Project 17 (9 page)

“Whatever it was,” Max said.

Jamie cleared his throat. “But.”

Lillian turned to him.

“How can we be sure that he didn’t do it himself?” Jamie said.

Lillian looked affronted. “Dexter already—”

“What if Zeke got there before the Northpoint cars?”

“And what would the two men in suits do in that house for 40 minutes if Toni and Sophie were already dead?”

“Take pictures?”

She huffed in exasperation.

“What we have is a transcript of the Sentry Report,” Jamie continued, “not the Murder Squad’s. Do we have a time of death? No.”

Lillian crossed her arms and didn’t comment.

“Lils, how did Mimsy die?”

“Jamie,” Max said. “Come on.”

“How did Mimsy die?”

“Caleb drowned her,” Lillian replied.

“Did he try to do that to you, too?”

Lillian looked out the window. “He tried to blind me with a pen.”

Jamie and Max didn’t say anything else after that. The sentence hung inside the car like cigarette smoke, like the smell of poison.

So he needed Senerex.

Or he needed Senerex to counteract the harmful effects of Neuropro.

What if she removed both pills?

This is going to get me killed,
Lillian thought, as she got ready the next morning, as she slipped Jamie’s
balisong
into her bag along with the bottle of calcium pills.
The switchblade was Jamie’s gift to her when she turned 18 but he was thinking more in the line of cutting ropes and shaping paper, not a weapon against a young man having a psychotic break.
But better be safe than sorry.

Paul was home.

The sight of him rendered Lillian paralyzed on the doorstep.

“Seton gave me the rest of the week off,” he explained, and let her in.

“That’s good,” Lillian said, “but do you still need me here?”

“You can have the day off if you want.”

She pretended to think about it for a second. “I’d rather stay.”

“Are you sure?”

She shrugged. “I have nothing else to do.”

Caleb was lying on his bed facing the wall when Lillian came into his room, and he started to cry when she called his name. They coaxed him to sit up. His face and arms were covered in claw
marks. Half of his forehead was covered with gauze. He couldn’t meet their gaze.

Lillian leaned forward and embraced him.

There were no words exchanged after that. Caleb sat on the couch staring at the TV while Paul puttered around the house. Lillian played a word game on her phone, getting bored with every passing
minute.

She was about to ask what the brothers would like to have for lunch when the doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” she called. She walked to the vestibule, opened the front door, and saw Jamie and Max standing outside, both holding paper bags and Tupperware containers.

“Hi!” they said like a pair of chorus girls, and Lillian slammed the door.

“Who was it?” Paul said. Lillian was forced to open the door once again.

Jamie and Max were still on the doorstep, looking bewildered.

“Oh,” Paul said, surprised. “Hello.”

“Hello, Mr. Dolores,” Max said.

“Did you just slam the door in my face?” Jamie said to Lillian.

Max brandished the paper bag in her hands. “We felt bad for the way we were introduced to each other yesterday, and we thought it would be nice if we brought you lunch.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Lillian said.

“I just said,” Max replied.

“But don’t you guys have work?”

“I have vacation leaves,” Jamie said.

“This is very kind of you,” Paul said. “Hopefully Lillian won’t have an aneurysm if I ask you to come in.”

Jamie and Max laughed. Lillian sighed and stepped aside.

Paul went ahead into the house to talk to Caleb. “What is your game here?” Lillian asked when he was out of earshot.

“Surveillance,” Jamie said. “And will you carry this, my arms are killing me.”

“We were worried about you, okay,” Max said. “After what happened we just want to see you and make sure that—”

“Hello.”

They stopped talking. Caleb had changed into a black, long-sleeved shirt to cover his arms. Lillian suffered beneath the weight of five awkward seconds.

“Hello,” Max finally said. “I’m Max, and this is my cousin Jamie.”

“Nice to meet you,” Caleb said. “Here, let me—”

He took Max’s paper bag, and they followed him to the dining room. Paul was already there, putting down plates and glasses. He added plastic sporks to the set. Nobody said anything.

Jamie took out the containers one by one. Rice, chicken tocino, chopsuey with quail eggs, thick corn soup, fried dory, and sliced bananas with caramel syrup for dessert.

“Wow,” Paul said when they sat down. “I’ll have to pay you back by buying you dinner one of these days. Thank you for this.”

“Dig in!” Jamie said. “And if you don’t eat your vegetables, Lillian, you can’t have the quail eggs.”

Paul seemed amused by them. “How long have you guys known each other?”

What followed was fifteen minutes of rehashed college chronicles that Lillian had to stop at some point before Max could enter blackmail territory. Caleb was silent throughout the whole
exchange, but he looked, to Lillian’s surprise, like he was having fun.

“So,” Jamie said, “Lillian said you work at Seton, Paul.” He had decided, within fifteen minutes, that he could now call Mr. Dolores by his first name. “Where did
you work before that?”

“Freelance.” Paul said it with a shrug. “I worked from home, took on design projects.”

“You didn’t have an office job before that?”

Paul paused. Caleb concentrated on his plate. Lillian looked at Jamie and glared at him.

“I worked with Legacy,” Paul said.

Lillian turned to him in astonishment. “Legacy?” Paul most certainly didn’t design furniture for them.

“He designed robots,” Caleb said, the first words he uttered ever since they sat down at the table.

Silence.

“Wow,” Max said.

“It was a long time ago,” Paul said. “I just designed them. I didn’t know enough to program them.”

But your brother did.

“Did you design Dancers?” Max asked, and they laughed.

“No,” Paul said, “that’s a different department.”

“So you knew Margaret Morales?” Jamie pressed.

Paul nodded. “She was one of the chief robot programmers there before she went to Northpoint-Pascual.”

“Did you follow her?” Lillian asked. She couldn’t resist. “To Northpoint?”

“No,” Paul said.

“Sad what happened to her brother,” Max said.

Caleb lifted his head, like a dog pricking its ears. “Why?” he said. “What happened to her brother?”

Lillian saw Paul freeze.

“It’s all over the news, Caleb.”
And now everyone’s on a first-name basis?
Lillian thought. “Nikolas’s wife hanged herself.”

“Berenice hanged herself?” Caleb said Berenice’s name as if she were a dear friend.

“That’s what the news agencies are saying. But,” Max lifted a finger, “SentryServ’s investigating if there might be a connection between her death and the death of
the judge handling the divorce case she filed against Nikolas.”

“How did the judge die?” Caleb asked, and smiled as though to cover his sudden eagerness. “I’m sorry. I’m so out of the loop.”

“One shot to the head,” Lillian replied.

“Who did it?”

“Nobody knows. They haven’t found him.”

“Sentry didn’t get him?”

Max, Jamie, and Lillian shook their heads. Paul remained silent.

“How is that possible?” Caleb said. “Modern models can hear a gunshot or a cry for help a mile away and these Sentries are everywhere. Response times are fantastic. No human
can outrun them.”

“This is what I’ve been telling them from the moment the news broke,” Jamie said, triumphant.

“Maybe a Sentry did it,” Max mumbled, and snorted.

Jamie looked like an idea just dawned on him. He looked at Lillian.

No human can outrun them.

*

Jamie and Max insisted on doing the dishes so after lunch the brothers went to the living room while they stayed in the kitchen.

“A rogue Sentry,” Jamie said as he scrubbed down the dishes. “Can you imagine?”

“I was just
joking,”
Max said. “It’s impossible. Those models have safeguards, Jamie.”

“A reprogrammed Dancer or Cleaner?” Lillian suggested, but Jamie was already shaking his head.

“Maybe. But those models’ systems are limited. They were made for certain roles. Cleaning. Fucking. Remember how Lester wanted to turn a Dancer into a Cleaner? That’s pushing
it. You can’t just reprogram them to shoot people in the head.”

“Ah, crap,” Max said. “I haven’t spoken to Lester about Mimsy.”

Lillian moved to the doorway and shushed them. “They’re talking.”

For a few seconds, both Caleb and Paul mumbled, until Caleb raised his voice. “Parental controls, are you fucking kidding me? Just give me the password. You can’t do this to me. You
can’t keep everything from me.”

“I knew it,” Max said. “Presets. Paul’s filtering their news.”

“Shh,” Jamie and Lillian said.

More mumbling.

“Well, why don’t you kill another cat while you’re at it?” Paul said.

The three looked at each other, embarrassed and thrilled, like children who had just heard their parents say a bad word in public.

Silence.

“Here’s your damn password.”

Minutes later, it was only Paul who walked with Jamie and Max to the front door and said goodbye.

*

“Your friends are really nice,” Paul said when they were alone again in the living room. “You’re lucky to have them.”

They were sitting on the couch with the silent TV and the dark tabletop. Paul looked tired.

“Where’s Caleb?” Lillian asked.

“In his room, I think.”

“Can I give him his meds later?”

At 4 pm Lillian climbed up the stairs with the medicine cup filled with pills. Caleb was sitting on the bed staring at the wall. He noticed neither the calcium pill sitting at the bottom of the
pile nor the fact that the Neuropro did not bear the letter N.

Paul and Caleb had stopped speaking to each other. Lillian, so used to the quiet inside the Dolores house, only noticed it on Thursday morning when she met Paul at the door and he told her he
was going to work. “Cabin fever,” he said, when Lillian asked why he’s truncating his planned weeklong leave. He didn’t say goodbye to Caleb. Lillian tried to remember when
the brothers last spoke and recalled the fight they had in the living room after Max and Jamie invaded the house.

“You could have talked through me, you know.” Caleb was sitting by the kitchen island, drinking coffee and reading the Newspad he had detached from the refrigerator doors. Lillian
hopped on a stool and folded her hands. “That’s what divorced parents do.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Caleb said, but he put down the Newspad and sighed and looked at her. “It’s just a spat.”

Lillian had grown bold. Yesterday, she exchanged Senerex for a calcium pill. Now Caleb was only taking the pills that she knew. He seemed calmer, more responsive, but other than that Lillian
couldn’t see any significant changes in Caleb.

Throughout the day, Caleb tried calling his brother thrice, but each time he got redirected to voice mail. He hung up each time, looking dejected.

Lillian gave him his third calcium-pill cocktail. Caleb had gone on without Neuropro for three days and no Senerex for two days.

She accompanied him during his afternoon anti-stress stroll.

“I don’t understand why he had to be mad at me,” he said as they walked. “He’s the one who should be apologizing.”

Lillian said nothing.

“He treats me like a child,” he said.

“You know, Max thinks you look no older than twenty.”

They were now walking side-by-side. Caleb turned his head to look at her. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“Does it?”

Caleb didn’t say anything, but on his face was a confused frown of such magnitude that Lillian burst out laughing.

“What?”

“You look funny,” she said. “I like you today, Caleb. You’ve spoken to me more in the past fifteen minutes that in the past few days I’ve spent in your
house.”

“I feel different,” Caleb said, and Lillian looked up, alert. “But not like—” Pause. “Good different. I feel
good
different.” Pause. “I
don’t remember much from that day, Lillian. Complete blackout. It scares me.”

Lillian knew what day he was talking about, but she was thinking of the emails, blood and brain on the meat cleaver. “Has it happened before?” she asked.

He didn’t reply.

They had circled the block. Halfway through the second walk-around, Caleb stopped on the corner, looked at the horizon.

“Caleb?” Lillian said. “You want to go back?”

“No,” he said. “I want to keep going.” But instead of turning left he went straight ahead and crossed the street.

“Caleb?” He was walking at a steady pace. They were leaving the neighborhood. In ten minutes or so they would be entering a cluster of shops and food joints outside the subdivision.
Town proper.

Lillian thought about calling Paul, but Caleb didn’t look disturbed or violent. He looked almost serene with his hands inside his jacket pockets.

So they walked in silence.

“Have you ever been to this place?” Caleb pointed to a small restaurant with a red door and brick walls and flowers in pots. Lillian had passed by the place once or twice but never
felt compelled to enter. “My brother and I ordered takeout here once, when we moved here. I liked their adobo pasta. Come on.”

It was a small, cozy place. They sat at a table for four. The table had a tiny square pot with a spray of hibiscus as centerpiece. Lillian placed her phone on the table and stared at Caleb. A
waitress came over. Caleb waved away the menus with a smile and ordered two adobo pastas and two lemonades. At the last moment he asked for one of the menus. “I might order something
sweet,” he said. The waitress giggled as though he had kissed her on the nose.