He continued listening to the unfamiliar footsteps, tilting his head slightly to one side and then the other. He guessed this stranger was about twenty-five, the average age of medical residents when they started working at Harmony House. Most were slightly younger than Eddie, which sometimes made him think that he should be their doctor and not the other way around. The fact was just another on the long list of things Eddie wished he understood, but doubted he ever would. Like all other things, he kept a list of these bits of unattainable knowledge. It was Eddie’s Book of Questions and was housed in binder #1000. He had chosen that number when he’d calculated that if he lived an incredibly long time, he might need all numbers through 999 for his other areas of interest, but one thousand seemed safe enough. And it was such a nice number, being ten cubed and all.
Her footsteps moved briskly along the cold linoleum floor. Not like she was in a hurry, but more like she was excited. Happy. Like she couldn’t wait to tell somebody something. Eddie knew that feeling. Had it his whole life. This feeling like he was on the verge of something so special, so great, so amazing that he would be happy forever and ever. At least, that’s how he had tried to describe it. But to hear Eddie talk about his emotions left most people with the sense that he had no idea what he was talking about. Like he was just guessing. Or parroting. Which couldn’t have been further from the truth. Eddie, like most with Asperger profiles, experienced a complete range of feelings, but had considerable difficulty identifying or discussing them. He didn’t know how to show his emotions—at least, not like those in the neurological mainstream. The “normals,” as many thought of themselves. The sixty-seven out of sixty-eight people, on average, who were off the spectrum, and who defined the standard practices for interpersonal communication, which often didn’t leave room for those who struggled to express what they were feeling. If only there were an emotional Google Translate app for those living with autism. Perhaps one day someone would invent such an app—someone on the high-functioning end of the spectrum, diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. One of the group that Hans Asperger first labeled in 1944 as “little professors.”
But until that day, Eddie would have to memorize the appropriate responses to specific situations. He spent hundreds of hours practicing in front of the mirror, making a sad face when told something sad, a concerned face when told something worthy of concern, when, in fact, he felt nothing at all. So, as Eddie sat on his Batman sheets in room 237, listening to the world around him, he made a mental note that, should he ever encounter this woman stranger, he would ask her to describe what she was feeling so that he would be able to repeat it one day and sound like he knew what he was talking about.
CHAPTER 3
Parking Lot, Harmony House, May 19, 4:16 p.m.
Skylar exited the facility, moving briskly across the lot to the visitor’s space where her 2009 Honda Accord with Virginia plates was parked. As Skylar got into the driver’s seat, she had no idea that a pair of high-powered binoculars was trained on her. The person looking at her had a steady hand. After sixteen years of surveilling people, he should. Michael Barnes was adept at all the requisite skills involved. Wiretapping. Records retrieval. Breaking and entering. He would have made an excellent criminal if he hadn’t gone to work for the government.
His hands were massive and weathered. Well-used instruments of strength and lethal destruction that were also capable of surprising precision. Barnes watched Skylar closely as she called somebody from inside her parked Honda. He glanced at the laptop sitting in the passenger’s seat next to him to see the number she was dialing: 212 area code, New York City. The number belonged to Jacob Hendrix. Her boyfriend.
In the three months Barnes had been keeping tabs on her, which coincided with Dr. Fenton’s decision to consider her a serious candidate for a Harmony House position, Barnes had learned significantly more about her relationship with Hendrix than anyone outside the two of them had a right to know. Among the surveillance expert’s key takeaways was how rarely Skylar let her guard down. She deftly managed to keep her lover at a safe emotional distance. Barnes chalked it up to her ambition. She was married to her career. Anyone involved with her would never be more than a mistress. In his generation, this was something only men did. Now, of course, it was a whole different deal. Which fascinated Barnes. In fact, he’d privately started to think of Skylar as the most beautiful man he’d ever met.
When Skylar had moved into Jacob’s apartment two weeks ago, Barnes had wired the apartment within hours, but he still hadn’t found the opportunity to install the transmitter that would allow him to listen to the apartment remotely. For the moment, he would have to be in immediate proximity to the building, which was just fine with Barnes. He preferred to familiarize himself with a location in person before retreating to his sanctuary in the bowels of Harmony House, if time and circumstances allowed. And in this case, they did.
Jacob answered his mobile phone; Barnes listened through his laptop. “How’d it go?” the young professor asked expectantly. The reception on his cell phone was sketchy, which always seemed to be the case whenever he was on the NYU campus. It made Barnes wonder if the government might be running something out of one of NYU’s departments. Most every major university had at least one covert operation stationed on its campus. Some had over a dozen. Institutions of higher learning made perfect covers, and operations could run for years without ever drawing attention to themselves. Except from someone like Michael Barnes.
The reception on NYU’s campus was as bad as the immediate areas around federal buildings, and those were bad because the government liked it that way. They’d have kept us miles away if they could, but even the government had to live with certain constraints.
At least, that’s what they wanted us to believe.
“I guess some things aren’t meant to be.” Skylar exhaled with feigned and exaggerated disappointment.
Listening from inside his vehicle, Barnes couldn’t help but smile. The girl did have a way. No wonder the old man was so smitten with her. Barnes sharpened the focus of his binoculars onto the back of her dirty-blonde head ninety-seven feet away. He could hear her breathing.
“I’m sorry. I know how badly you wanted this.” Jacob’s voice was compassionate. “You still in Woodbury?”
“Yeah.” Her voice wavered ever so slightly. She was having trouble containing her excitement. “I guess I’m going to have to get used to it . . .”
He paused. The man was no dummy. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
She held it for as long as she could. “I did it! I got the job!”
“Congratulations! You deserve it.” He paused, genuinely thrilled. “Hurry up and get back to the city so we can go out and celebrate.”
“I have no intention of going out the entire weekend.”
Barnes watched her turn left out of the parking lot, not through the windows, but on his laptop. A transmitter affixed to her right rear wheel well tracked her location. It was a redundant system in the unlikely event that the GPS transmitter in her phone went down. The wheel-well transmitter was also more accurate. The phone could only pinpoint her location to within five yards, while the other was accurate to within five inches. Barnes would concede that it was overkill, but also saw nothing wrong with that.
Before starting his engine to follow her into Manhattan, Barnes sent the recording of the phone conversation to Fenton. Nothing in the conversation would concern him. Shrinks were given greater latitude than most others he typically surveilled, which was part of the reason Michael Barnes had enjoyed his employment at Harmony House for the last fourteen years. It seemed more forgiving.
Until he was asked to kill someone.
CHAPTER 4
Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, May 19, 4:17 p.m.
Jacob Hendrix clicked off his cell phone inside his small, cramped office. At thirty-six, he was the youngest tenured professor in NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He’d been offered similar positions at Northwestern, UCLA, Stanford, and Duke even before he’d gotten his doctorate from Harvard. It seemed inevitable that one day, these institutions would have to create a formal draft for these hotshot young professors, just like the ones used by professional sports. Maybe CNBC or PBS would cover it.