Дэвид Балдаччи - The Sixth Man

He sensed the presence near his cell door. He didn’t look. He smelled the air. Edgar Roy didn’t simply have a nearly unique level of intellectual ability. He had senses heightened to an astonishing degree. It was all a case of special hardwiring in his brain.

It wasn’t a guard. He had processed and organized the smells and sounds of all the guards. There were a few support personnel who were allowed in the cell area, but it was none of them either. He had smelled this person before. He had also logged in his rhythm of breathing and his singular way of walking.

It was Agent Murdock of the FBI.

“Hello, Edgar,” he said.

Roy remained on his bed, even as he heard another man approach. A guard this time. It was the short one: wide hips, burly chest, thick neck. Name tag said Tarkington. He smoked and drank. Roy didn’t need heightened senses to know that. Too may breath mints, far too much mouthwash.

The electronically controlled door slid back. Footsteps.

Murdock said, “Look at me, Edgar. I know you can if you want to.”

Roy remained where he was. He closed his eyes and let the darkness in his head settle him into a place this man could not reach. Another sound. The rub of shoe soles on cement. Murdock’s bottom settled into the chair bolted to the floor.

“Okay, Edgar. You don’t have to look at me. I’ll talk and you listen.”

Murdock paused and then when he heard the next sound, Roy realized why. The guard walked away. Murdock wanted privacy. Then there was a nearly imperceptible cessation of powered machinery. Roy knew what it was. The video camera built into the wall had just been turned off. He expected the audio feed had as well.

Murdock said, “We can finally have a private conversation. I think it’s time.”

Roy didn’t move. He kept his eyes closed, forcing himself to sink into memories. His parents were fighting. They often did. For university professors existing in worlds of genteel theoretical tinkering they were unusually combative. And his father drank. And when he was in the bottle he was no longer genteel.

His next image was of his sister coming into the room. Already tall and strong, she had gotten between the two and separated them, forcing them into at least a temporary truce. Then she had picked Roy up and taken him to his room. Read books to him. Soothed him, because his parents fighting like that had always terrified him. His sister had understood his predicament. She knew what he was enduring, both in the outside world and, more subtly, within the complex confines of his mind.

“Edgar. We really need to end this,” said Murdock in a low, comforting tone. “Time is running out. I know it. You know it.”

Roy moved up to age five in his chronology. His birthday. No guests – his parents didn’t do such things. His sister, now sixteen, had already grown to her full height. She towered over her stepfather.

Roy was already five feet tall and weighed over a hundred pounds. Some mornings he would lie in bed and could actually feel his bones, tendons, and ligaments lengthening.

There was a small cake, five candles, and another argument. This one had turned violent, with a kitchen knife involved. His mother had been cut. And then Roy had watched in amazement as his sister had disarmed her stepfather, placed him in a hammerlock, and forced him out of the house. She had wanted to call the police, but their mother had begged her not to do it.

Roy tensed a bit as he heard the squeak of feet against the cement. Murdock was on the move. He was standing over him. A subtle prod in the back.

“Edgar, I need your full and undivided attention.”

Roy didn’t move.

“I know that you know Carla Dukes is dead.”

Another jab in the back, harder still.

“We got the slug out. It’s the same gun that killed Tom Bergin. Same killer.”

Age six. His beloved sister was preparing to go off to college. She was a tremendous athlete, basketball, volleyball, and crew. An academic star, she had given the valedictory address at commencement, a feat she would repeat in college. Roy was stunned by her ability, her absolute will to win, no matter the odds against her.

He had waved at her from the door of the old farmhouse as she put her things away in the car she’d bought with her own money working odd jobs. She had come back and hugged him. He had taken in her scent, a smell he could conjure up perfectly right this minute lying in his prison cell.

“Kel,” he had said. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll be back, Eddie. A lot,” she had told him. Then she had given him something. He had held it in his hand. It was a piece of metal on a chain.

She had said, “That’s the medal of Saint Michael, the Archangel.”

Roy had repeated this back to her, something he unconsciously did whenever someone gave him new information. It always made her smile. But this time she didn’t. Her look remained serious.

“He’s the protector of children. He is the leader of good versus evil, Eddie. In Hebrew Michael means ‘Who is like God?’ And the answer to that is no one is like God. Saint Michael represents humility in the face of God. Okay?”

He had repeated this back to her word for word, including her inflections. “Okay.”

“He is an archangel. He is the supreme enemy of Satan and of all fallen angels.”

She had said this last part while looking directly at her stepfather, who had glanced the other way, his face reddening.

Then she was gone.

A half hour passed and there was another argument and Roy had been at the center of it. It began with a slap. His father was drunk. The next blow was harder, knocking him out of his chair. His mother had tried to intervene, but this time his father would not be denied. She finally fell unconscious to the floor under his battering.

His father had turned to him, made him pull down his pants. Six-year-old Eddie was crying. He didn’t want to do this, but he did because he was terrified. His trousers fell to the floor of the kitchen. His father’s voice was low, soft, a singsong tone in his inebriated stupor. Roy had felt the man’s hands on his privates. Smelled the alcohol on his cheek. The man – Roy could no longer refer to him as his father – pressed against him.

Then he had been ripped backward off his son. There was a crash. Roy had pulled his pants back up and turned. He was knocked head over heels against the wall as the two struggled and slammed into him. His sister had come back. She was fighting her stepfather with the ferocity of a lioness. They crashed around the room. She was taller, younger, the same weight as her opponent, but he was still a man. He fought hard. She hit him in the face with her fist. He rose back up and she kicked him in the stomach. He went back down but the alcohol and the fury at having been discovered doing vile things to his son seemed to energize him. He grabbed a knife off the kitchen counter, rushed at her. She pivoted.

With all his prodigious mental skills, this was the one memory Roy had never been able to draw on at will.

She pivoted.

That was all he could recall about those few seconds of his life. Age six.

She pivoted.

And then it was a blank. The only memory gap he had ever had in his life.

When the blank ended his father was lying on the floor, blood dripping from his chest. The knife stuck out from his body; his sister standing over the man and breathing hard. Roy had never seen anyone die until that moment. His father gave a little gurgle, his body stiffened and then relaxed, and his eyes grew completely still. They seemed to be staring solely at him.

She had rushed to hold him, make sure he was okay. He had rubbed the medal, the medal of Saint Michael that was around his neck.

Saint Michael, the protector of children. Satan’s nightmare. The soul of redemption.