by C R Trolson
She climbed out of the ditch. She shakily unscrewed the lid of her thermos, filled it from the water cooler, and sat down. She felt dizzy. What the hell was going on?
The cemetery door grated. Unless it was another vision, Professor Knut Hamsun was walking toward her swinging a cane. He moved with painstaking precision - the cane, then the right foot, then a big step with the left foot, repeating the cycle.
He wore a Panama hat and a bulky khaki work shirt tucked into white cotton trousers. Bright red suspenders added color. He was very neat. Like an old man sent to the store for milk. Green aviator sunglasses gave his face an insect look.
He made his way slowly, stopping at several headstones, reading the inscriptions, chewing his bottom lip.
“Otters killed them,” he said when he finally got to her. He gestured to the graves behind him with a sweep of his hand. With the point of his cane, polished hickory, he scooted her backpack down the bench and sat next to her in the shade of the wall.
After the mini-hallucination, she barely trusted herself to speak. She waited for a moment to clear her mind. She looked straight at Hamsun, “Otters?”
Hamsun eyed her. “You look pale.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Did you just hear someone yelling? Screaming may be closer to the sound, like they were very scared.”
“Just now? Yelling?” He shook his head. “Not that my hearing is as good as it used to be, but it’s still not too bad.”
“It was probably kids out on the road.”
He looked at her for a moment. “You’re all right?”
“I might have a slight cold, but I’m fine.” Hallucinating every other day did not mean you were insane, she thought. She steadied herself and focused on Hamsun. “You were saying?”
Hamsun seemed unconvinced that she was fine but shrugged and kept talking. “In the mid-seventeen hundreds when the Russians started to make noise about settling California, the Spanish had been sailing past California for over two hundred years. Cabrillo had claimed the land for Spain in 1543, but the Spanish never settled the area or made much of the claim because the Indians had no gold, nothing of value. There was plenty of wildlife, hordes of otters, deer, bear, and elk, but the Spanish didn’t need meat or the fur. Fur was meaningless to the Spanish, most of their empire was hot, equatorial. What they needed was air conditioning. What they wanted was gold.
“But to the Russians, with their savage winters, the otter fur, the densest on earth, was worth its weight in gold. They swept down from the Aleutians slaughtering and skinning the otters. The Spanish began settlements to discourage the Russians. Even though the Spanish didn’t need otter fur, they didn’t want anyone else to have it. Like children. Still, if there had been no otters to begin with there would have been no Russians, no Spanish, no Missions. History often turns on the petty.
“The Russians killed off the otters and the Spanish did the same to the Indians.” She drank cold water from her thermos cup. She offered Hamsun a drink. Her head was clearing. She felt better. “Someone would have,” she said. “Someone would have killed the Indians. They had no defense. They had no real enemies, hadn’t changed in fifteen thousand years, and when the Europeans showed up with swords, horses, and muskets - and their germs - it was like the Martians had landed. They didn’t have a chance.”
“Exactly,” Hamsun said.
“It’s a strange concept. Perpetual inertia. In seventy years, our culture went from Kitty Hawk to the moon. But the Chumash never changed. They didn’t even have numbers, to speak of. No mathematics. Tribes moved in circles. The food would play out and they moved. Sometimes the circle was fifty miles wide, but they always came back to the same place. Year after year. They built their huts the same. Their boats the same. No improvements. Nothing.”
“Never change. Never grow old,” he said. “Well, time catches up with everyone.” He stood and studied the area. He poked around with his stick. His eyes rested on the mound at he bottom of the ditch. “More bones?”
“I’m not sure. I found the top of a stake. I’m assuming it’s driven into the chest like the other two. I won’t know for sure until I excavate further.”
Hamsun scanned the bottom of the ditch. “You’ve found two other skeletons?”
She pointed to the pile of dirt spreading under the screen. It had a cloying smell in the sun, like something freshly dead was mixed in amongst the dirt. “There.”
He poked the pile with his stick and looked at her. “This is loose dirt.”
“The bones disintegrated.”
“You left it mixed in? You didn’t separate?” Hamsun gave the mound another sharp poke, as if to underline an unforgivable breach, at least in archeology. “I guess you have your reasons.”
“Did you test the powder I gave you?”
“Yes. Pulverized bone mixed with dirt.”
She’d been wondering if Ramon had ground up the bones and sprinkled them back in the ditch. Why, of course, was another matter. “Mechanically pulverized?”
“No. The cells fell in on themselves. The calcium seems to have dissolved organically. Not any reason I can see for it other than usual disintegration over time. But we know that that is not the case, don’t we?”
“It came from skeleton one.”
“You should have told me.”
“The metacarpals?”
“They are no more,” he said dramatically. “They fell apart as well, disintegrated, same thing. About an hour after you took them out of the paper sack.”
“Sunlight?”
“If that’s the case,” he said. “It would really be quite remarkable, bones disintegrating because of a few hours in the sun. One of the more remarkable reactions to sunlight recorded.”
“This is a remarkable town,” she said.
He looked at her skeptically. “For the sake of argument we’ll say that ultraviolet rays had a profound effect on the skeletal remains. Is that why you are keeping the third skeleton in situ?”
“In situ?” The correct term was in statu quo, but she did not feel like arguing with a professor. Not today. “Yeah.”
Hamsun stepped back to the bench and sat down. He seemed like a man with some unanswered questions. “Where, exactly, did you find the jade whale?”
“Skeleton two. Balled up in her right fist, same hand I took the finger bones from,” she said, adding, “I’ve been wondering how you did it.”
“Did what?”
“How you scratched your initials into the jade without me seeing. Or maybe you pulled the old switcheroo?” It sounded ridiculous but the only why to explain Hamsun’s initials on the whale. The only other explanation was impossible.
“Switcheroo?” He laughed. “You think I had one on hand, do you? Same color, same words - Et El Hoc? Same size?” Hamsun shook his head. “My initials are not scratched in. I assure you. I used a Dremel tool and a diamond bit with a template. I bought the Dremel tool out of the 1960 Sears catalogue. It’s a twenty minute job to engrave your initials.”
“You know what that means?”
“Between 1963, when I found the whistle, and the present, a young, mongoloid female was buried holding the same whistle. Buried in an old graveyard, her bones turning to dust, acting like they’re thousands of years old. That’s really the cause of the bone damage. Age. Unless someone buried a very old skeleton with my newly found whistle.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that.” She glanced at the castle.
Hamsun followed her eyes. “He’s always watching.” Hamsun pointed his stick at her. “Does he scare you?”
“Ajax? No. The only thing that scares me is that he won’t pay up.” She was afraid of Ajax. But not enough to admit it to Hamsun. The thing that scared her most about Ajax was that he had way too much money.
“I hope you get to spend all your money. He’s a dangerous man. There have already been two killings and, from what I’ve heard, both were ritualistic.”
“You think Ajax did it?”
She laughed, but only to cover up the crazy thought that Ajax might have used her sickle to kill Ramon. “That sounds ominous, Professor. So now Ajax is approving murders? What do you have against him?”
“We’ve had our run-ins. He didn’t like the paper I wrote. The legend of Sok-so-uh.”
“The blood-eater?”
“Yes, the blood-eater. Anyway, I’d written the paper some time ago,” Hamsun said. “I remembered it, the situation of it, after you’d left yesterday. In the paper I suggested that the Chumash Indians believed Sok-so-uh had returned as a Spanish priest. The paper was printed in the Archeology Journal, Ajax read it, and sent me a nasty note. Threatened to sue, as a matter of fact.”
“Why?”
“I wrote that the Chumash thought the Sok-so-uh was Ajax’s ancestor, a Father Delgado. They thought he was a vampire.”
“I’d be mad, too.” She recalled the name, Delgado, and Ajax telling her that Delgado had been his great-great uncle or something.
“Would you?” Hamsun shrugged and looked into the ditch. “A have a portrait of Father Delgado, painted in 1789. He looks uncomfortably similar to your benefactor.”
“Is benefactor the same thing as ‘sugar daddy’, Professor? You’re treading uncomfortably close to my fighting side.”
“No one just ‘works’ for Ajax.”
“I didn’t give him my soul, if that’s what you’re asking. And it is a working relationship. There is nothing else to it.”
“Not yet.”
“Fine, now that I know how you feel, that I lack the objectivity to work for a billionaire, what do you mean by the portrait being similar?”
“They’re the same person.”
“They’re related,” she said, knowing there was more to it than that, again seeing Ajax’s perfect likeness carved into the Transylvanian coffin. “And you’re using a painting from the eighteenth century as a comparison? That’s not scientific.”
“Sometimes,” Hamsun said, “science has to be set aside. You have to make room in your mind for other considerations.”
“Especially,” she said,” if you’re saying that Ajax was alive two hundred years ago. You have to set science about a thousand miles from you.”
Hamsun was not impressed. “I’m saying Ajax looks very much like his great-great uncle Delgado, the Sok-so-uh. He’s a dead ringer, in fact.”
“The same Sok-so-uh the whistle works on?”
“There’s more to it than that. The whistle, when blown, summons a spirit, a beautiful Chumash princess that Father Delgado had killed. The princess returns to kill Delgado.”
“You mean kills Ajax.”
He nodded. “Precisely.”
She self-consciously touched the whale in her pocket. To cover the move, she checked the time on her watch, glad that Hamsun hadn’t noticed. “You blew the whistle yesterday. I didn’t see anything appear.”
“Maybe I didn’t do it right. Maybe I’m not the right person to use it. Have you tried it?”
“Of course not,” she said. “When did spirits and ghosts come into your view of archeology? It’s laughable.”
“More laughable than believing in a God? Take Father Serra, for example. He was beatified in 1977 because a lady in the Midwest claimed her lupus was cured by praying to a picture of him, a picture of Serra. That was Serra’s miracle. Imagine! The real miracle was that her claim was taken seriously by the Vatican.”
“That’s the Church. They love Serra. He legitimizes their entire missionary scam. But don’t compare that to whistling up spirits that kill vampires.”
“No?” Hamsun said. “Where is the whistle? You’re not carrying it are you?” He smiled knowingly, on the verge of cackling.
“No,” she said. He was getting on her nerves. “It’s in a safe place.” No way was she telling him about the brown-haired princess draped in otter fur she’d seen after blowing the whistle, or about the girl she’d just seen after touching the stake. Or that she was keeping the whistle on her at all times. As protection against Ajax? Good question. “A whistle that summons spirits? It’s ridiculous.”
“As long as you’re convinced,” he said, “what do the police think about it?”
“All they know is that I’ve found two sets of Indian remains that might have been killed by stake-wielding priests two hundred years ago.”
“A lot sooner than that I would think.” Hamsun hit the ground with his stick. “It’s just as well. The police wouldn’t know what to do anyway.”
19
Reese slept until noon. He woke up with scratchy eyes and foul-tasting mouth. When he remembered the look on Rusty’s face, he slammed his fist into the pillow.
He remembered screaming. He couldn’t remember exactly, he had several favorites including a face eaten by rats and a baby thrown in a dumpster, but it had probably been the nightmare about Homer Wermels eating his heart. Maybe she didn’t care if he had a few problems. She had a few herself.
For now, he had other things to worry about.
Two people were dead and more would follow. He was sure of it. He had no proof. He had no real suspects, except for Ajax Rasmussen, and the billionaire was giving nothing away.
He rolled off the bed and tried to do a few push-ups, but his arms were shaking so badly that he quit after three and took a shower. He ran the water full cold for one minute then switched to hot. Soon the bathroom was steaming.
When he got out of the shower the phone was ringing. Halloran.
As he backed the Mustang out of the Palms’ leaning carport, the cold fog reminded him that he needed to buy driving gloves and a heavier coat, or he could buy a new top. This top was frayed and torn and faded from the original black like a well-washed rag. He left it down rather than look at it.
It was a twenty minute drive down Highway 101. He parked across the street from the Santa Barbara Courthouse, which looked more like a Spanish castle from a Hollywood dream than a place of law.
He took an elevator to the third floor. Halloran’s desk was piled high with manila folders and textbooks. There was a sterile garbage-like smell, probably from the old book anchoring the far edge of the desk. Plastic gadgets - a heart, a liver, and a model of the human brain - were stacked near the center. The brain resembled a giant, pink walnut. Halloran motioned for him to sit.
“You told me something was wrong,” Reese said. Halloran was wearing a somber, blue suit, like a man going to a funeral. He didn’t seem worried, but it looked like he’d made his mind up about something. Outside the window, fog rushed by. They could have been flying in a slow plane.
“It’s a preliminary report you understand, a rush job, but the vial’s contents appear to be very toxic.”
“Really,” he said and wondered why Halloran couldn’t have told him over the phone, unless Halloran thought it was more effective to lie in person.
Halloran stretched back slightly in the chair. He studiously opened one of the manila folders. “It’s plasma. Human blood with the red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets removed. The gas chromatograph came back negative for known toxins.”
“I thought you said it was poison?”
“I said it appears to be very toxic, but nothing I’m familiar with. The poison, the toxin is suspended in the plasma. It’s intertwined with the plasma.”
“You’re not familiar with it?”
Hamsun cleared his throat. He did not like being cross-examined. “I haven’t been able to isolate the toxin, yet. I need more time.”
“You don’t know what the hell you have,” Reese said. It was not a question. “You’ve never seen it before, have you?
Halloran didn’t argue. “A technician mixed the sample with neutral whole blood to boost the volume and there was an immediate effect on the red blood cells.”
“Which was?”
“The cells disintegrated. They fell apart. In a body that means the blood vessels and
capillaries dissolve. It means traumatic hemorrhaging. The organs melt. It’s similar to hemorrhagic fever, like Ebola, but much faster.”
“Contagious?”
Halloran closed the folder. “It doesn’t seem to be. Your sample wouldn’t grow in a Petri dish, so it’s not bacteria. It may be a virus, but that could take years to isolate. I’ve never seen anything like it. The lab techs are calling it Liquid X. LX.”
“If you were injected?”
“You’d last ten minutes.”
“And if two or three hundred vials were dumped into the blood supply of Los Angeles? If it got into the blood supply? If people were getting transfusion with it?”
“Why are you asking?”
“Amuse me.”
Halloran tapped the desk with the pencil and then sucked on the eraser. “Where’d you get the vial? You’ve heard of chain of custody? I need to know.”
“Trust me.”
Halloran looked at him for a second. “Hospitals generally store blood in 500 cc units, so it’s not like you have a reservoir of blood that you can contaminate. Each unit would have to be infected individually. Since the patient will start throwing up blood soon after the transfusion, someone’s bound to suspect the blood, and there will be an immediate quarantine. A few people will die, there will be a panic, the contaminated blood will be checked and isolated.” Halloran looked out the window. “The blood supply is a bad place to start an infection. It’s too closely watched.”
“And if you contaminate the blood before it’s put in the units?”
“Impossible. After the blood’s been drawn from a donor, blood type and Rh type are determined. It’s screened for Hepatitis B and C, HIV one and two antibodies. It’s screened for West Nile and syphilis. Then the whole blood is separated into red blood cells, white blood cells, plasma, platelets. It’s broken down further into albumin, anti-thrombin, the list is endless. The labs have stringent safeguards every step of the way. Additives such as preservative, other things, are added before final repackaging and shipment, but if LX were somehow added, the blood would clabber immediately. It wouldn’t pass a visual check.”