Chapter 76

Charlie lunged toward Eddie. The barrel flashed again. The time between the flash and a blinding explosion of pain was instantaneous. Charlie fell hard onto the roof, his knee a pulpy mush of blood, tendon, shattered bone, and muscle. His scream was loud enough to echo off of the distant buildings.

“Now, Charlie,” Eddie said as he knelt down beside him. “You didn’t need to do that, did you? I was enjoying our little chat.”

Charlie heard his brother groan.

“He’s not dead, Charlie,” Eddie whispered in his ear. “But he’s not about to run a marathon, either.”

“Who did my brother kill for you?” Charlie asked, gritting his teeth through the pain.

“All of them but your mother, of course. You were supposed to kill yourself before we got to that. You might think I’m a monster, but even monsters have their limits.”

“But Rudy Gomes? His body?”

“I added that last-minute detail after you got committed. I was just going to leave him rotting in the tub, but you got the bright idea to bring the police into it. Figured I could use it to my advantage and make you look even nuttier. Do you know that I was watching you in the hospital from a hidden camera? Same guy I paid to plant the Audio Spotlight wired a camera and mic for me. So I knew all about your little body retrieval operation. Cleaning that place of blood wasn’t hard. He bled only in the bathtub. I bet the look on your face was priceless when you didn’t see him there.”

“But I heard Rudy’s voice,” Charlie said, gasping for breath. He tried to push himself away from Eddie, but the pain was too intense to move but an inch.

“Digital re-creation,” Eddie said. “It was a good thing I hid a listening device and microphone outside Gomes’s living room after you lost your job, Charlie. I wanted to make sure I knew what Gomes, Yardley, and Mac were up to. I had no idea how handy his recordings would become. My little bug is quite the wonder, you know. Too bad, Giles. After the SoluCent deal we could have started an electronics surveillance company with what I built. Anyway, this little bug of mine was powerful enough to hear through walls. Didn’t need much, but got enough snippets of his conversations to sample his voice.

“I then used a digital simulator, one that masked my voice and made mine sound like his. Simple really. Stealing his identity was easy, too, since he was careless about how he discarded his trash. I quit his job for him, bought me a ticket to the Bahamas so that your FBI friend could track me there. I left that afternoon, right after he called. Dreadful place, really. I’m not much for the sun, but you already knew that.”

“The body?”

“Oh, Rudy’s in the basement of your brother’s house, rotting as we speak. Joe moved him there. He did a lot of that work for me. Slipped notes under the sofa, too. But I was the one who hijacked your computer and wrote you that little message in Word to go look under there for the kill list. Did you like that? The kill list, I mean. Clever, huh? You really thought you were a killer, didn’t you, Charlie?”

Joe had managed to roll onto his back. His groans rose above the steady cry of the wind like those of a mournful, wounded animal. Charlie bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to distract him from the pain, then shifted himself to a sitting position and slid backward on his rear until his back rested against the wall of the stairwell.

As he moved backward, Charlie slid one hand into his front pants pocket. The cell phone Arthur Bean had given him was on. Charlie was glad to have programmed a speed dial to his house. All he had to do was hit the number one and SEND, and it would make the call. Rachel would know what to do next. He didn’t make his movements obvious. In minutes he’d know he’d hit the right keys, if he heard police sirens.

Panting from the exertion, he asked, “Who was Anne Pedersen?” Charlie had to keep Eddie talking if he wanted to live.

“A n actress,” Eddie said. “A drug-addicted one at that. As long as I gave her money for drugs, she played what she thought was a practical joke. Getting her a fake badge was easy. That was almost as easy as it was for me to put a wireless router by your office. That way I could have you surfing porn and sending out inappropriate e-mails at all hours of the day without you even knowing it.

“But I needed a real inexplicable experience to set things in motion. So I created Anne. I did just enough research about the company to get what I needed to know about the internal politics. It’s really amazing what your colleagues will say to someone who’s buying them drinks. Nancy Lord, your assistant, she’s really got her fingers on the pulse of the organization, Charlie. You really ought to do something to keep her.”

“So you made me believe I was delusional.”

“You got yourself committed, Charlie. That wasn’t me.”

“You wrote the kill list. All those notes.”

“And I paid for your little motel room and moved your clothes there myself. I even used computers to make a duplicate of your ID. That was what I mailed to the motel.”

“And the hands?”

“Well, the good thing about selecting that motel, and I checked, believe you me, is that nobody ever passes by at night. I covered the door handle to your motel room with liquid Fentanyl. Five patches secreted enough sedative to be absorbed through your skin and put you to sleep. You couldn’t hear me enter your room, and you didn’t feel it when I injected you with Nembutal to keep you knocked out. I returned hours later and put the hands under the bed. Joe did the heavy lifting, but I took care of the sawing myself. I drove your car to Revere. All you needed to do, Charlie, was put a bullet in your head. I even brought you your father’s gun. Now, was it that hard to do?”

Charlie grunted in disgust and spat blood onto the black tar rooftop. Joe had managed to roll himself over onto his stomach. He was groaning less but was talking softly to comfort himself. Charlie could see a large, horrific bloodstain expanding on the back of Joe’s shirt where the bullet had passed clean through.

“As genius as you are, Eddie, it was a bug that did you in,” Charlie said.

“A bug, yes.” Eddie grimaced. “I listened to your conversation in Joe’s car. Very clever of you to notice, Charlie. I’m not sure how I missed that, but I assure you our QA department will pay dearly.” Eddie then started to laugh.

“And you put us into the water, Eddie, but that gave us the chance to find you.”

“Yes,” Eddie said, rubbing his hand on his chin. “I couldn’t figure out how you got here. Then I guessed my IP address hadn’t been erased from the registry. Another odd circumstance,” he said. “But regardless, let’s finish what we started, shall we? Stand up.”

Eddie pointed the gun at Charlie’s temple.

“I can’t stand,” Charlie said.

“Stand, or I’ll put a bullet through your brother’s brain.”

Charlie used the stairwell housing to hoist himself up. He balanced his entire weight on one leg and used the wall behind him for support.

“Now, here’s the new deal,” Eddie said. “Get yourself over to the edge of the building and jump. If you don’t, I’ll shoot you both. If you do, I’ll let Joe live. Even call an ambulance for him.”

“Go to hell, Eddie.”

“I’m counting, starting now. I won’t pass fifteen. You get extra time on account of you’re crippled like me.”

Charlie hobbled on one leg toward the edge of the building. Joe’s groans returned. Even if Charlie did jump, he had no reason to believe for a second that Eddie would honor his word. Still, Charlie needed time to think, and the only way he was going to get time was to do as Eddie said and make the walk to the building’s ledge. His foot and leg tingled as if being tapped by thousands of tiny pinpricks, and he figured it was symptomatic of massive blood loss. It would be a miracle to survive this, let alone save his leg from amputation.

It was a fifty-foot jump to the ground. Charlie peered over the edge. He turned back around to face Eddie. He caught a glimpse of Joe in his peripheral vision. Did Joe just smile at me? Charlie wondered. He couldn’t be sure. What he did know was that he had to keep Eddie distracted. Charlie watched with widening eyes as Joe, still bleeding and lying on his stomach, inched himself closer to Eddie.

“You can still end this, Eddie,” Charlie said. “You don’t have to go through with it.”

“Turn around and jump, Charlie,” Eddie said. “Say good-bye to Joe, and finish what I started. Take your life the same way you took mine. Otherwise, watch him die before I shoot you.”

Eddie pointed the gun at Joe’s head. He cocked the hammer. At that instant Joe grunted loudly and, using his leg, swept Eddie’s foot from underneath him. Letting out a wild cry, Eddie Prescott fell backward. The gun fired harmlessly into the air. When Eddie connected hard with the rooftop, the gun was jarred free.

Both brothers wasted no time closing in. Joe only had to roll himself on top of Eddie to pin him down. Charlie used his one good leg to hop over to them. He picked up the gun.

“Get up,” Charlie shouted to Eddie. “Get up!”

“I can’t stand,” Eddie said. “I need my cane.”

“Joe, can you get off him?” said Charlie.

Joe rolled to the side and stood shakily. Blood continued to flow from him. Still, he managed to walk over to where Eddie’s cane had fallen and bent over to pick it up.

“Give him his cane,” Charlie said.

Eddie Prescott used the cane to stand. He pushed away wisps of his long, wavy hair from his face. From the distance sirens could be heard fast approaching.

“They’re coming for you, Eddie,” Charlie said. “Life in jail, my friend. That’s what you amounted to. Life in jail.”

Eddie said nothing.

“I’m going to help you, Eddie,” Charlie said.

“Charlie, what are you doing?” Joe asked.

“Joe, keep pressure on your wound and stay out of this,” Charlie said. The bleeding from Charlie’s gunshot wound had abetted some. Still, he felt light-headed. He didn’t know how much time he had before losing consciousness.

“You can’t help me,” Eddie said. “Don’t you remember? You already killed me once.”

“No, Eddie, you did that to yourself. So here’s my deal. Why don’t you finish what you started?”

“What do you mean?” Eddie asked.

“Walk to the edge and jump,” Charlie said. “I’m giving you a chance, Eddie. Back at MIT we were more than friends. I thought of you like a brother. We had ideas that would change the world, and you know what? We did it. Together. Without you, Eddie, I never would have been as successful as I am. I know that now, and I knew that then. But you betrayed me and us. I couldn’t let that go. I had to do what was right.”

“Because the only person you love is yourself,” Eddie said.

Charlie looked over at Joe. Joe’s hand was bloody from where he’d been pressing his wound.

“That’s not true,” Charlie said. “That’s why I’m offering you this chance. Finish what you started, Eddie. Life in jail. Is that how you want to honor your parents’ memory? Is that your legacy? Finish what you started. I’m giving you this out because we were once like brothers.”

Eddie Prescott walked backward toward the edge of the building. The wail of the sirens was louder now. It sounded to Charlie like an armada approaching.

“You know what, Charlie?” Eddie asked.

“What?”

“If I’m alive, people will think of me when they remember these crimes. But if I’m gone, you’ll be the only memory of what actually happened here. These murders will in the public’s eye be more your doing than mine. You’ll be alive to represent them. Funny, huh? But with me dead, we’re linked forever. Good-bye, Charlie.”

With that Eddie turned. And he jumped.