Read Online First Daughter by Eric Van Lustbader - Free Book Online
Authors: Eric Van Lustbader
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schoolwork yet become one of the greatest mathematical minds of his century. It was also what allowed Leonardo da Vinci to conceive of airplanes and submarines three hundred years before they were invented. These great leaps of intuition were possible because the geniuses who conceived of them were dyslexic; they weren't tied down to the plodding logic of the verbal mind. The verbal mind thinks at a speed of approximately 150 words a minute.Jack's mind worked at a thousand times that rate. No wonder certain things disoriented him, while he could see through the surfaces of others. Take the crime scene, for instance.
Alli had slept here last night until just after three; then something happened. Had she been surprised, driven out of sleep by a callused hand clamped over her mouth, a cord biting into her wrists? Or had she heard a strange sound, had she been awake when the door opened and the predatory shadow fell on her? Did she have any time before being overpowered, before she was gagged, bound, and spirited out across the black lawn under the black sky? Alli was a smart girl, Jack knew. Even better for her, she was clever. Maybe Emma had been secretly envious of her roommate's ingenuity. The thought saddened him, but wasn't everyone envious of someone, wasn't everyone unhappy with who they were? His parents certainly were, his brother was, up until the moment the bomb took him apart on a preindustrial Iraqi highway, somewhere in the back of beyond. After the explosion and the fire, there wasn't enough left to make a proper ID, so he remained where he died, staring endlessly into the hellish yellow sky that seemed to burn day and night.
These disparate thoughts might have confused a normal mind, but not Jack's. He saw the room in a way that neither Garner nor any of the forensic experts could. To him what he was processing was a series of still frames, three-dimensional images that interlinked into a whole from which his heightened intuition made rapid-fire choices.
"There was only one perp," he said.
"Really?" Garner didn't bother to stifle a laugh. "One man to infiltrate the campus, soundlessly murder two trained Secret Service agents, abduct a twenty-year-old girl, manhandle her back across the campus, and vanish into thin air? You're out of your mind, McClure."
"Nevertheless," Jack said slowly and deliberately, "that's precisely what happened."
Garner could not keep the skepticism off his face. "Okay, assumingfor a moment that there's even a remote possibility you're right, how would you know just from looking at the room when a dozen of the best forensic scientists in the country have been over this with a fine-tooth comb without being able to come to that conclusion?"
"First of all, the forensic photos of the Secret Service men showed that they were both killed by a single wound," Jack said, "and that wound was identical on both of them. The chances of two men doing that simultaneously are so remote as to be virtually impossible. Second, unless you're mounting an assault on a drug lord's compound, you're not about to use a squad of people. This is a small campus, but it's guarded by security personnel as well as CCTV cameras. One man—especially someone familiar with the campus security—could get through much more easily than several."
Garner shook his head. "I asked you for evidence, and this is what you come up with?"
"I'm telling you—"
"Enough, McClure. I know you're desperately trying to justify your presence here, but this bullshit just won't cut it. What you're describing is Spider-Man, not a flesh-and-blood perp." Garner, folding his arms across his chest, assumed a superior attitude. "I graduated second in my class at Yale. Where did you go to school, McClure, West Armpit College?"
Jack said nothing. He was on his hands and knees, mini-flashlight on, looking under Alli's bed—
"I've been Homeland Security since the beginning, McClure. Since nine-fucking-eleven."
—not at the carpet, which he
Alli had slept here last night until just after three; then something happened. Had she been surprised, driven out of sleep by a callused hand clamped over her mouth, a cord biting into her wrists? Or had she heard a strange sound, had she been awake when the door opened and the predatory shadow fell on her? Did she have any time before being overpowered, before she was gagged, bound, and spirited out across the black lawn under the black sky? Alli was a smart girl, Jack knew. Even better for her, she was clever. Maybe Emma had been secretly envious of her roommate's ingenuity. The thought saddened him, but wasn't everyone envious of someone, wasn't everyone unhappy with who they were? His parents certainly were, his brother was, up until the moment the bomb took him apart on a preindustrial Iraqi highway, somewhere in the back of beyond. After the explosion and the fire, there wasn't enough left to make a proper ID, so he remained where he died, staring endlessly into the hellish yellow sky that seemed to burn day and night.
These disparate thoughts might have confused a normal mind, but not Jack's. He saw the room in a way that neither Garner nor any of the forensic experts could. To him what he was processing was a series of still frames, three-dimensional images that interlinked into a whole from which his heightened intuition made rapid-fire choices.
"There was only one perp," he said.
"Really?" Garner didn't bother to stifle a laugh. "One man to infiltrate the campus, soundlessly murder two trained Secret Service agents, abduct a twenty-year-old girl, manhandle her back across the campus, and vanish into thin air? You're out of your mind, McClure."
"Nevertheless," Jack said slowly and deliberately, "that's precisely what happened."
Garner could not keep the skepticism off his face. "Okay, assumingfor a moment that there's even a remote possibility you're right, how would you know just from looking at the room when a dozen of the best forensic scientists in the country have been over this with a fine-tooth comb without being able to come to that conclusion?"
"First of all, the forensic photos of the Secret Service men showed that they were both killed by a single wound," Jack said, "and that wound was identical on both of them. The chances of two men doing that simultaneously are so remote as to be virtually impossible. Second, unless you're mounting an assault on a drug lord's compound, you're not about to use a squad of people. This is a small campus, but it's guarded by security personnel as well as CCTV cameras. One man—especially someone familiar with the campus security—could get through much more easily than several."
Garner shook his head. "I asked you for evidence, and this is what you come up with?"
"I'm telling you—"
"Enough, McClure. I know you're desperately trying to justify your presence here, but this bullshit just won't cut it. What you're describing is Spider-Man, not a flesh-and-blood perp." Garner, folding his arms across his chest, assumed a superior attitude. "I graduated second in my class at Yale. Where did you go to school, McClure, West Armpit College?"
Jack said nothing. He was on his hands and knees, mini-flashlight on, looking under Alli's bed—
"I've been Homeland Security since the beginning, McClure. Since nine-fucking-eleven."
—not at the carpet, which he
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