Old Poison (7 page)

I knew what he said was true no matter how
incredible it might sound.

“The other thing you must know is that you
are a very valuable person to our movement.”

“But my only skill is numbers.”

“Numbers are one of the skills you bring us,
but you also can make stories.”

Again, I thought he was making a fool of me
but knew better than to say so.

He laughed as he read my expression. “You
make stories that can be remembered and retold generation after
generation. Within those stories can be buried memories and history
for our children’s children.

And as strange as it seemed then, creating
stories is what I have done now, for twenty-two years. But today is
the end of my story. The memory coils that carry the stories of our
people and our destruction are now complete. We hope that they will
tell someone, someday, where and how our geneticists have hidden
the cell patterns of many of the plants and animals that have
disappeared from our world. Will anyone ever find these frozen
treasures and learn the secrets of restoring our lost world? No one
knows. I know only that like my dying planet, I must carry out my
last task, and die with hope.

I will deliver this diary and the last of
the memory coils to a safe drop. They will be given to the Hidden
Ones who will carry our coded stories to the new home on Atland. A
second set of coils is hidden in the great pyramid, and a third is
interred with the ice crystals and genetic codes. It is my private
joke that the safe drop is in the old astrological gardens at
Nautical University. In the burrocity scientific knowledge has been
withheld from the people, so my pursuers will not understand the
significance of the great granite spheres that chart the stars and
planets. But someone among the Hidden Ones may know enough to get
my joke. I leave my last information buried beneath the sphere that
represents Atland. Thus, in a way I am the first to get to the new
planet.

A totally different set of memory coils are
embedded in my scalp where the Enforcers can easily detect them,
and be misguided by them. I can hear their combox voices behind me.
It is time to bury the history coils and this diary, and give my
pursuers a lively chase. If I tire them, they will act in hasty,
thoughtless rage and slice off the top of my head to get the memory
coils. It will be a merciful and instant death and give me no
chance for betrayal. Dear Red Beard, dearest Ober, I carry my love
for you to whatever may lie beyond. Antia

From my last experience, I knew better than
to hit the down arrow, so I tried to save the file. Once again the
letters dissolved into meaningless symbols and the damn screen went
blank. Nothing we did could get it back.

* * * * *

Before Sam left that night we brain stormed
two complex searches for Yeabot to work on. In the first search we
incorporated every fact, opinion, date and description I could
remember from my talks with Borson. Then we asked Yeabot to search
for a true identity and location. In the second search, we fed
Yeabot everything I had found on Evelyn Lilac, including her video,
and asked him to see if he could find her current location.

The next morning I opened a second client
trust account to keep Borson’s money separate from the rest of my
client funds. I then put an ad in the
Los Angeles Times
personals that read, “Mr. Borson, assignment declined. Please
contact me for return of retainer. DH.” I doubted that Borson would
respond, but at least I could prove my legal attempt to reject the
assignment and return his retainer. I had an awful feeling I was
going to need it, either for a criminal trial or a Bureau of
Security and Investigative Services inquiry regarding my license.
As it turned out, what I would need it for was an FBI murder
investigation on the Navajo Reservation.

Yeabot’s searches produced nothing useful on
Borson, and all the information he found on Lilac was old. I had no
funds of my own to chase a wild goose to Costa Rica and had no
client to pay me to do so. The case went into the dead file.

For the rest of the week I worked hard and
tried to forget all about Red 19, polluting Martians, and Evelyn
Lilac. It was amazing how many reminders would pop up: I couldn’t
pick up a newspaper or magazine or listen to television or radio
without hearing something about Mars or environmental issues.
Pictures from JPL showed what scientists believed was evidence of
water on Mars, and an international conference was predicting a
disastrous rise in global warming. I started avoiding the papers,
and turned to reading historical novels and watching old movies. My
avoidance therapy was beginning to work. Then the call came.

“May I speak to Diana Hunter, please?”

“Speaking.”

“Ms. Hunter, this is Neal Camas. I am a
Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in
Flagstaff, Arizona. Are you a licensed private investigator in the
state of California?”

“Yes, ah, could you hold just a moment,
Agent Camas.” I try never to answer questions over the phone unless
I’m sure who is on the other end of the line. “Agent Camas, I have
an urgent call on the other line. Could I call you back in about
five minutes?”

Most professionals understand the need to
verify a caller’s ID, and after a pause he supplied me with a
number and extension. After verifying that the number was, in fact,
the FBI office, I dialed him back and waited while the receptionist
put me through to his line.

“Agent Camas, this is Diana Hunter. How may
I help you?”

“Ms. Hunter, we need your assistance in
identifying a woman found dead on the Navajo Reservation.”

Stunned by this request, I took a moment
before answering. “Is there some reason I should know her? I don’t
believe I’m acquainted with any Navajo women.”

“She’s not Navajo, and your business card
was found in her bra. It was the only ID on the body.”

To myself, I mouthed the name “High
Pockets.”

Hearing my whisper, he asked, “What was
that?”

I needed think time. Why did they need me?
With Evelyn’s arrest record from her protest days, her prints must
be in the system. “I really don’t know how someone in Arizona could
get my card. Did her fingerprints give you any possible ID?”

There was a long pause, then he said, “With
the condition of the body, there were no prints.”

The vision of a totally decayed body I had
once found came to mind unbidden. Memory of the sight and its
unforgettable stench made my stomach turn. “Will there be anything
recognizable for me to ID?”

“Oh, yes. Her face is undamaged.”

“Then what happened to her prints?”

Another pause. “We won’t speculate about
that now, Ms. Hunter. The bureau is requesting that you fly down
here. I can authorize something toward your expenses.”

His tone made the request sound a bit more
compelling than a simple invitation, so naturally, I agreed. I
didn’t need to piss off the FBI. Finishing my call with Agent
Camas, I turned on the computer and was about to search for airline
tickets when a message appeared on my blank screen:

IT’S TOO LATE FOR EVELYN, BUT YOU CAN STILL
BE OF HELP. THE FBI HAS WASTED TIME IN NOTIFYING YOU. MORE MONEY
HAS BEEN DEPOSITED TO YOUR CLIENT TRUST FUND. PLEASE INVESTIGATE
HER MURDER AND FIND THE
MARTIAN DIARY
. THE BUREAU DOES NOT
HAVE IT. B

This was not an email. It was just waiting
to come up on the screen the minute I booted up. How the hell did
he do that? The computer hadn’t even been on. How did he know about
my client fund? Scared and mystified, I reached for the phone and
dialed Sam.

* * * * *

As I looked down at her lifeless body, I
couldn’t help pondering the big question. Where had the life gone?
Was the real Professor Evelyn Lilac out there? Was her spirit
floating somewhere around this room, glaring down at me for my
failure, or was this inanimate organic form all there was? I like
to believe that life is an energy and that, as Einstein said,
energy can be neither created nor destroyed, only transformed. I
like to believe birth and death are only transformations of that
energy form, and that it remains a unique soul. I like to believe
it, but I know it could be wishful thinking.

Agent Camas was watching my face closely,
reading my response. “I take it you did know her.”

“We met once.”

“Was she your client?”

I thought about the question a moment, then
shook my head, “No. There don’t seem to be any marks on her body.
How did she die?”

Camas nodded to Mr. Sanchez, the coroner’s
assistant. Sanchez pulled back a covering from her forehead
revealing that the entire top of her head had been severed. Unable
to control my reaction, I gasped and raised a hand to my mouth to
shut off further sound. A small moan escaped my lips as I shut my
eyes to block the shocking sight.

“Sorry you had to see that,” said Camas.

Nothing on Evelyn’s body had been covered
but that gaping skull. Sorry, my eye. He had deliberately set up
this little revelation to see what reaction he could get out of
me.

“Sure you are. Please don’t confirm all my
worst first impressions, Agent Camas.”

It was very dumb of me to let my anger out
in such a direct verbal assault on a federal investigator. I knew
the minute I did it that I would pay for it. Anger flashed briefly
in his cold blue eyes, but he had sense enough to control it. The
tone of his reply was wonderfully balanced between the apology he
voiced and the sarcastic condescension he implied.

“Sorry to shock you, Ms. Hunter, but since
you’re a professional investigator, I naturally assumed you were up
to this.”

To complete his show and tell, he turned
Evelyn’s hands, palms up, so I could see that all the skin had been
sliced from the tips of her thumbs and fingers.

“Here’s why we got no prints.”

Getting my anger under control, I realized I
was lucky he thought it was the gore that had upset me. What had
really shocked me was seeing that Evelyn had been murdered in
precisely the same fashion as Antia in the
Martian Diary
. My
suspicion of Borson jumped to the red zone. I prayed that the
search Sam was doing would turn up some useful information that I
could turn over to the FBI. That last mysterious message from
Borson had really lit a fire under Sam. He had taken it as a
personal affront to his skill as an intelligence professional, and
he had turned on all his old skills to figure out how Borson was
tapping into my apartment, my phone, and my computer. At this
moment, however, I had nothing to give Agent Camas.

I decided to play the role his prejudice had
cast me in. I feigned illness and left the room suddenly. It gave
me a moment to be out from under his scrutiny and go over the
amount of truth I should tell him.

I had gotten into Flagstaff late Friday, but
Camas couldn’t be bothered with me until today, so I had spent
Friday night at a motel. That wasn’t included in his expense
reimbursement. From the moment we met this morning, he had pulled
one obnoxious, bigoted, sexist thing after another. Brilliant he
wasn’t, but dogged and arrogant he was, and he would be capable of
making my life miserable if I wasn’t very careful.

He walked up to me outside, stuck a piece of
chewing gum in his mouth, and offered me one. I declined. His
lopsided, sarcastic grin revealed large teeth with protruding
canines. There is no way anyone would mistake that smile for
friendliness. It radiated smart-ass arrogance.

“Yeah, it takes a while to get used to that
sort of thing, especially if it’s someone you know. Who was
she?”

“Her name is Evelyn Lilac. She is . . . was
some sort of biology or ecology professor from Costa Rica.”

“Costa Rica, huh. How did you meet her?”

“Someone asked me to interview with her
because she needed a research assistant for a novel she was going
to write.”

“Research assistant? Is that the level of
work you do?”

His voice was so derisive he almost taunted
me into another angry outburst, but I had learned my lesson.

“No, and I ended up rejecting the
assignment.”

“When and where was this interview?”

“Late October, I don’t recall the date. We
met on the San Gabriel River bike trail.”

“You mean, like, bicycle? Is this how you
usually meet prospective clients?”

“No, Evelyn was in Los Angeles to speak at
an environmental conference and was booked solid. Meeting her
during her morning bike ride was the only way to see her.”

He stopped chewing the gum and stared at me,
open mouthed. I couldn’t decide whether he thought I was lying or
was just incredibly stupid. Holding me in a long appraising gaze,
he resumed chomping on his gum. Finally, he pulled out a small
notebook and pen.

“What’s her address and phone number in
Costa Rica?”

“I don’t know.”

“How did she contact you?”

Now there was a tricky question to answer.
“She had some associate contact me and arrange the meeting.” That
might not be strictly true, but there was no way I was going to
tell this sneering, arrogant man anything about Martians and Red
19. Even if I had been dealing with a more reasonable investigator,
that story could be career suicide.

“What was the associate’s name and
address?”

I knew the questions would eventually come
down to this, but I dreaded having to answer. “His name was Borson.
I don’t have an address for him.”

He looked up from his pad. “Where did you
meet him, the Disneyland Autopia?”

I blushed as I confessed, “No, a city park
in Bluff Beach.”

“A city park? Let me guess. You’re one of
those hand-to-mouth PIs with an office that’s a typewriter and
filing cabinet in the bedroom. Did we maybe think to get this
Borson’s phone number?”