He ushered her around a corner, then hustled her through the dry lab. They tiptoed through the wet containment wing until they reached the door of Keanu's chamber. They gazed through the thermo-glass like two kids staring longingly through a toy store window.
The dark, leathery shape lay prone on the table, arms like cinnamon sticks, skin like bark. Centuries in ice will burn a rictus of a grin into a faceâa curing back of the lips. The specimen looked to Okuda as though he were smiling at the ceiling. Another thought flickered across Okuda's mind:
he looks different
.
“All right, the peep show's over, c'mon,” Okuda whispered, gently tugging at his girlfriend's arm.
“Hold on a second.”
“C'mon,
now
.”
Okuda dragged Miss Hecht and her tequila out of the wet containment wing, then hastened her back down long, empty corridors buzzing with dead fluorescent light. They reached the lounge and glanced over their shoulders, ever the mischievous children checking for parents. The lab remained as silent as a coal mine.
“That's better,” Okuda purred after securing them inside the cozy little lounge filled with plastic armchairs, bulletin boards, laminate cabinets, and the odors of stale smoke and burned coffee. They got out paper cups and poured some tequila and bit into lemons and giggled and tongue-kissed. A few minutes later, Wendy Hecht wandered over to the large-screen TV and started going through the loose stacks of DVDs. “Oh my God,” she exclaimed suddenly, selecting one of the DVDs. “What an appropriate title for this dreary place!”
Okuda was zoning out on the sofa. “Don't do this to me,” he murmured.
“Let's watch it.” She giggled, loading the silver disc into the deck above the TV.
A few seconds of black, and then the telltale opening of an old black-and-white Boris Karloff chestnut was flickering and popping on the huge screen. A cardboard cutout pyramid rotated toward the screen, and then the big ominous title dripped into view: THE MUMMY.
“Not this again,” Okuda groaned.
“Hush!” Miss Hecht trotted back to the sofa and settled in next to her boyfriend, and Okuda put his arm around her and shook his head as the old Tchaikovsky music warbled on the ancient soundtrack.
They drank tequila and sucked on lemons and watched the musty old tale of a group of archaeologists from the British Museum who unearth an Egyptian mummy called Imhotep. Ignoring the warnings of occult experts, the scientists defy the alleged curse and break the seal on the infamous “scroll of Toth,” inadvertently reanimating the remains. The monster, played to the hilt by Karloff, shambles around the film in filthy shreds and baleful glares, terrifying everybody in his path.
Okuda had seen the movie about a dozen times over the years, at Harvard, at work, at various parties. But
this
time, when the first big shock scene came on-screen, Michael Okuda got very quiet and watched. Maybe it was the dope working on him, or the exhaustion, or something else, but Okuda watched the part where Karloff first opens his eyes, and slowly unfolds his ragged arms, and all at once Okuda got the feeling he was on the verge of figuring out the Iceman's tattoos.
A mummy reaching down and gently, almost tenderly, running a petrified fingertip along an ancient scroll . . . insane laughter coming from somewhere offscreen.
“Michael? MikeyâYou okay?”
Okuda snapped out of his momentary fugue state and stared at his girlfriend. “Yeah . . . I'm fine. I just have to make some notes.”
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The conversation that would forever be thought of in Grove's mind as the first significant break in the Sun City case took place the following morning in a small conference room in the lower level of the Schleimann Building. The room, a musty confine of forgotten archives, appeared to be the repository of a decade's worth of corporate detritus. Stacks of cardboard boxes rose to the ceiling on one side of the room, while reams of documents bound with rubber bands covered the oval laminate table in the center of the room.
Throughout most of the conversation Zorn sat on a metal cadenza in the corner of the room, listening, while Grove circled the table like a restless predator circling its prey.
A woman's voice sizzled through the tiny housing of a conference speaker sitting precariously on a pile of manila folders: “Can I ask what this is in reference to?”
“It's in reference to the discovery of human remains on Mount Cairn a year agoâ”
“Oh God.”
“Excuse me?”
Shuffling noises on the other end. “For God's sake, how many times do I have to go through this?”
“I'm sorry, ma'am, but we're just, um, gathering information at this point.”
“There's no more information left to gather.”
“I'm sorry?”
“I answered every question that annoying little detective could think ofâwhat was his name?âPinkham?”
“Pinsky?” Grove offered.
“That's it. Jesus, I talked with that old Jew at least half a dozen times last year.”
A glance between Grove and Zorn. “I apologize, Mrs. Ackerman, if some of this seems a little redundant.”
A sigh. “Oh, for heaven's sake call me Helen.”
“Helen it is.”
“Why are you people still torturing me?”
Grove measured his words. “The truth is, Helen, there may be something we missed that day that might help us with another case.”
“That stupid goddamn mummy has been the bane of my existence.”
“I promise we'll make this as painless asâ”
“What possible difference could it make to anyone what I was wearing at the time or what direction the wind was blowing or what I had for breakfast that morning?”
“I know you've probably heard this before, but any detail no matter how minor might be helpful to us.”
After a pause: “Go ahead and ask me your questions, get it over with, I got a Junior League meeting in an hour.”
“We'll make it quick, I promise.” Grove looked at his notes. “Now according to Detective Pinsky's logs, you and your husband, Richard, were taking a hike when you stumbled across the Iceman?”
Through the speaker: “For the umpteenth time, yes, we were out early because we wanted to make it to the summit before the afternoon showers rolled in because we had heard from the concierge at the resort that the sunrise was lovely but you had to hurry to get up and down before the rains came, so, yes, we were on our way up the trail when we found that hideous, disgusting frozen bag of bones.”
Grove made a note, then glanced up at the speaker box. “Can I ask who saw it first?”
After a moment: “What?”
“The mummy, I'm wondering who saw it first that morning, you or your husband.”
“Like I told the detective, Richard saw it first. At least I
think
he saw it. What difference does it make? When I finally saw what he was fooling with I thought it was a coat, like somebody had left a leather coat up there. But then I realized, who in their right mind would leave a gorgeous distressed leather garment up on the side of a mountain?”
“So your husband saw the mummy first?”
“What did I just say? Yes, for God's sake, Richard saw the thing first.”
Grove leaned closer to the speaker. “May I ask what you meant when you said you
think
he saw it?”
An exasperated sound on the other end. “Here we go again. Okay, look, for the last time . . . I didn't see a thing at first. All right? Richard tripped over something, and I looked, and there was nothing there. I swear to God there was nothing there. No stump, no rock, but Richard's on his ass, and he's staring at this empty trail.”
A beat of silence.
“Would it be possible for us to talk to Mr. Ackerman today as well?”
Another pause. “Are you serious? Are you kidding me?”
“Is there a problem?”
A flinty laugh spewed out of the speaker. “Let's see, is there a problem, let me think . . . um, yeah, I think you could definitely say there's a problem with putting Richard on the phone today.”
Another glance between Grove and Zorn. Finally Grove told the woman to go on.
Through the speaker her voice sounded as taut as a high-tension wire. “If you two clowns did your homework you would know that my husband went out for a pack of cigarettes about a year ago and never came back.”
Grove and Zorn looked at each other. Silence gripped the room.
Grove's pulse quickened.
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Maura sat alone at a corner table in the Mariott Courtyard's crowded coffee shop, picking at a soggy BLT sandwich, absently going through her notes for an article that she was not sure she would ever publish, when she noticed a familiar figure out of the corner of her eye sweeping past the hostess stand, lugging along a suit bag and briefcase. Dressed in a smart Burberry overcoat, Ulysses Grove looked distracted and harried as he stood there for a moment, scanning the bustling restaurant. Maura felt a faint stirring in her chest when their gazes met. Grove's eyes lit up as he came over to her.
“There she is,” he said, coming up to her table and giving her his warm, open face.
“You leaving us?” she asked.
“Yeah, um . . .” He nodded at her barely touched food. “I'm sorry to interrupt your lunch, but you mind walking with me for a second?”
She closed her folder. “Not at all. I'd love to, I was done anyway.”
They left the restaurant, then went out the closest exit into the raw wind of the Alaskan midday. Grove told her he was on his way to the cab stand, and Maura had to practically trot to keep up with him. They strode along a weathered boardwalk that wrapped around the front of the motel, quickly sidestepping slow-moving guests and bellhops laden with luggage carts. Grove explained that there had been a break in the case, and he was going to be flying to Illinois that afternoon with his associate, Special Agent Zorn, to conduct an interview, and he needed to ask Maura something before he pursued this particular lead. Maura said she would tell him whatever she knew.
“These folks that discovered the Mount Cairn mummy,” he said, loping along.
“Right.” Maura nodded, remembering the phone conversation she'd had last year with the wife. “What was their name? The Ackermans?”
“Right . . . so, anyway, what I'm wondering is . . . you interviewed them for the article?”
She nodded, hurrying to keep up. “Yes. The wife. I spoke to her briefly on the phone.”
“Did you notice anythingâyou knowâout of the ordinary? Strange?”
“Strange?”
Maura thought about it. “Not really. She was a little . . . how do I put it?”
“Bitchy?”
Maura grinned. “That's the word I was looking for.”
“Anything else?”
Maura shrugged as she walked. “Not really. She just gave me a thumbnail of what they were doing when they stumbled upon the thing.”
Grove nodded as they approached the circular drive in front of the courtyard. The cab stand was busy. Grove paused, waving at an airport van waiting for him at the bottom of the drive about twenty yards away. A man in a Stetson hat stood outside the van, leaning against its rear quarter panel, reading a newspaper, presumably also waiting for Grove. Maura assumed that the cowboy was the mysterious Agent Zorn with whom Grove had vanished a couple of days ago.
“There's something else I wanted to mention,” Grove said in a low, conspiratorial tone. He seemed exceedingly distracted, anxious.
“Sure, go ahead.” Maura waited in the wind.
“You're cold, we'll talk about it later.”
“No, pleaseâgo ahead.”
He rubbed his chin nervously. “I'm not good at this kind of stuff.”
“Just say it. Anything. It's okay.”
He looked at her. “I lost my wife to cancer four years ago, and not a day goes by I don't think about it.”
“Oh my God, I'm sorry.” Maura's brain suddenly flooded with contrary emotions. “I'm so sorry.”
“The thing of it is, I need to get on with my life. Hannah would have kicked my ass, would have wanted me to do just that.”
Maura had no idea where this was going. “She would have been right, too.”
“The thing is, what I wanted to ask you is, after all this is over . . . if you might want toâI don't knowâgo have some coffee or something.”
Maura was nodding like crazy. “Absolutely, yeah . . . coffee would be nice.”