the large third-floor window of the building in front of him, where he could see little Nikki Bailey talking on the phone.

“I'm fine, Dad, except that Vince is ignoring me.” Nikki spoke into her pink cordless phone, pacing back and forth in front of the living room windows. She shouted across the room. “Aren't you, Vince?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah …” Vince was hunched in front of the television, watching Jesse Randall's Dallas test sessions.

“He's beating his head against the wall because he can't figure out the miracle boy's tricks,” Nikki said.

“He can join the club.” Joe's voice broke up as it always did when his portable phone passed between the tall downtown buildings. “I'll be home in a few minutes, okay?”

“Okay, bye.”

Nikki pressed the talk button to cut the connection. She stared at the street below and wrinkled her brow. A man was sitting alone in a Jeep.

He had been there the entire time she'd been talking to her father. She might not have noticed, but Wanda, her next-door neighbor, had recently filed a restraining order against her ex-boyfriend. It was too dark to tell if this was the guy, but he was definitely facing their building.

“Vince, can you come look at something?”

Vince's eyes didn't leave the television screen. “I'm
already
looking at something.”

She turned from the window. “Please …”

He sighed. “That's not fair. You know I'm powerless when you ask like that. You girls learn it in the cradle, don't you?” He stood and shuffled toward the window. “What is it?”

“See that man in the Jeep down there?”

Vince squinted. “No.”

Nikki turned back sharply. The Jeep was gone. “It was just there!”

“Sure it was.”

“I promise!”

Vince laughed and went back to the couch. “Maybe Jesse Randall made it disappear.”

She glanced up and down the street. No sign of the Jeep or the driver.

Obviously, the man had driven away, but it made
her uneasy that he had left in those few seconds when she'd turned from the window. It was sort of… spooky.

She closed the blinds.

Sharp kid, Lyles thought. Like her father. She'd spotted him.

That was okay. He wasn't close enough for her to get a description, and he'd gotten what he needed. He was just doing some preliminary legwork, establishing patterns of behavior, and gathering information.

He wasn't sure he would need the knowledge he'd gathered on Joe and Nikki Bailey, but it was always wise to arm oneself with as much information as possible.

But was someone else doing the same thing? For a moment, he thought he'd seen a man lurking in the shadows across the street, also looking up at the Baileys’ window.

Who the hell was that?

G
ood morning, Ms. Randall. Is Jesse here?” Joe and Nikki stood on the front porch of the Randall home early the next morning, trying to ignore the television cameras pointed in their direction.

“He's here,” Latisha said coolly.

“This is my daughter, Nikki. Would you mind if we came in?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Is Jesse a suspect?”

“Not as far as I'm concerned.”

“Then why are you here?”

Joe glanced at the cameras on the sidewalk. “Ms. Randall, at least two of those cameras are connected to high-sensitivity parabolic microphones. They can probably hear everything we're saying. May we come in?”

Latisha looked at the news crews, then opened the door wide for Joe and Nikki. They walked into the small living room, where Nikki immediately gravitated
toward the collection of ceramic salt-and-pepper shakers on the mantel.

“Wow,” she said. “Did you make these?”

Latisha's suspicious attitude toward Joe did not transfer to his daughter. “I made some of them, honey, but most of them I bought.”

Nikki nodded. “Very cool.”

“Thank you. I'm proud of them.”

“Ms. Randall, it's important that I be able to talk to Jesse,” Joe said gently. “Jesse spent more time with Dr. Nelson than anyone else did in those last few weeks.”

Latisha pursed her lips. “But your being here makes it even—”

“He may be able to help me end all of this. That's what we all want, isn't it?”

“Yes.” A small voice came from the hallway.

Joe, Nikki, and Latisha turned to see Jesse standing in the doorframe. “That's what /want,” Jesse said.

“I told you to stay in your room.” Latisha turned back to Joe. “He's a prisoner here. He can't leave the house without people bothering him, and they've asked him not to come back to school for a while.”

“Why?” Joe asked.

“They say he attracts too much attention.” She made a face. “They brought his books and lessons, and they're supposed to send a teacher a couple of times a week. Personally, I think the principal is afraid of him.”

“You're probably right about that. I can talk to her if you'd like.”

“No, I think he's safer here.”

Nikki stepped toward Jesse. “You like
Star Wars
, don't you?”

“Who doesn't?”

“Dad says you have lots of
Star Wars
toys. I have Queen Amidala's spaceship.”

“Chrome?”

Nikki nodded.

“I have a Naboo fighter and a bongo.”

Joe leaned over. “Maybe he'll show you his collection, Nikki.” He looked at Latisha. “If it's all right with you.”

Latisha finally nodded. “It's okay, Jesse.”

Jesse walked toward his room, and Nikki followed him. When they were out of earshot, Latisha turned back to Joe. “Do you always bring your little girl along on police investigations?”

Joe shrugged. “I thought Jesse would like to be around someone his own age who isn't afraid of him. It's only natural— Did I say something wrong?”