Future Crimes Part 62

"I'll double outside security."

"You do that."

Escape attempts are commonplace here during the first three weeks; week one, they fight us tooth-and nail because they see us as the evil ones who took them away from salvation and home; week two, they loosen up a bit, then decide to play along, hoping to give us a false sense of accomplishment; week three, they try to run for it. Cindy was a Third Weeker. Time to try.

We parted after that. Parsons going off to a scheduled session with some twelve-year-old from Indiana we s.n.a.t.c.hed from the Resurrected Peoples' Temple. I went into the computer room to run down Jimmy's name.

One of the things I've learned over the years is that you must take nothing for granted when tracking down a subject's past. Not that we have to do it all that often; usually the family provides us with more than enough information to go on. There have been, however, a handful of burn-out cases that have simply stumbled into our hands. These always take extra effort, but I rarely mind.

At least with Jimmy Waggoner I had a name--and a possible temple affiliation.

Cindy of the No-Last-Name-Given had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from the Church of the One-Hundredand-Eightieth Second, who believed that they and they alone postponed the end of the world because they and they alone owned the last three minutes of existence. Their literature even claimed that these last three minutes were a physical object, one that their Most Holy Timekeeper, Brother Tick-Tock (I'm not kidding) kept safely hidden away, watched over by the One and True G.o.d of All Moments, Lord Relativity.

I doubted that Cindy actually knew Jimmy, but at this stage anything was worth a shot. I fed all the information into the system, sat back, and waited.

It took about thirty minutes. I'd guessed about Jimmy having come from the tri-state area; most VR cults are localized religions and recruit their members close to home as a rule.

I'd almost nodded off when the computer cleared its throat (a way file I installed as a signal) and the words MATCH FOUND appeared on the screen. I rubbed my eyes and pressed the mouse b.u.t.ton---and there it was.

All the information on Jimmy Waggoner that there was to be found.

Only thing was, it came from the last place I'd expected.

The Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Parsons looked up at me from behind his desk.

"Don't bother to knock."

I shoved the printouts in his face.

"James Edgar Waggoner, born December 19, 1986. Disappeared on his birthday, 1993, on his way to a pizza parlor half a block from his home. It's all there, his kindergarten and first grade report cards, school pictures, health records, dental charts, all of it."

Parsons scanned the printouts, all the time shaking his head.

"Dear G.o.d in Heaven."

"Do you have the medical report yet?"

"Um .. . yeah, yes .. . it's right here. "He landed" it to me but I didn't take it.

"Why don't you just give me the Readers' Digest version?" I said.

He put down the printouts and rubbed his eyes.

"Those marks on his face and neck? There were identical marks on his chest, forearms, and thighs."

"Burns?"

"No. Medical adhesive irritation."

"In English."

"That guy's been hooked up to both an EKG and EEG for a very long time. Plus, there was an unusually high trace of muscle relaxants in his system."

"muscle relaxants?"

"That, and about a half-dozen different types of hypno-therapeutic medications."

We stared at each other.

'"Any traces of hallucinogenic?"

"Good old-fas.h.i.+oned Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Diamonds."

I felt my gut go numb.

"So whoever took him has .. . has--" "--has kept him more or less snowed out of his skull for a good while, especially the last year or so," said Parsons.

"Tests indicate definite brain damage, but we're not yet sure of the extent."

".. . Jesus .. ."

"I'll second that. You got an address on his family?"

I nodded my head.

"The father died a couple of years ago. Coronary. His mother still lives in town at the same house."

"You suppose she stayed there because she believed he'd come back some day?"

"Seeing as how it was the father who pet.i.tioned for the declaration of death, my guess is probably."

"Need anything to take with you?"

"A photograph of the way he looks now."

"I'll take it myself."

I stood staring out at I-don't-know-what.

"You okay, Cart?"

"Twenty-six years," I whispered.

"What the h.e.l.l were they doing with him for twenty-six years?"

"I've got a better question."

"What's that?"

"One minute the kid's seven years old and off to buy a birthday-in-December slice of pizza, the next-wham!--he finds himself in a thirty-three year-old body and doesn't know how he got there. How do you explain to someone that they've been robbed of over one-third of their life and will never get that time back?"

Joyce Waggoner was fifty-seven but looked seventy.

Still, she carried herself with the kind of hard-won dignity which, with the pa.s.sage of time and acc.u.mulation of burdens, becomes a sad sort of grace.

Her reaction to the news that her son was still alive was curiously subdued. I supposed (and rightly so, as it turned out), that she'd been scammed countless times over the years by dozens of so-called "cult busters" who, for a nominal fee, promise quick results, I a.s.sured her that I was not after any money, and even went so far as to give her the name and number of our contact on the police force. She told me to wait while she made the call, but then she did the d.a.m.nedest thing--she stopped on her way to the phone, looked at me, smiled, and asked if I'd like some fresh coffee.

"It's really no trouble," she said in a voice as thin as tissue paper.

"I usually have myself some coffee about this time of day."