“I still don’t understand why you say that.”
“Am I real? Right here? Right now?”
“Of course.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because you’re behind the wheel and I’m not. We wouldn’t be going anywhere if you weren’t really here, if you weren’t really driving the car.”
“But isn’t it possible that you’re still back in the hospital and you’re imagining this, or dreaming it, or that it’s all a blur?”
Daniel narrowed his eyes at Mr. Zacharias. “I never told you what I call them.”
“What?”
“My visions, hallucinations, whatever. How do you know I call them blurs?”
“Research.”
“Research.”
“Yes. And for right now we’ll have to leave it at that.”
“And what about Nicole? How did she find out I was at the hospital?”
“I sent her a text.”
“So she knows who you are?”
“It was sent anonymously.”
There was an awful lot of that going around this week.
“Have you been sending me texts too? Signing them ‘Madeline’?”
“No.” He shook his head. “That wasn’t me. You’re going to need a place to stay tonight.”
“What about you?”
“I’m set, but I need to take care of a few things. We have to find somewhere for you where you’ll be safe.”
At first Daniel thought that maybe staying at his own house would work, but then he realized that it would probably be one of the first places the cops would look for him when they found out he was missing from the mental hospital.
His two best options were Nicole’s place or Kyle’s house. Nicole had both parents at home, but at Kyle’s there was just one parent to worry about.
“Let me use your phone,” Daniel said. “I need to make a call.”
PART V
GASOLINE
MONDAY, DECEMBER 24
CHRISTMAS EVE
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
12:02 A.M.
Kyle answered right away and, after Daniel filled him in on what’d happened, said, “So, someone from a secret, shadowy organization was sent to help you escape from a mental institute and now wants to protect you because he’s interested in your psychic crime-solving abilities?”
“Well, when you put it that way . . .”
“Bro, do you realize how crazy that sounds?”
“Let’s avoid that term for now.”
“Which one?”
“Crazy.”
“I’m just saying—”
“I know, but trust me on this. We need to find my dad and the cops think I had something to do with his disappearance. If they catch me, they’ll take me in—especially now that I snuck out of that psych ward. I need somewhere to stay tonight. Can I crash at your place?”
“Sure, no problem.” It sounded like Kyle was shuffling his phone around, then he got back on the line and said, “Does this spy, or cop, or whoever it is, need a place to stay too?”
“He’s real, Kyle.”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t.” But Daniel caught more than a hint of disbelief in his friend’s voice.
“Here, I’ll let you talk to him.”
Daniel passed the phone over.
“My name is Malcolm Zacharias and Daniel is telling the truth. I’m here and I’m quite real; I can assure you of that.” He gave the cell back to Daniel.
“Convinced?” Daniel asked Kyle.
He was slow in responding. “So it’ll just be you?”
“Yes.”
“How are you going to get over here?”
“Mr. Zacharias will drop me off.”
“Well, um . . . Tell him to park down the street so Mom and Michelle don’t wake up. I’ll meet you at the front door.”
THE TRAYBOR INSTITUTE
6 MILES EAST OF BELDON, WISCONSIN
In order to maintain the illusion that the facility was engaged in fish management studies, there were four large fish hatchery tanks for trout and walleye in the main section of the building.
However, the real research went on underground, in the rooms that did not appear on the blueprints.
Though in his midsixties, Dr. Waxford was not at all interested in retirement. He briskly entered the break room and, without putting any money into the snack machine, punched in D134 on the keypad and then took a step backward.
Instead of offering him a Snickers bar, the machine unhinged from the wall and swung forward automatically, revealing a set of stainless steel elevator doors behind it.
He leaned close to the retinal scanner beside them and after it positively identified him, the doors slid open and he stepped onto the elevator.
While the vending machine tracked back into place, he punched L3 in the elevator, then the doors closed and he began to descend.
As he passed the two subbasements L1 and L2, he thought of the importance of the work they were doing here.
Justice.
It was all in the name of justice.
Twenty-four years ago his younger brother had been murdered by a psychopathic killer who was responsible for the deaths of eight other people. He was sentenced to four hundred and fifty years in prison.
When he made his statement to the judge during the trial, he had mocked the pain of the victims and their families, claiming that he would never suffer as much as they had.
The man was fifty-two years old and a heavy smoker when he was caught. He died of lung cancer in prison less than five years later.
He served only one-ninetieth of his sentence.
That’s what had gotten Dr. Waxford involved in this research in the first place.
If the United States of America was going to be a country governed by laws, if it was going to be a place where justice was truly served, then we needed to make certain we did all we could to ensure that the guilty served the sentences they were given.
Or at least that they experienced that many years of punishment.
That’s all he was working toward.
True and lasting justice.
The elevator stopped.
No, of course there wasn’t any way for someone to serve hundreds of years in prison. No one lived that long, at least not yet. Someday, through nanotechnology and bioengineering it might be possible, but that was still a few decades out.
In the meantime, through advances in chronobiology we had the capability to make it seem to someone like he was undergoing hundreds of years of imprisonment, or even solitary confinement, in much less time.
The doors parted.
It wasn’t cruel and unusual punishment; it was simply the punishment that the courts had legally determined was just and fair. If the sentences weren’t fair, why would they be handed down in the first place?
But not everyone was as forward-thinking as Dr. Waxford. And that’s why his research was, for the time being, not open to public scrutiny.
He left the elevator and walked past the operating room.
It had a rolling gurney, medical equipment, computer monitoring feeds, and shelves containing the various instruments he used in his research.
And of course, the arrays of electrodes to stimulate the different parts of his subjects’ brains that processed memory.
He was used to hearing screams come from that room.
He didn’t mind them.
In fact, he’d come to expect them.
All in the name of justice.
Now, however, since no subjects were currently at the facility, the room was silent.
The inmate he’d been administering his treatments to on Saturday had escaped.
Dr. Waxford made his way to the security suite at the far end of the hall.
The four other subjects who’d been brought to the Traybor Institute since it had opened had been transferred to other prisons after the doctor was done with them, some still mentally intact.
Othe
rs, not so much.
He’d worked at two other facilities over the years and had been responsible for some of the major breakthroughs in the field of chronobiology.
That’s what had caused the Department of Defense to take notice of his work.
Concerning the applications of chronobiology, the military had its own goals dealing with enhanced interrogations, but he didn’t ask them about that. They were allowed to have their agenda and he was allowed to have his.
The Defense Department had an undisclosed agency that had been secretly experimenting for years to find ways to alter, implant, or erase people’s memories and since they were helping fund his project, he was able to utilize their findings to augment his research.
Things had come a long way in the last decade.
He entered the institute’s security center so he could review the video footage and try to figure out how inmate #176235 had escaped.
Here’s what he did know: sometime between 4:20 p.m. and 6:25 p.m. on Saturday, the man had made it out of his holding cell on L2 before overpowering two guards and fleeing the property.
It was still unclear how he’d gotten out of that cell and how he’d taken out both guards so easily—and how he’d made it past the dogs outside—but somehow it’d happened and now he needed to be found before he did anything to compromise their research.
It was possible he’d received help once he was out. One of Dr. Waxford’s hunting rifles—his .30-06 Browning Automatic—had been stolen out of his car a month and a half ago and he wondered if that security breach and this one might be related. He didn’t want to write anything off as unrelated.
His staff hadn’t been able to figure out what had happened on Saturday and now, tonight, he hadn’t been able to sleep and had decided to come here himself to try his hand at getting to the bottom of things.
He sat down in front of the bank of computer monitors and pulled up the security footage to ascertain how the inmate had gotten free.
Maybe that would help determine where he was now.
The man was a loose end and he needed to be taken care of, whatever measures that required.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
They arrived at Kyle’s house and Mr. Zacharias parked down the block. “I’ll be in touch with you tomorrow,” he said to Daniel.
“I don’t have a phone.”
“Kyle does. I’ll contact you through his number.”
“And you’re going to help me find my dad?”
“I’ll do everything I can.”
The phrase was nearly the same as the one Dr. Fromke had used when he’d promised Daniel that he was going to do all he could to help him get out of the hospital, so Daniel didn’t find Mr. Zacharias’s words as encouraging as he’d probably intended them to be.
“When are you going to text me, call me, whatever?”
“That’ll depend. I have some things I need to take care of in the morning.”
“We may be at the lighthouse.”
“The lighthouse?”
“Up on Madeline Island. Long story. If you find out anything about my dad, text me right away.”
“I will.”
Daniel exited the car and watched Malcolm Zacharias drive off toward wherever he would be spending the night.
Just as Kyle had said, he was waiting at the front door and Daniel followed him quietly upstairs to his attic bedroom.
“Let me get this straight,” Kyle said when they got there. “The guy we helped out of that snowbank, he’s the one who got you out of the psych ward?”
“That’s right.”
“He’s on our side?”
“He says he is, but honestly I’m not sure what to think. I just know he helped me escape from that hospital and then brought me here. On the way, he told me what they do at the Traybor Institute.”
“Chronobiology research? Like we were thinking?”
“Yeah. It’s to find ways to make prisoners serve their whole sentences, at least in their minds.”
“Right . . . Okay . . . And . . . I don’t even know what that means.”
Daniel recapped what Mr. Zacharias had told him about Dr. Waxford and his research into making people perceive that they’re spending hundreds of years in prison.
“But how’s that justice?” Kyle asked. “Isn’t that more like, well, torture?”
“I guess they would argue that it’s not right for people to only serve part of their sentences.” On the drive Daniel had taken some time to think about the whole deal. “What kind of justice is there in sentencing people to serve time you know they’ll never serve? Just to make a statement? But to who? And don’t you think it’d be a bigger deterrent if people who were about to commit crimes knew they actually would spend that much time experiencing solitary confinement if they were caught?”
“You sound like you believe in this stuff.”
“I don’t really, I just think . . . Well, I can at least see where they’re coming from.”
“And they’re doing this on prisoners from the Derthick State Penitentiary?”
“Yes.”
“How is that even legal?”
“I have no idea, but either way, Mr. Zacharias thinks the man they transferred from there to the Traybor Institute might have escaped and be the one who attacked my dad.”
“What kind of crime landed him in prison in the first place?”
“Hmm . . . I didn’t ask. I probably should have.”
Kyle located a sleeping bag for Daniel and unrolled it on the floor of his bedroom, then went searching for an extra pillow.
You should’ve found out more from Mr. Zacharias about the prisoner—what he was in for, how dangerous he really is.
From past discussions with his dad, Daniel knew that in missing persons investigations the first twenty-four hours are the most important. After that, the odds are definitely not in your favor—at least not the odds of finding the person unharmed.
But Dad isn’t unharmed anyway—remember? Nicole told you the tests proved it was his blood, that there was a lot of it.
Daniel was forced to just admit it: the odds weren’t good for finding his dad alive.
Kyle returned with a pillow and gave him a T-shirt and a pair of shorts to sleep in. Daniel asked him, “Can you get away today?”
“My mom’s spending the day with Glenn, shopping or something, I don’t know. I’m supposed to watch Michelle while she’s gone.”
“Could Mia babysit for you?”
“No, she’s going to Eau Claire with her family.”
“Oh, that’s right . . . What about Nicole? She’s watched Michelle before.”
“I’d need to clear it with Mom, but yeah, that should be okay. Why? What’s up?”
“The lighthouse. We need to go up there like we were planning to do yesterday. Right now that’s where everything’s pointing. It’s tied in with my dad’s disappearance—I don’t know how, but it is. We need to find him and our best chance is by starting up there.”
“What about the Traybor Institute? You think we should check there first?”
Daniel shook his head. “If the person who attacked Dad did escape from there, then why would he go back? Plus, it didn’t sound like Mr. Zacharias was working with them, so I’m not even sure how we would get in.”
But then he decided that Kyle did have a point. “I guess we could anonymously call the police, maybe give them a tip to check out the institute. I mean, it couldn’t hurt. Where’s your phone?”
Although it was the middle of the night, if there was even a chance that his dad was there, the sooner law enforcement could search the place, the better.
Kyle dug through the stuff on his desk and came up with his cell. “But what if they trace the call? They’ll find you, take you back, maybe arrest you.”
“Download that app that disguises the sender’s number.”
Daniel wasn’t sure it would stop a police dispatcher from tracing a call, but it was worth a shot.
br /> Kyle tapped at his phone’s screen, found the app and installed it. “Your dad’s the sheriff. There’s a good chance they’ll recognize your voice at dispatch. Let me make the call.”
He punched in 911, and as soon as the dispatcher picked up, Kyle said in a low, disguised voice, “The Traybor Institute. I think that’s where Sheriff Byers was taken. Search it for him.”
He hung up before the person on the other end could reply. They waited for a few moments just to make sure dispatch didn’t call back. When the phone remained silent, Kyle asked, “What now?”
“We get some sleep.”
“Okay. First thing in the morning I’ll contact Nicole. I know she had some stuff going on, but if she can change her plans and babysit, then I’ll clear things with my mom so I can go with you up to Madeline Island.”
“They think I hurt my dad, maybe even killed him. You can’t tell her that you’re helping me.”
“I’ll think of something.”
“I didn’t stab him, Kyle.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
A slight pause. “I know.”
While he was reviewing the security tapes, Dr. Waxford got a call from the police that they were outside the institute and had an anonymous tip that the missing sheriff might be inside.
“I can guarantee you that no one else is here,” he told him.
“You’re here at the facility now?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we need you to open the gate so we can have a look around.”
He wasn’t excited about the idea, but he was confident they wouldn’t be able to find the research rooms and he didn’t want to arouse their suspicion by arguing with them.
“Alright, I’m coming.”
Who’d given them the tip to look here? His staff? No, that didn’t make sense. Only a handful of people even knew about the true purpose of this place, and none of them would’ve had any good reason to call in the authorities. Then who?
The subject who escaped? Is he doing this to try to get law enforcement poking around?
Possibly.
That might explain things.
Still wondering what’d led them here, Dr. Waxford showed the sheriff’s department deputies around and walked them through the main floor of the building. They studied things carefully but failed to find the elevator. Finally, when they were convinced that nothing suspicious was going on and that the place was clear, they thanked him for his time and left.