The Hollow Man

day in that human’s life: unplannable, unpredictable, governed by the hidden tides of chaotic factors and buffeted by butterfly wings that bring death in the form of a tumor … or, in Jacob’s case, in the form of a bullet to the brain.

Jeremy realizes his life’s ambition that evening, of discovering a profoundly new direction of mathematical reasoning and research—not for status or further academic honors, for those have been forgotten—but to advance the lighted circle of knowledge a little farther into the encroaching darkness. Islands of resonance within the chaotic sea.

But even in seeing the path of research he can take, he abandons it, tossing the abstracts and studies aside, wiping away the preliminary equations on his chalkboard. That night he stands at the window and stares out at nothing, weeping softly to himself, unable to stop, filled with neither anger nor despair, but with something infinitely more lethal as the emptiness enfolds him from within.

We Are the Stuffed Men

“Mr. Bremen? Mr. Bremen, can you hear me?”

Once, as a child of about eight, Bremen had dived into a friend’s swimming pool and, instead of rising to the surface, had simply and effortlessly sunk to the bottom ten feet beneath the surface. He had lain there for a moment, feeling the rough cement against his spine and watching the ceiling of light so far above. Even as he felt his lungs tiring and watched the glory of bubbles rising around him, even as he realized that he could hold his breath no longer and would have to inhale water in a few seconds, he was loath to rise to that surface, achingly reluctant to return to that suddenly alien environment of air and light and noise. So Bremen had stayed there, stubbornly resisting recall until he could resist no longer, and then he had floated slowly to that surface, savoring the last few seconds of aquatic light and muffled noise and the silver flurry of bubbles around him.

He rose slowly now, resisting the pull back to the light.

“Mr. Bremen? Can you hear me?”

Bremen could hear him. He opened his eyes, shut them quickly at the onslaught of whiteness and light, and then, wincing, peered out from between heavy eyelids.

“Mr. Bremen? I’m Lieutenant Burchill, St. Louis Police Department.”

Bremen nodded, tried to nod. His head hurt and seemed to be restrained in some way. He was in bed. White sheets. Pastel walls. The bedside trays and plastic paraphernalia of a hospital room. From his peripheral vision he could see a curtain drawn to his left, the closed doorway to his right. Another man in a gray suit stood behind the seated police lieutenant. Lieutenant Burchill was a heavyset, sallow-skinned man in his early fifties. Bremen thought that he looked a bit like Morey Amsterdam, the saggy-faced comic on the old Dick Van Dyke Show. The silent man behind him was younger, but his expression held the same occupational mixture of fatigue and cynicism.

“Mr. Bremen,” said Burchill, “can you hear me all right?”

Bremen could hear him all right, although everything still had a once-removed, underwater quality to it. And Bremen could see himself through Lieutenant Burchill’s eyes: wan and swaddled looking amid his blankets and bandages, left arm in a cast, his head wrapped in bandages, more bandages visible beneath the thin hospital gown, his eyes swollen and raccoon-ringed from draining blood, and fresh stitches visible beneath gauze on his chin and cheek. An IV dripped clear fluid into his left arm.

Bremen closed his eyes and tried to shut out Burchill’s vision.

“Mr. Bremen, tell us what happened.” The lieutenant’s voice was not gentle. Suspicion. Disbelief that this little twerp could have shot those five wise guys and landed the aircraft by himself Curiosity about what the FBI computer said about this citizen—a college math prof, for Chrissakes—and interest in the dead wife, the arson, and this clown’s connection with New Jersey’s Don Leoni and his bad boys.

Bremen cleared his throat and tried to speak. His voice was little better than a rasp. “Whermi?”

Lieutenant Burchill’s expression did not change. “What was that?”

Bremen cleared his throat again. “Where am I?”

“You’re in St. Louis General Hospital.” Burchill paused a second and added, “Missouri.”

Bremen tried to nod and regretted it. He tried to speak again without moving his jaw.

“I didn’t catch that,” said the lieutenant.

“Injuries?” repeated Bremen.

“Well, the doctor’ll be in to see you, but from what I hear, you’ve got a broken arm and some bruises. Nothing life threatening.”

The younger homicide detective, a sergeant named Kearny, was thinking, Four cracked ribs, a bullet graze over one of those ribs, a concussion, and internal stuff … this idiot is lucky to be alive.

“It’s been about eighteen hours since the crash, Mr. Bremen. Do you remember the crash?” said Burchill.

Bremen shook his head.

“Nothing about it?”

“I remember talking to the tower about the landing gear,” said Bremen. “Then the right engine started making weird noises and … and that’s all I remember.”

Burchill stared. This asshole’s probably lying, but who the hell knows? Somebody put a .45 slug right through the fuselage into the engine.

Bremen felt the pain begin to slide in like a long, slow tide that felt no hurry to recede. Even his mindtouch and the hospital neurobabble shimmered in the wake of it. “The plane crashed, then?” he said.

Burchill continued staring. “Are you a pilot, Mr. Bremen?”

Bremen shook his head again and almost threw up from the pain.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” asked the lieutenant.

“No.”

“Any experience flying light aircraft?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Then what were you doing at the yoke of that Piper Cheyenne?” Burchill’s voice was as flat and unrelenting as a rapier thrust.

Bremen sighed. “Trying to land it, Lieutenant. The pilot was shot. Is he alive? Did any of the others survive?”

The thin sergeant leaned forward. “Mr. Bremen, we advised you of your rights some time ago and that Mirandizing was videotaped, but we’re not sure you were completely conscious. Are you aware of those rights? Do you wish an attorney to be present at this time?”

“An attorney?” repeated Bremen. Whatever medication was in the IV drip was making his vision foggy and causing a dull roar in his ears and a fuzziness in his mindtouch. “Why’dIneed’n’torney? Didn’t do anything …”

The sergeant let out a breath, took a laminated card from his coat pocket, and went into the Miranda litany that was so familiar from a million TV cop shows. Gail had always wondered whether police were too stupid to memorize those few lines; she said that the audience had them memorized.

When the sergeant finished and asked again whether Bremen wanted an attorney, Bremen moaned and said, “No. Are the others dead?”

Dead as week-old horsemeat, thought Lieutenant Burchill. The homicide detective said, “Let me ask the questions, okay, Mr. Bremen?”

Bremen closed his eyes in lieu of a nod.

“Who shot who, Mr. Bremen?”

Whom. It was Gail’s voice through the fuzziness. “I shot the one named Bert with his own gun,” said Bremen. “Then all hell broke loose … everybody except the pilot was shooting. Then the pilot was hit and I got up front and tried to land it. Obviously I didn’t do too good a job.”

Burchill glanced at his partner. “You flew a twin-engine turboprop with a damaged engine over a hundred miles, got it into the pattern at Lambert International, and almost landed the sucker. The tower guys say that if the