Tunnel Vision (38 page)

It got louder as he approached the room, his pistol gripped in both hands.

The sound was some kind of alarm, and the piercing shrill was making him anxious.

He reached the knob of the door, turned it, and, gripping the pistol, kicked it open.

The alarm was emanating from a rack of electronic equipment that sat beside a gurney on which lay the body of a woman. She was hooked up to an IV and the various monitors on which alarm lights pulsed with the squealing. Clutched in her hands was a photograph of a young boy.

From the various video images, he recognized Elizabeth Luria.

And like the Kashian kid in the videos, she was hooked up for suspension from an IV. But unlike in the Kashian videos, the monitors were blinking red and squealing because all the vital function lines on screen were totally flat.

The woman had suspended herself to death.

74

An hour later, Zack and Sarah were passing through Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The earlier heat of irritation had cooled, leaving him grateful that she was with him.

As they moved to the right-hand lane, Zack pointed out the submarine base in the distance where his father had brought him when he was maybe seven.

“What do you remember about him?”

“Not a lot. He wasn’t around much,” Zack said. “He was a project engineer and worked long hours. I saw him mostly on weekends. Then my parents separated after Jake’s death. Sometime after that, he dropped out of sight.”

“That must have been rough.”

“It was.”

“But you have some good memories of him.”

“Until I was about ten. After he left, I saw him on a few occasions, which were mostly me telling him about what I was up to, but little about himself. Funny thing, as I got older, I thought of myself as not having a father, just a mother.”

“That’s sad.”

“To compensate, I made up stories about him. He was something of a photographer, so I’d tell kids he was on assignment for
National Geographic
and was off covering animal migrations in Kenya. Or helping build a refugee camp in Biafra. I once claimed he took me to Hawaii, where he saved me from a shark attack. Pretty pathetic.”

“I guess that’s how you dealt with his absence.”

“And all along he was a Benedictine monk praying and making jellies for tourists.”

They crossed the Piscataqua Bridge. Although he had passed this way fifteen or more years ago, he felt nothing overt—just a vague sense that he was pursuing some kind of directive. Or maybe it was just dumb autosuggestion after all. And the very possibility made his heart slump.

“If he’s really still alive, what would you say to him?”

“I’d ask him why he left me and my mother.”
And if God is in him and talking to me.

They soon passed a sign reading, “Welcome to Maine. The way life should be.”

“Now what?”

“We keep going.”

“Until?”

“Until I come to the right exit.”

“Do you know which one?”

“Not yet.”

Please give a sign,
he whispered in his head.
I believe. Please give a sign.

75

For several minutes, Roman didn’t know what to do. Elizabeth Luria was dead. So were Stern and others who had put together that lab. He didn’t care about those he didn’t know about. The project was dead.

And the Kashian kid was missing.

Roman had spent the previous night and that morning poring over data in Morris Stern’s laptop. The mathematical stuff meant nothing to him. But the videos and explanations of the neuroimages of Kashian kept playing in Roman’s brain. And as he drove back to Boston, an idea began to grow. A very good idea. No, a brilliant idea. In fact, an
epiphany
.

Epiphany.

The term had shot up from the recesses of his memory. From his fretful days at St. Luke’s.
Epiphany.
As in Day of Epiphany. A revelation. A vision. A sudden miraculous insight.

When he was a kid suffering through sermons, he remembered one Sunday in January when Father Infantino held forth on the meaning of the Day of Epiphany, when Christ’s divinity was revealed to the Magi. He went on about how each of us must find meaning in our lives and must listen to the yearnings of our souls, just like a lot of famous people who had made a difference in the world—Mother Teresa, President Kennedy, Martin Luther King. He hammered on about how each had experienced a revelation of how they should dedicate their lives—of how they were driven by higher missions from the rest of us. But the only difference between them and ordinary people was that they had discovered a clear purpose that they had embraced with fierce determination.

Back then, Roman’s only yearning was for Father Infantino to wrap up so he could go to Goodwin Park and play ball with the other kids.

But as he headed north on 95 toward Watertown, Roman experienced his own little epiphany, and it flickered in his head like a votive candle.

76

The sensation was back.

They were only a few miles into Maine on the northbound side of the turnpike. They had passed a long stretch of marshland that gave way to forests of pine and deciduous trees. Maybe it was the thick claustrophobic woodlands that triggered some recall or premonition, because a strange awareness hummed in the fore of his brain. And it was stronger.

He thought about telling Sarah but decided against it. He didn’t quite grasp what he was experiencing—if it was real, some quirk of his imagination, or if he had slipped into another neurological ditch. But the longer he drove on, the more he felt that he was following an invisible beacon beamed at him by some unknown source.

He kept his hands on the wheel, moving with the turns of the highway, half-certain that if he let go, the car would proceed under some weird remote control.

He was also convinced that whatever pulled him was not a matter of recall. None of the landscape looked even vaguely familiar. Nor was it some kind of déjà vu. In fact, it seemed like déjà vu in reverse. Instead of being compelled by things familiar, Zack felt propelled by a prophetic rightness. A prescient awareness maybe like the kind that inspired saints of old to take up spiritual quests—pilgrimages to sacred places.

“Zack!”
Sarah screamed.

“What? What’s the problem?” He looked ahead, expecting to see a car in their path or an animal. But the road was wide open. “Why’d you yell?”

“You were driving with your eyes closed.”

“What?”

“I looked over and your eyes were closed. You dozed off.”

“No.”

“You did,” she insisted. “Want me to drive?”

“No, I’m fine,” he said.
Dozed off? Did I really blank out?

“I think maybe we better take a break. The sign said there’re outlets at the next exit. I have to use the toilet, and maybe you can get some coffee. I can also pick up some overnight stuff.”

He didn’t like the idea, but a couple of miles ahead he turned off and merged with Route 1. They found a strip mall with several clothing outlets, and he pulled in and turned off the engine.

“Aren’t you coming in?”

“I think I’ll just rest a little.” And he lowered his seat back and rested his head.

“Sure you’ll be all right?”

“Just a little tired.” He watched her get out of the car.

“I won’t be long.”

“Good.”
She doesn’t have a clue,
he thought, and he followed her with his eyes into the entrance of L.L. Bean. This wasn’t some serotonin country ride. This was a mission of salvation. Something bordering on a religious pilgrimage. He closed his eyes. A stabbing shock to his side made him gasp out loud.

A sign.

His eyes flipped open, and his heart started racing. He didn’t have much time.
Where the hell is she?
he thought. In there buying clothes while his father was dying by the minute.

Jesus, why did he bring her?

77

Roman Pace sat in his rental across the street from the neat white Victorian house on Mt. Auburn Street in Watertown. From the outside, it could have been another late-nineteenth-century private home with a manicured lawn, a full red Japanese maple tree, and a variety of rhododendron and hydrangea. The only sign that it was not a private residence was a plaque by the front door: “Fraternity of Jesus Christ—Second Floor.”

Roman had called on his way in from Medfield, saying that he had big news to share. Babcock said he’d meet him at his office at eleven thirty. Roman arrived early. Since he had nowhere to go, he sat in his rental and went online to search some Google maps.

At about eleven fifteen, a black Mercedes S550 pulled into the driveway. Two men got out—Babcock in a red polo shirt and chino pants, looking as if he’d been summoned from a golf game. The other man was unfamiliar but wore a white shirt and black blazer and matching pants. He dropped off Babcock and pulled the Mercedes behind the building, then emerged a minute later in a silver BMW 328i sedan and left. Babcock let himself into the front of the building, disappearing upstairs.

At eleven twenty-five, Roman crossed the street. An accountant’s office occupied the first floor through a separate entrance. The door leading up to the Fraternity of Jesus offices was locked, so he pressed the button. Moments later, a male secretary opened the door. Roman introduced himself, and the guy nodded and led the way upstairs to a front office. He picked up the desk phone and announced Roman’s arrival. Then he led Roman down a hall to an office that clearly used to be a master bedroom before the place was converted.

Babcock was behind a mahogany desk, his face pasty against the bright red shirt. He shook hands and invited Roman to take a seat across from him. A brass plaque on his desk read, “The Lord Be with You.”

“Nice office,” Roman said.

On a table beside the desk was a computer monitor. On the desk were photos of his family and a gold crucifix mounted on a marble base. On the walls hung religious pictures as well as photographs of Babcock with other people, including clerics in robes.

“It’s small, but comfortable. So what do we have?”

“We’ll need your computer,” Roman said.

Babcock agreed and let Roman come around. Over the next several minutes, he showed Babcock some of the video of Zack Kashian’s suspension and the imaging data. “They claim he had a near-death experience and merged with his dead father.”

Babcock studied them quietly, his face seeming to fill with blood.

“I gotta say, they’re pretty impressive,” Roman said.

“Charlatans usually are.”

“Well, I mean, some of these people are convinced he’s crossed to the other side.”

“Mr. Pace, these people are necromancers, who’ve crawled out of the sewers of science to seduce the masses and get filthy rich. They’re willingly working for the devil, proselytizing his evil.” He pulled the black leather Bible off his desk and flipped to a page, stabbing a passage with his finger. “‘And the Lord proclaimed, “Do not practice divination or sorcery.… Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them.”’ Leviticus 19:31.”

Roman glanced at the page. It hadn’t taken Babcock long to get home. His flushed face looked like an extension of his golf shirt.

“And that’s what they’re doing. That’s what that bastard writes about in his books, on the God lobes and God spots and finding the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s what they’re doing in that bloody lab of theirs.” Babcock continued full steam, whipping through the pages for another passage. “Here! Second Thessalonians 1:8, 9: ‘And for those that do so, “In flaming fire take vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.”’” He turned the book around so Roman could read. “That is what our role is. Your role is.
Vengeance.
What more proof do you want?”

Babcock was on fanatical fire about Gladstone and his scientists. But Roman did not want to send the guy into cardiac arrest before he completed his purpose here. “I get it. But the kid was quoting Jesus, reciting the Lord’s Prayer in God’s own language. That’s not exactly words from a horned demon.”

Babcock rubbed his face as if he were weary of Roman’s thickness. “No, but it’s how your horned demon gets people to listen. Then once he’s got followers, he does his evil. That’s how Satan works—by deception. Here he disguises himself as a poor comatose kid and spouts off scriptural passages. And that’s the deadliest weapon in his arsenal—what he’s done since seducing Eve in the Garden of Eden. What you’re seeing in those videos is Lucifer masquerading as a follower of Jesus. Do you get it? Lucifer, God’s onetime light bearer. That’s the bloody devil in disguise.”

Babcock’s face looked as if it would burst.

“Look, I explained this to you several times. Their so-called NDEs are supposed to be tunnels to the afterlife—that everybody goes to heaven and there’s no hell—which means that even fucking Osama bin Laden and every other heathen bastard would live forever. Hell is the other rock of the Catholic Church, okay?”