Bobby cupped a hand to his mouth, the child’s way of imparting a secret.
“Mr. Manyteeth did it,” he whispered.
“He scared you?”
“I think so. But he’s the one who pulled me up.”
Steven looked at him. “He helped you?”
Bobby nodded again. “That’s why I got burned on my tummy. He’s real cold.”
Steven shivered despite the warmth of the room. “Well,” he whispered, “you’re safe now. Mommy and I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Bobby looked at him gravely.
“Something did happen to you,” he said, his brow furrowing as he tried to remember.
A chill ran through Steven. “What happened, kiddo?”
“I don’t know. Something.” He looked at Bonomo. “Bonomo knows, but he won’t tell me.”
“Well, maybe he wants you to get some rest right now. We can talk about this at home.”
“When are we going home, Daddy?”
“Tomorrow if the doctor says it’s okay.”
“Good. I don’t like New York. Too many people die here.”
Steven didn’t know what to say to that. He kissed the boy tenderly and stroked his hair.
* * *
The hospital cafeteria featured large windows that looked out over a large stand of trees, whatever houses might be nearby being hidden by the ash, poplar, and pine.
Steven and Jake Sparks sat down with their coffees near one of the large windows. Steven had purchased a double latte; Sparks had settled for a plain cup of coffee.
Sparks looked out the window for a moment, watching a pair of squirrels chase one another around a tree. He turned back to Steven and cupped his large hands around his untasted coffee.
“People like Tully come along once in a while,” he began. “They have these romanticized notions about anthropology or archaeology. They’ve filled their heads with stuff from books and movies and bring these fanciful notions to their work. Usually, the rigors of the discipline weed them out before they graduate. Those who persist usually find their thesis ridiculed because of its fantastic notions. Tully was one of the ones who came in under the radar. He kept his views secret because he wanted to profit from his discoveries and didn’t want to share those profits.”
Steven stirred his coffee but didn’t say anything. When Sparks saw he wasn’t going to speak he took a sip of his coffee. He grimaced.
“Hospital coffee. I think hospitals and the university get their stock from the same place. Probably filter it through gym socks and old linens.”
Steven smiled but said nothing. He didn’t want to prevent Sparks from gaining momentum, telling him what he needed to know.
“Okay,” Sparks said finally. “Some people believe in what they call power objects. They theorize and wax ecstatic about crystal skulls and religious artifacts like pieces of the True Cross or the Spear of Longinus.”
“Or the Ark of the Covenant,” Steven suggested.
Sparks winced. “I wish to hell they had never made Indiana Jones an archaeologist,” he said.
“I liked the movie,” Steven admitted, “and Daniel …” His voice trailed off as he thought of Danny in that old fedora, just a bit too big for him.
“Yeah, I did too, but you can’t imagine how many nut jobs it brought into the department or how many calls we got asking if we knew where they were storing the Ark.”
“And Tully?”
“Tully didn’t go in for Judeo-Christian artifacts; he was convinced that power lay in the earliest objects and that these were somehow infused with a mystical energy. He once told me he was convinced that all myths sprang from a handful of early protomyths, and that each had an artifact associated with it. Artifacts that had been crafted such that all the power of those early, powerful beliefs went into them.”
“So he was searching for these artifacts.”
Sparks nodded.
“Most experts—including myself—find such views archaic and an outgrowth of postcolonial didacticism.” At Steven’s blank look, Sparks laughed. “The guy’s nuts is what I’m saying.”
“So how did you and my brother become involved?”
Sparks held up his hand and took another sip of coffee.
“Let’s back up a bit,” he said. “Tully was able to examine one of the crystal skulls on an estate in Scotland. Seems his parents had some connections there. Anyway, he concluded that the skull did have some power but not anything primal. He said it was derivative, like a battery that has been recharged by house current. He wanted to find something that was a source of power, not an imitation.”
Sparks looked at his hands for a moment, troubled.
“Your brother and I went on a dig in Alaska as undergrads,” he continued. “I got postcards,” Steven said. “He loved it up there.”
Sparks nodded. “He told me he wanted to move back there when he retired. While we were there, we spent time with the Haida and the Tlingit. Picked up enough of the language to get around. Nice people, gotten as much of a bad deal as any indigenous people in North America.” Sparks fell silent and moved his paper cup in small circles, watching the coffee swirl inside.
“And Tully?” Steven prodded.
Sparks looked up, more focused now.
“As I said, Tully had decided that these so-called primal objects would have been crafted when religions were first being formed. That a belief system raw and powerful would be manifest in the main artifact of that system. He went to Africa for a couple of years but was unable to find anything like he had postulated.
“Tully got this idea that one of his objects might have come across the Bering Strait with one of the first migrations that settled North America. He figured that such a major journey would involve new beliefs and be enhanced by the dangers and wonders of a new land. He did a lot of research on tribes far to the north. Apparently, he felt that there was something in Alaska that was very old and very powerful.”
“What?” Steven asked.
“He wouldn’t tell me. He only wanted to know if I’d go and act as translator for him. I pressed him for details; I wasn’t going to just pack up and go to Alaska to act as his go-between. Some of his beliefs came out, and I thought he was as crazy as the people who think extraterrestrials built Stonehenge.”
“So you refused to go,” Steven concluded.
“Oh, not because he was nuts,” Sparks said. “A lot of times someone whacko will take you to a new place, make a new connection, postulate something groundbreaking. I didn’t think Tully was dangerous, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“So?” Steven asked, getting frustrated.
“I got the impression that he was doing this for personal gain. That whatever he found, he was going to sell to the highest bidder or keep for himself. That’s a violation of ethics, Mr. Slater, and it’s not something I’d consider. It’s not worth my career, and it’s not worth my integrity.”
“But Daniel went,” Steven said, disappointed.
“Yeah, I still don’t get that,” Sparks said. “Your brother was one of the most ethical men I knew.”
“It was right after he came back that he went into seclusion,” Steven said. “Did you have any contact with him?”
Sparks shook his head.
“What about Tully?”
Sparks squirmed a bit in his seat.
“What about Tully, Jake?”
“Tully came to my office, pissed off. Said that Daniel had stolen something that belonged to him and that he was going to get it back.”
“None of this sounds like my brother,” Steven said. “Why didn’t Tully go to the authorities?”
“I imagine because he was doing something illegal and unethical.”
“Do you think he killed my brother?” Steven asked.
Sparks shook his head.
“Tully talks a lot, but it’s mostly hot air. I don’t think he’d ever hurt anyone.”
“What about whomever he was trying to find this thing for?”
Sparks shrugged.
“Tully wanted to know if my brother had sent me anything.”
Sparks looked at him.
“We didn’t get anything, not yet,” Steven admitted. “Everything with my brother’s estate is screwed up because of the murders.”
“Almost makes me believe in the supernatural,” Jake said. He saw Steven’s look of surprise and laughed. “Almost. Whoever killed your brother, God rest him, is as human as you or me.”
Steven thought a moment.
“Jake, if we do get something, can I call you? Maybe we can figure out why Daniel took
it, and maybe it will lead us to the murderer.”
Sparks nodded solemnly.
“I’d be honored to help,” he said. “Daniel was a good friend.”
* * *
In Bobby’s room, the little boy was asleep, his thumb in his mouth. Steven hadn’t seen him suck his thumb in a year. It pained him to think of the stress the little guy must be under to regress this way.
Liz was dozing. The television was showing an episode of
The Powerpuff Girls
. Steven flicked off the TV, and Liz opened her eyes.
“Hi,” she mumbled. He leaned down and kissed her.
“Did you find out anything?” she asked.
“Just came away with more questions,” he said, keeping his voice low. “I’ll tell you later.”
“I’m starved,” she said, and he realized he was, too. He had been too intent on what Sparks had to say for the hunger to register. Now his stomach rumbled with a vengeance.
“Why don’t you get something to eat? I’ll stay with Bobby,” he said.
“Do you want anything?” she asked.
“Maybe a roast beef sandwich and a Coke.”
She kissed him and left the room; he watched her appreciatively as she moved. After Liz left, Steven settled in the chair. He turned on the television and kept the volume low. He found a Bugs Bunny show and watched Bugs trick Elmer into shooting Daffy Duck, time and time again.
As the light outside faded, Steven chuckled at the “wascally wabbit” and kept watch over his son.
Missouri came and went without ceremony. Oklahoma was distinguished by a large sign, and that was all.
Stan had started to think of himself as an important figure. He was transporting something important to the Big Boss, and it seemed odd that his passage was not marked by ceremony or fearful supplication by the citizens of this good country. Of course, he would not presume to think such deference was due him, but he thought there should be some recognition for what he was doing. He was, by God, the Fifth Horseman of the Fucking Apocalypse, sounding the trumpet for his Dark Lord.
Stan wondered if maybe he was laying it on a bit thick. He had set up this sort of awestruck claptrap in his head to buy him time if the Big Boss returned. Down deep in the rat’s warren of his mind, he continued to tot up clues on his small bulletin board, trying to ignore the jabbering of his other selves.
His subconscious had finally unveiled important information in the form of a waking dream or hallucination just as he passed out of Tulsa. The sun had gone down, but the night was not cooling. He had lost the air conditioner some two hundred miles back. The compressor had made a screeching whine, and the vents began blowing hot air. Stan had cursed and rolled down the windows. It had been like a kiln outside, and the wind whipped over him with an animal fury. The vomit in the car had begun to stink even worse, and it was all he could do to keep from puking up his Burger King meal. Again he had been tempted to wipe down the car with some napkins or his shirt, but was afraid that he would bring the Big Boss in for another session of Fuck with Stan, which seemed to be the Big Boss’s new hobby. At least until he could play Fuck with the World, that is.
So he drove into the Oklahoma dust bowl with the heat blasting through the car, grateful he had bought the little styrofoam ice chest. He popped open a can of Coke and offered once again to sell his soul for a beer.
There were no takers. He guessed his soul was no longer his to sell.
As he was driving out of Tulsa, the night seemed to recede. It became as bright as noon, and he wondered if he had passed through the night without awareness. He looked at the highway marker and saw he was still in
Oklahoma - OKay!
He looked around, seeing nothing
but flat dun earth wherever he looked.
Then he saw the fish.
It was a salmon, a big Chinook, and it flopped by the side of the road, its silvery flesh flashing in the sun.
That’s weird
, he thought, his detective brain postulating that some fisherman had lost the fish from his cooler. Of course, it would have to have been recently; no fish could live in this heat for more than a couple of minutes. Maybe a plane that transported fresh fish to restaurants had dropped it. No, that was no good; it would have been killed on impact. Still, he looked up to see if any planes were nearby. The sky was blue and empty except for the relentless sun.
As he drove along, he spotted a couple of mackerel by the side of the road, their mouths open, their eyes sightless.
Another quarter of a mile, and it was tuna, several of them twisting and thrashing in the dust. He had to drive around them, going onto the rough shoulder to avoid running them over. Maybe that would have been the kind thing to do.
He saw a tortoise up ahead and was relieved to see something normal in the desert besides fugitives from a fishing trawler. His relief turned to confusion when he saw that it was a large sea turtle, struggling to make its way across the hot road, its flippers scraped and raw from the asphalt.
A shark was next, its jaws snapping as its tail whipped back and forth. The remains of a jackrabbit lay nearby, the blood rapidly congealing on the highway.
Stan thought he must be going crazy and wondered if he might at last let go of the wheel and drive out into the desert until his car ran out of gas and he died from exposure. A tiny pulling at his mind told him that, crazy or not, he would continue to drive until he reached California.
Something ahead was blocking the road. It was huge, and he thought it must be a log from a redwood or an overturned truck. It was blocking not only the road but the shoulder, which meant he’d have to drive over the sand to pass it.
He was thinking that a log was no crazier than fish, thinking further that maybe it was the truck that had dumped the fish, when the thing came into focus out of the shimmering heat.