Shift: A Novel

Millbrook, NY

November 4, 1963

The first thing he saw when he came to was a tattered lattice of sunset shining through the needles of the pine forest. There was something wrong with this picture, but he couldn’t tell what it was at first. Then it came to him: the pine trees were solid now, their only movement caused by the breeze.

He sat up, wincing in pain. He felt the crust of dried blood on his face, looked down and saw a few drops on the front of his suit. Then he saw the car.

A Lincoln, flat, black, and rectangular, was slotted into the trees like a gigantic domino. He turned toward the cottage, looked first at the second-floor window to the bedroom where he’d confronted the girl and Forrestal. He stared at it a long time before accepting the truth of what his eyes told him: it was unbroken. Light shown through the drawn curtain, and dark shadows moved back and forth inside the room.

He started to stand and immediately felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see a stony-faced man sitting on a section of sawn tree trunk.

“I’m going to have to ask you to wait until the ambulance arrives, sir.”

“I’m fine,” BC said, and moved to get up again.

The man’s hand was heavy on his shoulder, and BC sat down hard enough to send daggers of pain through his forehead.

“Sir, please. I’d hate to see you injured further.”

BC squeezed his left arm against his side, confirming what he’d already suspected. His gun was gone.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“The ambulance will be here shortly, sir. You should take it easy. That’s quite a bump on your head.”

BC would’ve shaken his head but it hurt too much. He turned back to the cottage, just in time to see a man back out the front door pulling something long, black, obviously heavy.

A body bag.

He dragged his burden across the lawn and stowed it in the Lincoln’s trunk.

BC would’ve asked where he was taking the body, but he knew it was pointless. The man returned to the house and came out a few minutes later with a second body, then a third, this last one significantly smaller than the first two, and carried in his arms in a gross perversion of the Pietà.

“Lord have mercy. What have you done?”

The lights went off in the upper bedroom. As BC watched, the rest of the house went dark. The black-suited man scanned the ground, then got in the car. The engine started, the lights came on. Then a shadow filled the cottage doorway. Another dark suit, but there was something different about this one. It was bigger for one thing. Bulkier. More rumpled.

For some reason BC looked at the feet for confirmation of the man’s identity. There were the sandals. When he looked up at the face, he saw that it was covered by a broad-brimmed fedora and a pair of mirrored sunglasses, as if the man was hiding his identity even from the people he worked with.

He was different now. The clothing was still shabby, ill-fitting, but there was nothing disheveled about the man himself. He was clearly in charge.

“Did you have to kill them? Mr. Forrestal? The girl?”

Melchior descended the steps and walked toward the car.

“Isn’t it bad enough that you dragged them into your experiment? Did you have to shoot them when it went awry?”

A grin flickered over the corner of Melchior’s mouth, and for some reason BC knew it was his use of the word “awry.”

“Was Logan his real name?” he called as Melchior reached for a door handle. “Or Morganthau? His parents will want to know what happened to him. What about the girl? What was her name?”

Melchior pulled the door open. He paused a moment.

“She doesn’t have a name,” he said finally. “Not anymore. Give him back his gun, Charlie,” he threw in, then got in the car.

The agent guarding BC handed him his gun, then the bullets that had been in it. Then he got in the Lincoln with Melchior and the other man, and, almost silently, the car pulled away over the pine needles. More out of instinct than hope, BC glanced at the rear bumper, but black fabric had been draped over the license plate, as though the car itself were in mourning for the three bodies it carried.