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I heard Victoria’s voice and the live NASA TV feed from the ISS as I woke up on the carpeted floor of my bedroom.
“I did a full body scan and there are no broken bones. But you may have a concussion.”
“I didn't know that I could be unconscious while I'm already unconscious.”
“Your species has a very limited understanding of how your brain works. You have never been unconscious. You just entered another level of consciousness.”
I slowly got up, grabbing onto furniture and the wall as I made my way into the bathroom. I sat down on the chair in front of the sink and looked in the mirror. There was a big bump on my forehead. There was also a pretty nasty scrape on my right cheek.
“It’s good to be back to whatever consciousness I’m in, but I feel like I've been hit by a crosstown bus.”
“When the blast occurred, I almost lost our connection.” She said.
In the mirror, I could see that Victoria had a look of concern on her face.
“You’re not going to go all human species on me, are you?”
“I felt your pain. It was a new sensation for me.” She paused. “It was disturbing.”
“It didn't exactly give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, either.”
“Two men from a place called Metro were here while you were sleeping. They left when they did not see you. They said if you know what is good for you, that you will go downtown. What does that mean?”
“It means that my life is about to get a lot more complicated than it already is.”
“Is going downtown good for you?”
“Hardly,” I answered while still examining my cheek.
“Then you should not go.”
“If I don’t go, it will get a lot worse for me. Besides, all they want to do is ask me questions.”
“How are you going to explain the way you look?”
“I guess I'll have to tell the truth.”
“But you cannot do that.”
“Sure I can.” I said as I turned to face her. “I'll just tell them I had a bad dream and fell out of bed.” I smiled but stopped as I remembered something else.
I made my way to the bed and sat down facing the television. Victoria sat down next to me. The feed from the International Space Station showed the Earth rotating against the black backdrop of space.
“Favorite show? It's a beautiful sight.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I'm glad that I could keep it from getting canceled.”
As we both stared at the television, I had a nagging feeling that something just didn’t make sense. If Sullivan knew that Heskett was a spy, why did he wait until the conference to kill him? He could have killed him in Wales. Heskett was in deep cover. It would have been days or weeks before the Secret Service would involve the British authorities, for fear of blowing his cover. And then it hit me.
“Victoria, can you bring up the Mandalay Bay surveillance cameras around the time that I was holed up in the hotel room?”
“Do you want to see cats playing the piano? That is what the cameras saw around that time.”
“You actually did that?”
“You requested cats playing piano while you were on camera.”
I laughed. “I’m sure that Detective Acerno got a kick out of that. I forgot that you take everything literally. Can you bring up the video while I was in the hotel room?
Specifically, the one in the hallway outside the room.”
“Yes.”
The TV screen changed from the Earth to a hallway in the hotel.
“Now, rewind it to about 90 minutes before I got off the elevator.”
The time code on the video showed a hotel housekeeper doing something on her phone and then slipping a key card into a lock about 40 minutes before I came on the scene.
Just before the housekeeper entered Heskett's room, I asked Victoria to pause the video.
“Zoom in on that person’s face, please?”
When she did, I saw something totally unexpected.
“Son of a,” I yelled. “That’s the same housekeeper who gave me the latex gloves. She must have been working for Sullivan. She probably planted the cufflinks for me to find.”
It all started to make sense. Sullivan played me from the start. It started with the job offer and ended with the asylum explosion. Heskett hadn’t stolen anything. We were all just pawns in Sullivan’s sick little game. The Secret Service believed that Alvin was killed because of information he found out about Sullivan’s plan. My role was as the master of misdirection in the investigation of Heskett’s murder because he and I were together at the moment it happened. The Feds probably have their best forensic people tearing apart Heskett’s hard drive trying to find information that isn’t there. I went looking for information and Sullivan made sure I found it. Luring me to Denbigh was all part of his plan.
“Victoria, please get the laptop and memory stick from the office?”
She walked out and returned with the laptop, placing it next to me on the bed. Then she sat down and went back to watching the image from the ISS. The memory stick was still plugged in. As I started to access it through the file manager, the files began to disappear.
“No, no, no, no, no,” I said, as I frantically tried to stop what was happening before my eyes. All the evidence disappeared in the blink of an eye.
“The flash drive must have had a worm that caused the info to erase after one view. When I told Sullivan that I had made a copy and given it to an associate, he gave an Oscar worthy performance. He knew I was lying because it was impossible to make a copy of the drive. All the information was authentic, but it became useless as soon as I looked at it. Turning a blank flash drive over to the authorities would have led to a very uncomfortable discussion as to why I claimed it held information related to Heskett’s murder. Not to mention that my explanation of how I came into possession of it would only implicate me in Heskett’s death.
Sullivan counted on the fact that I would search Alvin's room. He knew that one view of the information would be enough to hold my interest until I put all the pieces of the puzzle together. After that, my reporter’s curiosity would lead me to the asylum in Denbigh.”
“But why would he still need you after Heskett ceased to exist?” Victoria asked, without taking her eyes off the TV screen.
“Because he needed my body found at the scene of the crime. That explains why he wanted Kong to bring me upstairs. Sullivan planned on blowing up the building as soon as the rocket launched. My body would be found and linked back to Heskett’s death. I just changed the timetable. What probably saved my life was that you knew what I had in mind, literally.”
“But would not Sullivan also cease to exist in the explosion?”
“He probably left the building shortly after he walked out of the basement. All he needed was a cell phone to remotely detonate the explosives. He's probably on his way to the Cayman Islands so he can be close to the money that he’s slicing and dicing. Although he won’t get the billions he had planned on as a result of starting World War III, he’ll still get several hundred million by the time the salami slicer stops.”
“So that is the end?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “If everything had gone according to plan, I’d be dead along with everyone else who could implicate him. Heskett’s murder investigation would end and no one would be looking for Sullivan because no one would even know that he exists. Unfortunately for him, I’m alive and I know his plan. I also have an ace in the hole, I have you. It’s far from over.”
I sat there thinking about how Sullivan had executed a global bank heist that was ingenious in its simplicity. In the end, he was nothing more than a common crook. Still, I had to admit that a small part of me respected the style with which he had pulled it off.
“I have one question.” Victoria said, breaking the silence.
“What's that?”
“Who is Douglas Berlin?”
“Don't you know? I mean, we are on the same wavelength.”
“I do not need to know all your secrets.”
“I kinda figure that since you've already saved my life twice, I can trust you with all of my secrets.”
“Trust is very important to humans, is it not?”
“Feelings of friendship and love just happen and that's good. But trust doesn't just happen, we earn trust.”
“And that is important?”
“That is very important, my electric friend.”
“Then I choose to trust you,” she said, punctuating the statement with her trademark Mona Lisa smile. After a few seconds, she added “But names are not important.”
“I think you're becoming more like me and I suspect that I'm becoming a little more like you. You and I make a pretty good team. You might actually decide that you like it here.”
Victoria looked at me with an expression that said otherwise.
“Your head must have hit the floor a lot harder than you think,” she said, as we both returned to watching the NASA feed.
I thought I saw a slight smile out of the corner of my eye as she murmured, “My hero.”
––––––––
“MY HERO,” ANTONIO SAID out loud as he removed the ear buds from his ears. He wondered what she meant by that. He pressed the stop button on the digital recorder nestled on the passenger bucket seat. For that matter, who was the woman? His research on the writer hadn’t turned up a live-in girlfriend. That was only one of many questions he had about the conversation he had just overheard.
He reached over and unhooked the parabolic microphone from the passenger door frame, unplugged it from the recorder, and set it down on the passenger side floor. Then he picked up the recorder and slipped it into his inside jacket pocket. Always save something for a rainy day, he thought as he turned the ignition key. For what remained of this day, food and a status call to Sullivan would suffice. Antonio flipped on the left directional indicator, turned his head, and slowly pulled away from the curb.