Dead Silence

She’d also learned from seeing the corpse of Mike and Megan’s father that a suicide could cause someone to bear both their own echo and imprint.

She turned back to the journal, wanting to know more.

May 5, 1987

We’re calling ourselves the Circle of Seven, our strange little group. Ari isn’t a part of the Seven since I now know he has no ability. Apparently, his true skill lies in recruiting. The rest of us, however, those who do have gifts and were brought together because of them, have forged a bond of sorts. A camaraderie like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.

Violet felt herself nodding along with her grandmother’s words as she read them. Yes, she thought, camaraderie. That was exactly the right way to describe it.

She was intrigued by the way her grandmother depicted this group, these people who reminded her so much of her own team, right down to the fact that none of the others could find bodies the way she did. In that, she was unique.

She was restless now, and she sat up, so she was on her knees, knowing she’d have to stop reading soon. It was late and she needed to sleep. Tomorrow she had school.

But she couldn’t stop herself, she had to know more.

May 29, 1987

I’m fascinated by one of the Seven, a young man named Jimmy. His ability isn’t like the others, he can’t read the future or tell your past. Like me, his gift is distinctive.

He’s been harder to get to know than the others. He’s quiet and reserved, but gentle too. I can tell just by watching him. He’s got a stillness about him, a certain tranquility. It’s not real, though . . . or so I’m told. It’s part of his ability. He makes others feel at ease. He takes away their worries and fears and anxieties, replacing them with . . . calm.

I’m not sure how I feel about that, being forced to feel serene. But I’m certainly not immune to it, that much I know.

June 28, 1987

I’ve made a terrible mistake. It’s not the fault of any of the Seven. Or maybe I’m just naive. Maybe every one of them knows—has known all along—what the group has been up to. Maybe I’m the only one who has qualms about what we’re being asked to do.

I still don’t know, exactly, who’s behind our operation . . . who’s pulling our strings. But we’re just part of some larger organization, and for whatever reason, they’ve decided we might be useful. Ari becomes tight-lipped whenever I ask.

Some of the others have been working on projects already, which we all assumed would happen eventually. We couldn’t be tested forever with no outlet for our skills. Muriel said something about doing background checks, which I assumed had something to do with prospective employees or investors, since she was giving a detailed history—more detailed than a standard credit report or criminal record check could be. My guess is that the kind of information she can dig up could be invaluable to a corporation.

There was one name I kept hearing, again and again. Jack Hewitt. It wasn’t just Muriel who mentioned him. I heard two of the others talking about him as well. I didn’t give it much thought really, I didn’t consider who he was or why I’d heard his name on more than one occasion. Until two nights ago, when John and I were watching the news.

A man’s face flashed up on the television screen, but it was his name—Jack Hewitt—that made me take notice. I knew immediately it was the man the others in the Seven had been investigating. John said he’d been in the news for several days. He’d been involved in a financial scandal, accused of embezzling almost half a million dollars from his company. On the night I saw the news story though Jack Hewitt had finally cracked under the pressure and shot himself. Right after he’d killed his wife and his two young boys.

Still, I might not have questioned the circumstances of his death if it hadn’t been for the redecorating of our government-like office. Almost overnight it was transformed into the kind of luxurious workspace that could have belonged to any head of state. It was as if the sky had opened up and rained money down on our group.

With a little digging, it wasn’t hard to discover that Jack Hewitt’s death facilitated one of the largest mergers in corporate history. That he’d been the majority stockholder in Hewitt and Sons, a company that had been in his family for generations. He hadn’t wanted to sell the business, but his brother had.

I can’t prove it, but I’m sure that somehow we were involved in his downfall, and the merger that followed. I’m sure that the others had been used to gather information about him, information that had been used against him. Maybe he was blackmailed. Maybe he was just plain threatened. Like I said, I can’t prove anything. All I have are a handful of personal trinkets belonging to a dead man, items that mean nothing . . . unless you have the ability to tell someone’s past just by touching them.

July 1, 1987

I confided my suspicions in Muriel, and she confessed that she had concerns as well. She confessed, too, that she’d been asked about Jack Hewitt’s personal life—things that should have remained private. In searching his past, she’d discovered infidelities, including the name of a mistress he’d had for years, and had even given them information about a love child he’d been hiding, filtering money to through the company. Things that might destroy a man’s family, as well as his career.

Together, we decided to dig for more information, to see if we could connect what she’d found to those who were behind the Seven, all of whom still remained anonymous.