Rememberers, Page 3

  Bennett looked at him curiously for a moment as if trying to gauge his aptitude for hearing the absurd. “Yeah, I do. It's a wild one, maybe even too wild to mention.”

  “I've been in law enforcement over twenty years. I've just about heard them all.”

  “A psychic,” Bennett said in a matter of fact tone.

  “A psychic?” Stint repeated.

  “I think someone knew what Dawood/Beamer was planning to do, and then either they or someone they directed killed him before he could carry it out.”

  “Huh,” Stint said. He was skeptical, but not dismissive. He'd known stranger things, like the man who'd thought his dog had commanded him to kill. “What about his cohorts?”

  “What about them?” Bennett asked.

  “Were any of them killed, too?”

  “No,” Bennett said. “We have a couple of the ones Dawood/Beamer communicated with via email in custody. But they, too, were sleeper cells and hadn't actually met him.”

  “Why would someone kill only this Dawood/Beamer character?”

  “Because he was the leader. Killing him ended the planned terrorist threat. Dawood had been the lead domino. The other cells were to follow his instructions like trained seals. They knew none of the particulars of the assignment, only their specific roles in it.”

  “Okay,” Stint said. “Let's say a psychic was involved. You have a vigilante on your hands that killed a known terrorist who was planning a horrific act of terrorism against the US. End justifies the means, right?”

  “You don't really believe that, do you?” Bennett asked.

  He didn't. Vigilantism was just another form of law breaking. To allow it would jeopardize the rule of law in society, ultimately leading to chaos. Not to mention the very real possibility that a vigilante could kill the wrong person. Stint didn't say any of this, but he didn't need to. He could tell Bennett recognized a slip of the tongue when he heard one. “So why do you think he was killed here in Buckleton?”

  “Because he was here. His death wasn't connected to the town in any other way.”

  I guess that's good to know, Stint thought. The last thing Buckleton needed or wanted was someone targeting its citizens. “What's your next step?”

  Bennett poked the inside of his jaw with his tongue and looked away. “There isn't a next step. Right now, we wait.”

  “What should I do about my investigation?”

  “Unless you're a glutton for the punishment of an unsolved murder, I'd table it. Beamer's killer is most likely a world away from Buckleton.”

  * * *

  Monday, October 5

  Kallie Hunt slowly opened her eyes and held her breath. Lying on her back, she looked expectedly up at the ceiling. She was in her bedroom at the house she shared with three other college students. She waited another minute before turning her head toward the alarm clock on the nightstand. It was 6:57 a.m., three minutes before the alarm was set to go off. She turned back toward the ceiling again. After another minute passed, a feeling of relief washed over her and she finally exhaled. There was nothing unusually familiar about this morning. There was no déjà vu sensation. For the fourth time in as many days, she awoke without the sense of redundant weirdness that had engulfed her for nearly two straight weeks. It appeared she was back to her old normal self again. Yes, that was the word, normal. For whatever it was worth and for whatever it meant. She was beginning to feel normal and not as if she was the star of a real life twilight zone episode, where she'd known everything that would happen to her right down to the slightest nuance. But thankfully this morning, there was none of that. Normalcy was such a great concept.

  She smiled, sat up in bed, and stretched. Normalcy, even of the perceived variety, never felt so good. Now, what do normal girls think about? She asked herself playfully. “Boys,” she answered immediately, her smile widening. But a smart normal girl, she chided herself, particularly one who didn't have any boys in her life right now anyway, would be wise to think about the history exam she'd be taking in just a little over an hour from now.

  As soon as her feet touched the floor, the alarm went off at its appointed time. She tapped the side of her fist against it, silencing it. She scuttled to the bathroom, thanking the heavens that it was clear. It was one of the benefits of scheduling eight o'clock classes. Usually none of her housemates rose before ten.

  The shower was quick, but revitalizing. Once finished, she stepped out and went to the sink. Standing in front of the mirror, she brushed her teeth and washed her face. The girls at Bengate College would no doubt seethe with anger-juiced jealousy if they knew that her total bathroom time was less than ten minutes. Only a third of which was spent looking at her reflection in the mirror, just long enough to make sure she had no toothpaste crust at the corners of her mouth or any nestling eye buggers. She didn't wear makeup, and the only thing that ever touched her lips was lip balm during the winter months. She was a natural beauty with a perfectly symmetrical face, big bluish-green eyes, and smooth olive-brown skin. Though her long brown hair was malleable and easily accepted most styles, she would often, as she did this morning, simply twist it into a ponytail. Her grandmother often said she'd inherited the best physical characteristics of three races. Her mother had been African-American and Native American and her father, whom she'd spoken to exactly three days her entire life, was Dutch-Irish.

  After finishing up in the bathroom, she returned to her bedroom where she laid blue jeans and a short-sleeved red blouse on the bed. Though it was October, the weather felt closer to summer than fall. Temperatures were expected to be in the high seventies for at least another week. Fall months were tricky like that in North Carolina. Before the end of the month, her daily ensemble would most likely include thick sweaters and corduroy pants. After getting dressed, she snatched up her cell phone from the nightstand and headed to the kitchen to devour her typical morning feast of cheese toast chased with a big glass of orange juice.

  Outside, the morning newspaper dangled perilously off a hedge. Stepping onto the morning-dewed lawn, she caught the newspaper just before it fell to the ground. Evidently, the newspaper guy had an aversion to porches and driveways. Just once, she'd like to retrieve the paper with only a simple kneel-down on the way to her car. What nineteen-year-old reads the paper religiously anyway, her housemate Maggie's voice rang in her head. “Tsk,” she answered in reply. Her mother had gotten her started reading the newspaper when she was eight years old. It was now an ingrained habit and hard to kill off.

  Her cell phone chimed as soon as she opened the door of the Civic. After throwing her book bag and the newspaper onto the passenger seat, she checked the caller ID screen. It was her grandmother. She tapped the accept icon. “Good morning, grandmother,” she said with as much cheeriness as she could muster.

  “Well, you sound better this morning,” her grandmother said.

  “I'm fine, grandmother, honest.”

  “I didn't ask,” her grandmother said.

  Kallie nestled the cell phone between her ear and shoulder as she resurrected the engine and slowly backed the car out of the driveway. “It's why you called, isn't it? You want to know if I experienced it again. You want to know if your only grandchild, in fact, your only living relative, is still on the precipice of a nervous breakdown.”

  “Stop that kind of talk, child. I don't think you're having a nervous breakdown. I think you're stressed about being behind in school and I think you're still grieving.”

  “It's been a year, grandmother,” Kallie said.

  “Some people do not get over the death of loved ones in only a year's time, especially their mother's death.”

  “I'm handling it.”

  “I know you're handing it,” her grandmother said. “But maybe you should have sat out another semester. Maybe started back in the spring. Especially since…” her voice trailed off.

  “I know tomorrow makes it exactly a year since mom died. But that would have been the case whether I was here at colleg
e or home with you.”

  “It’s at times like these that I wished Janie had more children. Perhaps if you didn't have to go through this alone.”

  “I'm not alone, grandmother. I have you.”

  “I know you do, sweetheart. But Janie was my daughter and I miss her terribly. But you,” she paused, “losing your mother at your age…” Her voice trailed off again as if she couldn't bear the thought.

  “I'm nineteen. I'm not exactly a baby.”

  “I know you're not. Still, if you had an older sister or something!”

  “Honestly, grandmother. I'm fine and I don't think that having a sister would've have made the situation any better.”

  “Maybe, maybe not, but she could have better understood those déjà vu sensations you've been having.”

  “I don't know if she could've helped with that either, unless she were a therapist or shrink,” Kallie said. She wished now that she'd never mentioned the sensations to her grandmother because the old woman was going to worry herself silly about them. But the sensations had been unsettling. Kallie had experienced the first one about three weeks ago. For the two weeks after that, she'd had at least one a day, mostly in the mornings. And then late last week, they'd stopped as suddenly as they'd appeared. During the sensations' onslaught, she'd researched déjà vu on the internet and found some interesting facts about it on the Wikipedia website.

  Déjà vu meant “already seen” in French. It was a phenomenon of having the strong sensation that an event or experience currently experienced had been experienced in the past, whether it had actually been or not. When she'd been in elementary school, Kallie used to get the sensations every now and then, but they'd never lasted longer than thirty seconds and there was never anything freaky or unnerving about them. In fact, through her research, limited as it was, she learned that children between the ages of seven and nine were the most likely to experience the sensations which seldom lasted as long as a minute. Of course, Kallie wasn't nine and her recent sensations had generally lasted longer than thirty seconds. But yesterday had marked the fourth straight day she hadn't felt any sensations. And with this morning's nonoccurrence, she was optimistic that she was well on her way to a full week of normality. Maybe whatever had caused the sensations previously had now resolved itself.

  “It's not natural to have those types of sensations as much as you've had them.”

  “Maybe not,” Kallie said, bringing the Civic to a stop at the end of a long line of cars waiting at a traffic light. Since over half its population was associated with its namesake college in some form or fashion, morning rush hour in Bengate mainly consisted of a herd of cars dashing in the same direction toward the campus. “But I'm fine now,” Kallie continued. “I haven't had any sensations for almost a week.”

  “That's good news. But maybe you ought to still speak with somebody.”

  “You mean a shrink?”

  “Stop calling them that,” her grandmother said. “Anyway, I meant you should speak to your pastor.”

  “I don't think that's necessary, grandmother. My pastor's a very busy man.”

  “No pastor is too busy for a member of his flock, which reminds me… You've never told me the name of your pastor or the name of the church you joined.”

  There's a good reason for that, Kallie thought. In the next moment, the car in front of her suddenly slammed on its brakes, almost causing Kallie's Honda to rear end it. Luckily, she was able to slam on the Honda's brakes just in time, avoiding a collision, but not from uttering the expletive that her grandmother clearly heard.

  “What did you say child?” her grandmother asked.

  Kallie, straining her eyes ahead to see what had caused the car in front of her to stop like that, didn't immediately answer. She saw the squirrel scampering across the street and into the parking lot of a church. A freaking squirrel, Kallie thought. She looked ahead and met the eyes of the other driver in the car's rear view mirror. The driver, a red-haired woman, simply shrugged her shoulders and drove on.

  “Kallie,” her grandmother said.

  “Oh, I'm sorry,” she said, turning back to the squirrel that'd now darted up the side of the monument that announced the name of the white-brick church.

  New Vibe Community Church

  Pastor Johnny Swag

  Sunday services 10 a.m. & 6 p.m.

  Bible study Wednesdays, Noon & 7:15 p.m.

  “I said my pastor's name is Swag, Reverend Johnny Swag,” Kallie said.

  “Swag, huh? It sounded like something else. Reverend Johnny Swag. It doesn't sound like a preacher's name.”

  “Well, it is. He's the pastor of New Vibe Community Church.”

  “New Vibe? Is that a Baptist church?”

  “What difference does it make, grandmother? You wanted me to go to church and I'm going to one.”

  “I don't want you joining a cult.”

  “A cult? Honestly, grandmother! You're too much,” Kallie said. “My church is not a cult. Besides, I'm not weak-minded enough to ever step foot inside a cult. Okay?”

  There was a long pause, as if her grandmother was really considering the possibility. “Well, all right,” she said finally. “I want you to call him.”

  “Call who?”

  “This Reverend Johnny Swag. Tell him about these sensations you're having.”

  It was easier to humor the old lady than to argue that preachers weren't doctors or psychologists or psychiatrists. Johnny Swag would be no more able to tell her about her sensations than that squirrel scampering across the street would. “Yes ma'am, I will. But I have to go now. May I call you later?”

  “You know you can call me anytime, dear.”

  Kallie parked in the student parking section and hurried to class, trying to forget the lie she'd just told her grandmother. Kallie didn't like lying to her, but her grandmother thought going to church was a cure all. The truth was, Kallie hadn't stepped foot inside a church since she'd left her grandmother's house. It wasn't that she'd lost faith in God. She still had as much or as little as she'd ever had. But God and religion just weren't a priority right now. Besides, Kallie honestly felt better, and she was confident that the déjà vu and whatever had caused it were now gone. She hated she'd told her grandmother about it in the first place, needlessly worrying her.

  Five minutes before the start of class, she took a seat at the front of the room. She started to reach into her book bag for her notes but decided against it, instead zipping the bag back up and placing it down by her feet. If she didn't know the material by now, a five minute cram session wasn't going to tilt the scales one way or the other.

  At exactly eight o'clock, Professor Sampson sauntered into the class with a wide Cheshire cat grin on his face, as if he harbored the world's biggest secret. He carried a briefcase in one hand and a stack of exam papers nestled in his other. A short, plump man with a hairline that had retreated to the areas just above his ears and the nape of his neck, he reminded Kallie of a fat small-town mayor from an old black and white television show. “I gather that we're ready for our little exam today,” he said, eliciting a collective muffled groan from the class. Apparently satisfied with that response, Sampson dropped his briefcase down beside his desk and then moved in front of Kallie's desk where he thrust a siphoned off portion of the exam stack at her. “Take one and pass the others back.”

  As Kallie reached for the stack, she saw some movement out the corner of her eye. Thinking it was her classmate's pencil rolling off his desk; she instinctively leaned over and placed her hand on the floor to catch it before it hit the floor. But when she did so, she immediately realized that the pencil had yet begun to move. The realization temporarily froze her in place, which kept her hand on the floor when the pencil finally began its descent five seconds later, landing securely in her palm.

  Observing her mistimed, yet successful pencil rescue, the professor's eyes widened. “Woman's intuition?” he asked, lightheartedly.

  Kallie didn't answer. With her p
encil-clasped hand still on the floor, she looked anxiously down her row of desks. None of the students seemed to be paying her the least bit of attention. Chances were they hadn't even seen what she'd done. Yet, she felt as if all eyes in the class were on her. Slowly, she sat up and handed her classmate his pencil. Of all days, Seth Winters would choose today to sit beside her. She avoided his brown eyes, focusing instead on his lips, which didn't help at all. His lips were moist and curved. She felt weak and silly. He mouthed something, but Kallie couldn't make it out. She felt as if she'd been sucked into a soundless vacuum. She looked around once more and suddenly felt a tightening in her chest. She snatched up her book bag and bolted out of the room, nearly knocking over a tall cactus plant standing soldier-like near the door.

  CHAPTER THREE

  He was now known as Gerald Principe. And as Gerald Principe, he loved making the 3 a.m. rounds patrolling the halls of the United Corporate Bank Center building, known to the Charlotte locals as the UCB Center. A gentle quiet permeated throughout the place during those wee hours of the day, despite the fact that there was always a fair amount of foot traffic in the halls, thanks to the interconnectedness of the world's financial markets. As the bank's corporate headquarters, the UCB Center stayed open on some level twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year.

  Although the bank never completely shut down, it did on occasion slow down, at least in spirit, creating what Principe considered controlled calm. It was more noticeable during the December holiday season when even some of the bank's top brass sported the occasional festive mood for at least a couple of hours during Christmas week. At other times of the year, the calmness wasn't as easily detectable. In the finance industry, hustle and bustle was the accepted norm. No one ever wanted to be accused of doing anything less than a hundred miles an hour at all times. Employees entered the building at all hours of the day and night, always seeming to be in a hurry. Lunches were often speed-eaten as if jobs were disappearing during hourly absences. Still, pockets of calm existed, unnoticed by most eyes, and observable only to someone tuned to the pulse of the building and its people and who was uniquely versed in the detection of the subtleties of the human spirit.