Mind + Body, Aaron Dunlap [smart books to read TXT] 📗
- Author: Aaron Dunlap
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She went on, “Most likely, we’re looking at strychnine added to something he ate or drank. It’s a pretty common and time-tested poison, historically taken by accident just as often as used intentionally. Jane Stanford, co-founder of Stanford University, died of strychnine poisoning. And if I recall correctly, it’s what Norman Bates was supposed to have used on his mother.”
Amy, Bremer, Rubino, and I stood in an odd silence for a moment.
“How does it work?” Rubino asked, eventually.
“Almost always, it kills by spasming the skeletal muscles until the spinotrapezius and latissimus dorsi muscles work against each other and break the spine, but it doesn’t seem like our body’s back is broken. It could also cause the diaphragm to displace itself, which may have happened. We’ll know more once we pump the stomach and analyze some of the foods it looks like he’s eaten.”
Bremer thanked her as she headed out the door with the rest of the science brigade. “You didn’t eat anything while you were here, did you?” Bremer asked me.
“No,” I said, “and I didn’t sniff anything, either.”
“Me either,” Amy chimed in.
Bremer nodded, and then noticed the gun on the floor by where I’d been sitting before. It was partially knocked under the couch.
“That yours or his?” Bremer asked. I turned and looked at the gun. It seemed like a nice gun, and I rather liked the idea of keeping it.
“His,” I said, unfortunately.
“Sorry,” he said, “That, we will have to take.”
Bremer pointed to it, and Rubino stepped over and picked the gun up by sticking a pen through the trigger guard.
“A Walther,” he said, “a .22, with an AAC silencer.”
Bremer chuckled and said, “Well there you go.”
I looked from him to the gun, and then said, “What?”
“Two types of people use .22s,” he said, “beginner target, women usually, and hitmen. Consider the silencer, and it’s pretty obvious. A .22 bullet is so small it can barely pierce bone. Sometimes, shot right into the torso, the bullets can get caught up in the abdominal muscles and won’t even get through the gut.
They’re only really any good at point blank range, but they’re so quiet — especially with a silencer — that it can make it worth getting close. It might take two or three shots to do any damage, but with practically no report it can be as stealthy as a knife. Plus, the bullet velocity is so low that they usually don’t exit the body.”
“So there’s no mess,” Rubino added.
“Wow,” Amy said, dryly, “this is all very fascinating and I’m sure I’ll one day use that information for a novel, but I think a more relevant topic would be what are you doing to catch this guy, and when can we go home?”
Rubino stood for a moment, holding the gun with his pen in silence. He pulled an evidence bag from his suit jacket and dropped the gun into the bag.
“Finding the guy isn’t likely,” Bremer said. “It’s more feasible to find whoever hired him. If this was retribution for something to do with you, or for Comstock screwing up by hiring Dingan, then there are few suspects.”
“Who, Schumer?”
“Probably.”
I sighed, wishing I had some kind of clue as to what was going on.
“So, there’s nothing to stop this guy from coming after us now?” Amy asked.
“Coming after you? If he wasn’t contracted to kill you, he’s got no reason to bother,” Bremer said.
“These types aren’t likely go off-book,” Rubino said. “When you’re good at something, you don’t do it for free. That is, unless you’ve really managed to piss him off.”
“It’s a good thing neither of us stabbed him in the leg, then,” I said, looking at Amy.
She shrugged. “You grabbed his gun and hit him in the throat, I’m not the only one he’d be mad at.”
Bremer looked us both, and asked, “Are you two in some kind of piss-off-hitmen contest or something?”
“We do have a knack for it,” Amy said.
“Oh yeah,” I said, “Dingan was supposed to be bringing me in, but I managed to coax him into wanting to kill me. How’s that for off-book?”
“I don’t understand this,” Bremer said, “You want credit for annoying people into wanting to kill you?”
“I’m just saying, this new guy could still be a threat.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Bremer said.
“How about my house? Do you have any idea who burned it down?”
“Blew it up,” Rubino said.
“Right. Do you know who blew up my house?”
“Nope,” Bremer said.
“Awesome,” I said, sarcastically. “Since I have little to no idea what the hell is happening in my life, could you perhaps provide some kind of list of people who might want to shoot me or blow me up?”
Bremer looked confused, “Well, it’s a short list. It starts and ends with Schumer.”
Why would Schumer want to kill me? If nothing else, it seems like he would want to strap me to a chair and have some hypnotist take a swan dive into my mind and undo his mistakes. I represent the last two decades of work and probably millions of dollars in development. There is no reason for him to want me dead, so why are my FBI pals saying that he would?
I remembered something Schumer had said. “You won’t know who to trust.” At the time, I thought he was just trying to be mysterious. He implied it was the FBI who’d actually killed my dad, as little of a fan I was of him at the moment. Lately, it seemed as if all Bremer and Rubino cared about was using me to mole out as much information about the program as they wanted. Maybe the FBI cared more about the program than about me. Maybe it was the FBI my dad was selling the program to, not a foreign government. Maybe the FBI double-crossed him, or he double-crossed the FBI, so they killed him, and are now pumping me for the information they couldn’t get from him. I supposed if that was their goal, they would want me to hate Schumer, wouldn’t they?
My head was spinning and my stomach felt sick. I don’t like the thought of being used. I don’t like the thought of anything that was happening to me. I don’t like that my dad was dead, or that my house exploded, or that I’m wanted in Austria, or that for the last 17 years I’ve been having my head screwed around with. I don’t like that I’m still standing in my dead principal’s living room, or even the fact that my principal is dead. I also don’t like the fact that wherever I went, whatever I did, I put my and Amy’s life in danger. Once again, I’m fed up. For all I know, Bremer and Rubino could have blasted Comstock with VX gas, or hired the .22-Caliber-Killer to “off” Comstock.
Wasn’t VX gas the stuff in that movie, The Rock? The little, green, glass balls? Whatever.
I told Bremer and Rubino I’d call them later, grabbed Amy’s hand, and left the building.
I didn’t sleep that night.
It wasn’t insomnia, and it wasn’t bad dreams from seeing yet another dead body or finding myself in yet another situation where I have to wait around for a more prepared version of myself to take the reins of my body. It was more of a crisis of identity, something I couldn’t stop thinking about.
I brought Amy back to the hotel’s parking lot so she could get her dad’s car and go home. Later, in my hotel room I lay in bed in hot, dark silence for hours but couldn’t sleep, my mind kept buzzing. The TV helped pass the time once I’d stopped trying, but through all the commercial breaks I sank right back into my brain and kept re-thinking the same things.
I wished I had a computer. I thought I might head to the store and buy one, like I’d done before. Something about that made me feel impressive. Like those people who can just go into a store and buy whatever they want and not even consider the price. Too bad, I thought again, that such things come at the price of death and destruction. More to think about, less to sleep for.
Dawn came eventually, light began to blot out the darkness and brought sounds of morning; birds chirping, sprinklers, early commuters opening car doors and starting engines.
After some time, the reruns of shows long canceled and advertisements for hair removal cream are replaced by morning news shows and morning talk shows. First we banter about recent news events, then an actor comes out to talk ever-candidly about the movie they happen to be in which happens to come out on Friday, then somebody shows us how to bake a pie with half the carbs, then someone comes to drone on about a book they just wrote.
Somewhere in there, a band plays their latest single and somebody in the audience wins a trip to someplace depressing like Boston or Seattle, places millions of people live day by day and don’t consider it a vacation. Betwixt these segments are three minute chunks of advertisements for cars, coffee, and travel websites.
I grew tired of telling myself that if I slept now I’d probably sleep until 2 PM, then 3, and so on. I got out of bed, opened the window the rest of the way, and took a shower in the bathroom connected to my room. A few times I nearly nodded off with hot water hammering my neck, but I held on to my lucidity. I felt like I needed a massage, if not from the car crash at least from the stress. When we first got to the hotel I made a point to see if they had a spa, they didn’t. Maybe when I’m out buying computers by the armful I can stop for a day in a spa. Drape salad toppings over my eyes while a Dominican rubs sea-salt lotion or ground-up snapping turtle shell all over my body. Pish, it’s only money.
When I was through the bathroom and into the only other set of clothes I owned, I got my knife out of the plastic FBI evidence bag and dumped it in the sink and ran hot water on it, wiped it dry with a towel, and clipped it in my pocket. I went into the kitchen and opened the front door to get the newspaper and found a plastic bin with the groceries we’d asked for yesterday. Trying not to make too much noise since my mom was probably still asleep, I brought the bin inside and put the food away. Crackers and granola bars in the cupboards, bottled waters and green tea in the fridge. I probably should have specified a brand of green tea when I wrote it down, since they got the cheapest and most notoriously awful brand. When I put the three bottles in the fridge I thought about having one then, for the caffeine, but hot coffee from the lobby sounded better.
The room phone rang, loud and annoying. A quick wave of concern pulsed through my mind, but I scrambled over to the phone and answered it as casually as I could manage.
“They won’t give me your room number,” Amy said through the handset.
She must have been at the front desk. “Well, you could be a crazy person,” I said. I tried to
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