Andrew Klavan - The last thing I remember

I was about to hand the newspaper back to the lady when something in it caught my eye. I wasn’t sure at first what it was. Something in that photograph of the Secret Service men with the troopers. I kept looking it over and it kept bothering me, but I couldn’t tell why.

Then, all at once, I got it. It was the face of one of the agents-one of the men in the dark suits. I had seen it before. But where?

I stared at the face, trying to remember. It came to me. It was back in Centerville. Back when they were taking me out of the jail to the cruiser. Just before the man came up behind me and whispered to me and broke my handcuffs, I had seen someone, someone in the crowd. I remembered now. I had had a strange feeling, as if I recognized this person, as if I knew him from somewhere.

Now there he was again: one of the Secret Service agents in the photograph. It was the same man, the same handsome face with the same floppy blond hair. Looking at him gave me the same feeling too. I knew him from somewhere. I couldn’t quite remember where it was. It was as if his name was right on the edge of my mind and I just couldn’t bring it out. The harder I tried to remember, the more it seemed to slip away from me.

They always tell you when you can’t remember something, the best thing to do is stop thinking about it. But I couldn’t stop thinking about this. It didn’t make any sense. Why would I know a Secret Service agent?

It was no good. I couldn’t figure it out. I gave up. Once again, I was about to hand the newspaper back to Jane.

Then, just like that, the name came out of me. “Orton,” I said aloud.

For once, the lady stopped her murmuring. She went very still. She stared at me as if I had said something bizarre or amazing. “Orton,” she repeated.

“The guy in the newspaper,” I said. I don’t know if I was talking to her or to myself, but it helped me to say it out loud somehow. “The guy in the picture. I think I know him. I think his name is Orton.”

Again, she spoke the name back at me, drawing out the syllables in her weird, dreamy way. “Orrrrtoooon.”

And with that, those other voices came back to me, my memory of those voices outside the torture room door:

Homelander One.

We’ll never get another shot at Yarrow.

Two more days. We can send Orton. He knows the bridge as well as West.

“Orton,” I whispered. “That’s right. They’re sending him to the bridge.”

“To the bridge,” whispered Crazy Jane, slapping her forehead.

“That’s where they’re going to do it.”

“That’s where they’re going to kill Yarrow,” she said.

“Yes!”

My eyes moved from the photograph back to the map-the map that showed the route of Secretary Yarrow’s trip from Centerville to the president’s home. Sure enough, there it was, marked clearly on the page: the Indian Canyon Bridge.

“There it is,” I said. I handed the page to her, pointing at the map. “There.” She took it, looked at it. “Orton is going to kill Yarrow tomorrow right there on that bridge,” I told her.

Crazy Jane stared at the paper. Then she let out a little gasp and lifted her eyes to me. The cats mewed and rubbed against her.

“Oh, Charlie,” she whispered. “You have to stop him.”

Cans She made a bed for me on the floor: just a pile of newspapers for a pillow, really, and an old rag of a blanket to pull up over me. She turned off the light and went back to her mattress. I lay on the floor in the dark nearby.

I was tired-exhausted-but I couldn’t sleep for the longest time. All I could think about was what would happen tomorrow: the secretary of homeland security murdered by terrorists on the Indian Canyon Bridge. And no one knew about it but the killers and me. Me, a seventeen… no, now an eighteen-year-old kid, wanted by the police as a murderous fugitive.

Crazy as she was, Crazy Jane was right: I had to stop it. Somehow I had to warn Yarrow or warn the police or warn somebody. I just had to. But how would I ever get anyone to believe me? I’d already told Detective Rose about it. He thought I was a liar. Everyone else thought I was a murderer. How could I convince them to take me seriously?

Wide-awake, I thought about it a long time. I thought about going back to Centerville to try to warn Yarrow myself. But how would I get there? I didn’t have a car. I didn’t have any money. I considered hitchhiking-but how long could I stand out there on the open highway before a police car went by or some driver recognized me and called 911…?

While I was thinking about all this, one of the cats-it was too dark for me to see which one-climbed on top of my chest. Purring loudly, he kneaded me with his forepaws so that I felt the sharp prick of his claws in my flesh. When he was done with that, he curled up on top of me and lay there, purring. I listened to the sound, comforted by the warmth of his furry body…

Then a hand grabbed my shoulder. I sat up, terrified and confused, blinking, looking around. Had the police found me?

No. It was Crazy Jane.

There was a bit of gray light seeping into the room now. I realized I must’ve fallen asleep. It was almost dawn. In the faint glow of morning, I could see Jane squatting there next to me. Her hand was clutching my shoulder. Her big eyes were gleaming.

“It’s all right,” she said in a low murmur. “It’s too early for them… the impulses don’t start till the sun comes up… We can get the cans before they reach us…”

“The cans?” I asked sleepily.

“Come on.”

My body ached as I worked my way up off the floor. It was going to be a while before the bruises and sores healed. I followed Jane’s shape in the dark room. The sound of her crazy muttering came ceaselessly from her silhouette.

“Jane knows what to do. They can’t stop Jane. They can’t take Jane back to the hospital. I know it’s mind control. I know how they do it. Electricity. That’s the secret.”

It went on like that as she took me out of the apartment, down the stairs again, back out into the street. A damp, bitter morning chill had settled over the city. It ate through the flannel of my work shirt and brought goose bumps out on my arms. Just as she had before, Jane took hold of my elbow and started walking along in that quick, choppy, squirrelly way of hers. Just as before, she kept talking as she walked.

“Jane knows. Jane knows. They can’t fool Jane.”

The city was still quiet. Cars went racing by on the all-but-empty streets. The few pedestrians we passed on the sidewalk were still night people, hunched and solitary. They paid no attention to us.

The sky grew steadily brighter as we went, and the traffic grew heavier. But the sun still hadn’t come up over the horizon when we stopped on the sidewalk in the warehouse district where we’d met the night before.

We were standing in front of a large, empty lot. It was big, nearly a city block wide and long. Maybe it had been a park once, or maybe there were buildings here and they’d been torn down or fallen down. Whatever the reason, there was nothing here now but an unbroken field of garbage and debris: piles of rubble, rebar, discarded appliances everywhere-and papers and coffee cups and fast-food boxes tumbling through it all, blown by the dawn wind.

Jane let go of my arm. She worked her hand into the depths of her voluminous coat. When the hand came out again, she was holding two black plastic trash bags-the same kind as the ones lying around all over her apartment.

“Cans,” she said, stretching out the word in that strange way of hers. “Caaaaans.”

She handed one of the bags to me and walked into the empty lot, carrying the other one.

At first, I couldn’t figure out why we were here or what she was doing. I just stood there, shivering in the cold, and watched as Jane moved into the empty lot, wading through the debris and garbage with her quick steps. Her chin was lowered almost to her chest, her head was down as she began to walk from one end of the lot to the other. Once or twice, I heard her murmur softly: “Caaaaans.”