Coldwater Revenge by James Ross (e novels to read online TXT) 📗

to go there after Sunday church when Tom and Joe were boys. The diner was a 1950’s era converted aluminum Airstream, sixty feet long and eighteen feet wide, with a cigarette-scarred Formica counter down the center and a row of swivel stools covered in red plastic facing it. Four bench booths lined the windows on either side of the entrance, with a cash register, candy counter and cigarette machine just inside the door. Two shelves of pies and cereals clung to the back wall above the toaster and drink machines.

Tom sat in the booth across from the cash register and flipped through a juke-box menu of unfamiliar titles while he waited for his brother to come back from the men’s room. When had Coldwater gone country? Outside, an old Buick Park Avenue inched into the gravel parking lot and unloaded a quartet of senior citizens out past their bedtimes. Behind it an equally ancient Camaro fishtailed to a stop and ejected a pair of leathered-up teenagers. The skinny one slithered through the oldsters like a rat through a cane field. The other hung back with a posture and expression like he was having a gastrointestinal moment. The door to the diner flung open and a blast of chill air hit Tom in the back of the neck.

“Shut it, please,” said Tom, not bothering to turn his head.

“Shut yours,” said a voice, at once insolent, adolescent and unmistakably high. Only the high part didn’t piss Tom off. He pointed a finger at his reflection in the window and through it to the Coldwater patrol car parked outside. “See that car with the bubble light? I leave in that. You can, too, if you don’t shut that door.” Tom spoke to his reflection in the window and to the pasty, cadaverous face above and behind it.

The face lifted and scanned the row of empty booths in either direction. “Bullshit.”

Tom pointed his chin at the plate across the table. “He’s in the can. That’s his meatloaf you’re freezing. Go ahead, keep standing there.”

A spike haired moon-face appeared above the deaths-head in the window refection. “Wassup, Cashin?”

“Nothing, Mulvey. You stink.”

The draft on the back of Tom’s neck disappeared and sound of metal heel taps receded. Joe reappeared, looking colorless, clammy and ill.

“You okay?”

Joe put his hand on the edge of the table and eased himself into the booth. “Threw up in there. That city of yours can have that effect on people.”

“You look like death.”

“Don’t say that, Tommy. Not even in jest.”

“Sorry. I’ll drive home, if you’ll let me do that siren and bubble light thing.”

Joe grunted, “Don’t touch the toys. I need to get to bed soon. Feels like I’m coming down with something.”

“You look like you’re going to fall over.”

“Enough!” The “Look” was their mother’s. Only flashing out from under a buzz cut, the similarity gave Tom the creeps. “Tell me how you think you know Sharp was lying.”

Tom smiled. “You’re going to like this. It’s a trick one of my litigation partners taught me. One I’m glad Dad didn’t know.” Joe lifted the palm of his hand to his forehead and squeegee-d a line of sweat into his hair. “What color was the tuxedo you wore at your Senior Prom?”

Joe leaned his head back and appeared to search for an answer in the far left-hand corner of the diner where the ceiling and walls converged. “John Travolta, ‘Saturday Night Fever’ white.”

“And what song did the band play when King and Queen danced?”

He closed his eyes, tilted his head to the right and his face to the left. “Can’t remember.”

“And if the Coldwater High School varsity football team played the Jefferson High School cheerleaders in a bowling tournament, and you had to design the bowling shirts, what would they look like?”

Joe closed his eyes and this time turned his head up and to the right. “See-through,” he grinned.

“True. True. And not true,” said Tom.

Joe grunted. “Okay, smart boy. Explain it to me.”

Tom smiled. “I’m kind of fuzzy on the science and so was the guy who explained it to me. But it has something to do with different kinds of material being stored or created in different parts of your brain.”

“You and your ex have got brains on the brain.”

Tom grinned. “Yeah, well you’re going to thank me for this. Think about the questions I just asked. One asked you to retrieve a visual memory, one a sound memory and one asked you to make-up an image.”

“Okay.”

“When you were searching for the visual memory, your eyes went up and to the left. When you tried to remember a sound, your eyes went sideways to the left. And when I asked you to make-up an image, they went up and to the right-–the opposite of where they went when I asked you a question where you had to retrieve an actual memory.”

“‘The eyes are the windows of the soul’?” Joe quoted.

“Exactly. Eye movements track the part of your brain that you’re accessing in response to a question. Sights, sounds, and feelings are stored in different areas of the brain and they’re made-up in different areas, too.”

“And how does this tell you when someone is lying.”

“It doesn’t. But if you ask somebody for a memory and their eyes go to the left, it tells you that they’re accessing a real memory. They may not tell you the truth about the memory, but they’re accessing something they’ve actually stored. For a sound, the eyes and face go to the side, for a feeling, they go down and the chin comes in. If the eyes go to the right, they’re creating, not accessing. Like your see-through bowling shirt. They’re making it up.”

“You get paid for this?” Joe snorted.

“It’s not foolproof like fingerprints and lie detectors. My partner’s a litigator. He uses it in depositions and cross-examination to let him know if he’s on the trail of something or not. He says it only works about 80% of the time. The signals tend to be reversed in