78

When Phil Esterhaus returned from his dawn run on the beach, his wife, Ellen, was already off to their daughter's house to help with the new grandbaby, Willy.

Now Esterhaus was in the shower, and John Falkirk relaxed in an armchair in the master bedroom, waiting for the opinionated chief of police to put in an appearance.

The draperies were drawn at the windows. One nightstand lamp with a pleated amber-silk shade provided minimal and restful light, and the prevalent shadows seemed to be a palliative purple instead of harsh black, as if the light and shadows conspired with the capsules of Vicodin to soothe a wounded man's troubled mind.

The susurration of falling water was reminiscent of the sound the unborn hear in the womb, the rush of the mother's blood, which lulls with a sweet promise of eternal safety and peace. A false promise. A damn lie. Not that Falkirk actually remembered what he had heard in the womb. The thought came to him as a consequence of having taken a double dose of the prescription painkiller on top of multiple caffeine tablets, as well as Zantac to deal with the acid produced by the excess of caffeine. He'd had some brandy as well, Esterhaus's brandy, two shots that he'd mixed with part of a can of Coca-Cola, which he was drinking now as he sat in the wombchair, the armchair, waiting for good old Phil to appear with his hair wet and a towel around his waist and snarky quip on his tongue.

Anyway, Falkirk hated his mother, who died and left him to the mercy of a stepmother so greedy she probably ate money in secrecy. His real mother hadn't dropped dead in every timeline, but what did that matter if she'd been thoughtless enough to die in this one? Somewhere there were John Falkirks who received their inheritances because there had been no stepmother to steal it from them. The existence of happy versions of himself did not please him. Indeed, he hated those other John Falkirks and would have liked to track them all down and kill them.

As the armchair cushioned him like an amniotic sac, as the shadowy bedroom snugged around him like a uterus, he felt no pain because even a quack of Dr. Nolan Burnside's caliber could provide useful medication when you threatened to carve up his children.

Correction: He felt no physical pain, but he was in emotional pain for several reasons. The biggest reason was that he had been shot for the first time in his life, and it had been a close thing, and he could have died.

Maybe because of the painkiller and massive amounts of caffeine and the brandy, he was having thoughts he never had before, insights and realizations. Although, in his capacity as a federal agent, he had killed people—always for good reason, always because they were traitors or otherwise dangerous or annoyed him—he had not until now given any thought whatsoever to the possibility of his own death. On some level, he must have realized that he was mortal. However, he never proceeded with his life as if that were the case. Being shot in the thigh had changed everything.

Since childhood, he had known that no one could be trusted, not your mother who would die on you, not your father who would trade a son's birthright for a hot bitch who would sex him to death, not the family lawyer who would strip you of your birthright for a piece of the fortune settled on your stepmother. Now he understood that he couldn't even trust other versions of himself in other timelines, those who had received their inheritances when he had not, for if they knew of him and his bitter animosity, they would surely want to kill him before he could kill them. To be perfectly safe, to have a chance to use the key to everything to exploit the knowledge of the multiverse and make himself wealthier and more powerful than any emperor in history, he would have to secure this timeline as his base, rather than split for a better one, and then he would need to murder as many versions of himself as he could find on other worlds.

This prospect would have seemed daunting, exhausting, if not for the wonder of Dr. Burnside's little pills and the effects of fine brandy. Freed from physical pain, clear of mind, he knew exactly what he must do.

Before storming Charles Pellafino's house and seizing the key to everything, Falkirk needed to frame Jeffrey Coltrane for the murder of Chief Philip Esterhaus. That would justify the death of Coltrane when the SWAT team stormed the Pellafino residence.

Coltrane had to be killed for Falkirk to get his key. In fact, he had to die merely because he knew about the key.

Amity Coltrane had to die because she also knew about the key, because she would be witness to her father's murder, and because she was a deceitful little smart-ass.

Charles Pellafino's death could be justified because he had given shelter to Coltrane, who conspired with the traitor Harkenbach and because ... well, maybe Pellafino also conspired with Harkenbach, and all of them had colluded with Russia on something. The details could be worked out after everyone who needed to die was dead.

After the assault on the Pellafino house, perhaps it would be possible to stage the scene so it appeared that Coltrane, cornered and desperate, had committed murder and then suicide, killing his daughter and then himself. Delicious.

Documents could be forged to prove that Coltrane—a pathetic loser, a struggling radio repairman—had given shelter to the vile traitor Edwin Harkenbach and helped him avoid arrest for selling national security secrets, and that he murdered Chief Esterhaus, who had tumbled to his scheme. At this very moment, Jason Frankfurt was falsifying the history of the weapon with which Phil Esterhaus would be murdered, so that it could be proved that Coltrane had purchased it two years earlier.

Without pain and medicated into a state of supreme confidence, Falkirk found his plan to be flawless, so clever that, contemplating it, he laughed softly and lit a cigarette. After all that he had been through, it felt good to be happy, especially considering that happiness was a feeling he rarely experienced.

When the cigarette was half smoked, he realized that he no longer heard the sound of falling water. He couldn't be sure how long ago the shower in the adjacent bathroom had been cranked off.

That realization led to another of equal importance. If neither Ellen Esterhaus nor her husband was a smoker, firing up a cigarette had been a mistake.

A sudden sense of jeopardy made him wonder if he might not be as clearheaded as he believed, which was when Philip Esterhaus came out of the bathroom.

Falkirk had seen the chief before, more than once, but never when the man had been wearing so little. In only a pair of briefs, Esterhaus proved to be a more muscular and impressive specimen than he was in uniform, as if sculpted out of stone.

"You look like a demigod," Falkirk said, surprised to have made such a statement, though his compliment was sincere.

The chief held a pistol.

The sight of the weapon perplexed Falkirk. How paranoid must a man be to keep a gun in his bathroom?

"What the hell are you doing here?" Esterhaus demanded.

"Smoking," Falkirk replied, passing the cigarette from right hand to left and taking a draw on it. He thought that was a pretty clever response, but he could see it hadn't amused the chief. So he blew out smoke and said, "We need to talk."

"You want to talk? Get your ass out of my house, we'll talk down at the station."

Esterhaus wasn't pointing his gun at Falkirk. He held it down at his side, the muzzle aimed at the floor.

Neither was Falkirk pointing his pistol at the chief. It lay in his lap, but he had let his free hand settle on it when he passed the cigarette from right hand to left.

His lap was in shadow. In fact, lamplight painted only the left side of his face and his arm, and the hand that held the cigarette. He imagined he must be a rather striking figure, like a mysterious character in a movie. He'd always thought he somewhat resembled a young Michael Douglas, although more handsome.

"The reason I intruded on your privacy," he explained, pausing for a weary sigh, "is that I thought, given what I have to reveal to you, that you would rather hear it in a place more discreet than your office. It involves some embarrassing information about your wife and a man named Charles Pellafino."

Esterhaus took another step into the room. "What bullshit is this? You think you can—"

With the cigarette still held somewhat languorously in his left hand to suggest an unthreatening listlessness, Falkirk tried a most unprofessional one-hand shot. He squeezed off three rounds in rapid succession, the recoil foiling his aim, and Esterhaus managed to bring up his weapon and fire once, and each of them scored one hit.

Falkirk took a brutal wallop in the torso. Although the slug, which burned a hole in his shirt, didn't penetrate the Kevlar vest, his field of vision narrowed to the figure of the nearly naked man, the periphery of the room dissolving into darkness, and he couldn't draw a breath. The impact robbed the Vicodin of its power. Pain splintered through his chest, as if his lungs shattered like glass.

Instead of Kevlar, the police chief had only a pair of cotton briefs. Anyway, Falkirk's one useful round took Esterhaus far above his Jockeys, in the throat, blowing out his esophagus, severing at least one carotid artery, and separating his spinal cord from the base of his brain.

The demigod collapsed in a graceless heap, but Falkirk wasn't ready to spring up from the chair and do a victory dance. Perhaps the punch of the bullet wouldn't have been so bad if his chest had not been bruised by the rounds Harkenbach fired at him point-blank earlier in the day. First, his ability to breathe returned, and he gasped for air, but each inhalation and exhalation felt as if it was being forced through a barrier of pulverized bones. After maybe a minute, the pain diminished, and after another minute, the double dose of Vicodin began to work its magic again.

He had dropped his cigarette. A thread of smoke rose from the carpet. He levered himself out of the chair and stamped out the fire before it could start.

After slipping the pistol into his belt holster, he picked up the empty glass that had contained Coke and brandy. He caned himself into the kitchen. He left the tumbler on the cutting board next to the sink. Mrs. Esterhaus could deal with it when she got home.

He had no concern about leaving fingerprints, DNA, or other evidence. Because this murder would be blamed on Jeffrey Coltrane and because Coltrane was part of the Harkenbach case, over which Falkirk had jurisdiction, nothing incriminating him would be found by the federal CSI team that would probe the premises.

Staring at the empty glass, he considered pouring a bit more cola and taking a third Vicodin. However, he quickly recognized this impulse as dangerous, as a consequence of already being much too far under the influence of medication. He didn't need another Vicodin. He felt no pain. He was happy. Happier than he'd been since he'd killed his stepmother in another timeline.

Nevertheless, he continued staring at the empty glass, which was mysteriously compelling. The very emptiness of it began to seem ominous. After a minute or two, he realized that the empty vessel was a symbol of failure. It must be taken as an omen, an urgent warning that the assault on Pellafino's house might go awry, as to some degree had the murder of the chief, which should have been a one-shot kill, without an exchange of gunfire. The SWAT operation might turn out even far worse, end up a catastrophe. Being free of pain and in a rare state of happiness, Falkirk realized that he was so clear-sighted that things he once would have overlooked were now visible to him in their true and overwhelming importance. Like the glass. The empty glass. He must take the empty glass seriously. Some power—perhaps Destiny—was advising him through signs and symbols.

In his heightened state of consciousness, he saw the world as he had not seen it before, but as it had been portrayed in certain movies that had enthralled him, movies that were now revealed to have conveyed the essential truth of existence. Great magic and powers of supernatural potency were contained in such things as a sword locked in stone, in rings forged in Mordor, in a key to other worlds that looked like a smartphone. Spirit oracles spoke of the future through crystal balls and Tarot cards and patterns in tea leaves—and empty drinking glasses.

He was scared. He'd never been truly scared before. For a man who believed that nothing had meaning, it was horrific to suddenly perceive that everything had meaning. Horrific and frightening, but also motivating. If there were signs and portents all around, he who heeded them would surely never fail.

A standard SWAT invasion of the house, executed even with the swiftest and most overpowering force, had at best a 90 percent chance of success. But it couldn't guarantee that the precious key to everything would be captured, that Coltrane and his daughter would not teleport out to a parallel world.

If Falkirk didn't nail them this time and seize the key, he very likely would never have another chance. If he failed, his future would be as empty as the glass on the drainboard.

He must set aside conventional thinking, abandon the protocols of standard SWAT assaults, and go big, as the Oracle of the Empty Glass had undoubtedly been instructing him. Instead of armored men battering down doors and shattering through windows and shooting everyone in sight as they exploded into the house, a better plan would be to gas everyone inside. Creep up on the house without alerting those within. Introduce a powerful, rapidly expanding gas that would render the occupants unconscious in a few seconds and dead soon after. Coltrane would have no time to use the key to everything.

When the gas dissipated, Falkirk and crew could enter without personal risk. A story could be concocted to explain the gas as issuing from a device that Coltrane had been cobbling together for a terrorist attack. It malfunctioned, taking out its maker instead of the innocent people he intended to kill. Irony. Karma. The press would never question the story. Most repeated as fact whatever was fed to them by a deep-state source with whom they were sympathetic.