Elixir. Part 23

22.

The eyes.

Wally shook himself awake. Like a Polaroid photo developing, it all came back in vivid color-and with it, the thing that had nibbled at his mind all night: Roger Glover had the same weird two-tone eyes as Chris Bacon.

And that was no coincidence.

Chris had been born with two different-colored eyes-one brown, the other green. It was a feature one does not forget. As he once said, looking at Chris Bacon was like looking at two faces superimposed. And he had joked how Chris had been born to see the world from an either/or perspective.

(Hey, Chris, are you ambivalent?

Yes and no.) But why the denial? They were once close friends. He was an usher at Chris and Wendy's wedding and had given them a fancy piece of calligraphy as a gift.

Wally got up and went to the cellar and tore through boxes of memorabilia-stuff he hadn't looked at in years, stuff his ex-wife had been after him to dump. Stuff that always made him a little sad-old letters, concert ticket stubs, baseball cards, Woodstock photos, school newspaper pieces he had auth.o.r.ed, record alb.u.ms of the Mamas and Papas, Joan Baez, the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, even 45s of Buddy Holly, Elvis, and the Dell Vikings. Stuff that he just couldn't throw out.

It must have been an hour before he located the old alb.u.m of photos taken at Cape Cod-of him and an old flame, Jane Potter, and Chris Bacon and Wendy Whitehead. Most were shot at a distance. Except for two-the group of them sitting on rocks with the water in the background.

The same facial structure and sinewy physique. Except for the lighter hair and sungla.s.ses, it looked like Glover.

Back upstairs he poured himself some port and watched the short segment of video he had shot of the man who called himself Roger Glover. The resemblance was remarkable. Beyond coincidence. Maybe it was a younger brother of Chris. But identical twins weren't born twenty years apart. Even if it were a younger sibling of striking resemblance, why deny the name?

And if it were Chris, why deny an old friend?

What sent a chill through him was that Glover looked exactly like Chris Bacon in the photographs from 1970. It did not make sense. None of it.

For a minute he sipped his drink and let his mind run down some possibilities. Then he turned on his computer, got onto the Internet, and accessed a search engine. He typed the name CHRISTOPHER BACON.

Instantly he got a long list of old newspaper abstracts of articles from the winter of 1988, beginning January 30 with an obituary:

SCIENTIST MURDER SUSPECT KILLED IN PLANE CRASH.

EASTERN FLIGHT 219 CLAIMS DARBY.

MURDER SUSPECT.

Four days later a Boston Globe headline read:

"FBI: BIOLOGIST BACON NOT ON PLANE".

Then the next day from papers around the nation:

MAN CHARGED IN MURDER MAY BE AIRLINE BOMBER.

SCIENTIST TURNS Ma.s.s MURDERER.

ALL-OUT HUNT FOR SABOTEUR BACON.

POLICE AND FBI INTENSIFY SEARCH FOR BACON & WIFE.

BOMB SUSPECT, WIFE, INFANT DISAPPEAR.

Wally was trembling with disbelief as he clicked on one of the articles. Christopher Bacon had been accused of killing a coworker in his lab, then planting explosives aboard a commercial airliner heading for Puerto Rico. He didn't remember the incident because he and his family had been living in j.a.pan at the time.

Wally scrolled down the articles. Following the sabotage, Chris had dropped off the face of the earth with his wife and infant son. As the years went on, the articles thinned out, occasionally producing pieces such as "Is Ma.s.s Murder Suspect Among Us?" and theories that Bacon and family had moved to Mexico or Canada. By 1991, the articles had stopped coming, the latest listing Christopher Bacon as the FBI's Number One most wanted fugitive.

Whatever the claims, these were crimes Wally could never imagine his old pal committing. Accompanying the articles was a color photograph of Chris and Wendy. It was grainy and had lost something in transcription, but recognition pa.s.sed through Wally like a brick. Take away the black beard and it was the same man.

But it didn't make sense, since the Chris Bacon in the 1988 Internet photos looked older than he did in person. Older by a decade or more!

Wally didn't get it. He didn't get any of it.

Either Roger Glover was some astounding lookalike, or Roger Glover was Chris Bacon who had undergone a stunning makeover.

Confused and baffled, Wally downed the rest of his wine. Then he went back upstairs and went to bed, wondering what the statute of limitation was on the million-dollar reward.

"He's so big for his age," Jenny said.

"He's only a year younger than Abigail," Laura said.

In the photo, Brett was in his wrestling outfit, standing tall and straight, square-shouldered, his young body firm and rippled with muscles. The image filled Laura with love.

"He looks like Roger, except for the eyes." Brett had Laura's brown eyes. Both of them.

It was at these secret hotel trysts where she and Jenny shared family news. Today it was the Milwaukee Marriott just up the street from the annual flower show-Laura's cover for the rendezvous. Although Jenny was no longer under FBI surveillance, Laura still insisted on meeting surrept.i.tiously-never in public, and never at each other's homes. This was their first meeting in four years.

Laura wished the rooms came with VCRs so she could show Jenny the tape of Brett's winning match from yesterday. Ironically, he had wanted to go out for basketball, but felt he was too short and signed up for wrestling reluctantly.

"How they change. I would never have recognized him."

Jenny had not seen Brett since he was baby Adam. Sadder still, Brett knew nothing of Jenny. Laura had told him that she was an only child of two parents who themselves were only children-like Roger. That he had no other family. Laura hated deceiving him, but if they announced he had other relatives, he'd want to visit them, and that could put the authorities on their trail. Plus it would open that awful can of worms. Not until he was older. Not until he could handle the entire, lunatic truth.

"I wish you'd brought pictures of Abigail," Laura said.

"Oh, you know these teenagers. She's camera-shy." Jenny hadn't brought photos of her for years. "She's something else, though, smart as a whip. We're studying French together." Jenny prided herself in being cultured, of rising above cra.s.s TV values.

"What a nice thing to share. Maybe you could take her to France someday."

Jenny smiled noncommittally. "That's another thing: She doesn't like to travel."

Laura saw Jenny infrequently, but she knew how devoted a mother she was, funneling all her energy into raising Abigail and schooling her at home. It was her way of making up for Kelly. Laura swore that without Abigail, Jenny would have lost her mind given the turmoil in her life. Nine years ago, she and Ted got divorced. It was a stormy breakup but she won custody of Abigail and a large settlement. Two years later, Ted was sent to prison for eight years for operating a car-theft ring. Then in 1993 real horror struck. Kelly, age twenty-nine, committed suicide.

It was impossible to gauge the effects by phone or a meeting every few years. But some weird denial had set in, because Jenny never mentioned Kelly's name again. She had moved to a suburb of Indianapolis with Abigail where she started life all over as a first-time mother.

Jenny flipped through photos nervously, distracted. Something was up. Laura had sensed the tension the moment Jenny walked into the room. Even in her voice when she called to schedule this rendezvous. Finally, Laura asked her point-blank what was wrong.

For a moment Jenny tried to dissemble. Then she blurted out, "I need help."

"What kind of help?"

"Elixir. I want some Elixir. Simple as that. I need some, and you can't say no."

The intensity of her expression startled Laura. "Jennifer, I can't do that and you know it."

"Laura, I'm fifty years old, and aging fast. Look at me, I'm putting on weight and fles.h.i.+ng out. I'm feeling older and I hate it."

"So am I. That's life."

"But Mamma was my mother, too. I carry the same family thing for cancer, and you said that stuff prevents cancer cells-"

Laura cut her off. "You don't know anything about the stuff. It's forbidden. Everything about it is forbidden."

"But Roger-"

"But Roger nothing! Yeah, he doesn't age, but do you want to end up like him-cut off from your kid? From your friends? Living in a state of biological schizophrenia-graying your hair and not knowing who the h.e.l.l you really are or what generation you're from? That's what it's like for him. That's what it's like for us, and I'll be d.a.m.ned if I'll let you do that to yourself."

What she didn't mention was what had happened to them as a couple. She still loved Roger, but their widening biological gap had set off a flurry of confused emotions-from sheer envy to anger to something akin to repugnance at the unnaturalness of his condition. Even s.e.x was a perverse throwback experience-as if she were making love to Chris Bacon, the h.o.r.n.y ever-ready grad student. Except she was a post-menopausal fifty-five and feeling like a cradle-robber. Elixir had thrown time and love out of joint.

"I can live with that," Jenny pleaded. "I'm willing to take the risk. Please. I'm begging you." She began to cry.

Seeing her weaken touched Laura, but she could not let the crocodile tears sway her. "You're not a hermit living in the woods, for G.o.d's sake. You've got a daughter to think of."

"That's who I'm thinking of," Jenny shot back.

"Then ask yourself what you'll tell her in ten years?"

"What about Brett? What are you going to tell him?"

Laura didn't answer.

Jenny made no effort to stop her tears. She was bordering on hysteria. "You have to help me. You have to let me have some. I'm not asking for much. Just a few ampules. You can't let this happen, after all I did for you-protected you, lied for you, got you pa.s.sports and IDs. If it weren't for me you'd be in prison for the rest of your lives."

"And I'm very grateful. But Elixir is lousy with horrors."

"You don't understand," Jenny said.

"What don't I understand?" Laura shouted. "I've lived with it for fifteen years."

"But Roger's managed. He's fine. You've got the power to prolong life, and you won't give me a drop. Your own flesh and blood."

"Jesus, Jenny, live the years you have, and stop whining about the ones you don't have."

"I'm afraid of getting old. I'm afraid of becoming wrinkled and decrepit. You're my sister."

"It's because I'm your sister I won't let you." Laura put her hand on Jenny's. "And you're not old and decrepit, for G.o.d's sake. You're making yourself crazy. You look ten years younger."

It wasn't false flattery. Jenny did look younger. Her skin was smooth and s.h.i.+ny-the skin of somebody who took proper care and avoided sunlight. But more than that, she dressed young: not in teenie-bopper flash, but jumpers and flats and plastic beads. She looked like a Catholic-school girl.

"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were already taking the stuff."

Jenny looked at her with a start, then gathered her stuff to leave.

The tryst was over. And a disaster. For the first time they had fought over it. Yes, in phone talk Jenny would hint how she wished she could go on indefinitely like Roger-if only it were safe. What Laura had discounted as idle musings. But Jenny had meant it, and it shocked her to see how much festered below the surface.

Laura tried to hug her goodbye, but Jenny pushed her away and opened the door.

"I don't want you to leave hating me."

Jenny gave her an icy stare. "You don't understand," she said through her teeth. "You don't, don't, don't"

Laura watched her walk down the corridor to the elevator, thinking they were more like strangers than sisters. Thinking that Jenny's desperation went beyond fear of fifty. Something else was going on. She was over the edge. Maybe she'd recommend psychiatric counseling.

Laura stepped back inside and closed the door. She still clutched a photo of Brett. She stared at it for a moment, taking in his young colt beauty.

"What are you going to tell him?"

On Monday morning, Wally Olafsson walked into the resident agency office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Madison and reported his encounter the other night and what he had discovered on the Internet, producing the downloaded articles, photos copied from news stories gotten at the UW La Crosse campus library, the Cape Cod snapshots, and the video taken of Chris Bacon at the Wisconsin Regionals.

The complaint duty agent, Eric Brown, took notes as Wally outlined his past acquaintance with Christopher Bacon. On his computer, Brown checked the Bureau's database and located the outstanding warrant. He reviewed the charges, comparing screen file photos of Bacon with those Wally had brought and the video segment he ran on a VCR.

"There's a resemblance," Brown admitted, "but the guy looks on the young side. According to files, he should be fifty-six. This guy looks about thirty."

"He's not. He's my age." Wally suddenly felt self-conscious of his big fleshy head and bulging gut. "His kid must be about fourteen like my son, which means there should be over a forty-year difference between them. You saw the videos. They look like brothers."

"That's what I'm saying, Mr. Olafsson: You've got the wrong guy." Brown made a flat smile to say he's wasting both their time. "It's not Christopher Bacon, it's Roger Glover."

"I hear what you're saying, but I'm telling you, it's Chris. What convinced me was his eyes. You can't tell in the photos, but they're two different colors. I didn't remember until I got close."

"Sounds like you studied him pretty good."

"I did, and I'd bet my life it's Chris Bacon."