The Eighth Day

Chapter 37

Gunfire belted out a violent harmony, and whoever was dragging him let out a choked cry and staggered away. He fell into the mud. The back of his helmet slammed into the ground, and the front tilted over his vision. He reached with his left hand to push it out of the way, but his left hand was gone, replaced by a bloody stump of meat and bone that hung in tatters. He moaned and squeezed his eyes shut. A cannonade of vertigo rolled over him in waves, and he turned his head and retched. A thin line of saliva swayed from the corner of his mouth and distended into the mud as it mixed with the falling rain.

Shawn Jaffe jerked in his seat, and the sounds of combat and the jungle morphed into the bleat of horns and the rumble of the Cadillac's engine. His heart hammered in his chest, and he let out a shaky breath. Tucked into the waistband of his jeans, his pistol pressed into the small of his back like a reassuring hand.

Harrington glanced at him. "You okay?"

They rolled to a stop as the holographic traffic signal stretching across the road turned red. Harrington said something else, but the words were muffled and unintelligible. A wilted newsstand sagged near the corner of the intersection. Above its shelves of sodas and candy bars, racks of magazines and newspapers hung in rows, both digital and paper editions, lit by a soft fluorescent glow. A fossil of a man slumped behind the counter and picked at his fingernails.

He didn't know how long he lay there—forever, maybe—bleeding out onto the jungle floor. The angry chatter of gunfire faded, replaced by the soft patter of rain on leaves and the chirrup of cicadas. He wanted to tell his daughter how much he loved her and how proud he was of her. He wanted to tell his wife she was the best thing that ever happened to him. But mostly he wanted to die. A shadow detached itself from the darkness and stretched over him. The barrel of a rifle lifted the brim of his helmet, and he stared into the face of the enemy. The Vietcong said nothing and pointed the barrel into his face and pulled the trigger.

"Shawn!"

Shawn blinked and furrowed his brow. His door was open. He'd swung a leg out and hauled himself out of the car with no recollection of any of it.

"What are you doing?" Harrington asked.

Shawn fell back into his seat and slammed his door shut. "I don't know. Getting a newspaper." The Cadillac started forward again, and he bit back a rising panic as the newsstand slipped by and disappeared behind them.

"A newspaper." The detective furrowed his brow.

Shawn glanced over his shoulder. "I think it's how they control me," he said. "How they give me missions or instructions or whatever you want to call it. Do you remember when we first met, at the Café del Mar? I was reading the Times. And later that night, they delivered a hard copy to my apartment."

Harrington nodded. "We found it opened to the classifieds," he said. "There was an ad that only existed in your copy. It was a quote from Shakespeare and a telephone number, and someone from that number sent you a text with blueprints to Madison Square Garden. Do you remember what happened after that?"

The dream in Amarillo that had been on his lips when he'd awoken. Don't—

He'd been about to say, Don't shoot.

"You killed a man," Harrington said. "A senator."

"And then I killed myself," Shawn said. His voice was soft and ragged.

Harrington scratched at his beard. "I got a feeling if you turn to the classifieds, you'll find another ad. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday. Soon. And it'll be Shakespeare and a phone number all over again."

"But I died. How do you explain that? I shot myself, and I died."

"I have no idea. I wish I did, I really do, because it scares the hell out of me."

The city loomed before them. Colors and lights stretched into the darkening sky and faded into the heavens.

"I'm having these visions." Shawn stared out the window as he spoke. "I had one just now. I had them earlier, too, when I stopped at the hotel."

"What kind of visions?"

"I'm in a jungle. It's during the Vietnam War—don't ask how I know that, I just do. But I don't know if these are memories they gave me or if I'm going crazy or what. But it's bad. I black out."

"Well," Harrington said, "I guess it's a good thing I'm driving."

Shawn stared at him. The corner of Harrington's mouth twitched. He broke into a grin, started to chuckle, and Shawn couldn't help but join in. Soon, the two were laughing like a pair of Mad Hatters.

When they'd gotten ahold of themselves, Shawn wiped at his eyes. "But if they can just put an ad in the classifieds, why come after me?" he asked. "Why not sit back and wait for me to finish the job for them?"

Harrington furrowed his brow and stroked his beard again. "Maybe it's because they don't know which city you'll stop in or which newspaper you'll read. Hell, even if you stopped somewhere for a while, you're remembering shit you're not supposed to. They're probably afraid the newspaper trick won't work anymore. And if in the meantime you remember your next mission or who did this to you—forget about it."

Shawn leaned his head back and sighed. He said, "It all sounds so crazy."

"You got a better theory?" Harrington asked. "Look. Lark Morton, where you worked, I paid them a visit after you disappeared. They'd closed up shop. I'm talking the place was a ghost town. The entire floor, empty. And when I tried to figure out where they went, I got zilch. No tax records, no filings, not even a goddamn website. Like they never existed."

"That's impossible," Jaffe said.

Harrington ignored him. "You had cardboard boxes in your apartment. What was in them?"

Shawn shrugged. "Some stuff from my mom and dad's, pictures, crap from school, clothes, stuff like that. Just memories."

"Memories." Harrington nodded. "I like that. Because those boxes were filled with bricks, old magazines, junk. Nothing but trash. Nothing real."

"That's—"

Harrington cut him off. "Impossible? You wanna know what's impossible? They erased you. You vanished as easily as footprints in the sand. No records, no social networking profiles, no online purchases, nothing. Remember what that guy at the restaurant said? He said you're not Shawn Jaffe, you're not from Ohio, and you're not an investment broker. You say it sounds crazy. I say fuck yeah, it sounds crazy. But that's how it is."

The horizon burned with the dying embers of sunset, and the Cadillac's headlights cut through the twilight. "So what do we do?" Shawn asked.

"I'm gonna make some phone calls. Then we'll go somewhere nice and public and wait."

"Where?"

The detective grinned at him. "I hear the Café del Mar has a mean tapas bar."