Rob Thurman - All Seeing Eye

She went after Boyd with a butcher knife.

He’d called me a liar, her a crazy bitch, then he’d taken the knife away from her and killed her with it. He’d put it through her throat, and she’d bled to death in less than three minutes. Which I knew because it had taken me less than a minute to get Boyd’s shotgun from his bedroom closet and blow his brains out. I’d felt his hot breath panting on my neck, heard him stumble, fall, and then stagger back up as he tried to beat me there to do the same to me. Too late. Sitting in a recliner all day wasn’t good practice for killing an agile teenager. It was only good enough for dying.

With Boyd’s bone, blood, and gray matter splattered on the wall, I held my mom’s hand. She tried to say something, but with that much metal through your throat, no matter how much you want to, you won’t get a word out. I told her it was okay. That we’d all be okay now. Of course, it was a lie, the same one I would’ve told Tess’s body. Nothing was okay. Nothing would be okay again, but you don’t tell dying people the truth. Even at fourteen, I knew that. In my mom’s last moment of existence, I gave her the only thing I could: peace.

A priest and a psychic will tell you the same on your deathbed, but only the psychic will know it’s a lie.

I didn’t want the beer anymore. I handed it to Hector. “Then Charlie and my file would’ve told you why I’m the only psychic who’ll tell you there’s no life after death. Because if there was, that would mean there was a God, and trust me, there’s no God, no matter what your nurse Eden thinks.” No God would’ve stood aside and let Tess and my mom die that way. Car wrecks, cancer, heart attacks, those things I could reconcile with a God, but what had taken place on that blood-soaked screaming night-terror of a day? Never. That couldn’t be justified or explained. It simply couldn’t.

There was no God, no heaven, but hell could be found on your doorstep when you least expected it. I’d lied all those years ago to my mom as she slipped away, and I hoped I’d done it well, but I’d never learned how to lie to myself. It would’ve made life easier if I had.

Hector dropped the beer into the garbage can before sweeping the other empties in. “I hope you’re wrong, and not just for Charlie’s sake. I’d like to think your stepfather has an eternity of hellfire to burn in and a devil inserting a pitchfork up his ass for every second of it.”

The comment actually had the corners of my mouth curling. “Hector Allgood, the man with the unexpected silver lining.”

Hector, who thought I was an honest man. Hector, who I saw as Charlie had seen him… and as I’d seen him over the past two days. Hector, a man in a corner but trying to do the right thing: save what was left of his brother and save innocent lives. Hector, a man who despite a near lifetime of caution had earned my trust when I thought I had none left to give.

A man who deserved the truth.

I said it abruptly, without softening the blow. I knew from personal experience that there was nothing that would make it easier to hear. Easier to live with.

“Charlie was murdered.”

As bombshells went, it wasn’t what I expected. Hector didn’t move other than his eyes narrowing. There was rage there, searing and hot, but pain, too. The kick-in-the-gut kind, an agony that sucked the oxygen from your lungs and the hope from your soul. Then he blinked, and it faded.

“I know.”

It was my turn to blink. “You know?”

“I helped Charlie build the transplanar interface.” At my blank look, he elaborated. “That machine that looks like a giant CAT scanner. It, linked to the cuff, is what initiates the OOB. Bottom line, I’m not the engineer Charlie was, but I was still there every step of the way. I couldn’t make the leaps of intuition a brilliant engineer like him could, but I could follow the basics, and I know the machine didn’t malfunction. It wasn’t Charlie’s mistake. Charlie didn’t make mistakes, not when it came to science.” His hand balled into a fist-unconsciously, I thought. “Someone killed him, either to stop the project or to steal it.”

In his mind, that could be the only reason. His brother wouldn’t have had any enemies-none that didn’t covet his work. And hell, as cynical as I was about the human race in general, I wasn’t sure Hector was wrong about this or about Charlie.

“And you didn’t think dropping a psychic into the aftermath would be like tossing me into a shark tank with a hungry great white or onto the front yard of a Colombian drug lord with ‘snitch’ written on my forehead?” I demanded. “Line up the personnel in the project, and in a half hour I can tell you who the murderer is-and the murderer knows it. That’s why I didn’t say anything until now. Christ, I’m surprised there wasn’t cyanide in the crappy cafeteria food you served me. My life isn’t worth a dime now. What the hell, Hector?”

He shifted uncomfortably before saying, “It’s not like I expected to find a real psychic. It was a last-ditch effort based on an experiment Charlie planned but hadn’t gotten around to yet. I had all the faith in the world in my brother, but I admit”-he gave a wistful smile that sat oddly on his roughly carved face-“I thought it was his scientific Santa Claus.”

“Santa Claus?”

“Every scientist has one. The theory you want to believe but you know either isn’t real or is beyond your ability to prove.” He shrugged. “It was Charlie’s one fault: he was never wrong. Never. There were times I was jealous. I’d feel guilty for saying it, but hell, Charlie would laugh.”

“Good. You can save that guilt for me, then.” There was one beer left on the desk. I went for it without offering it to Hector first. Faint of heart ne’er won fair beer.

He returned to the subject of my future survival. “I’ve assured everyone that there will be no readings on anyone, that I take violations of project members’ privacy very seriously. Most don’t believe you’re psychic anyway, and whoever killed Charlie doesn’t know I suspect murder. You’re as safe as I can make you.”

“Which would be not very.” I opened the beer and took two deep draughts. “You don’t know murderers.”

“And you do?”

“I’ve been in the business, really in the business, for twelve years. I know murderers. I know the ones who know what they are. And I know the ones who think leaving senile Grandpa Eddie under a tree in the woods in two feet of snow wearing nothing but his underwear is just a mercy. ‘Oh, Officer, he wanders off all the time. I’m so scared for him. I’ve been praying and praying.’ Whether it’s for fun or for convenience, killing to both kinds is like a good beer. One is never enough.” I shook my half-empty bottle to demonstrate. “And when one of them has a lot to lose, paranoia is like air to them.”

He took the hint of my wagging bottle and reached behind him for the bag to pull two more out. Now that was magic. Screw being a psychic. He handed me the second-to-last one, and took the last for himself. “Why would a murderer come to you to begin with?”

“They’re stupid, or they’re nonbelievers there with their boyfriends, girlfriends, wives, husbands. Mostly they’re stupid.”

“Unfortunately, whoever killed Charlie isn’t stupid. Chances are, he’s one of the most intelligent men in the country. Which is why this.” Hector had come into the room wearing a lightweight black jacket. He stood, stripped it off, and tossed it onto the desk. Then he pulled out the gun he’d had tucked into his waistband at the small of his back. He held it out to me, butt first. “Wear the jacket. Keep it hidden. If someone makes a move…” He gave a grim flash of teeth. “Just make sure you put a hole in the right person.”