There was a long pause, then Chief Gerber said, “I’ll do that, Agent Savich. Your wife said that if I don’t believe you I might as well hang it up and sail to Fiji. Not a bad idea, really. But you’ve got to know that none of my people are leaving here until I see Martin Thornton in custody and everyone safely out of that house.”
“Believe me, Chief Gerber, I appreciate that. Thank you for your cooperation. That will take some more time. Oh yes, would you please tell my wife it will be a little while longer?” He shut off the cell and slipped it back into his jacket pocket.
“You don’t pull any punches, do you?” Janet Thornton said, a dark eyebrow arched up a good inch.
“No reason to. Both of you know exactly what the score is, what’s going on outside. Chief Gerber is a good man. He’ll deal with things. As for your neighbors, I’m thinking you guys should move away from here. People don’t forget the sound of a shotgun, or police cars all over the neighborhood, not when they’ve got kids around.”
“No, you don’t pull any punches,” Martin said. “Yes, we’ll move. I hadn’t thought that far ahead yet.”
“Of course not,” Savich said. “Do you feel like getting back to it, Martin?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me why you disappeared right after you graduated, without saying a word to your father.”
“When he looked me right in the eye and told me that my mother’s death was an accident, something died inside. I simply couldn’t accept who he was or what he was. I remember very clearly thinking my old man had lied to me, flat-out lied, not because of me, mind you, but because of his wife, Jenny, my stepmother, and their two daughters. I realized I had nothing to do with his new life. If he could, I think he would have swept me under the carpet or tossed me out with the trash.”
“My wife, Agent Sherlock, said that isn’t true at all. When she spoke to your father, he was frantic to know where you were.”
Martin’s clear brown eyes, very intelligent eyes, had no shadows or madness in them now, just disbelief. “It may have suited the moment. I really don’t believe him.”
Savich nodded. “You know him better than we. But tell me why you erased yourself.”
“Erased myself,” Martin repeated slowly, as if tasting the words. “Yes, I suppose I did that. I got a whole new identity. It’s not hard to do if you live in Boston, and are willing to take some chances. I approached people on the street—fences, drug addicts—until I found the people who were willing to sell me an identity. I bought my name—Martin Thornton—got a social security number, a driver’s license, everything I needed, and then I hitchhiked out of Boston, didn’t tell a single person where I was going. Actually, I didn’t know myself.”
“Where did you go?”
“I went out to Seattle at first, got a job pumping gas, started working my way through school. The dreams stopped then. It seemed that when I found out about my mother’s murder, I didn’t need to dream about it anymore. The funny thing is, I wanted to remember my mother, I wanted to know what she was like. I wanted to know who murdered her and why. But the dreams never told me that.” He stopped suddenly, stuck out his hand for Janet to take, and said, “I dated. I slept with my first girlfriend when I was nineteen. I felt like a man. I felt normal.”
“You are normal,” Janet said, and there was absolute conviction in her voice. “What happened to you, Martin—your mother’s murder, being uprooted, not having your father tell you the truth—you dealt amazingly well with all of it. If I’d started having those dreams, I would have ended up in Boston Harbor or slitting my wrists. You didn’t do either of those things. You survived.
“I don’t blame you for leaving your father, for chucking all of it. The only thing is, I wish you had told me. We’ve been married eleven years, and you never told me. What Agent Savich said about the truth—he’s right, only the truth will do. I wish you’d told me so I could have helped.”
“I couldn’t,” he said, looking directly into her eyes. “I never wanted to think about him again. I never wanted it to touch our lives. I didn’t want it to hurt you, or us.”
“Well, aren’t you a bloody fool!?”
He actually grinned, squeezed his wife’s hand. Savich held very still, knowing he was invisible to them in this moment.
A few moments later he brought them back.
“Martin, the first episode, when was that?”
Janet Thornton sucked in her breath. “What a horrible word.”
Savich shrugged. “But I think it fits, more or less, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Martin said. “Now I can say that. Six months ago, it just hit me like a hammer. All sorts of wild things careened through my head. I thought I was going crazy. It lasted only a couple of hours, but I scared the hell out of Janet. She talked me down, thank God. The girls weren’t here that time or the second time either. That was about two months ago, and that one lasted longer.”
“You were here, at home?”
“Yes, Janet and I were having dinner—hot dogs and baked beans, potato chips—all my favorites. It was the day after my birthday. Janet thought we should have our own private celebration, without the girls. They were at a sleepover at a friend’s house. I suddenly remembered this was exactly what I always loved to eat when I was little. I started crying. Janet held me, didn’t stop talking to me, and finally, after a while, everything began to fade.”
Savich looked thoughtful. “The day after your birthday. You nearly remembered something.”
“You think so?”
“Maybe. Then what, Martin?”
“I—I was going to go to a doctor, really I was, to a shrink, but I didn’t know anyone and I was, well, I was ashamed. No, I was afraid of what a shrink would say, afraid I’d end up in a padded cell and my life would be over, all except for those horrible dreams. Believe me, Janet’s been on my case, but—I didn’t go, just didn’t.”
“Doesn’t matter now. If it’s okay with you, Martin, I’m getting rid of that shotgun. I want you to promise me you’ll never as long as you live have another gun in your home.”
Martin looked over to where Janet had laid the shotgun on the floor beside the front door.
“All right. Yes, I promise, Dillon.” He rose, but Savich held out his hand.
“Let me tell Chief Gerber that I’ll be handing out the shotgun so they don’t get nervous.”
When Savich walked back into the living room a few minutes later, he said, “All done. Everything’s fine now. We’ve got a lot of relieved people out there. Now, you guys got a good babysitter?”
They both stared at him. Janet nodded. “Well, yes, my mom. She lives in Rockville. She loves having the girls. When Martin had the second breakdown, I made an excuse and they stayed with her for three days.”
“Good. Both of you are coming with me now, back to Washington. We’ll drop the girls off at your mom’s. You’ll be staying tonight at the Jefferson Dormitory at Quantico. You’ll be safe there, Martin. If something pops again in your brain, there’ll be people there to control things.
“Where do you work, Martin?”
“I work in the IT section at the Giant corporate office.”
“Really? I have some interest in computers myself. Maybe we can talk about that later. Anyway, we can call your boss and get you some leave.
“After what’s happened here, I’ll have to take you into my own custody. We’ll call it a temporary commitment. That should keep Chief Gerber from filing any charges.
“Tomorrow morning, you’re going to meet Dr. Emanuel Hicks. I’d like him to try to hypnotize you, see if we can learn anything more about what happened to you when you were six years old. And he’ll be recommending a psychiatrist to you who’ll know all the facts. Sound okay?”