Dying Memories (16 page)

Chapter 49

Riding the public bus went off without a hitch. While Bill needed to take two connecting busses, he was able to get seats near the back in both of them and hide himself with a newspaper. A few times while waiting for the busses he caught other passengers looking curiously in his direction, but he found if he stared back at them with an angry scowl they’d wilt quickly and look away.

He now sat on the ground outside the back entrance of the building where Dr. Henry Schlow had his office. Schlow’s office hours were scheduled for between three and four-thirty, and the last time Bill compulsively checked his watch it was a quarter to five. He tried giving the impression that he was a panhandler, only occasionally craning his neck to search for Schlow. He hoped Schlow would be leaving by this entrance to access the small parking lot behind the building, but as the minutes ticked away his stomach tightened at the prospect of missing the MIT professor. If that happened, it would be another week before Schlow would have scheduled office hours again.

Earlier before leaving Charlestown, Bill found a coffee shop several blocks from Jeremy’s apartment that provided a strong enough Wi-Fi signal that he could tap into it from outside. He was relieved to see that the
Tribune
hadn’t disabled his account yet, but equally disappointed to find that he had nothing new from his good pal,
G
. He sent Jack a long email that he had prepared before leaving Jeremy’s apartment explaining what was happening, and attached to the email the same investigative story that he had tried handing Jack earlier. He implored the city desk editor to search the
Tribune
offices for the DVD that he had dropped. After that Bill walked around the neighborhood looking for a hiding place to stash his laptop and chose a deserted utility shed behind a fire damaged building. While the building was padlocked and had signs posted out front that it was scheduled for demolition, the shed behind it was left unlocked. Inside it had a stale, musty smell indicating that it hadn’t been used in a while. Bill hid the laptop under some floorboards that he was able to pry loose, then stacked a pile of junk that had been left behind over the boards. Unless someone knew where the laptop was, they weren’t going to find it.

He checked the time again and saw it was six minutes to five. Just as he was losing any hope of catching the MIT professor that day, Dr. Henry Schlow emerged from the building.

Chapter 50

Bill stayed as still as a stone on the ground as he watched Schlow waddle to his car. The MIT professor gave the impression of a large shaggy walrus. He was a big man with long unkempt hair and a thick mustache that covered his upper lip with the ends of it drooping well past his jowls, and he moved with the awkward gait of someone who carried far too much extra weight. Bill waited until Schlow opened the driver side door to a silver Range Rover and was working his way into the driver’s seat before he got to his feet and raced over Schlow to keep him from closing his door shut. The MIT professor, on finding the unexpected impediment, looked over with a puzzled detachment. Once he realized why his door wasn’t closing, his eyes narrowed as he took in Bill. At first he looked angry and befuddled, as if he didn’t believe what he was seeing, then recognition seeped in and fear showed on his large fleshy face.

“You know me, huh?” Bill said. He held out his bug detector as if it were a Taser. “Then you better fucking move over. And I’m only asking once.”

Schlow complied. Momentarily stuck as he tried moving his heavy body across the console separating the two front seats, he freed himself, and after a few painful grunts was able to maneuver himself onto the passenger seat. After handing over his car keys, Schlow suggested to Bill that he stay calm and not do anything rash.

“Shut up.” Bill pulled the Range Rover out of its spot, and then out of the parking lot and onto Vasser Street, heading in the direction of Boston. He noticed Schlow peering curiously at the bug detector that he was partially hiding with his hand, as if Schlow were trying to decide whether it was in fact a Taser.

“Is that really a Taser?” Schlow asked with an uneasy smile.

“I said shut up.” Bill felt the muscles in his jaw hardening, his teeth grinding. He gave Schlow a quick look before facing front again. “How do you know me?” he demanded. “From the news, or did the good folks at ViGen send out a memo?”

“The news, of course. I don’t know what you mean by ViGen. What are they supposed to be—”

“ViGen Corporation,” Bill said, shutting his passenger up. “You work for them, so don’t bother with this bullshit.”

The Range Rover slowed as they approached traffic. Schlow continued to eye the bug detector Bill held. “I don’t believe that’s a Taser,” Schlow said. “What’s to stop me from getting out of my car right now?”

“You could try it, but I’ll run you down in the street no matter where you try going,” Bill said matter-of-factly. “Right now I’m talking to you nicely, but I have no problem beating the truth out of you if I have to.”

Schlow tensed up for a moment, then exhaled loudly, his breath coming out in the same sort of rush as if he’d been punched in the gut. He sat back in his seat, his color also the same sort of queasy white as if he’d been punched. “Okay, you’re right. I do research for ViGen Corporation. How is that any concern of yours?”

“How? You’re kidding, right? Ever since I got involved with reporting on the Gail Hawes shooting and looked into Trey Megeet killing one of your fellow ViGen researchers, Tim Zhang, they’ve bugged my car, attempted to kidnap me, as well as tried to inject me with God knows what, and now they’re framing me for a home invasion and murder. How’s that?”

“What do you mean they tried kidnapping you?” Schlow asked, his voice catching in his throat.

Bill laughed sourly. He could feel his grimace tightening on his face. “A van pulled up when I left my apartment a few days ago and one of your thugs threw me into the back of it. Waiting for me inside was a freakish looking dude with a very pink face. You know who I’m talking about, right? He tried injecting me with something using a very big hypodermic needle, but was interrupted when the van was broadsided by another vehicle.”

Schlow’s heavy lids lowered as he watched Bill. His color paled even more, giving his flesh an almost rubbery look. “And why do you think ViGen is doing all these things to you?” he asked.

“Because I know they’re performing illegal human trials,” Bill said. “And I know that they’re not working on a super flu vaccine. That that is only a front. ViGen’s really a military operation, aren’t they? And what they’re working on is some sort of fast-acting brainwashing drug, right?”

Schlow rubbed a large white hand resembling a lump of lard across both cheeks and mouth leaving small pinkish spots behind on his skin. “Mr. Conway, I really only know about you through the news, but this does explain quite a bit. Please pull over at the first opportunity and I will tell you what I can. You must believe me that it is of utmost importance that you understand what’s really happening.”

“If this is some sort of trick, trust me, I can outrun you.”

“It isn’t a trick.” Schlow showed a sickly smile. “And nothing I tell you will be able to help you with the police. I will later be denying all of it, and they will not believe you. Even if you’re recording this I will say that I was only trying to humor a madman, but that would only be if your recording made its way to the police, which we both know it wouldn’t. Certain people we’re both aware of would make sure of that. But it is critical that I explain to you what is happening.”

Bill slowed for a moment, then pushed hard on the gas making the Range Rover jump forward as it sped up. He first pulled onto the Mass Pike, then kept the speed just under eighty miles an hour until he got off in South Boston where he turned down one deserted street after the next until finally arriving at an empty parking lot. The lot was for a warehouse that had been shut down years earlier. During the drive, Schlow tried once again to implore Bill to pull over, but the look Bill gave him stopped him cold. There was nobody in sight where he stopped the car, probably nobody within a mile from where they were.

Bill shut off the engine and turned to Schlow. “Go ahead,” he said. “Tell me what you know.”

Schlow looked flustered. He tried giving Bill a patronizing smile but it failed to stick. “You’re right about some of it,” Schlow said, “but only some. ViGen’s mission has been to build a vaccine that can intelligently recognize mutations of a flu virus and vigorously attack it. An unfortunate and unforeseen side effect cropped up that has created a completely different application, and along with it, a new set of partners who are, quite frankly, very scary to work with. I’m sure these are the people you’ve had the misfortune to encounter.” Schlow stopped for a moment to squeeze his eyes with his thumb and index finger. When he took his hands away both his eyes showed red. “Do you know what nanotechnology is?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’ve been reading about it,” Bill said.

“So you know it’s building very tiny structures. Sub-molecular structures, actually. You probably also know that it’s my field of expertise.” Another heavy breath, then, “Specifically I’ve been building what can be thought of as nanometer-sized robots, which are called nanorobots. These function to analyze cells so that they may be recognized as flu viruses. These nanorobots are injected into the bloodstream where they roam through the body searching for flu viruses and killing them on detection. While we built in what we thought would be a method to retrieve them from the body, we miscalculated, as well as miscalculating on how these initial nanorobots would perform.”

“You admit ViGen is engaged in illegal human trials?”

“Yes, of course.” Schlow smiled guiltily. “I wish that wasn’t the case, but we have done so. Not my idea, by the way.”

“And Trey Megeet was one of your early guinea pigs?”

Schlow nodded.

“Why did they want him to kill Tim Zhang?”

“They didn’t.” Schlow let out another heavy breath. “That was a result of a quite unexpected side effect. The nanorobots we built reacted within the body in ways we couldn’t possibly have anticipated. They attacked the cerebrum, creating results that are really quite spectacular in their own right. You see, Mr. Conway, what we accidentally discovered with these early versions of our nanorobots was a way to create a very unique form of psychosis, one in which our test subject experiences an alternative and parallel consciousness. Think of it almost as splitting the person in two, with one path triggering scenarios that create homicidal tendencies. With Trey Megeet, the path that was split out formed a delusion of Dr. Zhang driving the car that killed his wife, and that was as real to him as if it had happened. How and why this side effect occurs we still don’t fully understand.”

Bill shook his head slowly. “I don’t believe you. It doesn’t fit with what’s been happening.”

Schlow smiled sadly. He reached out to gently touch Bill’s arm, but the look Bill gave him caused him to pull his hand back. “It’s important that you believe me,” he said. “Somehow a very dark branch of national intelligence was brought into the picture, and they’ve been working with us on ways to weaponize this early discovery. For whatever reason they seemed to put quite a bit of value in being able to create this random but homicidal psychosis in their test subjects.”

“This is bullshit,” Bill said.

“No it isn’t. I suspect they injected you with this psychosis-inducing drug when you were brought into the van, and whatever schism with reality that occurred has you believing that a car crash saved you.”

“That’s not a delusion. It happened.”

Schlow’s smile turned condescending. “And you just happened to walk away from it unscathed? What were these highly trained intelligence operatives doing as you escaped? Sitting on their hands and watching you?”

“One of them tried shooting at me,” Bill said, distracted.

“Where did all this happen?”

Bill shook his head as if he were trying to shake away the idea of what Schlow was saying. He heard himself murmuring to Schlow that it happened in Medford.

“In a congested area, correct? How come there were no witnesses to the car crash, if it indeed happened?”

“They were able to clean it up.”

“Please,” Schlow said. “The spooks I’ve been seeing in and out of ViGen are clearly good at what they do, but they’re not that good. Nobody is. I’m afraid, Mr. Conway, that you’re a victim to this drug, and that you’re living an alternative reality outside of your current consciousness. This other reality is one where a homicidal rage has been unleashed. I’ve seen the progress that they’ve made with this drug and I doubt that you would have any awareness of this other side of you. It’s imperative that you turn yourself in to the police before you kill others without ever knowing that you’re doing it.”

Bill felt a hotness burning his cheeks as he stared at the MIT professor. The patient way Schlow was now smiling at him was maddening; as if Bill were tied up in a straightjacket. “You’re lying to me,” he said in a half-whisper. “I have emails from someone who knows about ViGen and has been confirming everything that has happened.”

“That’s all part of the psychosis you’re suffering. You mentioned something earlier about a fast-acting brainwashing drug. No, that’s not what this is about. While the homicidal aspect to the psychosis is predictable, the rest is completely random. They knew that you would kill, but not who. They had no idea that you would end up severely beating your ex-girlfriend and murdering her fiancée. But you see, who you killed didn’t matter, since it put you out of the picture.”

Bill stared hard at Schlow. “I guess this explains why I have such a strong urge to kill you right now,” he said. Schlow blanched at that. Bill’s eyes narrowed as he kept staring at the MIT professor. “Get out of the car.”

“Please, you need to listen to me. There were witnesses to what you did. According to the news your ex-girlfriend, and also your current one…” Schlow stopped, his thick eyelids lowering as he nodded to himself. “You believe that they were brainwashed,” he said. “They weren’t, Mr. Conway. We’re not developing that type of technology. That’s not what this is about. You’re a danger, Mr. Conway, both to yourself and to others. You will kill again without ever being conscious of it. Please, let me help you.”

Bill smiled slightly, his jaw muscles taut. “You almost had me there,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Your story, the way you told it, how sincere you’re trying to be,” Bill said, his voice soft but with a violent harshness cutting into it. A pulse started to beat along his left eye. “But where you screwed up, or really where ViGen screwed up, was with Gail Hawes. Her killing Kent Forster wasn’t some random event caused by a psychosis-inducing drug. Whatever you guys injected her with, it was so she would do what she did. That was where you guys screwed up. The drug wasn’t meant for her. It was meant for Janet Larson. A neighbor who looks like her. She was the one with an eleven year-old daughter named Jenny who was murdered, and she was the one that ViGen wanted to brainwash to kill Forster. If it wasn’t for that screw up, maybe you might’ve convinced me I was going crazy, or at least planted a seed of doubt in my mind.”

Schlow appeared flustered for a moment. He held his large white hands out to Bill so that his palms were showing in an imploring gesture. “Don’t you see that that’s all part of the psychosis,” he said. “Your memory can’t be trusted, reality has been skewed and jumbled up within your brain, events have been changed and resequenced. That’s all part of the psychosis.”

“Get out of the car,” Bill ordered.

“Please listen to me,” Schlow tried to explain. “I’m just a scientist, a cog in the machine. I have no real stake in what’s going on at ViGen other than being given the opportunity to put theory to practice. There’s no reason for me to be lying to you—”

“Get…out...now.”

Schlow’s mouth closed and he reached back for the passenger side door handle, then nearly fell backwards onto the pavement after opening the door. He caught himself and was able to safely maneuver his large pear-shaped body from the car. Standing outside, Schlow gave Bill one last imploring look.

“Please, let me help you,” he said.

“Sure. You can start by emptying your pockets,” Bill told him.

Schlow’s shoulders slumped. Resigned, he took a wallet and cell phone from his pocket and handed them to Bill, as well as some loose change. When he was done he had his pants pockets pulled inside out to show they were empty.