Atmosphere (13 page)

Leonard Racine nodded, frustration clearly eating him alive. "I understand. But you also need to be patient with us. This has been a very difficult day."

"Of course." Hector moved right on to the next question. "Had he made any new friends that you know of? Any phone calls, perhaps from someone unfamiliar?"

Leonard shrugged his shoulders.

"As a matter of fact..." Amanda said, "I remember receiving a phone call from someone who asked for Pat, about a week ago. I told him that Patrick was at school. I took a message and left it attached to the message board by the phone."

She pointed toward the kitchen. Adhered to the wall alongside the phone was a rectangular-shaped cork board with a number of messages pinned to it. Frank rose from his seat and examined them more closely. Three messages, two for Amanda, one for Leonard, each signed by someone named Emily.

"Do you remember the caller's name, Mrs Racine?" Hector asked.

"No," she answered, shaking her head apologetically.

"Where's the note? Could it still be around?" Frank questioned.

"Patrick probably took it. Could be in his room."

Frank raised an eyebrow at Hector. He couldn't help but notice the dark half-moons forming below the captain's eyes. He looked real tired.

"Mr and Mrs Racine, we'd like to take a look in his room. Is that okay?"

Leonard rose shakily from his seat. "Sure, fine. Hon?"

"Yes. Of course."

The five of them rose from the table. While Amanda cleaned up, Leonard led Frank, Hector, and Ernie down a hallway lined with Victorian art prints. Frank quickly admired the prints, each exquisitely displayed in finely carved oak frames, each one different from the next but all similar in size and design, as if exhibited as part of a gallery artist's collection.

They entered the second door on the right, Patrick Racine's room. Frank noticed at once that the room had been kept as meticulous as the rest of the house; the bed neatly made; furniture dusted; rug vacuumed. A desk sat beneath the room's only window, and a bookshelf ran against the length of the right wall. It held a variety of Patrick's things: a few text books, novels, a CD player, and plenty of CD 's.
 

Frank walked over and fingered through some of the CD 's. He saw the names of what he assumed to be bands, ones he had never heard of before: System 7, The Orb, Eat Static, Andromeda. Further on, Plastickman, Carrier Waves, Abduction.
Of course
he had never heard of them before. This collection of CD 's represented a teenager's taste in cutting-edge music, and weren't even vaguely indicative of the oldies he himself enjoyed so often. He looked further. At the end of the row, some CD 's were titled
Techno Explosion
,
Ambient Space
, and
Alpha Waves
, all claiming to be compilations of various bands. Thinking back, Frank had heard Jaimie use the term 'techno' at times when he begged her to turn down the volume on her stereo. Yes, she herself listened to this 'music' sometimes, which to Frank sounded like repetitive nonsense, as if a needle was skipping on a record.

Seemed Patrick Racine was quite the techno-music enthusiast.

Frank turned and looked at the desk. A computer and printer took up half the desktop, papers cluttering the remainder of the work area. He went over and fingered through a few sheets of paper, but found only class notes.

"Mr Racine," Hector said. "Do you have a housekeeper?"

"Yes. Emily. She cleans every day between three and five, usually before we both arrive home."

"When was the last time you spoke to her?"

"I rarely do. My wife speaks to her a couple times a week." He leaned out into the hallway. "Hon?"

Footsteps sounded and Amanda appeared at the threshold. She looked worse than she did when they first arrived, tears now streaming down her face.

"Mrs Racine, can you remember the last time you spoke to your housekeeper?"

"On Tuesday. I paid her."

"She mention anything about Patrick's room? Anything even slightly out of the ordinary?"

Amanda tilted her head in thought. Frank imagined that it must've been real difficult for her to capture memories when so much chaos stormed inside her head. "She did say that Pat's room had been cleaned. That the bed had been made. But that wasn't out of the ordinary. Sometimes he would help her out, 'do a few things to make her job a little easier' he would say. I used to tell him that she got paid for what she did, but he felt sorry for her. I just assumed he cleaned his own room. He'd done it before."

"Is it possible that Pat hadn't been home since the last time Emily cleaned his room?"

Again, looks of dumbfoundness compounded their sorrow. The Racines had never expected these assumptions to be made toward their son. "At this point, anything is possible." She buried her face in her hands and rubbed her eyes.

Frank, still prodding about the desk, opened the top drawer.

His heart started pounding. Hard.

It was there.

A phone note to Pat, signed by 'mom'.

Harold called. He'll call back
.

Frank picked it up, showed it to Hector. Ernie glimpsed it too.

They all nodded to one another.

Time to pay Harold Gross a visit.

R
un, run, need to run...

David Traynor decided today, unequivocally, that he needed to run. Never in his nineteen years had he felt a comparable desire to move his legs in such a rapid fashion. To take deep regulated breaths, to watch intently as puffs of frozen breath spewed from his mouth like emissions from a geyser. The thrill of it captivated his being, clenched all his thoughts and commanded his sole means of personal motivation to an extent previously unfelt.

He
needed
to run, and at the moment, nothing else existed in life but to do just that.
   

Run.

Although there had been no doubt in his mind to enact himself in this behavior, many questions teetered on the periphery of his consciousness. How had he become so suddenly enraptured with the hunger to force his body into such a vigorous motion? What internal force—he had no doubts from the onset, whenever that was, that this behavior originated from within—had been triggered to initiate such a physical response? And
why
had he become so wholly absorbed with this desire to run? He knew that answers to these questions—logical explanations no doubt—had to exist somewhere deep within his realm of reason. But he also knew that his need for a purpose to this unforeseen aberrant conduct had become fully overshadowed by the quasi-primordial yearning to satisfy his immediate urge. That the answers were secondary and insignificant to his immediate desires. That justification for his motives didn't carry any concern.

As long as he ran.

Run, run, need to run...

Suddenly, after nearly two hours of burdening his body through an inundation of strenuous activity, after coercing it to withstand such intemperate discipline, another question slithered forth from deep within the barriers that held back his conscious, astute sensibility.

Where?

Where had he been going all this time? For two hours his legs demanded he run—albeit now he could demonstrate not much more than a labored jog—and although all previously self-imposed questions still distracted him, the answers to
where
seemed all the more timely and pertinent. His mind agreed, and allowed sole access to the deliberation of this conundrum.

He needed a place to go.

Where do I live?
   

As he queried himself for a location to his maddening travels, the walls inside his head holding his lucidity back collapsed for a fleeting moment. Suddenly a new sensation came into play. That of fear. The fear of being lost in a world with no place to go, with no one to help. The fear of being completely out of control, guided by an unseen force so damn powerful that visions of the world coming to a disastrous and painful end seemed a more viable alternative than the surrender to the darkness influencing him—infecting him—from within.

As quickly as it had revealed itself, it once again assumed control.

And again, David Traynor wanted to run.

But during the shockingly brief interlude where David had been free from the bond that held him captive, a multitude of memories stormed within his head. Who he was, where he lived, his age, his likes and dislikes, the music he listened to. Simple things about himself that he now no longer possessed the ability to grasp. They had all been there again. Inside his head. For him to realize, to feel.

He set his mind to thought. Prior to the brief interlude of coherence, he had asked himself a question.

Where do I live?

Now, because his mind had allowed a brief pinhole opening into his consciousness, he had the answer.

He gazed about his current surroundings. Dark monolithic buildings encompassed him, shadowy streets intersecting at all sides, grainy pavement greeting his footsteps, invisibly escorting him towards his new destination.

Home.

Street signs marked his location, their useless guidance serving purpose only to the removed mind held captive deep within his head. The portion of his mind now controlling him carried only those thoughts necessary given the moment at hand, and brought forth memories of direction—a mental map leading the way home.

So his feet again carried him, weaving him haphazardly through the darkened neighborhood, in and out of deserted streets and unlit alleys, through empty courtyards, in between parked cars, helping to avoiding sight by those few pedestrians milling about beneath the moon's beams.

Familiar sights soon came into view. The evacuated lot where the abandoned tenement building had been torn down; the elevated platform from where he sometimes rode the train; and, oh yes, his building.

Home
.

Dragging his feet in an exhausted lumber, he entered through the front doors of the building, climbed one, two, three flights of steps, tripping along the way, hands grasping blindly at the graffiti-marred walls, his breathing now vociferous in its weariness. Shuttered doors lined the hallway, but only one ignited his memories, as if an entity had been perched just beyond its threshold, emitting waves of psychic thought in attempt to lure him in. He stopped in front of the door, staring at the steel barrier, the rusted 3F, trying to convince his mind to formulate his next means of strategy.

Keys.

The voice, although not his, came from within. Wishing to unfold the mystery of his life as it came to pass, knowing very well that he had no alternative but to obey the command, he allowed his mind, the voice, to continue to lead the way.

He blindly fished for the keys in his jeans pocket, pulled them out, and entered the apartment.

Although he knew that this was indeed his place of shelter—his mind told him so—nothing here triggered any memories of the past. Four walls, sheathed in dust, paint chipped and faded; worn furniture, drawers pulled out, wrinkled clothes escaping from within; piles of magazines, the girlie kind, many of their pages torn out and left astray. And music tapes, scattered all over, their protective covers long lost to the litter demons on the floor.
 

He moved forward, wearied feet pushing through the clutter. He sat on the bare mattress, its bulk set crookedly upon a metal bed-frame. He intuitively raised his right hand and ran his shaky sweaty fingers along the headphones cradled around his neck, feeling the plastic curvature, the soft ear-pads, the wire leading down, down, down, across the hard plastic features of the walkman tape player clipped to his belt. He fingered the buttons, the volume dial, the clear plastic window displaying the tape beneath.

He placed the headphones on.

Music loomed forth, a relentless, hypnotic pulse of synthetic tones.
 

Suddenly, his mind allowed another remembrance, of something else...

Excitement.

Yes! He remembered! His purpose. With the aid of the music, his mind revealed a purpose to his actions!

He had been asked to supply.

Moving his hand from the walkman to his jacket pocket, he felt for the object. His fingers graced its smoothness, ran fluidly about the six circular spines jutting from its surface, about the casual slopes at their base, within the hollowed-out crevices at their pinnacles. He felt a warmth emanating from its infrastructure, from its
body
. It kissed at his fingertips, tiny tingles slowly wandering the lengths of his fingers like a swarm of gentle electric charges.

How he knew that this object had been meant for him, he could not fathom. But the moment the Harbinger on the subway graced him with its presence, its
existence
, he knew he had to become one with it.

He knew at that moment, somehow, that he was to supply.

He pulled it from his pocket.

Beautiful. Its ebony, shining pure brilliance, emitted an unsullied blend of emotions, a perfect intermingling of love, hate, sex, death, anger, and ecstasy. It was...sacrosanct.