Dunston Falls (22 page)

Peck exited the car and looked up at the building. It was beyond saving. A crowd had gathered to watch the fire and Peck recognized several boys in the crowd as friends of his son.

“James is still up there,” a boy shouted to Peck.

“I can’t imagine what that must have felt like at that exact moment,” Kranston said. “The pain you must have felt had to be pure agony.”

Peck raised his head and looked at Kranston. Tears rolled down Peck’s cheeks as the memory of that day became clearer in his mind.

Dressed in full gear, Peck began to climb the ladder on a truck. Brooks attempted to pull him off.

“Get away from me,” Peck shouted. “My son is up there.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Brooks said, but it was no use.

Peck climbed the ladder to the fourth floor of the tenement building where his eleven-year-old son James, hung out the window and cried for help.

“Dad,” James shouted.

“Give me your hand,” Peck cried. He reached as far as the ladder would allow and the boy was able to take hold and jump to the first rung. The ladder swayed, but held fast.

“Down. Take us down,” Peck shouted to his men below.

The ladder slowly moved away from the building. James began to descend along the rungs when a large hunk of burning debris suddenly broke loose from the building, struck the ladder, and shook it violently.

“Hold on, James. Hold on,” Peck shouted as he slipped several rungs before regaining his grip.

“Dad,” James cried.

Peck climbed as quickly as he could, but the boy lost his grip before he reached him. Stunned and horrified, Peck could only helplessly watch as his only son fell several stories to his death below.

On his knees, the memory of the event intact and clear, Peck wept openly.

“Well, you could imagine what kind of impact that would have on a father,” Kranston said. “Any father. However, a firefighter losing his only son at a fire, that is enough to put anyone over the edge. You came to my attention a year later when I was researching possible subjects. You were little more than a living vegetable.”

Peck raised his head. “So you resurrected me to be your lab rat? You sick son of a bitch, you’re insane.”

“Am I? I am not the one walking around with someone else’s mind, David. Even the questions Reese and the others asked you during the course of the murder investigation were written by me. I control it all and for what it’s worth, you did very well the first time out of the box.”

Peck forced his way to his feet. His brain was on fire. He stared at Kranston until his vision cleared. “People died, you sick, twisted fuck.”

“David, a few people died,” Kranston said, nonchalantly. “Isn’t that worth it to save millions? Knowing that a few, faceless mentally ill people would die to accomplish that task, wouldn’t you have to do it? Wouldn’t you have to think of the greater good, even if a few, insignificant lives are lost?”

“Who…am I?” Peck said. “Goddamn you, who am I?”

“You are whoever I program you to be,” Kranston said.

“What year is this?”

Kranston smiled at Peck. “2019. Welcome to the future, Dave.”

Peck rubbed his eyes and looked at Kranston. His vision was a blur. “I had a wife. I remember now. That night at Deb’s, I could feel her, but I couldn’t see her face. She was blond and pretty. What was her name?”

“Oh, I don’t think you want to know.”

Peck took a step toward Kranston, then paused as his eyes rolled back exposing the whites. Slowly, Peck sunk to the floor where he passed out.

McCoy rushed forward and knelt beside Peck. He pulled back Peck’s right eyelid to inspect his eye. “He’s completely regressed, Ed.”

“But savable,” Kranston said. “If we hurry.”

McCoy turned and motioned to Reese’s men. “Help me get him to the main lab. Get the girl, too.”

“What about me?” Reese said. “I’m shot here. I’m bleeding all over myself.”

“I’ll fix you up in no time. Don’t worry,” McCoy said.

As Reese’s men lifted Peck and carried him out, Peck’s cigarettes fell from his pocket. Kranston picked the cigarette pack up and sat on the sofa.

At the door, McCoy turned to look at Kranston. “Ed, are you coming?”

“I’ll be along,” Kranston said, removing his gum.

Several of his men carried Reese out to a waiting car. Kranston was alone. He removed one of Peck’s cigarettes and lit it with a match. It had been so long since he smoked, but damn it all, they were still so good.

TEN

Peck hummed to himself as he shaved before his bathroom mirror using a sleek and efficient, electric razor, the newest model available, the one with five, floating heads and guide bar. After shaving, he felt the smoothness of his skin, splashed on some aftershave, and then inspected his face carefully. While slight bags had settled recently under his eyes, his overall appearance was not that of your average fifty four year old man. His hair was thick and dark, his chin void of the normal middle age sag. The muscles in his arms and shoulders bulged with the strength of his youth and his chest and stomach were firm and flat.

Pleased with his appearance, he left the bathroom and wandered into the large, ultra modern, gleaming white kitchen. Filling a stainless steel coffee pot with purified tap water, Peck set it on the latest coffee maker from France to brew. While he waited, he used a dishtowel to wipe down the ceramic, counter top tiles until they shined.

When the coffee was ready, Peck filled a mug, reached for his cigarettes on the table and walked to the window. He lit a cigarette and looked through the spotless glass. Trees were beginning to bud, as were flowers. The sun was high and warm and he was growing anxious to go outside, walk around and smell the spring air after being cooped up like a house cat for months.

From his office in the main lab, Ed Kranston made notes in a book as he sat on a sofa and watched Peck on one of a dozen monitors. As Peck moved from room to room, a different camera picked him up and showed Kranston exactly what he was doing at every moment. Audio recorded every word Peck spoke, to himself and others. Even the phone had a direct feed to Kranston’s equipment so he could monitor Peck’s social progress.

Behind Kranston, the office door opened and Tom McCoy entered. “How is he doing today?” McCoy said, joining Kranston of the sofa.

“He looks terrific,” Kranston said. “But a bit antsy.”

“Spring fever.” McCoy looked at a monitor and watched Peck smoke a cigarette by the kitchen window. “He’s come a long way in four months.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t sound happy.”

Kranston looked at McCoy. “It’s that meeting with Justice.

“What about it?”

“They want the timeline moved up.”

“That’s impossible. They know that.”

Kranston shook his head. “We know that. They don’t know anything.”

“Then we’ll have to make them understand that work like this takes years of planning and development before it’s perfected,” McCoy said. “This isn’t the fast food industry here.”

“That’s the problem,” Kranston sighed. “They know it takes years, but they want it in months.”

“Months?” McCoy said. “It can’t be done in months.”

Kranston watched Peck move from the kitchen to the living room where he sat on the sofa and clicked on the sixty-inch television. “You’ve heard about the latest uprising in the middle east?”

“Who hasn’t. It’s been all over the news since last week. Just when we thought peace would last among the tribes, a new nutcase arrives on the scene and starts cutting heads off again.”

“Nutcase or not, remember what happened the last time we ignored a state of affairs like that. It blew up in everyone’s face. Two million were dead before the UN called its first meeting. It will be worse this time. A lot worse.”

McCoy sighed as he watched Peck light a cigarette on the monitor.

“They want the CIA to go in and begin infiltration as soon as possible,” Kranston said. “The quicker they can turn his high ranking staff against this new would be dictator the faster we quell the violence.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them I would present the results at the meeting and let them decide what to do from there.”

“By results, you mean Peck?”

“Yes.”

McCoy looked at Peck on the monitor. He was motionless on the sofa, seemingly uninterested in the television. “What’s he doing?”

“Waiting,” Kranston said.

“For what?”

“Me.”

Peck’s head was hurting again. Not the overpowering pressure and pain as he experienced in the past, but just enough to encourage him to lie down.

He stared at the pure white ceiling in his bedroom as he waited for the pain to subside. He didn’t remember painting it white, but he must have. After all, this was his house.

The same argument could be made of the bedroom furniture. It was the latest in fashion and design, sleek and efficient, unisex in nature. He didn’t remember buying it, but he must have. It was here. So was everything else.

The pressure behind his eyes finally dissipated enough for his to stand up. He went to the bathroom where he washed his face with stinging cold water. The freezing effect always made him feel better around the eyes.

He wondered if he should take the medication Ed gave him for the pain. He decided against it. There was no sense in wasting a pill if the pain had left on its own.

Peck went to the first floor of his house and entered the living room where he turned on the television. There was never anything interesting to watch. Using a remote, he flipped channels until he settled on a cable news program. There was unrest in the middle east, protests in Russia, demonstrators in Washington, atrocities in Africa. What else was new?

Peck glanced at the heavy watch around his left wrist. It was nearly four in the afternoon. A slight case of anticipation was bubbling inside his stomach. He lit a cigarette and smoked it to the filter.

The front doorbell rang and Peck jumped up from the sofa. That would be Ed.

Kranston sat in a chair opposite the sofa and carefully inspected Peck, who occupied the seat opposite him on the sofa. A briefcase rested on Kranston’s lap.

“How are you today, Dave?”

“I’m fine Ed, how are you?”

“Good.”

“Did you bring my cigarettes?”

Kranston opened the briefcase, removed a carton of cigarettes, and rested it on the coffee table. “Have I ever forgotten?”

Peck picked up the carton and removed a pack. “Would you like some coffee, Ed? I just made it.”

“Yes, I would.”

They moved to the kitchen where they sat at the table while Peck poured coffee into two mugs.

Peck lit a cigarette. “I want to go outside, Ed.”

“Soon.”

“When?”

“As soon as the doctors say you’re fit to resume your duties as police chief.”

Peck took a sip of coffee. “I feel fine. I want to walk around and smell the fresh air.”

“I think what they’re worried about is your mental condition, Dave.” Kranston looked at Peck as he sipped coffee. “After all, when a man has been in a car accident like the one which put you into a coma like that, they error on the side of caution. It’s for your own benefit.”

“But, I feel fine. My mind is as clear as a bell and I hardly have headaches anymore.”

“I hope so, Dave. The doctors want to test you next week.”

“Test me? How?”

“I’m not sure. With questions, I would imagine.”

“What kind of questions?”

Kranston shrugged his shoulders. “Questions to determine your state of mind, as I understand it.”

“Maybe I should get ready then,” Peck suggested.

“Good idea. I can help.”

“How?”

“I can test you. For instance, who is the president of Russia?”

Seated on the sofa in Kranston’s office, McCoy watched and listened with keen interest as Kranston asked one question after another to Peck. To Peck’s credit, he got nearly every one right.

Pleased with Peck’s progress, McCoy stood up and walked to the window to look out. Peck wasn’t the only one experiencing spring fever. It was a long, hard winter, spent mostly indoors at the secret lab where the artificial lighting wreaked havoc with your eyes after several months of intense exposure to it.

Outside the window, grass showed the first signs of growing, as did flowers and trees. In the background, McCoy heard Kranston continue questioning Peck.

A quote he read once in college by Publilius Syrus in 42 B.C., flashed through his mind. “It is sometimes expedient to forget who we are”, Syrus said. Never was that quote more appropriate.

ELEVEN

The state of Maine was experiencing its worst heat wave in a decade during the week of the Fourth of July. Temperatures reached one hundred and one degrees by noon of the third. As Peck drove his sleek, ultra modern police cruiser through the center of Dunston Falls, he was grateful for its powerful air-conditioning unit. Earlier models of the hybrid, police vehicles didn’t have the power of the old gas-guzzlers and the AC was always weak.

Peck parked in his reserved spot outside the four story, municipal building, next to the town mayor’s car. Exiting the cruiser, Peck climbed the steps of the municipal building where he paused to look at the banner that stretched across Main Street. HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY 2019, DUNS TON FALLS, the banner read.

Peck entered the modern municipal building, which housed the six-man police force he was head of, the mayor’s office, tax assessor, code enforcement officer, the DOT and school board. Only the police department and small holding cells occupied the first floor.

As Peck entered his office, his senior man, Lieutenant Reese greeted him from his desk against the wall. “Morning, chief. The mayor is in your office. “

“Ed? What does he want?” Peck said.

“Don’t know. He wouldn’t say.”

Peck picked up a coffee mug and filled it from the double burner, French made, coffee machine. “I guess I’ll go see.”