Blindspots Read online

  "Oh shit!" Kaitlin gripped Jake's arm so hard he nearly cried out. "I don't think we can go back up."

  They retreated, further into the darkness, Jake leading. "Down here, I know where we can hide."

  26.

  Gabriel ran down the last few steps, with Monica's hand in his. Getting tired of these stairs, a silly thing to notice in spite of everything. Only 9:00 a.m. and already the windows in the lobby were darkening, the storm suddenly returning with a vengeance. It sounded like howling banshees were at the windows.

  He headed for the desk and was about to ask the receptionist if she'd seen the two guys he'd been talking to during breakfast, when he saw Nestor's big outline in the lounge. Gabriel skidded to a stop, then ran into the room.

  "We have to go now," he said, between ragged breaths, speaking low enough that only he could hear. "Did they find Jake?"

  Nestor shrugged, staring at Monica now, his mouth open.

  One of the orderlies spoke up. "Mr. Griffith came back inside, but we lost where he went – he just ran off."

  Nestor blinked at Gabriel. "What happened to your face? Get in a fight?"

  "Yes," Gabriel said. "Let's start moving. Nestor, take Monica to the garage now. We have to beat the storm. I'll find Jake and then we'll be right behind you."

  Gabriel turned back to the lobby, keeping an eye on the nurses. Come on Jake, where are you?

  A commotion. There, on the stairs. Critchwell and Stoltz came running down, out of breath. "Dr. Sterling! Where are you going?"

  Gabriel swore. He glanced back in time to see the door to the garage closing, Nestor and Monica safe for the moment. Critchwell was striding toward him, and behind him, easing down the steps, Gregory Stoltz and Dominic Greiner, with Nurse Ursula in front of the lobby doors, her hair full of snow.

  Critchwell's face turned red. "I asked you where--"

  "I heard you. We're leaving."

  "I don't think so, Doc."

  Gabriel balled his hands into fists. He glanced around, aware of the other staff members looking on with concern. Could he count on them for help? He doubted it. He was good at his job, but never earned the kind of respect that would lead mere employees to put their lives on the line for him.

  He opened his mouth and was about to try to talk his way out, when Ursula, standing on her toes, looking down the stairs, shouted something. Then she was leaning over. "The Griffith kid! And a woman – looks like she could be Kaitlin!"

  Gabriel cursed and lunged forward, but Critchwell shifted, blocking his path. He shoved an arm in his chest and knocked him backward. "Stay there, Doc." Critchwell turned and raced after the others, into the stairwell, chasing their quarry into the basement.

  Stoltz and Greiner advanced toward him, fists clenched.

  Gabriel decided. Save Nestor and Monica. Get help, come back and--

  The lights above blinked. Flickered first, then died.

  A scream. A series of shouts.

  Then the auxiliary power kicked in, the generator supplying the minimum power to get a few lights on, keep the refrigerators going and the heat pumping.

  And the storm raged outside, shaking the walls and rattling the windows, celebrating its first breach in Daedalus's defenses.

  At least it's cover. Gabriel turned and raced for the garage.

  #

  They stared out into a world of swirling white. A drift a foot high covered the drive. "Get in," Gabriel shouted, pointing to the only Jeep left, the one without the plow.

  Damn it Jake! Why couldn't you have waited for us?

  "I'm driving," said Nestor.

  "No way," Gabriel answered.

  "I've had the experience. Drove all last night in a truck. This'll be easier."

  "Nestor, it's my--"

  "Boys!" Monica was sliding into the backseat. "Someone please just drive. Get us the hell out of here!"

  Shocked with her tone, Gabriel ran to the passenger side and got in while Nestor jumped behind the wheel, strapping himself in. He turned the key, floored the accelerator, and they were off, barreling through the drifts, crunching across the main drive. Gabriel glanced back to see two men running into the garage, taking a few steps into the snow before the blizzard swallowed them up.

  "Can't see shit," Nestor said, hunched over the wheel; he turned on the wipers.

  "Trees on the right," Gabriel said. "And a steep ditch near the bridge, so stay in the center of the road, if you can tell where it is. And don't go too fast."

  "Okay, okay."

  Monica made a whimpering sound behind them, and Gabriel turned around. "It's going to be okay. I know a place, a farmhouse a couple miles away. We can get there and send for help, and--"

  "Seatbelt," Monica said, pointing to Gabriel's unused belt.

  He smiled, said, "Thanks," turned and reached for it – when he caught a glimpse of something in Nestor's expression. Something cold, colder than the winds outside. Calculating, scheming. A tight smile had formed on his face.

  "Sorry, Doc."

  "Slow down, Nestor," Monica said at the same time.

  But then they were skidding off the asphalt, and Nestor was turning away from the skid, purposely trying to flip the already top-heavy SUV. Gabriel felt the wheels leave the ground and they tilted--

  Once, twice, a violent slamming, hard on one side, then the other, crunching into the drifts, pounding and skidding finally along the roof through the snow, careening like a sled.

  Gabriel had no time to think, no time to reason what had happened. He tasted blood, felt it burst from his nose, and was dimly aware of lying on the ceiling in an impossibly twisted position, when the car crunched into the tree and sent him headfirst into the glass.

  Just as dimly, he felt cold winds kissing his face, numbing his injuries. And he noticed that the driver's side was empty, and a big shape was crawling into the back, freeing Monica, who was just lying there limp and shell-shocked. Gabriel reached for her.

  But then Monica was dragged out into the snow.

  And everything went white.

  27.

  The Hillside Nursing Home was set back in the outskirts of St. Albans, just twenty miles from Daedalus. While its setting shared some characteristics with Daedalus, Indra thought the architecture couldn't have been a better study in contradictions: stately white pillars, ornate window dormers, a grand brick facade and a colonial-style roof underneath mounds of snow and ice.

  The rest of the town had just lost power, but Hillside's generators were keeping the interior warm and the elevators operable. Indra made it past the front desk. He preferred to think it was his skill at persuasion, rather than any pity for his handicap, that won out. He was admitted as a visitor, and allowed up to the third floor. After the elevator doors closed, he drove his chair toward the fifth door on the left and promptly knocked with fingers still cold and nearly senseless from just a few minutes spent outside. He could hear the TV on inside, so he knocked again, louder.

  Someone promptly yelled, "What the hell do you want?"

  Indra opened the door, maneuvered through it and rolled in. He smiled at the blurry-faced old woman with the snarly gray hair, the pink cotton bathrobe and mismatched blue slippers. She didn't seem too bad off – a little thin, spine hunched with age, but still mobile. He couldn't speak to her mental condition yet, but he had been told she was mostly coherent, one of the better ones.

  "You're no nurse," she spat. "What the hell're you doing in here? You ain't takin' my roses away."

  Indra raised his hands defensively while looking around the room. There were no flowers of any kind in sight. "I'm only here to talk, Mrs. Sterling."

  "Mrs. Sterling's my mama's name. Call me Darcy or get the hell out."

  Indra stifled a laugh. "Okay Darcy."

  "Who the hell are you?" she asked. "You're wheeling around like one of my old fart neighbors, but you ain't that old."

  "Who I am," Indra said, "doesn't matter right now. Not as much, I believe, as who I was."

  D
arcy blinked at him. She reached for the remote, clicked off the TV.

  "Shut the goddamned door."

  #

  Indra rolled to the other side of her bed while she took a seat in a reclining chair by the window and a card table littered with old magazines – Cosmopolitan, TV Guide and Star. She snatched a box of tissues from the window ledge. Indra expected her to offer him one because he was sniffling from the cold, but instead she dug around below the tissues and came up with a glass ashtray, a silver lighter and a pack of Camel cigarettes. She lit one, then switched on a small bedside fan to blow away the smoke.

  "Okay, Mr. Gandhi, or whatever your name is, explain yourself. Why're you here? Although I can guess."

  Indra leaned in closer; he studied the jumbled face before him, trying to make sense of it. "Guess, then. It might save us both some time."

  Darcy took a deep drag. "Time, I got plenty of. Do you?"

  Shaking his head, Indra said, "No. And neither do five other people at the Daedalus Institute. Five others who are about to die. If you cannot help."

  Darcy breathed out a long cloud of smoke and watched it scatter in the fan's breeze. "Six, including you?"

  "Yes."

  She took another drag, and finally stared into his eyes for several moments. After another exhale, she leaned back and gazed up at the ceiling. "Son of a bitch. That bastard actually did it."

  Indra said nothing.

  Darcy sighed. "Guess you know then, or think you know."

  Indra nodded, but thought: Not really. Just a couple of wild theories…

  "Atticus, Atticus…" She flicked the tip of her cigarette into the tray. "I never thought he had any real talent, you know. Just a smooth talker. A con-man. Playing for serious stakes."

  "Tell me," Indra urged.

  “The circles he ran in. The articles he published, the ads he put out. Lots of people came to him. Usually of a certain type."

  "Wealthy?"

  "Stinkin' rich, more like it. And everything that involves. Usually huge-ass egos. And my Atticus, he was like those fake séance people, he knew how to tell folks what they wanted to hear. Hell, that's how he got me to marry him, wasn't it? Naïve little tramp that I was."

  "His clients… he would regress them back—"

  "—to a past life. All that hypnosis shit." Darcy rolled her eyes and took another drag. "But like I said, I didn't figure he was anything but a showman at heart, despite the medical degrees and all those books. All a big game to him. He knew how to get to people, get inside their heads and stroke their egos." She laughed and then coughed out a cloud of smoke. "All those rich clients, paying ungodly sums? You can bet he told each of 'em they were something special in the past – a prince or a philosopher, or a general or some shit like that. Oh, and what little talent he had, he wasn't above snooping around in their minds for some dirt, some blackmail material to beef up his usual fees."

  Indra's heart was racing. They were getting off track, and he had to steer her back without giving away his ignorance. "The Six…"

  Dropping ash on the floor, she carried on as if she hadn't heard him. "Atticus had no talent. None. Leastways, until Egypt."

  "Egypt?" Indra's ears perked up.

  "Yeah, that six-month sabbatical he took in ‘68. Gave me a nice little vacation from him too, mind you. Although most times he wasn't around anyway, always holed up in that dank room in the institute's basement. Had me some affairs behind his back, and the old goat never even noticed. Ha!"

  "Okay, Mrs… Darcy. We were in Egypt?"

  "He was, yeah. Went on a tour with some of his occult study buddies. Whack-jobs all of 'em. Rich old men afraid of death, wantin' to take all their gold with 'em and leave nothin' for their families. They forgot that their lineage was supposed to be the only immortality any of us get." She frowned at the dying cigarette, put it out and reached for another.

  "So, dear old Atticus had this theory. He'd been reading about the pyramids and the pharaohs for years, obsessing about it, even hiring a tutor from the University to teach him how to read hieroglyphics."

  Indra swallowed. Something in his vision darkened and a gloom settled about the room, almost muffling her voice.

  She went on: "So he and his batty friends took off, gone for half a year. He had me run the place in his absence, and I brought Gabe along too; thank God he didn't share his daddy's problems. Good thing too, my boy and I, we knew enough to carry on when Atticus was out of the picture."

  She breathed in, coughed, and continued. "So when he got back, I asked Atticus: why Egypt? What the hell was he doing when he had patients to help, a clinic to run, and a wife and a young son who idolized him."

  "And he said?"

  "Well, that's what it comes down to, don't it? He spouted out some crazy theory that I promptly filed in the same mental cabinet where I shoved all his other nutty beliefs. The ones that eventually got him censured and ridiculed." She blew out a perfect smoke ring, and then sat back, admiring it. "You know about them pharaohs, right?"

  "What about them?"

  "How they built those obscenely big pyramids? Built 'em as tombs, right?"

  "That's what they say."

  Darcy shook her head. "Ain't what Atticus said. In fact, after reading up on some ancient writings, some Book of Death or something-"

  "The Books of the Dead?"

  "Whatever. Atticus had himself the bright idea that the pyramids were actually supposed to be more like safe deposit boxes. Like in a bank vault. All that loot locked away behind nasty booby traps that'd kill anyone who didn't know where they were – who didn't have the key, in a sense."

  "But," Indra said, "the Egyptians believed the treasure inside was for the Pharaoh, for when he came back to life. He—"

  "Nah, that's bunk. Think about it. He'd be trapped in a pyramid under the sands with the skeletons of his former aids, concubines and dead cats – and yes, a shitload of treasure – but he would have no way to escape and spend it."

  "I never said it made sense," Indra responded. "It was supposed to be symbolic."

  "Atticus thought the opposite. According to his theory, he thought the pharaohs did it for practical reasons."

  "Tell me," Indra said. "Although I think I've guessed."

  "Then save me the time," Darcy said.

  "Okay." Indra let his fingers, still numb, traced the cool edges of his wheelchair's handles. "Atticus thought that the Pharaoh believed he would be coming back for that treasure." He licked his lips. "Coming back..."

  Darcy smiled. "Coming back through the goddamned front door." She raised her cigarette in a salute. "You get it? The old rotting mummy was nothing, a red herring I guess you'd say, never meant to be any kind of resurrection vessel. All that preparation for the afterlife – all bunk. I'm guessing only a select few knew the truth, had the real answers. Only they knew what the Pharaoh did. What they all tried to do.”

  "Find a way to come back."

  "To be immortal. Here on Earth." Darcy grinned. "Atticus even figured that some of the tomb raiders, the looters who came centuries later and seemed to know where the look, knew how to get in and rob everything? They knew because they weren't simple thieves."

  "They were the pharaohs."

  "Coming back to get their stuff."

  "What about Tut?" Indra asked. "And the others whose tombs were never robbed?"

  "Too young when they died? Or they didn't learn how to trans-whatever their souls, how to preserve their inner selves, reawaken their memories or whatever, in the next life. I always wondered about reincarnation. What if they came back as a stinkbug or something, and had to work their way back up to a human, what then?"

  "It does not work that way," Indra said. "I believe you can suffer karmic setbacks, but once in an advanced life-form, you do not regress."

  She shrugged and then lit another cigarette, forgetting that she already had one in her mouth. "Goddamned Atticus and his 'Grand Experiment.'"

  "The Six," Indra whispered. "They were pa
rt of this… Grand Experiment?"

  She narrowed her eyes at him. "Just how much do you know, then? Or are you just fishin'?"

  He smiled at her, hoping their relationship had progressed beyond suspicion and into the realm of trust. "I confess, ma'am. Not enough."

  "You're one of 'em, though? One of the Six?"

  "I believe so."

  "Can you see my face?"

  Indra shook his head.

  "Ah…" She put out the first cigarette, then the second, absent-mindedly. The windows shook and the cold seemed to press right through, reaching for them.

  "Please, Darcy. We're running out of time. Can you tell me what you know? What did he do?"

  She sighed. "I don't know it all, ‘cause he was never one for sharing, but after Atticus drank down his cyanide-and-tonic cocktail, I was the one to deal with the shitstorm he left behind. I set poor Gabe, only seventeen at the time but with a good head on his shoulders, to working with the staff while I tried to hide my late husband's… I don't know what you call 'em – embarrassments. Stuff we'd all rather no one found out about. The past-life regressions, the blackmail, the wild theories on Egyptian mysticism."

  "The Grand Experiment."

  Darcy let out a laugh. "Yeah, that. I found a few notebooks, a journal or two Atticus had forgotten about, hadn't hidden away in his vault." She took a raspy breath, and coughed. "1976… You poor six bastards. One of you even a little boy. Atticus wanted people with birthmarks because, at least according to some of the research, birthmarks often stayed, life to life, in the same spot."

  Indra nodded. "So by searching for those with such marks, what did he hope to achieve? A confirmation of the theory of reincarnation?"

  "Yep. The most important test ever, he thought, according to his notes. The Grand Experiment."

  "But how? Of all the people born in the world… what was he going to do, go around checking everyone with a birthmark? The logistics of such an empirical test, such a scenario – it would be…" He stopped, suddenly feeling like someone had just swung a sack of bricks at his head. Stupid. So obvious.