Central Park Guillaume Musso (read along books .TXT) 📖

operation takes place every six to ten years. And most pacemakers have lithium batteries.”

Alice gestured at the image. “How could there be batteries in such a small device?”

Looking pensive, Dr. Mitchell said, “I imagine yours doesn’t have a battery.”

“Then how would it work?”

“Maybe some kind of self-generating system. A piezoelectric sensor that would transform the movements of your rib cage into electricity. That’s one of the methods they’re currently working on to reduce the size of pacemakers.”

He took a plastic ruler from the console and used it as a pointer. “You see this slightly rounded part that looks like a notch?”

Alice nodded.

“I think it’s a connector that links the pacemaker to your heart via a catheter.”

“So where’s the catheter?”

“Nowhere. That’s exactly why it’s strange.”

“So what is the pacemaker connected to?”

“Nothing,” the doctor admitted. “The way it’s currently configured, it can’t send electrical impulses.”

Doubtfully, Alice asked: “Could you remove it?”

“One of my colleagues might be able to, but it would require an operation and more tests.”

Alice’s brain was working at a hundred miles an hour. “One last thing. I checked, and I don’t have any wounds at all on my chest, neck, or armpits. How could it have been implanted without leaving any trace?”

Mitchell bit his lip. “Either you’ve had it for a long time…”

“Impossible. I would have noticed.”

“Or it was implanted via another opening.”

To the doctor’s amazement, Alice unbuckled her belt, removed her ankle boots, and pulled off her pants. She examined her ankles, her legs, knees. At the top of her thigh, she noticed a transparent Band-Aid, and her heart began to pound again. She peeled it off and found a small incision.

“Yeah, my guess is that’s where it was introduced,” the doctor said, looking closely at the wound. “The implant is so small that they could have placed it using a catheter.”

Perplexed, Alice put her clothes back on. This investigation had moved beyond the realm of the baffling, frightening, and surreal and was now becoming completely insane.

“So, to sum up,” she said, “I have a pacemaker with no battery and no catheter that is not connected to any of my organs?”

“It makes no sense, I agree,” Mitchell said, “but yeah.”

“Then what does it do?”

“That’s exactly what I’m wondering.”

19In the Land of

the Living

NIGHT FELL SLOWLY.

The final rays of the setting sun blazed like a fireworks display. The forest was incandescent. In the foreground, the maples, ashes, and birches were a whirlwind of bright flames, the larches all gold and the lindens pure fire. Then the golden-brown glow of the beeches, the black blood of the sumacs and red oaks, the crimson embers of the rowan trees. And, farther off, a high green wall of pines was overhung by the angular, mineral mass of mountains.

In Greenfield, Gabriel had filled the car with gas, added oil, and found a new spare tire. When Alice met him at the garage, she told him the latest news from Seymour about the origin of the Glock and where her Audi had been found. Instinctively, she decided not to tell him about the foreign body she had discovered under her skin. She wanted to know more about it before she shared this unlikely piece of information.

They began driving again, but on I-91 near Brattleboro, a fuel tanker had overturned and gas had spread everywhere, so emergency services had closed that part of the interstate.

Forced off the highway and onto minor roads, Gabriel had to drive more slowly. At first, Alice and Gabriel had cursed their bad luck, but gradually they let themselves be lulled by the peacefulness of the land they were driving through. They listened to a local radio station that played rock standards—“American Pie” by Don McLean, “Me and Bobby McGee” by Janis Joplin, “Heart of Gold” by Neil Young—and they even bought cider and cinnamon doughnuts from a roadside stand.

For nearly an hour, their investigation was put on a back burner.

The landscape was picturesque, punctuated by footpaths, covered bridges, spectacular views, and mountain streams. Mostly full of rolling hills, the area became flatter for several miles and they found themselves on a country road passing through a succession of pretty villages, timeless farms, and wide-open fields where cows grazed.

For a while, Alice was calmed by the purr of the engine. The region reminded her of family vacations in Normandy when she was young. Time seemed to have stopped here. Whenever they drove through a village, they felt as if they had gone back a hundred years. It was like living in a New England postcard of old barns with pitched roofs and trees with flame-colored leaves.

The spell was abruptly broken when Alice opened the glove compartment to get her gun. When she had first joined the police, she used to make fun of her older colleagues who carried their weapons even when they weren’t on duty. But as time passed, she became just like them—she needed the weight of the gun against her ribs in order to feel at ease, to feel like herself.

The pistol was where she had left it, strapped inside its leather holster, but next to it, she found a child’s toy, a metal car painted white with blue racing stripes—an exact replica of the Mustang Shelby they were driving at that moment.

“What’s this?”

Gabriel glanced at the toy. “Just one of Kenny’s little gadgets, I assume.”

“It wasn’t here earlier.”

Gabriel shrugged. “Maybe you didn’t look properly.”

“I’m sure that the glove compartment was empty when I put my gun in it,” Alice barked.

“Does it matter?” Gabriel scowled.

“I thought we were being honest with each other.”

He sighed. “Okay. Barbie’s cousin gave it to me. Very nice guy, actually. He collects Hot Wheels. He must have at least three hundred of them. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

“You’re right. It is unbelievable,” she repeated, staring into his eyes.

Exasperated, he raised his voice: “What? Look, the guy was just being nice. He offered me this toy and I took it to be polite. That’s all. Do we really have to spend the whole evening discussing