The flat LED screen suddenly seemed as inappropriate in this rustic Southwest decor as a polished monolith found in a crater on the moon. Wyatt felt no less out of place, harrier of con men and extortionists and blackmailers, having come here from Seattle to play a role for which he had no credentials—psychic detective, medium seeking to converse with some supernatural entity, explainer of the inexplicable.
The remote control was on the painted chest that stood under the wall-mounted TV. He picked it up and pressed the button labeled OFF. The screen went dark.
It came on again before he could put the remote down.
The luminous rectangle proved intriguing, as smooth and gray as mouse fur, presenting no smallest variation, and yet suggesting that images of enormous importance were concealed within its sameness, if only he were gifted enough to perceive them. The curious light was unlike anything he’d seen on a TV before, appealing for a reason he couldn’t grasp, entrancing, seductive. In the absence of the ominous and judgmental voice, the television produced not a scintilla of sound, but Wyatt felt a cold, fine sleet of vibrations emanating from it, prickling his skin, as if communication continued on a frequency he could not hear but received subconsciously.
Then the voice came once more, sharper than before, antipathy trembling on the edge of hostility. “You are termites devouring the foundation of the world—blight, rot, a terminal cancer.”
Wyatt’s eyes had fallen shut, and a kind of bewitchment had overcome him, but his sudden recognition of the speaker’s identity rattled him into a wide-eyed response. “‘Blight, rot, a terminal cancer,’” he repeated. “Who the hell are you, what do you want?”
The voice that had come from the TV had been his own.
Note for note, inflection for inflection, it came again—“Who the hell are you, what do you want?”—clearer than an echo, too perfect to be that of a gifted mimic. Wyatt spoke not a word but his voice issued from the TV: “I want what is right, only what is right. If it’s right that you should kill yourself, all of your greedy kind, then kill yourselves—or be killed.”
The TV switched off.
He considered turning it on. Instead, he put down the remote. At Liam O’Hara’s instruction, a powerful satellite dish had been installed on the roof of the house, to ensure that the family would be able to receive the entire spectrum of available television broadcasts and obtain swift internet access in this remote location. A first-rate hacker with the electronic address of the dish could invade the residence’s computer system and associated electronics, such as this television receiver. If he had the right audio gear and software called Paramimic, the invader needed only a one-sentence sample of anyone’s voice to be able to imitate it and deceive with a phone call, perhaps to speak out of a TV.
However, such a hacker would have extraordinary resources and would certainly not be a video-game-addicted thirtysomething case of arrested development living in his parents’ basement. More likely than not, he would be in the employ of an agency of one government or another. Although Liam set high ethical standards for himself, though his ambition was tempered by humility, the fact that he was a multibillionaire meant that he had enemies, including those envious souls who had never met him, never done business with him, but nevertheless hated him with an insane passion.
Perhaps this wasn’t a job for a psychic or a medium, after all, but only for a savvy gumshoe who could reason his way through a maze of deception.
So explain the fireflies, he thought.
He couldn’t explain them, of course, not with reason, not by pointing at a bogeyman who was a world-class hacker. Nor did his vaunted intuition offer him a whisper of Sherlockian inspiration.
24
Shortly after seven o’clock Friday morning, the seventh of August, minutes out of Santa Fe and miles above the Earth, Joanna Chase suddenly sat up straighter in her seat as one of the veils masking her memories of Jimmy Two Eyes slid away.
She recalled a twilight with frogs croaking jubilantly in expectation of the oncoming night, she and the boy side by side on chairs, on the dock, watching the crimson sunset turning purple on the surface of the lake. She was excited because the next day would be her birthday.
A long-forgotten conversation returned to Joanna now with such clarity that she seemed to be on that dock, in that distant time, unnoticed by her younger self and Jimmy, listening.
“I’m gonna be eight, Jimmy. Cool, huh?”
His voice raw and guttural, he said, “You seem excited.”
“Sure. Half grown-up!”