Read Online Richard Montanari by The Echo Man - Free Book Online

filtered through the blinds,
Kevin Byrne stood in the defendant's well of a cavernous courtroom that was lit
by a sea of votive candles. He could not see the members of the jury but he
knew who they were. They were the silent victims. And there were more than
twelve. There were thousands, each holding one light.
        Byrne
got out of bed, staggered to the kitchen, splashed cold water on his face. He'd
gotten four hours of sleep; three the night before. Over the past few months
his insomnia had become acute, a routine part of his life so ingrained that he
could not imagine living any other way. Nevertheless, he had an appointment -
doctor's orders and against his will - with a neurologist at the University of
Pennsylvania Sleep Clinic.
        He
took a long hot shower, rinsing off the previous night. He toweled, dressed,
pulling a fresh shirt out of the dry-cleaning bag. He put on a new suit, his
favorite tie, then sat at his small dinette table, sipped his coffee. He
glanced at the Sleep Clinic questionnaire. All one hundred sixty probing
questions.
        Question
87: Do you snore?
         If
I could get someone to sleep with me, I might be able to answer that, he
thought.
        Then
Byrne remembered his little experiment. The night before, at around two a.m.,
when he'd found that he couldn't drift off, he'd dug out his small Sony digital
recorder.
        He
got back in bed, took two Ambien, turned on the recorder, flipped off the
light, and closed his eyes. Four hours later he awoke.
        And
now he had the results of his experiment. He poured more coffee, played the
recording from the beginning. At first he heard some rustling, the settling of
the unit on the nightstand. Then he heard himself turn off the lamp, a little
more rustling, then a bump of the table, which was so loud that it made him
jump. He turned down the volume. Then, for the next five minutes or so, he
heard nothing but white noise, the occasional car passing by his apartment.
        Byrne
listened to this rhythmic breathing awhile, which seemed to get slower and
slower. Then he heard the first snort. It sounded like a backfire. Or maybe a
pissed-off Rottweiler.
         Great, he thought. So he did snore. Not constantly, but about fifteen minutes
into the recording he began to snore again, loudly for a few minutes, then not
at all, then loudly again. He stared at the recorder, thinking:
         What
the fuck am I doing ?
        The
answer? Sitting in his small dining room, barely awake, listening to a
recording of himself sleeping. Did it get dumber than this?
         Man, he had to get a life.
        He
pressed the fast-forward button, and every time he came across a sound he
stopped, rewound for a few seconds, played it back.
        Byrne
was just about to give up on the experiment when he heard something that
sounded different. He hit Stop, then Play.
         'You
know? came his voice from the recorder.
         What ?
        Rewind.
         'You
know .'
        He
let it run. Soon there was another noise, the sound of the lamp clicking on,
and his voice saying, clear as a bell:
         '2:52 .'
        Then
there was the snap of the lamp being turned off, more rustling, then silence
for the rest of the recording. Although he had no memory of it, he must have
awakened, turned on the light, looked at the clock, spoken the time aloud, and
gone back to sleep.
        Except
there was no clock in his bedroom. And his watch and cellphone were always on
the dresser.
        So
how did he know what time it was?
        Byrne
played it all back, one last time, just to be certain that he was not imagining
all of it. He was not.
         2:52.
         You
know .
     
        As
Byrne waited in the park, he thought about another moment in this place, a time
when his heart had been intact. His daughter Colleen had been four years old,
and was trying desperately to get a kite in the air. She ran in circles, back
and