He began walking north, covering new ground. The skies were clearing fast, the storm having moved east, and a strong wind filled the void, pulling in Arctic air from the north and raking whitecaps across the bay. DeBolt looked cautiously up and down the street. Nothing seemed out of place. He passed a playground where a toddler climbed a ladder under the watchful eye of his mother, and at the end of a jetty an old man with a walrus mustache stood contentedly with a slack fishing pole. Normal people resuming their normal lives after the passing of a storm.
But how can I? he wondered.
He was thousands of miles from Alaska. Men were hunting him. He had twenty stolen dollars in his pocket, and no way to get more. DeBolt had no identity documents to prove who he was — indeed, nothing to prove he had ever existed, save for a copy of his death certificate, and that was back in the cottage, a place to which he could not return without risking another deadly encounter.
And then there was the other problem: the odd visions he’d experienced twice now. Hallucinations? His battered brain playing tricks? He wanted desperately to reclaim his life, but the obstacles seemed overwhelming. So DeBolt went back to basics. He decided it was time to eat.
He reached into his pocket and fingered the twenty-dollar bill. He looked up the street and saw a restaurant, then a second farther on. Roy’s Diner was the closer of the two, and something called The Harbor House a block beyond. Both looked open.
A gust of wind sent leaves cartwheeling across the street, and DeBolt stood on the sidewalk making the most basic of decisions. Roy’s Diner, he thought. I wonder what’s on the menu.
Seconds later the answer arrived, posted in absolute clarity. In the blind spot in his right eye, he saw a high-definition image of the breakfast menu for Roy’s Diner.
11
DeBolt sat alone in a booth at Roy’s Diner. He stared at the menu the hostess had given him with a level of interest likely never before seen in the establishment. Word for word, price for price, it was an exact duplicate of the image fixed in his head.
Shaken to the core, DeBolt tried to delete the thought, tried to force the image away. At one point it did disappear, but by some inescapable urge he called it up again — or perhaps more accurately, he conjured it, like a magician pulling a card out of thin air. The result was the same. Somehow he had an ability to acquire images, displayed perfectly on the tiny screen in his right eye. He remembered seeing the time of the sunrise, and the compass heading that had saved him as he’d foundered in the sea. Both had appeared in a similar fashion, but he’d written off those events as curiosities, as fleeting apparitions. This time there could be no doubt.
“… I said, coffee?”
He looked up and saw a waitress with a metal pot in her hand. “Uh … yeah, please.”
She turned over the upside-down coffee cup on the table and began filling it. “You were a million miles away,” she said. “Never seen anybody so taken with Roy’s breakfast menu.” She was a smiling woman, fortyish, manufactured blond hair, and the beginnings of a stoop in her shoulders.
“Sorry, I’ve been a little distracted lately.”
“Cream?”
“No, black is good.”
“Want me to come back, or have you made up your mind?”
He looked at the menu — the one on the table — and saw a boxed entry on top: Everyday special — two eggs, bacon, and all-you-can-eat pancakes for $9.99. “I’ll take the special, over easy.”
She smiled and reached for the menu. He almost asked her to leave it, but decided it would seem strange and let it go. DeBolt looked around the place, and with some trepidation thought, So what other tricks can I do? A television mounted on the wall nearby was tuned to a cable news channel. The volume had been muted, but in a corner of the screen he saw numbers. DeBolt cleared his head of everything else, and thought: Dow Jones Industrial Average … current value.
A number lit to view in his blind spot. It was fractionally different from what he saw on the television, but soon that number changed to match the one he’d grasped out of nowhere. DeBolt tensed, and a sudden burning sensation caused him to look down. Both his hands were around the coffee cup, and he saw a few drops of brown liquid on one thumb. He dried it using his napkin, then discreetly reached back and fingered the scars at the base of his skull, now hidden beneath hair that was longer than it had been in years. And there, he knew, was his answer. How had Chandler put it?… to make you different. An operation? Had something been surgically implanted? Was his brain now wired to the internet, some kind of biological routing device?
His waitress scurried past and he noted her nametag: SAM.
DeBolt pondered how to phrase a request, and settled on: Roy’s Diner, employees, Sam.
It took only seconds.
SAM VICTORIA TREMAIN
AGE: 41
ADDRESS: 1201 CRISP BAY ROAD, APARTMENT 3B
DeBolt then noticed a scroll bar at the bottom of his visual field. He concentrated on it, and after some awkward interactions, more information rolled into view.
MARITAL STATUS: DIVORCED 12/03/2014
2015 AGI: $24,435
AGI? he thought incredulously. Adjusted gross income?
He sat motionless for a very long time, pondering the imponderable, until Sam Victoria Tremain arrived with a mountainous plate of food, four pancakes sided by eggs and bacon. In her other hand was the ever-present coffeepot, and she began topping him off.
“Your name,” he said, looking deliberately at the oval tag on her blouse, “I was wondering — is it short for Samantha?”
She chuckled good-naturedly. “I’m afraid not. I was the youngest of five girls, and my dad was Sam Tremain the fourth. Mom insisted on getting her tubes tied after me, so it was the only way to keep the family name going.”
He did his best to mirror her smile, and then she was gone to another table. He briefly stared at his plate, his appetite gone. DeBolt forced himself to eat, and all throughout the meal his eyes wandered the room, seeing countless ways to test his newfound abilities. The potential was all at once frightening, exhilarating, and intoxicating. The cook was named Rusty Gellar, a guy with two cars, one child-support payment, and three minor drug convictions, all over ten years ago. The owner of the place was not named Roy, but Dave. He owed back taxes to the state of Maine for the last two years, and headed up the local VFW. A dozen tables were occupied behind DeBolt, twenty people with backgrounds and stories. All there for the taking.
He sat frozen in his seat, unsure what to do. He stared out the plate-glass window on his right shoulder, and saw a crisp and glorious day. He also saw a world fraught with unthinkable complications. Unthinkable opportunities. It was as though he’d been given the keys to some perilous kingdom. DeBolt was already facing a mountain of problems, life as he knew it having ended weeks ago. And now this.
What the hell do I do with it?
To that question, the high-definition screen in his head remained maddeningly blank.
Lund rose early, and by seven thirty was at the apartment building where William Simmons had lived. She’d arranged to meet the bartender’s wife in front of the unit marked OFFICE, and she was there waiting, a pale-skinned woman with lively green eyes and an eager manner.
“Hi, I’m Natalie. You must be Shannon — Tom told me you needed some help.”