“That he killed his parents after they learned the truth about him. Same thing with his doctor at the hospital. He couldn’t risk exposure. And you owe me a dollar now.”
“The boy said it was these cyborgs who killed his parents, them and some kind of holographic figure.”
“You’ve been out in the sun for too long, Professor. I believe your brain may be roasting.”
“How many men have you got?”
“With me?”
“In total.”
“Plenty,” Marsh said, thinking of the special-ops veterans Rathman was bringing in to rendezvous here in the San Francisco area.
“You better hope so, because if I’m right you’re going to need every one of them.”
“What I need is to find this boy.”
With that, Marsh flashed a nod to Rathman, who moved closer to the seated Wilder, swallowing the old, bearded man in his shadow.
“Tell me how I can find the boy, Professor.”
“That’s not a question.”
“No, it’s an order.”
“You aren’t listening to what I’ve been saying.”
“Because you haven’t been saying what I need to hear.”
“Which is?”
“How I can catch him once and for all.”
“You might start with the girl who was with him,” Wilder said, after stealing a glance up at the looming Rathman.
“Tell me more about her,” Rathman said.
89
SKETCHBOOK
NIGHT HAD JUST FALLEN when Alex made his way across the adjoining properties into the backyard of his family’s bungalow, his home. He tried not to think of it that way, since this wasn’t really his home anymore and never would be again; all the crime scene tape and the police cruiser parked outside to keep the curious away was more than enough evidence of that. Raiff had parked down the block, out of sight of the house on the chance either the men he called Trackers or more of the ash man’s androids were waiting and watching, his last words weighing heavy on Alex’s mind.
*
“There’s something else you need to know, Alex,” Raiff told him, before he climbed out of the car. “They think it was you.”
“Think what was me?”
“They think you killed your parents and probably your doctor too. That’s the theory they’re proceeding on.”
“Nice of you to mention that,” Alex said, rolling his eyes.
“I didn’t want to say anything in front of your friend.”
“Sam. And she’s more than a friend.”
“You mean…”
“No, not like that. I mean in spite of everything, she stayed with me. She didn’t run. Truth is, Raiff, I don’t know what I would’ve done without her, especially last night.”
“All the more reason she doesn’t need to hear you’re a suspect, on top of everything else.”
“Guess that makes me a fugitive too,” Alex said, and finally reached for the latch.
*
There was no one watching the rear of the property, and his parents always kept a spare key inside a fake rock mixed into his mother’s flower garden. Her roses seemed to droop, looking almost sad. Alex wondered if it was possible for plants to have some degree of consciousness and awareness of their surroundings. Not here, probably, but who knew on the other planets both like Earth and advanced far beyond it.
Under cover of darkness, Alex used the key to unlock the back door and enter the house where his parents had been murdered twenty-fours earlier. He expected it to smell stale and musty, even faintly of death. Instead, though, the only scents that lingered were from the last meals his mother had cooked. The thought tightened his chest and thickened his throat, making it hard to breathe.
Focus!
That was easy to do on the football field, where moments unfolded quickly and melded into the next. But inside the house in which he’d grown up, everything slowed and lingered. Time seemed to have frozen in the moments before his parents were attacked, beaten by the drone things that had come for him.
Alex padded through the house and up the stairs, careful to avoid looking at the living room, where he’d held his mother’s hand as she took her last breath. It felt stuffy, the air trying to choke him as he sucked it in.
He reached the top of the stairs without remembering the climb, stopping when the vision of himself as a seven-year-old boy trampling across the Oriental runner in his football uniform struck him hard and fast. Alex watched his younger version tossing a football lightly enough to dash under it and snatch the ball from the air. Remembered doing just that for hours, conscious now but not then of the concerned voices of his parents coming through their cracked open bedroom door.
*
“He could be hurt,” his father raised in the cautious tone his voice took on when expressing such concern. “Then what?”
“He’s a boy,” came his mother’s retort. “He deserves a normal life.”
“If he were normal, you mean. But he’s not. And we are fooling ourselves to think otherwise. You knew that when you took him, when you brought him home.”
“I knew nothing until we took him to Dr. Chu.” His mother’s voice hesitated here. “Why do you look at me like that? What is it you’re not saying?”
“Dr. Chu is gone.”