Free Maybe by John Locke

one phone number for Darwin all these years, but they were different numbers. When Lou calls, his name shows up on Doc Howard’s cell phone, and a blue light goes on in Doc Howard’s office and home. When I call, a red light flashes. Lou says if I’ll go with him to Doc Howard’s office and home, he can prove it to me.
    I tell him I don’t need to see it.
    “Why not?”
    “Because I trust you, Lou.”
    “Right.”
    The real reason is I already knew about Doc Howard’s lights. I’ve been to his house several times. The first time I visited, he showed me how the lights blink when different people call. But they blinked when I called Doc’s number, not Darwin’s. If Doc’s lights are now blinking when I call Darwin, Lou or someone else has had them reprogrammed.
    So I don’t buy it.
    Doc was a crusty curmudgeon who complained about everything in his life. He ran the infirmary and surgical center at Sensory, and was involved in my facial reconstruction. “Under orders from Darwin,” as Doc put it, he implanted a chip in my brain while I was in a coma. But years later, Doc tipped me off about the chip and taught me how to disable it. For this information he charged me a hundred million dollars.
    Lou doesn’t know it was Doc who told me about the chip. Nor is he aware of the financial arrangement I made last year with Darwin and Sal Bonadello, the two people most likely to kill me.
    I secretly pay them for protection.
    Every month my Swiss bank transfers a multi-million dollar payment to two numbered accounts. One is owned by Sal Bonadello, the other, Darwin. The amount is equal to the monthly interest on two five hundred million dollar certificates of deposit.
    If I die, the payments stop.
    If Sal dies his payment stops.
    If Darwin dies, his payment stops.
    So both men have a vested interest in keeping me alive.
    I’ll know in a week if the payment to Darwin has been made. If it has, Darwin’s alive. Or at least his eyes are alive. You see, he has to log in with a retinal scan to accept the money.
    I don’t believe Darwin would have told me about the chip for any amount of money, because that was his insurance against me. Darwin ordered the chip placed in my brain so he could press a button from anywhere in the world and kill me if I ever became a problem.
    Thanks to Doc Howard’s information, I disabled the chip. So I’m having a hard time believing he was Darwin.
    Which means Lou killed the wrong man.
    “Callie thinks you’re Darwin,” I say.
    Lou does a double take. “That’s crazy ! Why would she think that?”
    “You and Doc are the two people who claimed Darwin was trying to kill me. And you’re the one who uncovered the evidence against Doc. And you’re the one who killed him.”
    “It’s logical I found the evidence,” Lou says. “It’s my research team. Plus, I worked right here in the same building with Doc Howard for more than ten years. If I’m wrong, why was Doc Howard tracking your movements and monitoring your flights? Why would a government surgeon do that?”
    “The obvious answer is he wouldn’t. But Callie might remind me that you’re a computer genius. You gave us fake ID’s and wiped our paper trails clean. You’ve doctored our birth certificates and created diplomas and certifications that prove we’re lawyers, doctors, nuclear inspectors, and anything else we need to prove out in the field. For a guy like you, framing Doc Howard would be child’s play.”
    “You know damn good and well I’m not Darwin!” he says.
    “You’re right.”
    Lou looks relieved. “You do know?”
    “Yes.”
    “For certain?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then please tell me why. I haven’t slept for days, worrying you might come after me.”
    “Remember when we did the sting together and stole all that money from Sam Case’s clients?”
    He nods.
    “You tried to kill me.”
    He hangs his head. Then looks up and says, “I don’t understand.”
    “You tried to kill me by pumping the