Alred didn’t even know he owned a leather jacket. She never would have guessed Porter could dress himself in something worn so badly at the shoulders and the elbows. What did he do, sleep in it? The building was well-heated, but he kept it zipped to his collar bones anyway. She imagined his conservative button-down shirt fit the rest of his nasty attire.
“The zombies walk,” he said. “Are you alone?”
“I hate zombie movies. How did you find my address?” She walked into her tidy room while Porter closed the door behind him. Her dissertation would be ten times better with the codex in her hand, so she played along, preparing for some ecstatic lie explaining his costume and more pointedly, his crime.
“Followed you home yesterday,” he said.
She looked at him, huffing silently that she was right. He’d been here all along.
“Anybody looking for me?” said Porter, looking at the glowing twenty-gallon fish tank on his right, three half-dollar sized crabs wiggling their small legs beneath two diving goldfish with bulging eyes.
“Dr. Arnott came by yesterday,” said Alred. “He said he had some information for your ears alone.” She didn’t hide the suspicion in her eyes. “What would that be?”
Porter fell onto her heavily pillowed couch just past the fish tank. “Mind if I sit down,” he asked, staring at something many dimensions away with concentrating eyes. The room smelled of rose potpourri. Pink, dusty rose, and burgundy colors dominated.
“I went by your office every day,” she said, getting a glass from the cupboard. She opened the refrigerator, pulled out a pitcher, and poured.
“I never went to the office.”
“One of the secretaries let me in,” she said, handing him the glass, sitting beside him, watching as he examined the translucent brown liquid. “Thought I’d…take a look at KM-2.”
“You brought a screwdriver then,” he said, smiling a tired grin and smelling the drink. “Wasn’t in the vent, was it. What is this.”
“Iced tea.”
Handing it back to her, Porter said, “Can’t drink it. Water?”
Alred felt her muscles clench. She took the glass, stood, and went to the sink where she dumped the mixture and rinsed out the vessel. She refused to let loose the irritation she felt building. Redirecting the energy, she pondered what to ask next. Where had he been? What did he think he was doing hoarding their precious book? Didn’t he know she could get him into further trouble with the university if he thought he could—
“Someone tried to kill me,” Porter said. “I think they were after the codex.”
She handed him the new drink and sat on the pillowy lazyboy chair opposite the couch. “You…expect me to believe that line?” The words just came out. Oh, well. She’d take responsibility for them and find out what was going on.
Then a voice, a vision, a memory, spoke where the brain meets the spine.
You’re in danger…and so is your friend
. Her back bone reacted involuntarily, sitting her upright with an icy touch.
Porter told her what had happened after she’d left the library.
He explained it all: the bookshelves, pushing the lights out of the way as he skipped across the tops of the cases dodging bullets; breaking through the glass on the second floor; hiding in the hotel. When he came to the experience on the roof of his apartment, Alred was amazed at the detail in his story. He jumped to the tree? Dropped everything? Escaped professional gunmen? From which movie did Porter steal these pictures?
“I think you have a very active imagination, Porter,” she said.
The shock on his face froze like cooling clay. “Go look, Alred, the Eucalyptus on the side of the building is busted in two places! They still haven’t cleaned it up!”
“There’s been a storm the last few days,” she said in a flat voice, pushing the hair behind her right ear.
“What does that have to do with anything?” he said.
Alred leaned back in her chair. “Eucalyptus trees on campus always drop a limb here or there when the winds pick up enough. I don’t doubt there are branches in the parking lot next to your apartment, but how can I believe everything else you said?” Her voice was strong, and she meant it to be. She wanted him to know she wouldn’t be pushed around anymore. This was turning out to be her least favorite semester at Stratford, her only consolation being the knowledge that she’d be done in two weeks.
Porter stared at her. A single flickering light hid deep inside his gray eyes.
Alred watched him close. What was this look he gave her? Abashed hope? Abandonment? He looked like her last dog, Vespucci, that gaze when she’d left him with new owners. She saw those dark eyes looking at her through the screen, watching her say good-bye for the final time. There was no way the animal would know she’d never return. But she felt Vespucci’s confusion, happy hope, questions, worry…sadness? Or did she project all those feelings.
Porter was human.
He looked into her for almost thirty seconds before reaching down his right side.
Alred looked at his busy fingers, working up the soiled and torn pant leg.
Close to the knee she saw a cut, taped up poorly with medical tape. No bandage. The wound had a thick black scab glistening with hints of red which had already assimilated portions of the white tape.
“I don’t know…it might need stitches. Real glass doesn’t shatter like it does in the movies. I thought it best to do it this way to help seal the gash.”
Alred looked at his bandaged hands, then up at his face. She felt the blood leave her head and her tension release. Her mind went into overdrive, running through his story, collating the hard pieces, the ones that mattered. She heard the whisper of the ghost who had visited her the night Porter started running. Her unpainted lips parted. She pictured the smashed codex on the pavement and the men in black apparel sprinting for it, and Porter scurrying away like a maimed animal.
“You…left…KM-2?” she said, eyes gawking, but only seeing the image of the ancient book shredded on the asphalt.
He nodded, fixing his pants. “For them. I lost all my notes.”
“Who cares about your notes! Porter?! How could you give them the codex?!”
Relaxed, he said, “I think I can still remember the bulk of the important things. I’ll have to find it all again, to be sure I’m citing correctly.”
Alred’s brain did a somersault and then a few more tricks. Her heart beat like a runner’s as she put all the insinuated pieces together, all the parts of this jigsaw with too many holes.
“You didn’t have the codex, so you weren’t in danger,” Porter said, lifting a finger to remind her he’d insinuated this point before.
In danger
, said the ghost in her head.
“What?” she said, staring at the fish tank radiating a blue light on Porter’s left, then at a painting of two Eskimos boarding an
umiak
on a cold river.
“That’s what I think, anyway. I stayed in a motel while they no doubt tore up Stratford trying to find me,” he said, unzipping his jacket.
“But you said—” her eyes locked onto the bent book he removed from the hot cavity between the black suede and his stomach. The bark paper crumbled in front of her, small pieces dropping to the floor.
“I need a bag, a box or something, before this is completely ruined,” Porter said, looking at her kitchen.
Like a hawk high in the air, she imagined herself viewing the codex on the black asphalt days before. She dived straight at it, and like a microbe went instantly through the brown grocery bag to reveal the notes and newspaper he’d stuffed in place of the codex.
Jumping to her feet, she pulled open a drawer to the right of the oven, whipped out a large freezer bag with the handy plastic zip-seal, another brown paper bag from the side of the refrigerator where others were stuffed, and a disposable hand towel from the roll hanging to the left of the stove. When she returned to her chair, Porter had carefully placed the Mesoamerican document on the glass coffee table.
They mummified it gently but firmly with the paper towel, placed it into the plastic bag, and slowly pushed the excess air out before sealing it and putting it into the brown bag. They wrapped the bag into a tight book shape before looking at each other again.
“I have something…that might give us a few answers,” Alred heard herself say. She didn’t know why she was opening up to him all of a sudden. Because he was honest? Because he came to her
with the codex
, while he still suspected his life in danger? Or because she knew she had to have KM-2, which, if his suspicions were correct, meant she was in as much peril as he had been the past five days. “We’ve gotta meet again with Mrs. Ulman.”
“How can she help us?” said Porter.
“Trust me, Porter, we have little to go on!”
“All right,” he said, putting up his hands.
* * *
5:02 p.m. PST
A moment later, Alred knocked on the door of the Ulman residence while Porter scanned the street with a grimace on his face, fearful of seeing anyone.
“Mrs. Ulman?” Alred said to the door after hearing movement. “It’s Erma Alred.”
“Go away!”
It was an exhausted shriek which turned Porter’s head.
“If you don’t let us in, you’re going to have two dead students on your doorstep when you open to collect your morning paper,” said Alred. She looked down at the unpruned rosebushes, spiny vines about to take over the small concrete porch while letting loose a seductive scent from its pink flowers. She tried to push her gaze through the door to see the trembling woman on the other side, but all she saw was crumbling white paint and the hunter green paint from years past peering back at her.
Porter smiled, stunned.
“I said—”
Alred cut her off with the words, “Mrs. Ulman, I have some information I think your husband needed to give you.” She spoke quickly. “And I have something you need to see. We’re not leaving!”
Mrs. Ulman opened the door and stepped back as if she expected an attack.
Alred closed the door behind them, locking the bolt.
“We’re not going to hurt you, ma’am,” Porter said, “We just have a few questions, and it’s imperative that you answer.”
Alred followed them into the front room, but they didn’t sit. Boxes everywhere overflowed with personal belongings. Mrs. Ulman was moving by the looks of things. She looked terrified, her face melting with sorrow, her eyes vibrant, touching the windows, the halls, the closed doors visible from the room.
Alred widened her eyes. “Is he here?!”
“No one’s here, and I’d like you to leave!”
“Is
who
here,” Porter asked to Alred.
“Have you seen your husband,” Alred said, trying to relax. Her eyes skipped to every point Ulman glanced to.
“I told you last time you came. I don’t have any more information,” she fell into her chair, tears racing down her cheeks in two lines.
Porter frowned at Alred and put a hand on her arm as if to hold her back. He looked at Mrs. Ulman and said in a quiet voice, “I’m sorry if we’ve frightened you. Someone’s been trying very hard to steal our work on your husband’s find.”
“Like you stole it from him?” said Mrs. Ulman.
Porter pulled back. “We were assigned this project.”
Alred knew that was an exaggeration of the situation, but didn’t feel safe enough to play games.
Alred reached into her pocket. “Do you recognize this key?” She held it up.
Mrs. Ulman stared at it with drying eyes.
“Look closer,” Alred said, handling the metal carefully so as not to scare the woman. Mrs. Ulman had been through a lot the last few months. Who knew what she’d been crying over before they’d arrived.
0417-2105
.
“It looks like my husband’s post office box,” she said. “But it can’t be, there’s only one key.” She stood and went to her bedroom while they waited. A moment later, she appeared with a similar key with different numbers. There was no air in her voice. “You’re not trying to tell me he had more than one box.”
Alred eyed the dark-haired woman for a moment in silence, considering. “I had a visitor a few nights ago. Someone whose face I didn’t see. Actually, I wasn’t sure anyone’d been in the room at all. But the man gave me this key…and I thought it was…your husband, Mrs. Ulman.”
She stood like a woman with a gun shoved in her back.
“I don’t…know anything,” she said in a lonely voice.
“I accuse you of nothing, ma’am, I’m only trying to find out why someone is trying to kill John here and why your husband would visit me under cover of shadows in order to give me a key and a warning,” said Alred.
Porter stared at his companion’s energized eyes, which never flinched, though she could feel his attention. He had a lot of questions, no doubt, but she’d answer none of them now.
“Who knows what I saw; I thought it was a dream, but here is the key,” Alred said, snatching it, and holding its solid form between their faces. “
This
is real.”
“I can’t help you,” Mrs. Ulman said, sitting slowly on the couch, crowded already with the boxes and a menagerie of photo albums, fake plant parts, worn holistic books, and a fallen stack of novels with bent spines. She stared at the fireplace with blank eyes.
“
He
said…to tell you he was all right,” said Alred looking at the carpet.
Porter squinted at her.
“And that you would understand what this key is about.”
Did Mrs. Ulman hear her? Her eyes ran up and down the cracks in the cement under the mantle, measuring the stones set in the wall. She listened to the birds singing in the leafless oaks outside the glass door, watched them with the corner of her eye, dancing down to the porch, searching for spilled seed. Clouds still grayed the sky, shaking the glass pane with a rumble of thunder.
“It’s…not a post office box,” she said through the quiet of a storm miles away but closing in. “Go to the West Federal Bank on Cedar Parkway. It fits the safe deposit box there.”
Licking the inside of his mouth, Porter looked at the two of them, one at a time. His voice was as calm as he could make it. “Mrs. Ulman, a bank won’t let anyone into a secured box without identification. That person also has to have preapproval on a signature card created when the box was opened for the customer.”