The Eighth Day

Chapter 26

Shawn Jaffe sat in a thick, upholstered armchair beneath the dim glow of a shaded floor lamp. He steeled himself for another vision, another blackout, but another didn't come. They seemed to have stopped. For now.

The small hotel room was dominated by an unmade bed. On the far side, a short hallway ended at a wooden door, and a curtained window stretched the length of the wall next to him. Beneath the window, an air conditioner banged and rattled.

He leaned his head back, sighed, and rubbed at his eyes, trying to make sense of it all. Two competing sets of memories, one of a life that had led him to New York, and another that had led him to Amarillo. And now this, visions of a war in a foreign land that had happened over fifty years before he'd come kicking and screaming into the world.

Someone had done this to him. They had done this to him.

False memories. It was the only explanation that made sense. At first, he'd thought of the split as a crossroads, but that wasn't quite right. It wasn't different paths but different layers, all stacked on top of each other, as if he'd been reprogrammed and reused, his hard drive overwritten but not erased.

Amarillo was the clearest because it was the most recent. Before that had been New York, which came through in bits and pieces. Were other layers of memories hidden beneath, like fossils waiting to be uncovered?

And why did he have memories of Vietnam? Were they the first of the false memories, implanted as practice, a kind of dry run? Or maybe his memories had been overwritten so many times he couldn't distinguish fact from fiction, and he was mistaking movies he'd seen and books he'd read for experiences he'd lived. It was like Apocalypse Now, starring Shawn Jaffe as Captain Benjamin L. Willard.

It was even possible his memories of Vietnam were real, and he was some kind of time traveler, a character straight out of a Philip K. Dick novel, manipulating events and history to suit the whims of his puppet masters. Crazy, yeah. But so far, crazy had been behind every door he'd opened.

The blare of a siren ripped Shawn from his thoughts. Strobes of color shone through the drapery. He pushed himself to his feet and brushed the hanging fabric aside to peer through the window.

They were here.

Men in black suits carrying automatic rifles stood alongside a line of black cars parked next to the hotel. A police cruiser had slewed to a stop at a severe angle behind them, and two officers squared off on its far side, using it for cover as they leveled their pistols at the other men.

Shawn let the drapes fall closed and stumbled backward. They'd found him. He'd ditched his phone, his truck, the Tesla, and left the compact at a charging station across the street, yet somehow they'd still found him.

From outside the window, someone yelled, "Drop your weapons and put your hands on your head!"

"We're FBI!"

"Stop right there! Lower your weapons! I said lower your weapons, goddamn it!"

Shawn spun away from the window and raced toward the door, twisted the handle, yanked it open. It caught on something with a violent, metallic crack. He'd left the swing bar lock engaged. He slammed the door shut, slapped the swing bar aside, and wrenched the door open again.

The hallway beyond was empty. He stole along it and slipped down a side corridor across from his room. It led to a glass door that opened on the other side of the hotel. He cupped his hands around his face and pressed his forehead to the glass. Silent cars with dark interiors lined the parking lot in neat rows. He prayed no one lurked in the shadows, pushed his way outside, and dashed away from the hotel, waiting for cries of alarm and sounds of pursuit to follow. But none did.

A row of pine trees stood sentry at the edge of the parking lot. He shrouded himself in their umbrage and wove between their trunks as he slunk toward the road. The night wind stirred through the boughs above but carried neither shouted voices nor gunshots from the other side of the hotel—a foreshadowing of differences settled between the cops and the FBI. Soon they'd burst into his room and find him gone. And then they'd come for him. His time was running out.

The row of pines ended at the edge of the street. Lights from a passing vehicle pierced the twilight and sped by. He waited for it to fade into the distance before he burst from cover and raced across the empty stretch of road to the charging station where he'd parked the compact. The slap of his boot heels echoed off the asphalt.

He entered the halo of light surrounding the charging station and skidded to a stop, eyes wide and wild, thinking the scene at the hotel had been a ploy to lure him here all along, where the real trap waited. The monotone hum of the charging terminals took on a malevolent pitch, and an ominous, electric charge filled the air.

The compact waited with indifferent patience in the shadows. He approached it with slow, cautious steps, body tensed for flight. But no one came for him. He was right. They hadn't tracked the compact. They'd tracked him. They'd planted a tracking device in his boot or his clothes or his skin.

He opened the door of the car, slid behind the wheel, and pulled the door shut with a vault-like thunk. No one followed as he pulled out of the charging station and sped down the road and onto the entrance ramp for I-70 East. In the rearview mirror, the lights of Effingham faded into the darkness.

Both the police and the FBI had tracked him to the hotel. But some bureaucratic or inter-agency snafu had left them locking horns with each other. Otherwise, he'd either be in cuffs or staring at the inside of a body bag by now.

Yet the whole thing struck him as off. His wife, her buddies from the barn, and the men who'd driven the Tesla—they all shot first and skipped the questions. Not the modus operandi of legit law enforcement. Throw in a handful of supposed FBI agents wearing suits and armed with automatic rifles and something didn't add up.

Shawn removed his wedding band and held it between his thumb and forefinger. They'd picked it out together, Victoria on his arm with her head against his shoulder. They'd shuffled along and peered into the jewelry store's glass display cases. Her hair had smelled of apple blossoms. He rolled down his window and flicked his wrist, and the wedding band disappeared into the rush of night. It was the one thing he wore every day. If they'd planted a tracking device on him, it was the prime suspect.

Nevertheless, when he saw signs for a Madison York department store in Indianapolis several hours later, he stopped and bought new clothes—sneakers, jeans, T-shirt, even underwear and a pair of socks. He changed in the in-store dressing room, stuffed his old clothes into the wastebasket, and wiped his hands together in a gesture of absolution. If they found him now, it meant the tracking device had been inside him all along, and if he failed to get it out, he was a dead man.

He prayed it wouldn't come to that.