But he’d spoken directly with very few of them. Eddie didn’t feel comfortable around most people, but particularly not around strangers. They made him nervous, because he never knew what they would do next. Eddie didn’t like surprises. To make matters worse, most strangers stared at him like he was some kind of oddity, reminding him just how different he was from most people. And how alone. In all his twenty-seven years, Eddie had never had a real friend. He often wondered what that would feel like, but knew that he would probably never have a friend, so he contented himself with listening to the comings and goings of others, learning as much as he could about each of them.
The one person he knew nothing about was the muscular man Eddie sometimes saw sitting in a beige Chevrolet Impala in the parking lot. The man clearly worked at Harmony House, because he was there almost every day, but Eddie had no idea what he did. He had asked Dr. Fenton about this mystery man on several occasions, but each time Dr. Fenton insisted that the man was none of Eddie’s concern.
Whoever the stranger in the hallway was, she’d been in Dr. Fenton’s office for one hour and thirteen minutes, which was an unusually long visit. The old doctor rarely met with anyone for more than thirty minutes, much less an hour. Eddie made a note of it in a binder labeled #37, where he kept a log of every meeting Dr. Fenton had had in the last six months. Logs of the doctor’s meetings from prior to six months ago were contained in binders labeled #1 through #36. Each contained approximately six months’ worth of meetings. The first date in binder #1 was April 14, 2001, the day Eddie had arrived at Harmony House at age eleven. The nursing staff referred to Eddie’s binders, at least #1 through #37, as “The Old Man’s Minutes.” They called #101 “The Book of Slaps,” but never to Eddie’s face. They were all too fond of him—and of their jobs.
Other numbered binders, such as #121 through #125, contained logs of temperature readings; the ones beginning with #131 listed what kinds of food had been served in the cafeteria, and whether or not they were prepared to Eddie’s liking. The #150 series listed the number of people who’d walked past his door during certain hours. The clear winner was always 5:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m., because that was when the daytime staff left.
The binders were all carefully arranged in numerical order along five evenly spaced wooden shelves. Eddie didn’t mind if any of the staff used his logs for reference, as long as they returned the binders to their original locations. He was surprised at how few of the doctors and nurses ever utilized his data. There was so much to be gleaned from it.
One day, he would show them.
He continued listening to the unfamiliar footsteps, tilting his head slightly to one side and then the other. He guessed this stranger was about twenty-five, the average age of medical residents when they started working at Harmony House. Most were slightly younger than Eddie, which sometimes made him think that he should be their doctor and not the other way around. The fact was just another on the long list of things Eddie wished he understood, but doubted he ever would. Like all other things, he kept a list of these bits of unattainable knowledge. It was Eddie’s Book of Questions and was housed in binder #1000. He had chosen that number when he’d calculated that if he lived an incredibly long time, he might need all numbers through 999 for his other areas of interest, but one thousand seemed safe enough. And it was such a nice number, being ten cubed and all.
Her footsteps moved briskly along the cold linoleum floor. Not like she was in a hurry, but more like she was excited. Happy. Like she couldn’t wait to tell somebody something. Eddie knew that feeling. Had it his whole life. This feeling like he was on the verge of something so special, so great, so amazing that he would be happy forever and ever. At least, that’s how he had tried to describe it. But to hear Eddie talk about his emotions left most people with the sense that he had no idea what he was talking about. Like he was just guessing. Or parroting. Which couldn’t have been further from the truth. Eddie, like most with Asperger profiles, experienced a complete range of feelings, but had considerable difficulty identifying or discussing them. He didn’t know how to show his emotions—at least, not like those in the neurological mainstream. The “normals,” as many thought of themselves. The sixty-seven out of sixty-eight people, on average, who were off the spectrum, and who defined the standard practices for interpersonal communication, which often didn’t leave room for those who struggled to express what they were feeling. If only there were an emotional Google Translate app for those living with autism. Perhaps one day someone would invent such an app—someone on the high-functioning end of the spectrum, diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. One of the group that Hans Asperger first labeled in 1944 as “little professors.”
But until that day, Eddie would have to memorize the appropriate responses to specific situations. He spent hundreds of hours practicing in front of the mirror, making a sad face when told something sad, a concerned face when told something worthy of concern, when, in fact, he felt nothing at all. So, as Eddie sat on his Batman sheets in room 237, listening to the world around him, he made a mental note that, should he ever encounter this woman stranger, he would ask her to describe what she was feeling so that he would be able to repeat it one day and sound like he knew what he was talking about.
CHAPTER 3
Parking Lot, Harmony House, May 19, 4:16 p.m.
Skylar exited the facility, moving briskly across the lot to the visitor’s space where her 2009 Honda Accord with Virginia plates was parked. As Skylar got into the driver’s seat, she had no idea that a pair of high-powered binoculars was trained on her. The person looking at her had a steady hand. After sixteen years of surveilling people, he should. Michael Barnes was adept at all the requisite skills involved. Wiretapping. Records retrieval. Breaking and entering. He would have made an excellent criminal if he hadn’t gone to work for the government.
His hands were massive and weathered. Well-used instruments of strength and lethal destruction that were also capable of surprising precision. Barnes watched Skylar closely as she called somebody from inside her parked Honda. He glanced at the laptop sitting in the passenger’s seat next to him to see the number she was dialing: 212 area code, New York City. The number belonged to Jacob Hendrix. Her boyfriend.
In the three months Barnes had been keeping tabs on her, which coincided with Dr. Fenton’s decision to consider her a serious candidate for a Harmony House position, Barnes had learned significantly more about her relationship with Hendrix than anyone outside the two of them had a right to know. Among the surveillance expert’s key takeaways was how rarely Skylar let her guard down. She deftly managed to keep her lover at a safe emotional distance. Barnes chalked it up to her ambition. She was married to her career. Anyone involved with her would never be more than a mistress. In his generation, this was something only men did. Now, of course, it was a whole different deal. Which fascinated Barnes. In fact, he’d privately started to think of Skylar as the most beautiful man he’d ever met.
When Skylar had moved into Jacob’s apartment two weeks ago, Barnes had wired the apartment within hours, but he still hadn’t found the opportunity to install the transmitter that would allow him to listen to the apartment remotely. For the moment, he would have to be in immediate proximity to the building, which was just fine with Barnes. He preferred to familiarize himself with a location in person before retreating to his sanctuary in the bowels of Harmony House, if time and circumstances allowed. And in this case, they did.
Jacob answered his mobile phone; Barnes listened through his laptop. “How’d it go?” the young professor asked expectantly. The reception on his cell phone was sketchy, which always seemed to be the case whenever he was on the NYU campus. It made Barnes wonder if the government might be running something out of one of NYU’s departments. Most every major university had at least one covert operation stationed on its campus. Some had over a dozen. Institutions of higher learning made perfect covers, and operations could run for years without ever drawing attention to themselves. Except from someone like Michael Barnes.
The reception on NYU’s campus was as bad as the immediate areas around federal buildings, and those were bad because the government liked it that way. They’d have kept us miles away if they could, but even the government had to live with certain constraints.