Logan knew that paracusia, or auditory hallucinations, could be a side effect of many things: sleep disorders, psychoses, epilepsy, encephalitis. But the chances of four people in such a small sampling, all suffering such mental or physical illness, was vanishingly small. Besides, people with musical hallucinations almost invariably heard tunes they were familiar with, which was not the case here — Logan had made it a point to ask. Nor were the voices of the standard types: argumentative or narrative or the loud noises common with exploding head syndrome. Instead, the voices all four had heard were whispered.

“Visions” and “strange compulsions” were terms that had come up frequently. All the incidents had begun six to eight weeks earlier. In all four cases, the people were aware that the phenomena, the aberrant behaviors, were not normal; and in all of the cases, the phenomena had ceased abruptly — usually, weeks before Strachey’s death — and not returned.

There was one other commonality — one that was of particular interest. Cross-checking his notes on the four individuals, a pattern emerged. All four who’d been affected either lived or worked in the vicinity of the West Wing.

The West Wing. It was, Logan sensed, bound up inextricably with the circumstances of Strachey’s death. And now, he thought he was beginning to understand why.

21

Late that same afternoon, Logan steered his Lotus Elan coupe from Carroll Avenue right onto Ocean, downshifting smoothly as he made the turn. What had started out as a foggy, drizzly day had turned at least temporarily bright and warm, and Logan had the hardtop’s windows down: the breeze coming in from Hazard’s Beach on the left filled the car with a deliciously salty smell.

While Lux could provide just about everything in the way of edibles — their meals were first-rate, and a small café was open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. if anyone grew hungry in off hours — they did not serve PG Tips tea, a habit he’d developed while doing graduate work in England and never been able to shake. So he’d driven into town to pick up a box, and a few toiletries, from a gourmet food market on Pelham Street.

Now, as he drove back toward Lux, his thoughts returned to what Carbon had said about Kim Mykolos. If you’re looking for a scalp to collect, go chat up that Grecian assistant of his. She’s had her eye on his chair from her first bloody day in the place. This directly contradicted what Kim herself had told him about her relationship with Strachey. Odd…

He was forced to slam on the brakes when a dark SUV pulled out of a side street and onto Ocean Avenue directly in front of him. Frowning, he suppressed the urge to give the vehicle a blast of his horn. The driver was almost undoubtedly a tourist — judging by the glacial pace at which the vehicle was moving, the occupants were either lost or else taking in the sights. And the sights were admittedly stunning: the road was running nearer the sea here, and was rising to the highest point on Ocean Avenue, almost one hundred feet above the beach.

Leaving the Elan in second gear, Logan’s thoughts went back to Carbon. His instincts told him that Kim Mykolos had been genuinely upset and shaken by Strachey’s death. Those weren’t the behaviors of somebody gunning for his job. And she herself had indicated there was no tension between them, no strain in their relationship.

The SUV was still ahead of him. Maybe it wasn’t taking in the sights, after all — perhaps the driver was having mechanical problems. The vehicle would slow down, speed up abruptly, then slow down again. At this rate, instead of getting back to Lux in one minute, it would take him ten. Logan drifted into the oncoming lane to look for any approaching traffic, but the road angled to the right up ahead and he couldn’t get a good enough view to pass. He settled back into place behind the bulky vehicle to wait.

Carbon might be a first-rate bastard, Logan thought, but why would he lie about such a thing? Was he trying to deflect my attention? If so, why? And then again, Strachey did attack Mykolos right before he killed himself. That did add some possible weight to Carbon’s accusation…. But no, he decided; it just didn’t feel right to him.

Now the SUV had pulled over to the side, at an angle, still partially blocking the lane. As Logan came to a stop behind it, the driver’s window slid down, and a gloved hand emerged, waving him on. With a reciprocal wave of thanks, Logan moved out into the other lane, ready to depress the clutch and shift into third…

Just as he did so, the SUV, which had been idling, suddenly roared into life, veering directly toward him. Logan’s heart began to race and he downshifted, braking in order to tuck himself back behind the SUV — but the dark, slow-moving vehicle was still lumbering sideways toward him, at speed now, as if with a stuck accelerator pedal. In another second it would impact his small sports car, push him off the road.

In desperation, Logan veered off to the narrow left shoulder. The Lotus spun on the sandy shoulder, tires shearing sideways. Out of control now, it hurtled toward the rocky cliff edge and Logan got a stomach-churning view of the long drop to the boulder-strewn breakers below. Heart hammering, he spun the wheel in the opposite direction to the turn. He felt a sudden dip as the left rear wheel dropped onto the rocks at the very edge of the cliff. Downshifting into first, feathering the brakes, Logan desperately gunned the car forward. At the last moment, the rear-wheel drive gained traction and the Lotus half lurched, half leapt back onto the shoulder. He killed the engine and sat there, breathing heavily, a faint cloud of sand and dust falling all around him.

A red mist that had fallen over his eyes slowly cleared. Logan glanced left again, at the dizzying, one-hundred-foot drop to the ocean just beyond the shoulder. Then, heart still thudding in his chest, he looked down the road. The plodding SUV was just barely visible ahead, at a gentle curve in the road. Then it turned onto a side street and disappeared from view.

22

It was nine o’clock in the evening when Logan rose from the desk in his quarters on Lux’s third floor and walked over to the nearest window. The bad weather had finally won out over the good and a storm had settled over Newport. Swollen clouds scudded before the moon, and sheets of wind-driven rain beat against the panes of leaded glass.

He stared out at the storm-lashed ocean — pounding fiercely against the coastline — for several minutes, lost in thought. Then he turned back to the desk. It was covered with notes he had taken following various interviews, along with brief dossiers on a dozen of the scientists and administrators at the think tank: Roger Carbon; Terence McCarty; Perry Maynard; Laura Benedict, the quantum computing expert. Life, he had learned, had been especially unkind to Ms. Benedict recently: in addition to losing her mentor, she was doubly bereaved — her grandfather had died of cancer a few years before, and not long after she’d been tragically widowed. Her husband, an aviation enthusiast, had died in a midair crash with another small plane during a storm — perhaps a storm not so different from this one.

He flipped through the pages on his desk for a minute, then pushed the folders aside. Beneath them was another: a file on Kim Mykolos. He’d made a point to sit at her table that evening for dinner, and had found that — when the conversation did not turn to Strachey, obviously still a painful subject — she was witty and charming, an excellent conversationalist. She had also borne out the fact that Strachey had, in fact, been like a father to Laura Benedict. Logan’s empathetic instincts assured him of what he’d already deduced: that, whether out of misapprehension or spite, Carbon was wrong about Kim — she had not been after Strachey’s job.