Chapter 74

“Well, that proves one theory,” Charlie said. He handed Joe the photograph. Joe took the photograph and shook his head.

Staying in position, Charlie looked around the rest of the room. Something on a chair in the far corner of the room, nearest the street side of the building, caught his attention. At first it looked like an ordinary baseball cap.

He looked closer. There was something underneath it that he couldn’t identify. As he neared, he wondered if the cap was resting on some sort of furry rag. Then something about the baseball cap itself triggered a memory—of the grocery store after he had escaped from Walderman. He had been in Whole Foods when Eddie Prescott spoke to him. Charlie tried to remember the other people in that aisle with him that day: a black woman, two elderly ladies, and an elderly man. The man had had white hair, a dark blue baseball cap, and a cane.

Charlie reached down and picked up the cap. Sewed into the inside lining of the baseball cap was a white wig. He held the cap and noticed a black patch that was almost the same color as the cap itself and had been sewn into the front.

Charlie pried off the patch, and out fell a small, flat black disc. Charlie picked up the disc and held it to his eye. He’d never seen anything like it.

“What’s that?” Joe asked.

“I have no idea,” Charlie said. “I remember seeing an old man wearing this hat in Whole Foods. But I have no idea what this is.”

“I do.”

The voice came from behind Joe. Charlie shuddered at the sound. That voice, Charlie thought. It can’t be.

Joe whirled around. He took a step forward, then started to back away. Joe continued walking slowly backward toward Charlie.

“Keep going,” said the man. “Keep going.”

Joe stood beside his brother.

In one hand the man clutched a cane; in the other he held a gun. Charlie didn’t know the make and model. It didn’t matter. He knew the most important thing: it was loaded.

“Eddie,” Charlie said.

“Hi ya, Charlie,” Eddie Prescott said. “So tell me, did you enjoy your little trip on the crazy train? I know I did.”

Eddie Prescott still wore his wavy brown hair down to his shoulders. It had always made him look younger than his years. It was an homage to the carefree ′70s, he would say.

Eddie seemed weak and bone-thin. Not surprising that he walked with a cane. But a gun had a way of giving someone added muscle. He was wearing an olive green army jacket, the jacket Charlie had seen on the lone man sitting in the waiting room at Mount Auburn Hospital.

Eddie kept the gun perfectly level. He stood fifteen feet away from the brothers. Joe took a step toward him, but Eddie pointed his gun at Joe’s head.

“Now, now, Joseph,” Eddie said. “Let’s not die just yet.”

“But you died, Eddie,” Charlie said. “The ME identified your remains.”

“The ME identified remains,” Eddie said. “But dental records are a somewhat unreliable way to name the deceased. All that I had to do was switch the name that came up in the ME’s database search to my own. It didn’t matter that my records and the records they had from some corpse in the morgue were nothing alike. All that mattered was a name on the form, and my little hack did nothing more than put my name on a coroner’s report. And voilà, Eddie Prescott—who, yes, did jump from the Golden Gate Bridge but who survived—became Eddie Prescott, the dead jumper.”

“Why?” Charlie asked. “Why fake your death? Why not just take it as a second chance at life?”

“Well,” Eddie said, “I guess you could say I was really disappointed with myself. You see, I should have shot you, Charlie. I was really, really mad that I didn’t. I mean, let’s face it, you screwed me.”

“You did that to yourself,” Charlie said.

“Oh, really? I didn’t cut me out of the business, Charlie. You did that. I stood in your living room, this gun pointed at your chest to get my revenge. But I was too weak to pull the trigger. So what did I do instead? I gave up, Charlie. I gave up living, and I jumped off the bridge. What was the point? I was nothing but a failure.”

“You were never broke, Eddie,” Charlie said. “You had more than enough money to get by. You could have started over if you’d wanted to. You were a gambling addict. You didn’t have to steal our money for your bets. You could have used your inheritance.”

“And shame my parents even more? I don’t think so,” Eddie said. “Besides, I found a much better use for that money than I ever dreamed.” Eddie used the gun to gesture at the room and all the computer equipment. “I see you found my little hat,” he said, motioning with the gun to the cap in Charlie’s hand. “That was my favorite part. You really thought you were hearing voices from beyond the grave.” Eddie laughed as he said it. “Funny, I never thought you could be so easily fooled.”

“What is this?” Charlie said, holding up the flat black disc.

“We can thank a local company for that.” Eddie grinned. “That, my friend, is what the inventors call the Audio Spotlight. It creates a narrow beam of sound. Just like light from a flashlight, but it’s sound beams instead. Point it at somebody and they’ll hear stereo sound in their ears while the person standing next to them will hear nada. I put one on that cap there, concealed under cloth because cloth doesn’t inhibit sound waves. I paid one of the cleaners at Walderman to install another disc, plus a microphone, in the ceiling tiles of your hospital room. Did you like that room, Charlie? Really, such a treat that you wound up there. I honestly had no idea that would happen when I started this.”

“You crazy, fucking bastard,” Charlie spat. He made a move toward Eddie.

Eddie raised the gun and pointed it at Charlie’s head. “Trust me. I’m not going to be a coward about it this time.”

“Why?” Charlie asked. “What was this all about?”

Eddie laughed. “Well, it’s about you, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s about you. Just like it’s always been. I decided after I survived that jump that my life had a higher calling. I couldn’t figure out what it was. And then one day, really by happenstance, my higher calling became clear. Him actually.” Eddie motioned with the gun toward Joe.

“Eddie, I haven’t talked to you in years,” Joe said.

“Oh, but there you’re wrong,” Eddie said. “You talk to people all the time. You just don’t know it. You blog, Joe. I was searching the Internet, and there it was. Your blog. And that blog not only gave me a great idea. It gave me purpose.”