Dark Matter (26 page)

Snow from a recent storm has dusted the concrete and coated the generators beneath those glassless upper windows.

Even now, flurries blow in off the lake, drifting down like cold confetti.

I wander away from the box, trying to temper my hope.

This could be an abandoned power plant in South Chicago in any number of worlds.

As I move slowly down the row of generators, a glint on the floor catches my eye.

I approach.

Resting in a crack in the concrete six inches from the base of the generator: an empty ampoule with its neck snapped off. In all the abandoned power plants I've passed through during the last month, I've never seen this.

Perhaps the one Jason2 injected himself with seconds before I lost consciousness, on the night he stole my life.

I hike out of the industrial ghost town.

Hungry, thirsty, exhausted.

The skyline looms to the north, and even though it's decapitated by the low winter clouds, it's unmistakably the one I know.

I board the northbound Red Line at Eighty-Seventh Street as dusk is falling.

There are no seat belts, no holograms on this El.

Just a slow, rickety ride through South Chicago.

Then the urban sprawl of downtown.

I switch trains.

The Blue Line carries me into the gentrified northern neighborhoods.

Over the last month, I've been in Chicagos that looked similar, but there's something different about this one. It isn't just that empty ampoule. It's something deeper that I can't explain other than to say it feels like a place where I belong. It feels like mine.

As we cruise past gridlocked rush-hour traffic on the expressway, the snow intensifies.

I wonder—

Is Daniela,
my
Daniela, alive and well under the snow-laden clouds?

Is my Charlie breathing the air of this world?

I exit the train onto the El platform in Logan Square and thrust my hands deep into the pockets of my coat. Snow is sticking to the familiar streets of my neighborhood. To the sidewalks. To the cars parked along the curbs. The headlight beams from rush-hour traffic slash through the profusion of snowflakes.

Up and down my block, the houses stand glowing and lovely in the storm.

A fragile half inch has already collected on the steps to my porch, where a single set of footprints leads to the door.

Through the front window of the brownstone, I see the lights on inside, and from where I stand on the sidewalk, this looks exactly like home.

I keep expecting to discover that some minor detail is off—the wrong front door, the wrong street number, a piece of furniture on the stoop I don't recognize.

But the door is right.

The street number is right.

There's even a tesseract chandelier hanging above the dinner table in the front room, and I'm close enough to see the large photograph on the mantel—Daniela, Charlie, and me at Inspiration Point in Yellowstone National Park.

Through the open doorway that leads from the dining room into the kitchen, I glimpse Jason standing at the island, holding a bottle of wine. Reaching across, he pours into someone's wineglass.

Elation hits, but it doesn't last.

From my vantage point, all I can see is a beautiful hand holding the stem of the glass, and it crashes down on me again what this man did to me.

All that he took.

Everything he stole.

I can't hear anything out here in the snow, but I see him laugh and take a sip of wine.

What are they talking about?

When was the last time they fucked?

Is Daniela happier now than she was a month ago, with me?

Can I stand to know the answer to that question?

The sane, even voice in my head is wisely suggesting that I move away from the house right now.

I'm not ready to do this. I have no plan.

Only rage and jealousy.

And I shouldn't get ahead of myself. I still need more confirmation that this is my world.

A little ways down the block, I see the familiar back end of our Suburban. Walking over, I brush off the snow that's clinging to the Illinois tag.

The license plate number is mine.

The paint is the right color.

I clear the back windshield.

The purple Lakemont Lions decal looks perfect, inasmuch as it's half ripped off. I instantly regretted putting the sticker on the glass the moment I did it. Tried to tear it off, but only managed to remove the top half of the lion's face, so all that's left is a growling mouth.

But that was three years ago.

I need something more recent, more definitive.

Several weeks before I was abducted, I accidentally backed the Suburban into a parking meter near campus. It didn't do much damage beyond cracking the right rear taillight and denting in the bumper.

I wipe the snow off the red plastic of the taillight and then the bumper.

I touch the crack.

I touch the dent.

No other Suburban in the countless Chicagos I've visited has borne these markings.

Rising, I glance across the street toward that bench where I once spent an entire day watching another version of my life unfold. It's empty at the moment, the snow piling up silently on the seat.

Shit.

A few feet behind the bench, a figure watches me through the snowy darkness.

I begin walking quickly down the sidewalk, thinking it probably looked as if I were stealing the license plate off the Suburban.

I have to be more careful.

The blue neon sign in the front window of Village Tap blinks through the storm, like a signal from a lighthouse, telling me I'm close to home.

There is no Hotel Royale in this world, so I check into the sad Days Inn across from my local bar.

Two nights is all I can afford, and it brings my cash reserves down to $120 and change.

The business center is a tiny room down the hallway on the first floor, with a borderline-obsolete desktop, fax machine, and printer.

Online, I confirm three pieces of information.

Jason Dessen is a professor in the Lakemont physics department.

Ryan Holder just won the Pavia award for his research contributions in the field of neuroscience.

Daniela Vargas-Dessen isn't a renowned Chicago artist, and she doesn't run a graphic-design business. Her charmingly amateurish website displays several pieces of her best work and advertises her services as an art instructor.

As I trudge up the stairwell to my third-floor room, I finally begin to let myself believe.

This is my world.

I sit by the window of my hotel room, staring down at the blinking neon sign of Village Tap.

I am not a violent person.

I've never hit a man.

Never even tried to.

But if I want my family back, there's simply no way around it.

I have to do a terrible thing.

Have to do what Jason2 did to me, only without the conscience-protecting option of simply putting him back into the box. Even though I have one ampoule left, I wouldn't repeat his mistake.

He should've killed me when he had the chance.

I feel the physicist side of my brain creeping in, trying to take over the controls.

I'm a scientist, after all. A process-minded thinker.

So I think of this like a lab experiment.

There's a result I want to achieve.

What are the steps it will take for me to arrive at that result?

First, define the desired result.

Kill the Jason Dessen who's living in my home and put him in a place where no one will ever find him again.

What tools do I need to accomplish that?

A car.

A gun.

Some method of restraining him.

A shovel.

A safe place to dispose of his body.

I hate these thoughts.

Yes, he took my wife, my son, my life, but the idea of the preparation and the violence is so ugly.

There's a forest preserve an hour south of Chicago. Kankakee River State Park. I've been there several times with Charlie and Daniela, usually in the fall when the leaves are turning and we're antsy for wilderness and solitude and a day out of the city.

I could drive Jason2 there at night, or make
him
drive, just like he did to me.

Lead him down one of the trails I know on the north side of the river.

I will have been there a day or two prior, so his grave will already be dug in some quiet, secluded place. I'll have researched how deep to make it so animals can't smell the rot. Make him think he's going to dig his own grave, so he thinks he has more time to figure out an escape or to convince me not to do this. Then, when we're within twenty feet of the hole, I'll drop the shovel and say that it's time to start digging.

As he bends down to pick it up, I'll do the thing I can't imagine.

I will fire a bullet into the back of his head.

Then I'll drag him over to the hole and roll him into it and cover him up with dirt.

The good news is that no one will be looking for him.

I'll slide back into his life the same way he slid into mine.

Maybe years down the road, I'll tell Daniela the truth.

Maybe I'll never tell her.

The sporting-goods store is three blocks away and still an hour shy of closing. I used to come in here once a year to buy cleats and balls when Charlie was into soccer during middle school.

Even then, the gun counter always held a fascination for me.

A mystique.

I could never imagine what would drive someone to want to own one.

I've only fired a gun two or three times in my life, while I was in high school in Iowa. Even then, shooting at rusted oil drums on my best friend's farm, I didn't experience the same thrill as the other kids. It scared me too much. As I would stand facing the target, aiming the heavy pistol, I couldn't escape the thought that I was holding death.

The store is called Field and Glove, and I'm one of three customers at this late hour.

Wandering past racks of windbreakers and a wall of running shoes, I make my way toward the counter at the back of the store.

Shotguns and rifles hang on the wall over boxes of ammunition.

Handguns gleam under glass at the counter.

Black ones.

Chrome ones.

Ones with cylinders.

Ones without.

Ones that look like they should only be carried by vigilante cops in 1970s action movies.

A woman walks over wearing a black T-shirt and faded blue jeans. She's got a distinct Annie Oakley vibe with her frizzy red hair and a tattoo that wraps around her freckled right arm and reads:
…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

“Help you with something?” she asks.

“Yeah, I was looking to buy a handgun, but to be honest, I don't know the first thing about them.”

“Why do you want one?”

“Home defense.”

She pulls a set of keys out of her pocket and unlocks the cabinet I'm standing in front of. I watch her arm reach under the glass and lift out a black pistol.

“So this is a Glock 23. Forty caliber. Austrian-made. Solid knockdown power. I could also set you up in a subcompact version if you wanted something smaller for a concealed-carry permit.”

“And this will stop an intruder?”

“Oh yeah. This'll put 'em down, and they won't be getting back up.”

She pulls the slide, checks to make sure the tube is clear, and then locks it back and ejects the magazine.

“How many bullets does it hold?”

“Thirteen rounds.”

She offers me the gun.

I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do with it. Aim it? Feel the weight?

I hold it awkwardly in my hand, and even though it isn't loaded, I register that same
I'm-holding-death
unease.

The price tag hanging from the trigger guard reads $599.99.