Delirious (41 page)

Charlie lowered his sunglasses and gave Rachel his best “you don’t really believe that, do you?” look.

“Well, all I’m saying is we have no plan,” Rachel pointed out. “And I’m not sure I can support just letting you run. If we’re wrong, things could get much worse. More people could get hurt.”

“What are you suggesting, Rachel?” Charlie asked. He kept his eyes focused forward.

Joe stayed silent.

“I’m suggesting that you turn yourself in to the police. Let’s get them to look at this. We need more help to piece this together.”

“There are other things I haven’t told you,” Charlie said.

Rachel leaned forward so her body extended into the front seat area. “Like what?” she asked.

“Like, I found body parts in my motel room. Two hands. And they weren’t from the same person.”

“Jesus,” Rachel whispered.

“Not to mention my car was parked outside the motel,” Charlie added. “Our father’s gun and a bloody hacksaw were in the trunk. The police probably have already recovered the body parts, and they have the car, because I crashed it.”

“Charlie, that does it. You have to turn yourself in,” Rachel insisted. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to call the police.”

“Rachel, please,” Charlie said, but not forcibly. In a way, the idea of turning himself in felt like a relief. Once in custody, he could get Randal to help. Whoever or whatever was responsible for framing him, Charlie didn’t have the time or freedom to figure it out. “They’ll charge me with murder.”

“You’ll plead not guilty. You’ll get a lawyer, and then we’ll work together to try to get to the truth.” Rachel paused. “No matter what that truth might be.”

Charlie took in a deep breath. He held it a moment before exhaling. What choice was there? He could run. The question was, for how long? “The longer this goes on, the worse it is for you and Joe,” he said. He sounded like a man resolved to his fate.

“Good. Good.” Rachel nodded.

“There’s a state police station a few miles down the road,” Charlie said. “We can go there. I’ll explain everything. We just need to make
sure we have a consistent story that absolves you both of any accountability. Sound good?”

“Yes,” Rachel said.

“Joe, what do you think?” Charlie asked.

Joe didn’t answer. Instead, an unexpected sound filled the car. The sound wasn’t strange because it was unfamiliar. No, it was very familiar. It was music, jazz music. But the idea of Joe listening to jazz music after all these years, given the effect it had on his brain, was as incongruous as the sound of seagull cries in a Midwestern city.

The music continued to spill out of the InVision speakers. Charlie checked and confirmed that the radio was turned off. Yet the music continued to play, even growing louder. Charlie saw that the CD player was empty, too. Where was this music coming from? Charlie wondered. Then came a bright flash of white light, not unlike the powerful strobes underneath an airplane’s wings. The light pulsed in regular intervals and seemed to emanate from the large quartz In-Vision display screen.

Charlie could identify the song. Its melodic theme was unmistakable. The blue notes defined its unique melody, which was expertly played on the trumpet by one of the all-time jazz greats. Behind the melody, he could hear the syncopated rhythms that gave this particular tune its infectious and unforgettable groove.

This had been their father’s favorite song. It was this song that had inspired their father’s passion for jazz in the first place. The notes of this song were in many ways an extension of their father’s heart. Joe and Charlie had listened to this very song while they read the note he had left for them on the kitchen table. It was the song that Joe’s doctors eventually concluded had both a tonal uniqueness and emotional context capable of triggering powerful seizures in Joe’s brain. Musicogenic epilepsy. Joe never had another seizure after he stopped listening to that song. The song playing was the Miles Davis classic “So What.”

Charlie knew the symptoms well. Joe’s past episodes had been forever implanted in his memory. He was afraid Joe had regressed and had had a seizure the night they fought over the kill list. Now he was certain Joe was having one. The patient first lost track of time as they entered into a trancelike state. They could respond to verbal commands but most often were not aware of their actions, as if they
were sleepwalking. They might hallucinate as well, the result of extreme neurological changes in the front temporal lobe.

“What’s going on?” Rachel asked from the backseat.

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Joe?”

Again, Joe didn’t respond. But a hollow, mechanical voice answered in his place. It was a terrifyingly familiar voice at that. It was the emotionless, computer-programmed voice of InVision. But it was saying something Charlie had never even contemplated possible, an action it was certainly never programmed to perform.

“Joe,” InVision said, “Charlie and Rachel are not your friends. They are going to kill your mother.”

Joe nodded.

InVision continued to speak. “You must trust me. I know what is going to happen. It’s up to you to stop them.”

“Joe, what is going on?” Charlie shouted.

InVision answered for him. “Joe, prepare to exit highway in three hundred yards. Then prepare to kill them.”

J
oe took Exit 7A, as InVision instructed. He had no idea where he was. He was driving but knew nothing more. How had he come to be in a car, or his intended destination, he couldn’t recall. His feet worked the gas and brake expertly. That was good. He didn’t want to get into an accident. He wasn’t sure that he even had his driver’s license. Mother wouldn’t want him to get in trouble about that.

Joe looked to his right and saw a man seated next to him. The man looked familiar. Joe processed the man’s face. He squinted to help sharpen his focus. Then it came to him. It was not because he recognized the man. He actually didn’t. But the voice of his friend told him who he was.
Yes, of course,
Joe thought with a smile.
How could I forget?
The man was his brother. This was Charlie.

He glanced in the rearview mirror. A woman was sitting in the back. She, too, looked familiar. Same as with Charlie, he couldn’t recall her name. Her name was Rachel, he suddenly remembered. She was his doctor.

Joe came to the end of the ramp and turned right. He followed the flow of traffic. His brother and Rachel were shouting at him. They were talking too fast for him to understand. Their voices were loud. His ears rang as if he were hearing the loud crash of pots and pans dropping to the floor from a good height.

Then they went silent, though their mouths continued moving. They looked at him as though they were in a Buster Keaton film. The image made Joe laugh aloud. When he laughed, they looked afraid. That made him laugh even louder.

But what was he doing, and where was he going?

Something was wrong, but what?

If only … if only … if only his friend would talk to him.

Then, as if a mind reader, his friend spoke. Unlike with Charlie and Rachel, Joe could hear his friend’s words clearly. They were like focused sonic beams directed into his eardrums. There wasn’t a word he couldn’t understand. Yet what his friend said made little sense.

His brother and his doctor were going to kill his mother? How could that be?

“I don’t believe you,” Joe told his friend.

His friend didn’t give up that easily. “The doctor has drugs. Your brother has motive. He didn’t want to live with you anymore. With your mother dead, he could leave you all alone. He and Rachel will run away together. They will leave you all alone, Joe. That is, unless you stop them. Will you stop them, Joe?”

There was nothing erratic about Joe’s driving. He drove with the flow of traffic. Out of the corner of his eye, Joe caught a glimpse of Charlie leaning forward and reaching for the InVision system. Joe couldn’t allow that to happen. That was where his friend lived. If Charlie shut off InVision, he would shut his friend off, too.

What would happen then?
he wondered.
To his mother?

Joe couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t. He needed more answers. There was no reason for him not to believe what his friend had said. These two were evil. And they had to be stopped.

Joe made an arching motion with his arm. With his hand held flat, palm facing down, he cut his arm through the air like a knife. The side of his hand connected with the soft flesh of Charlie’s throat. He saw his brother’s head snap backward. He seemed unconscious, but the seat belt kept Charlie’s body upright, while his head slumped forward until his chin rested against his chest.

“Yes! Yes! You will save your mother, Joe! Yes!” his friend said.

The doctor. Her name again … What was her name?

Joe tried, but he couldn’t remember her name. Just when he thought it was coming to him, a flash of light made him lose his thought again. It didn’t matter. She was evil, too. No different than his brother. Her mouth was open wide, and it looked to Joe as if she was screaming. If she was, he couldn’t hear any noise coming from her. For all he knew, she could just be singing loudly. An opera star,
like the ones he had watched with his mother on PBS. He thought again of his poor mother. He could remember the hospital where she lay.

Did the voice just remind him of that? He wasn’t sure if his friend had just spoken to him. Everything was so confused. How long had he been driving? Where was he going? It didn’t matter. His mother mattered most of all. She didn’t deserve to die. He would never allow them to kill her.

The woman started to reach for the door. He wondered if she could survive the impact of leaping out of the moving car. He didn’t care about that. But he wanted to know what she was going to do to his mother. If she got out of the car, he might never know. Joe pressed the automatic door lock and then the window lock. He made certain the woman couldn’t unlock the door from the backseat. She was his prisoner.

“
Let’s see you hurt Mom now,” he said.

Then he turned off the main road and drove a quarter mile down another street. Why did he turn? Then he remembered. His friend, the voice, had told him to turn. It was guiding him.

“Turn right on Drum Hill Road,” InVision directed.

Joe turned right.

“Follow road to the end,” InVision said.

Joe drove to the end of the road. He pulled the car to a stop at the far side of a small cul-de-sac. He looked around. The road was deserted. There were only a few houses on it. There were no people on the sidewalks or out on their lawns. It didn’t matter if people were walking about. What he was doing was right. Anyone who asked would understand. He was saving his mother.

Charlie remained still, slumped over in his seat. The woman continued screaming or singing, whatever. Reaching for her, he felt nothing as she swung her fists wildly at him, landing blow after blow. In fact she had cut the skin of his arm with her nails, but he didn’t notice until he looked down and saw blood. No matter. The cuts didn’t hurt at all.

Joe asked his friend what he should do with them. He wasn’t sure his friend could even hear him. He was glad he could.

“Put them in the trunk,” InVision said.

C
harlie came to in total darkness. His memories were a jumbled collection of disjointed images. He could recall some of what had transpired, but they were isolated experiences and all out of sequence. The sensation of darkness was not yet terrifying. It was merely unnerving. There was no reason at that moment to feel fear. Charlie roused with a logy awakening, like a bear emerging from deep winter hibernation. It was that slow reconnection of his nerves to his brain that helped suppress the panic he should have been feeling.

Charlie felt off balance and knew that he was lying down. He just didn’t know where. He tried to lift himself up. His head cracked hard against something metallic. A bolt of pain followed. It was a staggering blow that left him dazed. In its wake, the blow produced a stinging ache that pulsed in powerful waves and seemed to linger forever. Worse, the echo made by the impact didn’t travel far. Wherever he was, Charlie thought, the space was frighteningly small.

Both for good and for bad, the pain of smashing his head accelerated the return of his memory. His thoughts, though still scattered, were at least now in sequence.

Joe, he first recalled. Joe was driving. The InVision system. Music. No, jazz music came from it. I heard a voice. There were lights. Blinding strobes. The voice issued commands. It was a warning about me. No, it was about us….

As quickly as those thoughts came, they began to trail off. Panic started to set in. He knew where he was now. Charlie’s ears perked up and caught the sound of wheels revolving fast along the ground.
He could feel a steady side-to-side rocking that suggested movement at a significant velocity.

Then something brushed against his leg. Whatever it was, it wasn’t inanimate. The object touched him again, this time purposefully. It suggested a certain sense of urgency, as if it were pleading for him to do something.

My God,
Charlie thought.
It’s Rachel.

Charlie’s hands were not bound. He could move them, but not much, given the cramped quarters inside the Camry’s trunk. Rachel must be pressed up against him. In the total darkness it was hard to tell, but his eyes were starting to adjust to the little light there was. He could now make out the silhouette of her body. They were lying sideways in the Camry’s trunk. She was closest to the backseat. Her feet were at his head.

“Rachel? Rachel? Can you hear me?” Charlie asked.

He heard only a muffled cry.

Had Joe gagged her? he wondered.

“Are you hurt? Can you press into my body one time if you’re okay, twice if you’re injured?” Charlie asked.

Rachel pushed against him with her legs and torso. She did it once, not more.

“Thank God,” Charlie said. “I’m going to get us out of here. Hang in there, Rachel. I’ll get us out of this.”

Again he felt her body press into his. He knew this meant that she believed him. He also knew that the consequence of failure would be death.