Diamond Sky (Diamond Sky Trilogy Book 1) (12 page)

Jackson Fox had a good idea as to what caused the alarming
change in the snake’s behaviour. If his theory was correct, he also knew that
this would not likely be an isolated incident. His greatest concern was not how
to stop or reverse the process that was taking place. His greatest concern was
how to make sure nobody else found out.

Chapter 12

Lucy lay in for much of the morning. In spite of her low
expectations, the guestroom bed was surprisingly comfortable. It was maybe even
more comfortable than the bed she slept in at home. She could certainly get
used to penthouse living.

After a quick shower, she got dressed and then went
downstairs to the bar. The pub was yet to open, but Mindy made her some
breakfast of scrambled egg on toast. If all went to plan, her next meal would
be cooked on an open camp fire, just like dad used to do it.

After finishing her food, she handed back her room key,
settled the bill and went outside to see what time she could collect her car.
The garage was closed up and there was no light coming from inside when she got
there. She knocked on the door, but received no answer. After walking around
the building, hoping to find evidence of somebody inside, but finding none, she
went back to the front door. Rather than knock this time, she turned the
handle. It was not locked.

‘Hello?’ she said, as she crossed the threshold into the
darkened shop floor.

No response came. Instead of leaving it at that, she decided
to continue on into the back office. First, she needed some light to see what
she was doing. She could just make out the outline of the office door and
figured that the switch would be close by. When she got there, she began to
feel around the wall. Something brushed against her arm and there was a clatter
as whatever she had touched hit the floor.

Her fingers eventually found three switches, which she
pressed in turn. The first two had no apparent effect, but as the third clicked
into place the shop floor was flooded with light. A picture frame lay face down
on the floor by her feet. She reached down and picked it up. Thankfully, no
damage was done. At least not by her; the glass front had already been removed.

She held the picture for a moment. The couple looked so
happy, so content. It was a scene Lucy hoped she would be part of one day. She
wondered who the happy couple may be. Was the mechanic father of the girl, the
guy or neither? Where was the pair now? A picture can reveal so little
information, but at the same time raise so many questions.

Lucy kept a single photograph in her purse. It was not
unlike the one that she held in her hands. It was taken some years previous on
her final camping trip with dad. She wondered what that picture would reveal to
a stranger’s eyes; a proud father with his happy young daughter. There was not
the slightest clue to suggest the horror of the illness that would soon
separate them.

Lucy placed the picture back on the shelf and knocked on the
office door. When she received no response, she tentatively turned the handle and
entered. The room was in darkness, but a quick feel by the doorframe revealed
another light switch.

The mechanic was seated at a desk with his head slumped
forward onto the tabletop. He did not react to the light. There was no
paperwork on the desk; nothing to have kept the man so occupied that he had
fallen asleep on the job. There was only a bottle of whisky and a single empty
glass.

She walked over and picked up the bottle, holding it to the
light in order to accurately gauge its contents. There was about a fifth of the
bottle left, but without knowing how full it had been to start with, Lucy had
no way of knowing how much the man had drunk. She put the bottle back on the
table, hoping the sound of which would stir the sleeping mechanic. It did not.

The office was sparse, but it did not appear to be in
neglect. Some files were stacked on an otherwise empty bookcase that did at
least allude to actual work being done. There was a CD player on top of the
bookcase and a small red LED light told Lucy that it was switched on, although
the music had long since come to an end. She flicked the switch to the off
position. Before continuing her exploration of the office, she lifted up the
lid to see what the man was listening to when he fell asleep. It was an album
called
Use Your Illusion
by
Guns n’ Roses
. This was the same band
on the poster in the garage. She had heard of them, but they were well before
her time; back in the days before MP3’s replaced CD’s.

In the corner of the room was a small portable TV. It was
not plugged in. She ran her finger along the top of the set and found no dust.
The same could be said of the rest of the office. It had been cleaned recently,
perhaps no longer than two or three days. Whatever sent this man into his
destructive spiral must have been recent. At least that explained why Lucas
recommended the mechanic to her. The policeman obviously did not know the
extent of this man’s problems.

She tried to think more positively of the mechanic as she
carried on with her exploration. Apart from the expected manuals and a few
packaged car parts, the rest of the area was pretty bare. There was a calendar
tacked to the wall. A date was circled with red ink with a small cross
inscribed next to it. The cross was a depiction of a crucifix rather than an X.
She quickly counted down the days in her head and realised that this particular
day was less than a week away.

‘Flick?’

The voice startled her and she let out a little yelp.

‘Who are you?’ the mechanic asked. ‘Where’s Flick?’

She turned around, hoping he would recognise her from the
day before. If recollection had dawned, it did not show on his face. The
vulnerability of her situation suddenly occurred to her. She was alone with a
strange, older man, who may have drunk up to eighty percent of a bottle of
whisky. There was no telling what he may be capable of.

‘My name is Lucy, I came by yesterday. Lucas; that friendly
policeman, brought me here. Don’t you remember?’

She felt better after mentioning Lucas. Just saying his name
made her feel safe. The mechanic shook his head. He seemed to be wrestling with
his thoughts rather than refuting what he had been told. It appeared that the
most dangerous period of drunkenness had passed and he was now well into
hangover territory.

‘The busted fuel tank?’ he asked, uncertain by the vagueness
of his memory.

‘That’s right. You said that you needed to get the parts in
from Alice Springs. Is it ready?’

‘Is what ready?’

Lucy was starting to get inpatient.

‘My car.
You were supposed to
repair my car for today. Have you done this or not?’

He shook his head, but did not look at her. She was not
happy, but the feelings she was experiencing were more of disappointment than
anger. Despite this man letting her down and doing
himself
no favours with his obvious binge drinking, Lucy could not help but feel pity
for him. It was just a gut feeling, but something told her that he had suffered
a great loss. Maybe that loss was recent or maybe it was not. The circled date
on the calendar could be an anniversary or an upcoming funeral. There was
simply no way for her to know without asking and it was not the right time for
that.

‘Do you have a kettle?’ she asked.

‘It’s in the main garage.’

She went back onto the shop floor and located the kettle next
to a sink, which looked like it was mainly used for cleaning up after the
mechanic had done work on his cars. The basin and the taps were covered with
oil. She quickly filled the kettle and turned it on. Whilst she waited for it
to boil she looked around for some mugs. Although she managed to find two, one
of them was being used to contain a variety of loose screws and bolts. It was
thick with dirt and after seeing the state of the sink, it was pointless to
even try and clean it out. The other was stained only from the previous brew it
had contained and she gave this one a quick rinse before spooning in three
large tablespoons of coffee.

When she returned to the office the mechanic had pulled
round slightly. He was now able to sit upright and no longer made the effort to
avoid her gaze. He thanked her as she handed him his drink.

‘Did you not want one for yourself,’ he added. ‘You’re more
than welcome, of course.’

She smiled, awkwardly.

‘You couldn’t find another clean cup, could you?’ he said,
recalling what a state the place was in. ‘You must think me pathetic, mustn’t
you?’

‘Not at all.
Everyone goes through
hard times. I am sure that whatever it is you are dealing with will soon pass.
I’ve experienced a great loss of my own recently. You could say that’s how I
came to end up here.’

‘I take it you’re referring to more than just the loss of
your fuel tank?’

‘I wish that were the case. My father passed away just a
week ago. I decided to take a road trip in order to try and put things into
perspective.
To help me move on with my life.’

He glanced down into his coffee.

‘I’m sorry to hear that. How did he go?’

It was the first time she had talked about it since the
funeral. She took a deep breath, but the words were not as difficult to say as
she thought they would be.

‘It was cancer. He tried to fight it at first, but at his
age the chemotherapy hit him harder than the disease. In the end, he decided to
come off the treatment and let nature take its course.’

‘That must have been hard for you.’

‘The most important thing was that he kept his dignity and
when the end came he was not alone. I suppose I can be grateful that I had time
to prepare myself. At least I got to say goodbye.’

The mechanic did not say anything. Lucy could see that he
was struggling to hold back his tears. She thought again to the circled date on
the calendar; was this man now alone? Would he have anybody to hold his hand
when his final moments came?

‘I’m sorry if I have upset you,’ she said. ‘I can see that
you obviously need time to come to terms with whatever is troubling you. I can
arrange for my car to be picked up and taken to Alice Springs for repair. I
will reimburse you for anything that you may already have spent on parts.’

‘That’s not necessary. I can still complete the job. I’ll just
need a little more time, that’s all.’

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea. You are in no fit state to
get any work done today and I am supposed to be leaving this afternoon.’

‘I can have it ready by Monday.’

‘I
dunno
. I have already spent
longer than anticipated in this town.’

‘Please, let me do this for you,’ he pleaded. ‘You will be
doing a miserable old man a favour.’

She did not want to say yes, but she would have found it so
much more difficult to say no. Reluctantly, she agreed to give him one more chance.

***

Emmy
called in to see how
Charlie was doing. She was curious about what new assignment her grandfather
had him working on, but most of all; she just wanted to make sure he was not
getting cold feet about their experiments following the near encounter of the
previous evening.

‘Did the professor ask you about last night when you were
with him?’

‘He never mentioned anything. If you saw the trouble we had
trying to sedate our new pet here, you would understand.’

She ignored his attempt to redirect the flow of the
conversation.

‘Are you sure? It need not be by way of a direct question.
Perhaps he made a sly or slightly off kilter comment or remark?’

‘Uh-huh. Not a word. Why are you so worried; I mean, apart
from the obvious?’

‘That short power outage is going to show up on the event
logs. Pops reads those as soon as they are available to him. Trust me; he knows
that something out of the ordinary happened last night. If he hasn’t said
anything then he could be waiting for us to go to him. The fact that we haven’t
is going to make it appear even stranger.’

Charlie took a brief break from collecting tissue samples in
order to give his colleague his full attention. Although
Emmy
exceeded him in many ways; she had earned her PhD at a younger age – one of the
youngest in the nation’s history, she was still only twenty two and carried all
of the baggage that came with that.

‘You need to relax,
Emmy
. Given
the nature of those experiments, everything that we do is out of the ordinary.
A brief power surge is probably the most mundane thing that has happened to us
all week. At least if you are oblivious to the cause it is. If the professor
asks, I’ll just tell him that we overloaded the circuits. It’s no big deal.’

‘So you’re still in?’

‘Of course.
Just try and be more
cautious next time. Make sure that we are the observers and not the subjects.’

‘I’ll try,’ she replied and then finally turning her
attention to what he was doing, she asked: ‘Is that a snake?’

‘Very observant, Dr Rayne.
Are you
sure you don’t want to lend your expertise?’

‘I don’t think I’d be much help. I’m more of a mongoose kind
of girl - if you know what I mean.’

He did and he chose to ignore her crude innuendo.

‘Well, it is your loss. I just hope you do not get too
jealous when I pick up my Nobel Prize. What I have here may well be the world’s
smartest reptile.’

I can beat that; look, what I have here is the world’s least
impressed face.’

‘Seriously, you would like this. It may even provide your
grandfather with a much welcome distraction. Anything that keeps him off our
back has to be good, right? Lucas found it in town. It’s instincts, reflexes,
whatever you want to call them; they are way off the chart. We’re still trying
to figure out the cause.’

She briefly considered helping, but compared to what she was
already working on, even the discovery of the Abominable Snowman would not
tempt her away. Charlie would simply have to get by without her on this one.