Richard Montanari by The Echo Man Page B

waiting for more. Nothing. Not yet.
        In
addition to his upcoming appointment with the sleep-study clinic, he had his
annual MRI screening. He'd had yearly MRIs for the past five years, ever since
he had been nearly fatally injured in a shooting. He knew everyone in the
hospital radiology department, and the mood was always light-hearted when he
went there, but they all knew what it was about. There was, and always would
be, a possibility of a brain tumor. He'd read all the books on symptoms and
signs - blackouts, voices in your head, sometimes unexplained smells.
        In a
separate incident, many years earlier, he had confronted a suspect in a bar
beneath the Walt Whitman Bridge. During the course of the arrest Byrne had
plunged into the frigid Delaware River, locked in combat with the suspect. When
he was pulled out of the water Byrne was declared dead. One full minute later
he came to.
        Not
long after that the visions had started. They were never fullblown apparitions.
He did not show up at a scene, close his eyes, and see any sort of recreation of
the crime in Technicolor and THX audio. Instead, it was more of a feeling.
Sometimes it crossed over into the dominion of sense and sensation, but mostly
he got a feel for the victim, the perpetrator. A thought, a dream, a desire, a
habit.
        Byrne
had been to group-therapy sessions of every kind, even going to a
regression-therapy group that tried to take him back to that moment when he'd
plunged into the river, an attempt to bring him back to the person he had been
before the incident. Byrne now knew that was impossible.
        The
visions had diminished over the ensuing years as had the accompanying
migraines. These days they were few and far between.
        He
had not had anything close to a full-blown migraine lately, but he knew
something was happening inside him. More than once, in the last few months, he
had experienced something... not pain, more of a presence, a thickness in his
head, along with a slight blurring of vision. And with these feelings came the
clearest inner visions he'd ever had, now accompanied by sounds. Then,
sometimes, a blackout.
        He
was still undecided on whether or not to mention these things to his doctor.
Telling a doctor something like this only led to more tests.
     
        He
stepped into the room where a dead man lay on the floor. Byrne's heart picked
up a beat, quickening with the knowledge that a killer had stood in this spot
no more than twenty-four hours earlier, breathing the same air.
        Just
when he was about to begin his routine, a warm sensation filled his head. He
held onto the door jamb for a second, attempting to ride it out. With the
warmth came the knowledge of...
        . . . something that has burned for many years, a feeling of loss and desire, a
dark passion that will forever be unfulfilled, a love story unwritten,
unwritable, the hunger to create a legacy . . .
        Byrne
knelt down, snapped on a latex glove, then instantly thought better of it. He
removed the glove. He needed the feel of the flesh. A dialogue happened between
the skin of the dead and his senses. A superior officer, or a representative of
the medical examiner's office would surely object. That didn't matter at the
moment. He was alone with the dead, alone with what had happened in this room,
alone with the rage that drove someone to brutally take a life.
        Alone
with himself.
        Kevin
Byrne reached out and touched a finger to the dead man's lips. He closed his
eyes, listened, and the dead man spoke.

 
        

Chapter 10
        
        Jessica
and Byrne spent the next hour separately canvassing the neighborhood for a
second time. They learned a great deal about cheating spouses, lazy landlords,
illegal parking, possible international drug cartels, alien invasions, more
illegal parking, and - a fan favorite - government conspiracies. In other words,
nothing.
        At
three o'clock