She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,123

drank the rest in three long swallows, then he set the empty one down on the table. “Done.”

“I’m gonna need that coffee you promised, too.”

“There’s a fresh pot in the corner over there. I don’t lie about coffee.”

Fogel glanced around the room again, then sat at the table. “Okay, tell me what I don’t know. Let’s start there.”

Log 08/12/1993—

Subject “D” within expected parameters.

Audio/video recording.

“He’s just sitting there,” Carl said. “Staring at the wall.”

“Maybe he’s meditating.”

“He looks like he’s waiting for something.”

“I can’t imagine what,” Warren replied.

“Did the doctor see him today?”

“He had many visitors today.”

“Who?”

Warren didn’t reply.

“Did the doc meet with him today?”

“She meets with him every day. They have a lot to discuss.”

“What did they talk about?”

“I dunno. I didn’t listen.”

“You’re supposed to listen. That’s the job.”

Warren pressed the microphone button. “David, what did you discuss with Doctor Durgin today?”

Thirty seconds elapsed, then: “The future, mostly. We talked about Carl, too. We talked about Carl a lot. Carl, Carl, Carl. What to do with Carl.”

Carl frowned. “Why are you calling him ‘David’ rather than his designation?”

“His designation?”

“Subject ‘D.’”

“Because that sounds cold. He doesn’t like it.”

“Who gives a shit what he likes?” Carl picked up a pen and nervously began twirling it between his fingers. “Everybody in this place is acting fucking weird.”

“Weird how?”

“Just weird. I ate lunch in the cafeteria earlier, and nobody was talking.”

“Maybe they have nothing to talk about.”

“There were at least twenty people. Nobody said a word.”

“I like silence,” Warren replied.

The pen spun faster between Carl’s fingers. His eyes landed on something, small and white, sitting on the far corner of the console. “What is that?”

“Doctor Durgin’s hearing aid.”

The pen went still in Carl’s hand. “She’s deaf. Why would she have a hearing aid?”

“Not completely deaf,” Warren said.

“What do you mean? Isn’t that why she got the job?”

“She had meningitis when she was a child. She lost more than 99 percent of her auditory range, really everything but the deepest of base frequencies. Technology is always advancing, though, making strides. What was once considered impossible is commonplace.” Warren smiled. “I wanted to be a scientist when I was a kid, but I didn’t have the grades. That’s why I took the job here. I figured I could at least be around it, be a part of something bigger. You should talk to the doctor about her life’s journey. She is really a remarkable woman.”

Carl had gone pale. “She takes the hearing aid out when she goes in there, though, right? That’s why it’s sitting here? She forgot it?”

Warren said, “She wanted to hear his voice. Just the one time. That’s what she said. He has a beautiful voice. David Pickford is a beautiful man.”

Subject “D” stood and approached the opposite side of the observation window.

Carl jammed his finger onto the microphone button. “Step back from the window!”

“That’s a nice pen, Carl.”

“How can he see us? That is one-way glass.”

Warren tilted his head toward the ceiling, closed his own eyes. “He said when the fluorescents are on, when it’s bright, the glass doesn’t work so good.”

“Get back from the window!”

Subject “D” smiled broadly. “Hey, Carl, I bet if you shoved that pen into your eye, good and hard, you could reach your brain.”

“Get the fuck back!”

“Carl, go ahead and do that for me. Bury that pen to the hilt in your eye.”

Carl did.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Carl gripped the pen firmly in his right hand and rammed it into his eye socket. His remaining eye went wide with surprise.

It was then he spotted Warren’s hand still resting on the little red switch next to the recorder and speaker system, the one that enabled the thirty-second delay on all the kid said and did. The switch, normally covered in tape beneath a note that read DO NOT DISABLE in large block letters, was in the OFF position.

Two things happened in that very instant—Carl dove for the switch, and David told him not to touch it.

—Charter Observation Team – 309

5

I attended the funeral for Detective Faustino Brier, but I did so from a distance, standing on the top of the same hill where he had stood for Auntie Jo’s funeral what seemed a lifetime ago.

He drew a big crowd.

There was a twenty-one gun salute at the end.

His body was laid to rest about three hundred feet east of my parents and Jo.

Detective Fogel was there. She didn’t see me.

The sun was bright that day, damn near too bright. It felt like someone took a chisel to my eyes. That