I took a few more steps into the room and saw a man in the bed. He reminded me of the physicist Stephen Hawking, gaunt, bent, and curled up by disease. Breathing oxygen through a nasal cannula, he lay on his right side, wore glasses, and watched the screen intently, seeming to have no idea we were there.
“That’s not the Alden Lindel who came to see me,” I said.
“I didn’t think so,” Eliza said.
“I don’t know why I didn’t check.”
“Why would you? We’re private about Al’s challenges because that’s the way he wants it. How could you have known he has end-stage ALS?”
“I suppose,” I said, and I felt baffled until I realized that the man who’d posed as Alden Lindel brought me the flash drives that showed the mock executions of Gretchen Lindel.
No one had sent those drives to him. He was part of Killingblondechicks4fun. And so was the love junkie.
Tinker darted by us and jumped up on the bed, wagging her tail.
“E-liza,” an electronic voice said.
She smiled at me before going to his side. “Right here, Al.”
“N-ext?”
“You’re not even through that one yet, and the next is in the queue,” she said with a glance at me. “He loves this show.”
“S-mart dwarf,” he said. “B-oobs.”
“Yes, Tyrion and lots of boobs,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’d like you to meet someone, Al. He’s trying to find Gretchen for us.”
I came over to her husband’s bedside. Laboring for breath, the real father of the missing blond girl rolled his eyes up to me.
“I’m Alex Cross, sir,” I said.
He had a digital tablet next to him on the mattress. He rolled his eyes down and blinked eleven or twelve times, maybe more.
“I know you,” the tablet said a few seconds later.
“Wow,” I said. “How does that work?”
Eliza said, “The tablet’s built with three camera lenses that triangulate to pick up where he’s looking on the screen, which shows a keyboard layout. He looks at a letter on the keyboard and blinks. When he blinks twice, he’s done with the word. Blinks three times and the voice comes on.”
“That’s amazing.”
“I think so.”
The tablet voice said, “B-lows, you ask me.”
Lindel was peering at me again, and I nodded in sympathy.
He looked at the tablet. A few seconds later, the voice said, “Where’s my Gretch?”
Thinking about the fake Alden Lindel and Annie Cassidy coming to my office, I said, “She could be closer than we think. Within driving distance.”
The missing girl’s father looked down at the tablet. His synthesized voice said, “Can’t even cry for her.”
Eliza’s hand shot to her lips. “It’s true. His tear ducts are shutting down. We have to put drops in every two hours.”
Her husband rolled his attention to the tablet for the longest time yet before the voice said, “My time is near, Cross. My last wish is to see my Gretch again. One last time.”
He peered up at me. Even though his body and face were virtually frozen, I could see the desperate hope in his eyes.