Blind Eye (10 page)

York, Pennsylvania

M
ark generally went home to his apartment above the garage only to sleep. Today, he made an exception. He was anxious. He needed to be by a computer to check his e-mail.

He pulled into the driveway and got out of his pickup. The air was fresh and crisp outside. A perfect fall day.

“Everything okay, Mark?” Ryan asked.

The husband and wife who were renting the main house were outside, raking the yard. From what Mark could see, Dora was pretty far along in her pregnancy, but nothing seemed to slow her down. He knew this was their first child and they were both very excited about it. Mark told his parents, anytime he talked to them on the phone, that the renters took as good care of the house and yard as they had when they were still living here. In fact, Ryan had mentioned a couple of times that if and when Mark's parents decided to sell the house, they'd be interested, although right now they couldn't afford it.

The two were eyeing him curiously. They knew he rarely came home during the day. He waved them off.

“Everything's fine,” he told them. “I'm expecting
some e-mail, so I figured I'd come home and check on it.” Cable TV and Internet service were two amenities that he'd run out to his garage apartment as soon as he'd gotten home from Iraq.

“We're having some friends in tonight. Why don't you come over?” Dora asked.

Mark figured these two had joined the “let's feed Mark” team.

“We want to get all of our socializing with adults in before the baby comes,” Ryan added.

“You'll probably know some of the people,” Dora said.

“Thanks, but…” He couldn't think of an excuse. He appreciated the offer, but somehow the wires in his head were all twisted up. He couldn't remember what he had planned for the day, or for tonight. There was only one thing that he could think of. That e-mail.

Mark pointed to the garage and the stairs on the side. “I have some work to do now but I might poke my head in later. Please don't wait for me, though.”

He made some comment about Dora taking it easy and headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Maybe his life was too boring. Maybe it was the lack of having a day-to-day routine. Mark couldn't remember being this wound up about anything since he'd arrived back in York.

Going into the apartment, he left the door open and walked straight to the computer.

Waiting for it to boot up, he checked out the fridge. Four beers and a quart of orange juice he couldn't remember buying were the only things on the shelves. He shut the fridge door and looked back to the living space. He wasn't regressing, he told himself. His bed was made, and there were no piles of dirty laundry lying
around. The apartment looked neat. He just always ate out. No harm in that.

He went to the kitchen cabinet and took down a can of coffee. Thanks to his mother, the cabinet was still full of soups and canned foods and other nonperishables. Looking at them, he felt a sense of comfort, knowing he could still manage here if he needed to.

He started a pot of coffee and sat down at the computer.

Mark opened his e-mail. He'd checked it last night. Since then, he had a dozen messages. He found the one from Jennifer Sullivan at the top of the list. The e-mail had an attachment.

He opened it, anxious and not knowing why.

There was a brief message from the nurse, summarizing pretty much what they had said on the phone. He scrolled down. The computer was taking its time to load the picture.

Mark looked over his shoulder at the coffeepot. It was ready. He turned back to the computer to see if he still had to wait.

He felt a sharp kick in the gut in response to the picture on the screen. He stared at the face for a long moment.

Mark reached for his cell phone and dialed the last called number. The operator at the long-term care facility in Connecticut answered.

“Jennifer Sullivan, please,” he told her. “Please tell her it's Mark Shaw.”

He didn't have to wait long before Jennifer was on the line.

“I know her,” he said into the phone.

The shock was transferred to the other side of the line. It seemed a few long seconds before the nurse found her voice.

“You do?” Jennifer asked. “Who is she?”

“Have you been watching the news about the accident and those researchers on the Gulf of Mexico?”

“I've read a little about it.”

“Well, I believe the name of the person in the photo is Amelia Kagan. She's the twin sister of Marion Kagan. The scientist who died in the research facility yesterday.”

Nuclear Fusion Test Facility

M
arion aimed the ax at the door handle, but she was tiring quickly and missed. The blade hit the tile floor and glanced off, just missing her foot. Raising the ax with an effort, she took more careful aim and swung it again.

Two total strangers meeting in an airport, and yet Marion had revealed things to Mark that she'd never told to people she considered her closest friends in California.

She'd talked about the town where she was from. Deer Lodge, Montana. This was the one place she never discussed, almost never allowed herself to think about, if she could help it. Even in her mind, she liked to pretend that it never existed.

Most importantly, though, she'd told him about her sister, Amelia. People she'd met after leaving Montana never even knew Marion had an identical twin.

She'd told Mark how, even as children, they were like one person divided into two bodies. What set them apart, though, was their reaction to life—their distinctly different way of handling their emotions. Amelia reacted, pouring hers out and showing everything; Marion repressed every uncomfortable feeling.

Marion leaned against the door to catch her breath. She was determined to get it open, and she knew she was almost there. Her mind wandered to her past again.

Deer Lodge. Her mother had returned to the home of Marion's grandparents with the twins after their father took off with another woman. As soon as she got her feet under her, Kim Kagan had immediately changed her last name back to her maiden name. She was Kim Brown to everyone who knew her. The twins were only three, and neither of them remembered much about the man who'd fathered them. In the years that followed, they never saw him or heard from him.

Deer Lodge was not much to speak of. Except for the fact that some big NBA coach had come from there, the tattered gray town was famous for just one thing. The prison. The biggest employer in town. That was where Marion's grandfather had worked his whole life, and that's where her mother had gotten a job as a secretary after returning home with the twins.

Living with a mother who always worked overtime to make ends meet and elderly grandparents who had their own lives, Marion and her sister did not have an ideal childhood.

There was so much Marion had never liked about her life. The house was always overshadowed by a black cloud of tension, guilt and sadness. That cloud emanated from their mother. She was unhappy and let everyone know it, feel it. Marion hid her misery and buried herself in her books and her studying. She erected walls out of the knowledge she found in those pages and hid behind them.

Amelia, on the other hand, took the brunt of their mother's unhappiness. Sensitive and caring as a child, she felt it all deeply and eventually rebelled against it.

Their grandfather had a soft spot in his heart for Amelia. But that bit of attention made Kim only angrier. She constantly complained that the old man was meddling in the way she was raising her daughters.

The girls' mother made sure they knew that to be vulnerable was to be weak. Because of Kim, a person needed thick skin to survive in their home.

As an adult Marion often thought back over those years and came to realize that Amelia never had stood a chance. Kim was of the school of parenting that allowed choosing favorites. And in her eyes her daughters, though identical, were each a model of one parent. Marion was like Kim and Amelia was like their father. She was one bad egg.

Amelia became more miserable as she grew older, and her actions reflected it. She ran away at twelve, but was caught and returned three weeks later. For the next four years, she was constantly in trouble at school and at home, and spent as much time on the streets as she could. The grandparents took sides, as well. The girls' grandmother had as little patience for Amelia as her daughter did. Their grandfather continually sided with Amelia. It didn't matter much, however. He didn't have any say in the way things ran in the house.

At seventeen, Amelia ran away for good. To this day, Marion believed that her mother was relieved. Kim had clearly been expecting it. Like father, like daughter. Good riddance.

After that, no one was allowed to talk about Amelia at home, just as no one was ever allowed to mention the name of the man who had fathered them. Even at school, no one mentioned Amelia. Everyone who knew them pretended that she had never existed.

Marion picked up the ax and swung it hard, slamming it against the door.

“But not me,” she said out loud.

For Marion, her sister had never died. She
knew
Amelia was alive. There had been times long ago when she could feel her sister's pain, her feeling of restlessness. But for a long time now, there'd been a sense of peace. Not death, but a calmness that made Marion believe that perhaps her sister had finally found the happiness she'd been searching for.

She lifted the ax again and let it drop.

With the sound of cracking wood, the entire handle separated from the door, and it was open.

Waterbury Long-Term Care Facility
Connecticut

T
here was a slight movement of the fingers. Sid looked down and realized he had laid his hand on JD's hand as he listened to Jennifer on the telephone.

JD looked up into his face. She was watching him.

“Are you listening to this, too?” he whispered.

He didn't know exactly what was said on the other end of the line, but one thing was clear. Mark Shaw knew who JD was. Sid was aware of an anxiety that he knew he had no right to be feeling. He'd only started working with her yesterday.

The possibility of having to stop the experiment wasn't what concerned him now. This acceptance alone was a transformation in who he was and how he worked. But there was something more, and he couldn't put his fingers on it.

Science wasn't the only thing in this equation here. He felt that there was more JD wanted to convey to them. This phone number was only the beginning.

Jennifer was writing things down speedily. Sid looked over at Desmond. He hadn't done anything more with shutting down their equipment for the day.
He seemed as interested in what the nurse was able to find out as Sid was.

“I never expected this when we started. Did you?” Desmond asked.

Sid shook his head. He told himself that this was the point, the purpose behind what he was studying, what he wanted to do. The theory of how many pictures of cats and dogs the computer could guess correctly from the readings was only a stepping stone to this. To actually help someone. To help find out who this young woman was.

“Okay, I'll be here,” Jennifer said before ending the call.

Desmond came around the computers. “What do you have?”

The nurse stood on the other side of the bed and looked down at JD. The patient's eyes remained on Sid.

“Amelia?” she called softly.

There was no movement. Sid kept his hand on hers, testing for any reaction.

“Amelia Kagan,” she repeated.

Sid looked into her dark eyes, wishing he could see what it was going through her mind right now. They'd removed the electrodes.

“Is that her name?” Desmond asked.

Jennifer nodded. “Mark Shaw believes she is Amelia Kagan, the twin sister of the scientist who just died in that explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.” She looked around the room. She moved to where a stack of papers had been left on a table. “Wasn't there a newspaper here from yesterday with the article and pictures? Here it is.”

As Jennifer flipped through the paper, Sid couldn't bring himself to look away from JD. The intensity of the young woman's stare rooted him to the same spot. He felt there was a change from what he'd seen before.

“Amelia Kagan,” he repeated the name. “Next time we connect her to the computer, I want to see if anything shows up when we mention her name.”

“Do you think they'll let us continue?” Desmond asked.

“We have all the signatures that we need for right now. I'll only stop when someone comes in and tells me to stop.”

“So who is this guy…Mark Shaw?” Desmond asked. “Family?”

“No, only a friend to JD—
Amelia's
sister,” Jennifer said. “He's decided to drive to Connecticut. He's offering to help out with whatever the conservator or the police might need from him. I got the feeling there was something between him and Marion Kagan.”

Sid felt the movement again. The fingers shifted beneath the weight of his hand.

“Here's her picture. Marion Kagan, age twenty-five…”

Amelia's fingers moved. She tried to raise her hand.

“Say her name again,” Sid told Jennifer.

She lowered the newspaper. “Amelia?”

“No, her sister's.”

“Marion. Marion Kagan.”

“She's responding to it,” Sid said excitedly. “She's responding to that name, but not to her own.”

“Should we hook her up again?” Desmond wanted to know.

“I believe there are some phone calls that you or I should be making first,” Jennifer reminded Sid. “Dr. Baer, the conservator. They should be ready to meet with Mark Shaw when he gets here.”

Sid knew how bureaucracy worked. Things took time. He hoped there would be no problem meeting
Shaw today, considering he was coming here all the way from Pennsylvania. He'd leave the information for Baer with his answering service. They'd get the message to him. And the physician knew how to reach the conservator.

There was no reason to rush Amelia, to put her under any undue stress.

“She's right.” He turned to Desmond. “You should pack up for the day.”

“And the calls?” Jennifer asked.

“I'll make them,” he told the nurse. “At the same time, I'm not going anywhere. This Mark Shaw doesn't see her unless I'm in the room.”

“Just like I told you before, that makes two of us.” She laughed. “I'll have the staff set up your tent.”