Peripheral Visions: White Lily

"Peripheral Visions: They shimmer darkly in the fringes, there to see for those who look. Turn your glance quickly, or you won't see them... until it's too late."

White Lily

"What Fassbinder film is it? The one-armed man comes into the flower shop and says: 'What flower expresses: Days go by. And they just keep going by, endlessly pulling you into the future?' ...And the florist says: 'White Lily.' " – Laurie Anderson

When he was needed, Boston police detective Bill Brier showed up – any and all hours of the day, and all days of the week. So it was at five o'clock on Sunday morning, September 9, 2001: He was called to a private residence on Beacon Hill, the home of a prominent neurosurgeon, after neighbors reported hearing gunshots.

The story was all too common, Brier thought hours later, sitting at his usual spot in Tiny's Bar. Marital discord, professional pressure. That's what the neighbors had talked about. Digging a little deeper, Brier had uncovered more: The good doctor was also on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School. It seemed there was an attractive student. Brier knew the rest as if by heart: Jealousy, tantrums, a pregnancy scare, blackmail. And, in the end, three bullet-riddled corpses, which would now be followed with a carefully-worded police report, a grave and knowing nod to the county coroner, and a quiet word with the medical school's dean.

Brier was a surgeon, too, in a way; a surgeon of history. He had cauterized scandals and made precise incisions into the facts such that certain details never had to make it into public records, and certain headlines never had to appear in the papers.

Brier had never told any lies, exactly, but he'd bypassed ugly truths. That meant that he'd saved reputations. He'd allowed the guilty of lesser crimes to go free, from time to time, in order to head off the likelihood of greater crimes. He'd done what a cop was supposed to do, and held back chaos.

Brier sighed, sitting at his usual spot in The Cove, staring into the amber depths of his beer. It was only three o'clock in the afternoon. On any other day this might be considered might be considered day drinking. But today?

Brier smiled, remembering when he used to go to church on Sunday mornings. He thought of the congregants lined up to have a sip of communion wine at the nine o'clock mass. Was that day drinking? Or how about the Bloody Marys at lunch... brunch... whatever came after mass? Did that count as day drinking?

Not on a Sunday, he thought. No, of course not. A day of rest.

God, he could use a day of rest.

But he hadn't had one today, a day with so much blood on the walls, streamers of blood propelled by the force of bullets. Three rooms given an instant makeover: The living room for the student; the kitchen for the wife; the bedroom for the surgeon. The walls had become canvases, portraits of violence both intimate and ruthless.

At moments like this, Brier was glad that Suzanne had left him. He wouldn't have to go home and explain, he wouldn't have to endure sympathetic words or offers to listen. But he didn't want her, or anyone, to listen. He didn't want to talk. He wanted to drown it out, forget it. Just... drown it.

Brier killed off the last of his beer and set the glass down.

"Hard day?"

Brier looked up at the man, startled. Even after a beer or two he usually would never have been caught by surprise. How did the guy simply appear at the next stool? Had he been that stealthy? Had Brier been that morose, or that drunk?

Brier studied the man, not sure what t make of him. Stealthy? He seemed like he might be – stealthy as a ghost. He looked like a phantom, or a ghoul. His face was pale, bulging, pinched at the neck by a black collar that belonged to a black shirt that was, in turn, swallowed by his black overcoat – too warm a garment to be wearing on a magnificent fall day like today. A white brooch stood out in dazzling contrast to the man's black lapel. It looked like some sort of stylized fire symbol, curving and sweeping and coming to sudden, jarring points.

Brier blinked at the man. He'd somehow assumed that the man was wearing glasses – little round glasses would have been so perfect on him that the man's eyes looked wrong without them. It wasn't just his eyes, Brier decided, though his eyes were strange; fixed, lifeless, colorless, staring. Eyes located in deep sockets under a brow where thin, pale wisps of hair resided, the remnants of eyebrows that had faded away with time, or perhaps been shaved off.

The man wore a hat, too – a shapeless black hat with a wide brim – but Brier felt sure that there was no hair on the man's head. He just looked like he should be bald.

Overall, the man was unearthly, sinister... he gave Brier the creeps.

"You look like it's been a hard day," the man reiterated.

"Yeah," Brier said brusquely, and looked back at his glass. Empty. He frowned. He didn't feel like talking to anybody, and talking to this guy in particular seemed like it would only make the day harder.

"Are you a brother officer?" the man asked.

Brier looked up again, sharply. The man was watching him, pale eyes intent.

"Detective. Boston PD," Brier answered. "You?"

The man smiled slightly, a barely existent shift that made him look even creepier, and said, "National security."

Really? Brier thought. From what nation? The man had an accent. Not something readily identifiable; not French or Spanish. Maybe something more Nordic?

Brier had always paid attention to people's voices. It was useful, when questioning witnesses or grilling suspects, to be able to pick up on hesitations, or slight signs of stress: A rise in pitch, a slight waver or crack, telltale signs of fear or rage or lies.

This man sounded confident, as well as foreign.

"FBI?" Brier asked. "CIA?"

The man's smile grew. So did is uncanny affect. "None of that. Not an acronym you'd recognize," he said.

"Not an accent I recognize either," Brier told him.

"No, I'm not an American. Of course you noticed that. But there's no need to worry about me on that account." The man turned his attention away, his colorless eyes gazing at the bartender, whose name was Barney. Brier had gotten to know Barney well in the past few years.

The man gestured, pointing to Brier and himself in a motion that somehow said "Give him another, and I'll have the same." "And two shots," the man added, in words.

Barney nodded and set to work.

"How did you know?" Brier asked.

"You look thirsty," the man said.

"No, I mean how did you know I'm a cop?"

"Because I am also, in a way."

Brier held his peace as Barney set a small array of glasses in front of them. The man produced a bill and then made a "keep the change" gesture.

"Thanks," Barney said, in his taciturn way, before retreating to the other end of the bar, where another customer was signaling.

The man lifted his glass in salute. "To us good guys," he said, and took a sip.

A flicker of something came across his face: Distaste. Brier watched him closely even as he took a sip from his own glass.

"Don't like American beer?" Brier asked.

"Not really, no. Sorry." The man set his glass down and reached for the shot the bartender had placed next to it. "Now this, on the other hand..." The man knocked the shot back and made an appreciative noise – half grunt, half sigh.

"Sláinte," Brier said, picking up his own shot and swallowing it in one go.

"Kippis," the man said, but didn't drink.

Brier looked at the man. "Okay, so what's the deal? Did you see me at the crime scene this morning?"

"The crime scene?" the man asked pleasantly.

"The murder. Did you know the victims? The perpetrator?"

The man frowned slightly. "I don't know anything about it. I'm not here about that."

"But you are here about something," Brier said. "You're not here talking to me by chance."

"No, I'm not," the man said. He looked down at his hand and Brier's eyes flicked, apprehensively, to see what he was holding. Not a gun; not a badge. A small watch. Old fashioned. A pocket watch. It had a small metal cover that the man had opened with a subtle, quick movement. Then, with another swift motion, the man tucked the watch away. "I'm sorry I can't stay longer," he said. "I really only have time for one drink."

"And what else? A tip? A request, a confession?" Brier had no idea what the man could want, but he was getting the feeling that there was more going on. But why would a foreign national claiming to represent a security agency come to him?

Brier held his tongue, knowing when to let a suspect take the lead. For the moment, this stranger was definitely a suspect.

The man picked up his beer and regarded it wistfully, as if weighing the pleasures of its effects against its taste. "I like you, Detective Brier," he said.

"How do you know my name?" Brier asked. "I didn't tell you."

The man looked at him sidelong with a that creepy vague smile. "I know you're a reliable officer, and a level-headed person. I know you have a dedication to your job that doesn't just come from wanting to see bad guys punished. You want things to make sense. You want to follow evidence – to wherever it leads."

"What evidence?" Brier asked. "You know about a crime?"

"Yes," the man said. No hesitation, no undue emphasis; just a statement of fact. "It hasn't happened yet. But when it does, you'll know it's the one I'm here about."

"That's helpful," Brier said, returning to his beer.

The man gave him a look that almost seemed sad – or pitying. "Tuesday morning will be clear and bright," he said. "And something will come out of that clear blue sky... that's how you say it? 'Out of the clear blue sky?' "

Brier frowned at the man. "If you have a tip, or know about a crime, just tell me," he said.

"More than a crime," the man said, picking up his shot glass and turning it in his fingers with a wistful look. "An atrocity. It will change... everything."

"And why are you telling me? What am I supposed to do about it?," Brier asked, pitching his tone somewhere between bored and irritated, and looking straight ahead in a stiff-necked way that made it clear he was no longer interested in talking.

There was beat of silence, then Brier heard the man sigh. "Nothing," he said. "You should do nothing. You can do nothing."

Brier heard him get up to leave.

Suddenly thinking better of simply letting the man go, Brier got to his feet. The man was heading for the door; Brier followed close after. An urge to reach out and grab the man by the collar of his black overcoat flashed through him, but Brier wasn't ready to escalate the situation – not yet.

The man stepped through the door onto the street. The afternoon light briefly blinded Brier as he stepped outside, right on the man's heels –

Brier looked up and down the street. The man had vanished.

"Well, fuck me," Brier muttered. He looked around again.

The man had been right there and then... he was gone. Had Brier imagined him?

Returning to his bar stool, Brier took note of two empty shot glasses, the stranger's still-full beer, and his own half empty glass. Brier thought about finishing the drink, then decided he'd had enough.

"See ya, Barney," he called to the bartender, who looked up and gave him a nod.

***

Brier went to the station instead of going home. His desktop computer at work was much better for what he wanted to do next. He checked his email, looking for any notifications or tips of imminent criminal activity; nothing solid, and, in any case, nothing major. He made a few calls to guys he knew, most of whom he didn't manage to get hold of since it was a Sunday. Other people had lives, families, plans. Labor Day had been the previous Monday; a couple of the guys he might have wanted to talk to had chosen this week to take vacations.

He'd have better luck on Monday, Brier thought.

***

Tuesday morning arrived. Brier had no reason to believe anything would actually happen, but he was wound up with anxiety all the same.

"What are you so nervous about?" Dee asked. She was lounging at her desk like a vet of forty years, putting out an air of hard-bitten world weariness. She was fiddling with a pencil, a habit she'd picked up from their supervisor, Davis, who was at least twenty-five years her senior. Hard to believe she was still only in her twenties; then again, she was one of the more talented and ambitious detectives on the force.

She had a way of cutting to the point, Brier thought.

"Who says I'm nervous?" Brier asked.

"Stressed out and uptight all yesterday, and now this morning," she said. "And you look like you haven't slept too well."

Brier shrugged, glancing at his wristwatch. Almost nine o'clock. He'd gotten hold of most of the guys he wanted to speak with the day before and spent as long as he could doing a little research into possible threats, but no one seemed to have heard anything. Even the guys who dealt with gang activity and drug stuff seemed to think there was nothing unusual coming up.

The guy with the usual accent had been a crackpot; Brier was sure of it.

Except... he wasn't sure at all. The man's words, and his general affect and demeanor, haunted him. He didn't know why, but he believed the man's prediction that something significant was about to happen.

Well, he did know why, in part: The weather. The morning was absolutely stunning, the sky an impossible blue, the sunlight golden and flawless. The man had mentioned the weather. He might have gotten hat detail from a weather report... but you didn't get a poetic sense of a beautiful blue sky from weather reports. Did you?

Something from the clear blue sky. Something that would change everything, the man had said. But what could that be? An assassination? A bombing? A mass shooting?

"You're white as a sheet," Dee said. "Is your ulcer acting up again?"

Brier shook his head, feeling electric tingles of dread course through his body. His stomach was a heavy lump of misery and fear.

"Maybe you need a sick day," Dee said.

Brier considered it for a moment.

Then he heard a commotion across the room. Everyone was clustering around the small television set in the corner. Brier and Dee glanced at each other and then got to their feet.

When they caught sight of the television it took Brier a moment to realize he wasn't looking at a movie. It was a breaking news bulletin – something about the World Trade Center in New York City, which Brier could see for himself. It didn't look good. A thick streamer of smoke was rising from the side of the skyscraper. It looked like a bomb had gone off.

This is it, Brier thought. This is what the guy was talking about.

Brier focused on the news announcer's voice through the exclamations and terse mutterings of his colleagues. The North Tower, the news announcer said; a commercial airliner.

An airliner? Not a bomb?

"Son of a bitch," Brier muttered to himself.

He noticed Dee staring at him.

"This what you were so worried about?" she asked quietly. "You hear something?"

"A guy said something weird to me the other day," Brier told her.

Guys around them looked at Brier, who felt himself grow hot under their scrutiny.

"I thought he was a crank," Brier said. "He didn't give any specifics, just said something was going to happen this morning."

Supervisor Davis was among the crowd gathered in front of the TV. Davis was glaring at him. Brier looked him in the eyes and said, forcefully, "I researched everything I could think of, and there was no indication of... of anything substantive."

"Hey, they're saying it was American Airlines Flight 11," one of the detectives spoke up. "Took off from here... from Logan."

Supervisor Davis' glare grew harder, colder.

Brier looked back at him and shook his head, his face a mask of bewilderment. What could he have done, other than what he had done?

"Write it up," Davis told him. "Write down everything he said. Include a detailed description."

"Yessir," Brier said, and turned to walk back to his desk.

"Holy shit!" someone yelled.

Brier spun back toward the television, and felt his heart seize as another airplane plowed into the South Tower, a huge orange ball of flame sprouting from the side of building, debris spraying down..

Two thoughts came into Brier's mind: How had the impact not sheared the building in two? It seemed incredible that an aircraft so massive could strike the tower and the building wouldn't come crashing down at once.

And: He had to find the foreign man. He had make him pay.

***

"He was Finish," Brier told Davis, two chaotic days later.

"Your mystery man?" Davis waved the news away.

"I listened to online clips of all sorts of speeches, and when I found someone who sounded like him it turned out the guy was Finnish," Brier said.

"Those assholes weren't Finnish, Brier, they were the goddamn..." Davis pulled up short, sputtering.

"Al Qaeda," Brier said. "I know. But – "

"With the guys who actually did it coming from Saudi Arabia," Davis said. "And our president won't talk about that. He's too busy defending his Saudi buddies."

Brier didn't want to get swept up in yet another emotional discussion of who was to blame. He'd heard it all: The president, who was reading a story book to school children in Florida when he got the news. The former president and his intelligence team. The CIA, the NSA, and other federal agencies that had gotten into a pissing contest and failed to share information that, if put together correctly, would have revealed the plot in advance.

"Finish your report, and I'll send it in," Davis said.

"And they'll ignore it," Brier said.

"Of course they will," Davis said, "and I would too, frankly, because I don't see how there can be a connection."

"A man here in Boston warning about a terror attack involving planes that took off from Boston," Brier said.

"A Finnish guy, according to you, who spouted off about some mysterious major crime," Davis said. "No specifics. In other words, bullshit. The guy was a fuckin' loon. Cranks call in all the time, something's bound to happen sooner or later – doesn't mean they knew anything."

"He followed me into a bar. Knew I was a cop."

"Or," Davis said, "he saw you on Charles Street earlier, heard about the killings. Followed you a few blocks to the bar. Thought he'd fuck with you. Finnish national intelligence?" Davis snorted.

"He didn't say that. He said he was with a national law enforcement agency. He didn't say what nation."

"Okay, and if he's actually with an agency – American, Finnish, whatever – and if he really did know something in advance, then he's working on it."

"Working on it?" Brier asked.

"Following leads, putting the pieces together, making sure it don't happen again... whatever. But – why the hell would a legitimate intelligence officer, or whoever, come up and start talking about a major terror attack like that? The guy's a kook."

Brier didn't like that word, kook. It was imprecise, childish, meaningless.

There was more to it than that. Brier knew in his gut the Finnish man had known exactly what was going to take place. He swore to himself that he was going to find him.

***

Brier turned in his report. Nothing happened. Time went by. His colleagues forgot about the Finnish man; Dee forgot about the Finish man. Brier spent two years trying to find out about Finnish intelligence agencies, trying to find out who, among America's intelligence community, might have coordinated with someone from Finland. A new federal agency – Homeland Security – came into existence. A few of Brier's old contacts ended up with HomSec. None of them could tell him anything; none of them believed there was anything to his story.

Brier started to doubt himself. Maybe the strange encounter really was nothing more than coincidence. Maybe the guy hadn't been Finnish after all. Had he been affecting an accent? Or was Brier mistaken in identifying him as Finnish by accent alone?

At the same time, he combed through art books and databases trying to find something that looked like the white flame the strange man had had pinned to his lapel. Nothing there, either.

With the advent of video posting platforms like MeView, Brier found a new obsession: Combing through hundreds, ten thousands, of clips. He found five-minute rants and three-hour lectures, everything from foaming-mad conspiracy theories to highly technical explanations addressing every aspect of the events that had unfolded on 9/11. But he found nothing about Finnish intelligence having unearthed evidence of an impending terror attacks. He found several videos made by Finnish nationals that were presented in English; they sounded the same as the man in the bar, renewing his conviction that the man had been Finnish. The speakers exhibited the same pronunciation, cadence, and stresses in their spoken English that the strange man had. Brier had no technical expertise in the science of spoken language, but he had a good ear, and he trusted his talent at placing accents.

He even managed to get some the records regarding international travelers for the month before and after September 11. One of his old buddies, now at HomeSec, had arranged it. The records were voluminous, and mostly were drawn from passenger manifests of intercontinental flights. Brier waded doggedly through as much of it as he could, but turned up nothing.

Six years later, Brier conceded he had nothing, and probably wasn't going to turn anything up. A ridiculous war on Iraq had come and gone, despite Iraq and Saddam Hussein having had nothing to do with 9/11; a more sensible response in Afghanistan had turned into a war that seemed destined to go on without end; movies had been made about the day, and books written, and air travel had become more stressful than ever.

Brier had stopped sharing his thoughts on the subject. No one, either among friends and family or among professional colleagues, gave any credit to the idea that a Finnish national had somehow been involved with Saudi terrorists operating out of Afghanistan.

It was in April of 2013 that Brier saw the Finnish man again. He'd had dreams over the years about being in a bookstore, or on a bus, or even back in that same bar, and looking up to see the Finnish man; in the dreams, the man was always furtive, always slipping away.

In real life, it was different. The Finnish man approached Brier – or, at least, he stood in place with no evidence of nervousness, and stared at him defiantly. He did it from across the subway tracks at Downtown Station at nearly two in the morning.

Brier had been out to a baseball game with Dee and some other guys from the department. Dee had suggested they go have a drink after the game. It was a Sunday night, and ordinarily Brier would have declined, but the following day was Patriot's Day, a state holiday he'd managed to get off work. Besides, the Red Sox had just trashed the Tampa Bay Rays 5-0; a celebration didn't seem out of the question.

By ones and twos the other guys called it a night and headed home, until it was just Brier and Dee. They wandered from place to place, then lingered at a sports bar until Brier, wondering if he was interpreting Dee's signals correctly, asked if she wanted to go home with him. She seemed to want to, for a moment, and Brier held his breath; but then she reconsidered. A moment later, so did Brier. They both laughed, but the moment was awkward. She said good night. He went to the Green Line station and headed for Park Street, then made his way through the connecting corridor until he got to Downtown Crossing, where he intended to take the Red Line to Quincy Center. He could walk home from there.

It was late, but there were plenty of people on the platform. Looking up the subway tunnel, Brier felt his eye catch on a figure at the far end of the opposite platform, on the other side of two sets of tracks.

It was the Finnish man. Brier froze in shock: The man looked exactly as he had on that Sunday afternoon twelve years earlier. His slightly bloated face was the same; his black overcoat and hat were the same; even the white pin on his lapel was the same. Brier closed his eyes, counted to six, and looked again, certain that he'd had one too many... but the Finnish man was still there. He was looking directly at Brier, and the creepy, wispy smile was on his face.

The two shared a long look and then the Finnish man tilted his head inquisitively.

Brier hastened along the platform toward the entrance and then darted back into the corridor. Following a circular route, swimming upstream against a surge of passengers making their way to the platform he'd just left, Brier made his way to the opposite platform. He didn't think a train would pull in before he got there – a train had just departed two minutes before he saw the Finnish man, and it would be at least another fifteen minutes or so until the next one.

Still, it took him a long time to get where he was going, and when he finally arrived there was no sign of the Finnish man.

Brier walked all the way to the end of the platform, shaking with adrenaline and cursing under his breath. Most of the crowd were gathered in a knot in the middle of the platform; almost no one was at the far end. Brier made his way to an empty bench, sat down, and wondered if he was going crazy.

Then someone sat next to him and Brier grew cold all over, knowing who it was.

"Before you do something stupid and crazy and get yourself in trouble, I need you to shut up and listen," the man told him. "I had nothing to do with 9/11."

Brier looked at the man, fighting the urge to slam him to the ground and cuff him. Or maybe, he thought, maybe just blow his brains out right there.

Strangely, though, he also felt disinclined to get to his feet, or make any movement at all. He could wait, he told himself. He would listen. And anyway, he was drunk. If the two of them got into a tussle, would Brier be likely to prevail? The Finnish man looked soft and weak, but he was also large and fleshy. That, plus Brier's intoxication, might give him the advantage.

Brier decided to play it cool, but he couldn't keep the anger and accusation out of his voice. "Even if you didn't do it, you knew about it," he said. "Before it even happened. And you didn't stop it."

"No, that's not true," the man said. "I mean, no, I didn't stop it. But neither did you."

"Because you didn't tell me," Brier said.

"I knew about it, yes," the Finnish man continued. "But that's because I learned about it in school. As a boy. Like everyone else. It's history... at least, where I come from, it is."

Brier's anger grew hotter. "You're fucking with me again," he said. "You were fucking with me then, and now – "

"And now I'm telling you I'm from the future, and I've traveled through time to have these conversations with you. Yes, that's right," the Finnish man said calmly. "That's the correct inference. And it's true, actually. I do come from the future."

The man looked at him with perfect equanimity as Brier glared at him, exasperated. Somehow, though, he still couldn't bring himself to move. Just how hammered was he?

But Brier had no trouble speaking. "All the way from the future... and Finland?" he growled.

The man chuckled. "So you placed my accent? That's good! Well done."

Brier started to move, angry enough to want to shake off his lethargy and get to his feet, determined he was going to take the guy in and get some answers. His body refused to cooperate. A shudder passed through him. He closed his eyes, willing himself to move, but he couldn't.

"Like I said, let's not be hasty," the Finnish man told him. "I wasn't lying, and I wasn't trying to fuck with you. I only approached you then in order that you'd believe me now."

"Like I believe a fucking thing you have to say," Brier told him.

"You will," the man said. "I'm here today, I'm gone tomorrow. I come back when I need to, in order to convince you."

"Cut the shit!" Brier snarled, as a train rumbled up the tracks.

The two said nothing more as the train screeched to a halt. The doors opened; the crowd shuffled in, with a few more lively people peeling off and heading for the cars at the end of the train. One or two looked at Brier and the Finnish man as they lingered on the bench.

The doors shut and the train departed. A few stragglers ran onto the platform, a few seconds too late. One man uttered a curse and then threw himself onto a bench and put his head in his hands.

"Time has a way of charging onwards." The Finnish man said, looking at the angry man. "It doesn't hesitate to leave the unwary behind."

"You'd know all about it I guess," Brier said disdainfully.

The Finnish man turned his gaze to Brier again. Brier studied his face, trying despite his drunken state to memorize exactly how he'd describe the man to a sketch artist: Pale skin. Wispy eyebrows. Gray eyes. Full, pudgy cheeks. Fine pores. A small, even childish nose. The man looked like a child in several ways... no, not like a child. He just looked unfinished, somehow – not completely formed.

Like, maybe, a figment of my own imagination, Brier thought. The idea had occurred to him before. But then he remembered how Barney had served them both... or had he? Was all of that imaginary, too?

"Have you ever heard the saying that extravagant claims can only be verified with exceptional evidence?"

The phrase sounded familiar, but Brier couldn't place it.

"Our earlier conversation was intended to give you evidence of just such a claim: That I know about things before they come to pass," the Finnish man told him. "And now, I have more evidence for you."

"Oh, Jesus," Brier whispered. "What is it this time?"

"As before, you'll know it when it happens."

Dread coursed through Brier. "More terrorist shit? Or what? Maybe a natural disaster?"

But he was talking to the empty air. The Finish man hadn't blinked out; he hadn't faded out; he'd simply been there and then not been there. It was like waking up from a dream; it felt like a shift in Brier's perceptions

Was this what it was like to be schizophrenic? Like that guy in "A Beautiful Mind," with his imaginary friends and his hallucinations of late night secret agent adventures?

Brier slowly got to his feet and started walking back up the platform. Across the tracks, the train he'd been waiting for rumbled up to the opposite platform. There was no way he could get over to the platform in time to catch it. He'd have to wait for the next one.

"Time charges onward," he mumbled, as the train departed. He felt like he was standing squarely on the tracks as time rushed toward him, bringing whatever new horror the Finnish man knew about but wouldn't explain.

***

"It was him, goddamn it," Brier told Davis.

"No, it was not," Davis said firmly. "It was a terrorist fanatic and his little brother. Foreigners, yes, but not Finnish. People we took into our community and –"

"He came up to me the night before the bombing, and he told me the same thing he told me before 9/11," Brier interrupted. "He said that something was gonna happen."

Brier was all too aware that he was leaving out part of the story: The Finnish man's claim to be from the future.

"Yeah." Davis looked at Brier with a frown. "So you said on Monday morning, hours before the bombing happened. And it makes me wonder. No one else ever saw this guy. There's no record of anyone like him in the city just before 9/11, or even now... I did my research, too, both then and now. So here's what concerns me, Brier: The similarities between the two events."

"Religiously motivated terrorists," Brier said. "But, you know, they've gotta have religious extremists in Finland, too. I mean, there's some evidence that these sorts of terrorists have loose affiliations with each other all around the world."

"Not what I mean." Davis sat back in his chair, fiddling with a pencil. "The common factor I'm thinking about is you." Davis narrowed his eyes. "And you haven't given me much of an explanation as for why this Finnish guy would want to talk to you, and only you."

"I... I don't know the answer to that," Brier said, giving a helpless shrug. "All I can tell you is that both times he approached me..."

"Thought you said you had to chase him down Sunday night? At the T station?"

"I saw him on the opposite platform, yes, but I didn't have to chase him. He waited for me to get there. And I don't think he was there by chance," Brier said.

"So he just happened to know where you'd be at two o'clock in the morning," Davis said.

Brier shrugged again.

"And you didn't arrest him, for which you also don't have a good reason," Davis added.

Brier fell silent. Then he said, "I was drunk. It was after the game. I'd been out having a good time. I didn't... I mean, I wasn't in top form."

"So you were gonna let him walk away?"

"No, I..."

"That's exactly what you did, am I right? Or did he just dematerialize again, like when you followed him out of the bar in 2001?"

Anger welled up in Brier. He felt his mouth tighten into a line as his jaw clenched. "Yes. That's exactly what happened. I don't know how he did it, but the guy... he just vanished."

"So, your Finnish guy is a ghost, I guess, huh? A friendly ghost who tells you about terrorists?"

"Okay, look," Brier said angrily. "I was completely forthright about both of his warnings. I told you about him on 9/11, when I realized he wasn't just some crank. And I told you about him Monday morning, before the Marathon bombing, because I knew... I was afraid that he was telling the truth, it wasn't just a coincidence, and something was gonna happen. The thing, though, the thing is, he didn't say what it was that was gonna happen. I had no way of knowing. Nobody did – except him."

"And he consorts with everybody from Osama bin Laden to the Tsarnaev brothers," Davis said with icy sarcasm.

"What if he's the mastermind?"

"So, all right, he goes from using passenger planes as missiles in a highly organized, complex attack to building DIY bombs out of pressure cookers with a couple of radicalized teens?"

"Terrorism is terrorism," Brier argued, "And don't minimize what those kids did. The Boston Marathon is a high profile event, famous around the world."

Davis' hostile glare didn't waver.

Brier tried a different tack. "Davis..."

"Supervisor Davis."

Brier didn't like how Davis was using his title to put space between them. As if they hadn't worked together for more than fifteen years. As if there had never been a bond of trust between them.

"I'm gonna have to put you in for a psych eval, and while I'm at it a close examination of your banking records, your computer use, the whole workup," Davis told him.

"As if I'd be telling you this, drawing attention to myself if I was complicit," Brier said.

"I have to rule it out," Davis said. "You had to know that."

Brier shook his head even though, yes, he'd known it was likely to happen.

"You mind if I check your home computer too?" Davis asked. "I'll get a warrant if I have to."

"Why are you treating me like a suspect?"

"I'm not," Davis said, his tone slightly more conciliatory. "The investigation will be done very quietly – unless it turns something up, or unless you make a fuss. Got it? And I don't even know why I'm doing you this favor, except I can't make myself believe you, of all people, have anything to do with the terrorists who have attacked our country and our city. Twice now. But the thing is, twice now you've claimed you had some sort of advance knowledge of a threat."

"I did everything I could to –"

Davis cut him off. "I don't wanna hear it, Brier. I want you to talk to a psychiatrist. I want to know if and how these visions you're having –"

"They're not visions! The guy is real!"

"Don't fuckin' interrupt me!" Davis barked.

Brier clamped his mouth shut.

"Now, either you imagined meeting the Finnish guy... which you could have done in the shock of 9/11... and now you've somehow managed to guess at another terror incident, which is very, very unlikely," Davis said, "or else this Finnish guy is real. Or hell, maybe he really is a ghost. I don't believe that, but on the other hand I don't believe any other explanation."

Brier held his tongue.

"So we do this according to procedure, and we do it like gentlemen. If you're having visions or whatever, you get your meds, you lie on a couch and spill your guts, and you straighten yourself out. If you're actually getting real intel from a real person, we will track him down, and we'll work out the rest from there. But this is our starting point: You take a couple of weeks off, you see the shrink, he reports to me, I tell you what I decide."

Brier kept silent as he walked out of Davis' office.

***

Brier chose The Cove out of a perverse sense of symmetry. If the Finnish man wanted to see him, he'd be there. If not, he'd just have to weather Davis' investigation, the suspicions of his brothers and sisters on the force – including Dee, Brier thought with a pang – and the ordeal of talking to a psychiatrist.

At least the shrink would be on the department's dime.

Brier didn't feel like drinking but he ordered a beer anyway, so as to have a reason to sit at the bar. He stared into the depths of the glass, gradually drinking it down, and then ordered another when it was empty.

So Davis thought he might be some kind of terrorist-abetting turncoat?

Or he thought that Brier might be nuts?

Maybe he was nuts, Brier thought, trying to recall why he hadn't arrested the Finnish man last Sunday night. Had he just been too drunk to take initiative? Or did some part of his mind know that he was hallucinating?

If the Finnish man was real, if Brier had gotten off his ass and arrested him, then at the very least Davis would know he was real. For that matter, maybe they could have stopped the Marathon bombing from happening. The terrorists behind the attack would be in jail right now, instead of still on the loose. The FBI had turned up video images of the two brothers, and a survivor who'd been right next to one of the explosive devices had related how he had looked one of them right in the eye, seen the backpack he was carrying... a backpack that the terrorist had left behind just a few minutes before it detonated.

That witness, that poor man, had lost a leg. Other victims had lost limbs, too, more than a dozen in all – Brier wasn't sure of the number. He did know how many were killed though. Three people. Three.

Could have been worse, he mused, staring into his glass.

Shouldn't have happened at all, he countered himself.

"Drinking your sorrows?" a voice asked.

Brier slowly raised his head and looked to the side. The Finnish man sat there, having arrived as silently as before. He was looking as calm as ever. He was also looking grave. That was good. Brier would have killed him if he'd been smiling.

Maybe he would kill the guy anyway...

TO BE CONTINUED