Chapter 16

"What did you just say?" The spell was broken. Just as I feared – the Danny I'd been hoping to be reunited with slipped out of my grasp.

"God has spoken to me," he said. I searched for the glint of madness in Danny's eyes, but only his familiar green eyes greeted me. Dorshak's words in the interrogation room came back to me: "Your partner is completely off the deep end. He thinks the LINK-angels guided his hand."

I shook my head, as though trying to will the words back into Danny's mouth. "No, you don't mean that."

Ignoring the tremor in my voice, he smiled crookedly. "Yeah, I do. I've received an answer from the Almighty ... a sort of peace."

I pushed away from him and sat down on the bleachers. I squinted up at him. "What are you talking about, Danny?"

He sat down next to me. The long-unused plastic creaked in protest at the added weight. Danny reached into the pocket of the trench coat and carefully laid a Bible on my knee.

I stared at the scarred and battered book, as though it might be a carrier of his insanity.

"I smuggled this out for you," he said, patting the book. "You'll find it illuminating."

"I'm a Catholic, Danny. You know we never read that thing," I said, pushing the Bible back at him.

"Maybe it's time." Firmly, Daniel placed the book back in my lap. He looked deeply into my eyes. "I've been thinking about that night. All my notes are in there."

I looked at the Bible with renewed interest.

He shrugged. "It was the best I could do. It's the only paper the Moral Office allows besides toilet paper. But I could hardly have kept notes on that stuff, now could I? Keeping a Bible is expected."

I nodded, not sure what to make of this new development. "Danny, you haven't become a New Right convert, have you?"

"Hell no!"

"Why all this God-talk, then?"

"I told you, Dee. I've been chosen. God has spoken to me." :

"Sure," I said hollowly. His shoulder touched mine, and we stared out at the ruined ballpark. The glass field glinted like a multifaceted diamond in the silvery moonlight. I put my hand over his where he pressed the Bible into my lap. His knuckles were dry and his fingers thin. As I caressed his hand, I noticed the absence of a band on his ring finger. "She divorced you?"

"Wouldn't you have?" His face scrunched up in a grimace.

"It's illegal. How could she possibly have gotten ..."

"It's not illegal in cases of adultery, remember," Daniel said. "And even though you were acquitted of the charges, by the time the circus was through the press painted you a total nymphomaniac. Barbara didn't believe me when I told her I'd stopped before ... well, you were there. You know the truth."

I pulled away at the memory of that night. In my mind, his hot hands, so unlike the gentle ones resting on the Bible now, pawed at my dress like an animal. "Yeah," I said hoarsely, "I was there."

He removed his hand deliberately, conscious of me staring at it. He folded his arms across his chest. "Dee, about that night ... Did you get my letters?"

I nodded, returning my gaze to the glass-shrouded arena.

"It's important, Dee. This is why I wanted to meet. I need you to understand it was ... Them." He unraveled one hand to jab a finger at the Bible. "Them, not me, who were in control that night."

I shook my head. He was completely delusional. "Oh, Danny."

"No, you've got to listen to me. The therapist at the psych ward told me to take responsibility for my actions, but he didn't understand me. I know I did it; it just wasn't me that did it."

"Do you know how crazy that sounds?" My voice took on the same tone Rebeckah's had when she begged me to join a twelve-step program, sympathetic yet tinged with hopelessness.

His eyes locked on to mine, asking me to trust in our partnership, to remember who he used to be. With a nod, he said, "I know how crazy it sounds, Dee. I think sometimes that I have gone off the deep end. But, you were my partner for five years. Was I really capable of any of it?"

"Sometimes we don't know what we're capable of." My voice sounded mechanical, harsh. "Danny, you have to face facts. They caught you with a smoking gun. You killed the Pope."

"Right. Right," Daniel said, impatiently. "I've seen the tapes. The whole world has. It was me, but who pulled the strings?"

"I don't believe in fate." The open air of the stadium robbed my words of their impact. I shook my head and muttered, "Freewill down here, my friend, freewill." I could feel my throat constricting, and tears burning behind my eyes. "Danny, maybe that doctor was right."

To have come so far only to find him so changed. It was almost more than I could stand. A tear slipped down my cheek, and I touched his back lovingly. I could feel his shoulder blades tremble beneath my fingers. He looked up at me, finally, his eyes so full of pain that I pulled away.

He looked up at me, his face puzzled, lost. "I thought you would understand."

"I'm sorry."

"I know I fucked up your life," Daniel said. "Believe me, where I've been I've had just as much time to think about it as you have – maybe more. But, I'm trying to talk about what really happened that night."

Daniel's eyes danced with that same excitement he used to have when we cracked cases together. His mood was infectious. He shifted his body to address me directly. I found myself mirroring his posture. "It was tech-telepathy, Dee," he said. "Don't you see? It was me doing all that stuff, but it was Them pulling the strings. I was a puppet."

"Except there's one big hitch," I said, articulating my biggest stumbling block to completely believing that the LINK-angels were man-made. "Tech-telepathy is fool's gold, Danny, and you know it. And what you're talking about is not just mind-to-mind communication– – it's much bigger. Even if it were possible to send a mental image through the LINK, there's no way anyone could control your actions – make sure you do it."

"True. Okay, let's back up a second," Daniel said, waving his hand. "Maybe I used the wrong word. What I'm talking about isn't exactly tech-telepathy. It's more like sending an emotional command over the LINK. Hate ... Rage ..." – He dropped his eyes – "Lust ... blinding emotions. As if someone could electronically transmit that very moment you 'see red' and lose all rational thought."

"Like the Jordan Institute's tech," I agreed, suddenly excited. "I've been thinking about all this. I thought, maybe ... well, until recently, I never really connected it with what happened to you. Do you remember what we were working on, the tech-theft from the mental health biotech people?"

He blushed. "Not well. When they pulled the strings on the LINK I lost a lot of my memory files. I guess my brain wasn't used to storing things the old-fashioned way anymore."

I nodded. It was true for me as well. "Well, I've been piecing it back together. Jordan Institute was developing emotion-manipulating software – it was supposed to help people with chronic pain, or other emotional problems. Something that could touch those parts of the brain – pain, pleasure – who knows what else. But, I don't know, Danny." I shook my head. "It's a big leap from masking the pain centers to killing the Pope."

"Have you ever had an out-of-body experience, Dee?" Daniel said suddenly.

I gaped at him.

"Neither have I," he said to my stunned silence. "And, that's what makes me so certain that I was possessed by something."

My mouth still hung open, but now for a different reason: it made a kind of twisted sense.

"Okay," I said hesitantly. "Go on."

Danny's eyes watched mine intently. "Both times that it happened, there was a brief moment, before the emotion overwhelmed me, when I felt separated, floating."