by C R Trolson
He walked back inside, mixed a large whiskey, and took a shower. The hot water did not relax him. He kept seeing Rupert’s eyes and Thomkins’ slicked-up red hair.
He put on clean underwear and socks and fresh jeans and a clean ginger-colored cotton shirt. He mixed another whiskey and sat on the couch drinking it until he felt loose.
He poured another drink and called Carsabi. Shirley put him right through. “What the hell is going on?” was the first thing out of Carsabi’s mouth.
“You tell me.”
“We have four homicide victims: a nurse impaled on an I.V. stand, a nurse strangled, one of the janitors with a hole ripped out of his neck and strangled, and an old man who’d had a blood transfusion burned beyond recognition, burned to ash. We’re just guessing it’s him because he’s the only one unaccounted for.”
“Ash?”
“That’s what they’re saying. Cremated. Like he’d been put in a kiln overnight. But that shouldn’t phase you. You already knew he’d be ash. You foretold the future, didn’t you? A regular clairvoyant.”
“Smoke on the ceiling? Evidence of gasoline? Accelerant?” Reese asked. He already knew the answer.
“Nothing,” Carsabi said. “I’ll ask you again - What aren’t you telling me? How’d you know the old man would be burned up like that?”
“Could the old man have killed the other three?”
“The old man? He was eighty-seven! He could barely walk. You’re saying he killed three people then set himself on fire?”
There was no sense telling Carsabi what he suspected. Carsabi had been dealing with facts too long to understand vampire tales. “Keep me posted,” he said and hung up just as Carsabi started to ask him another question.
He could not tell Carsabi the truth. Carsabi would think he’d gone over the edge. Neither did the bureaucracy that Carsabi was part of, the LAPD, want to know the truth. They’d waste too much time trying to cover their butts and blaming each other. Ajax, if confronted, would merely laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Even the governor would laugh that his largest contributor could be mixed up in such a fantastic conspiracy. They’d all ask about the mental stability of a certain detective who’d had his share of problems.
He poured another whiskey, drank it, and washed the glass. He carefully combed his hair. There were no options.
Afterwards, if he could stay out of jail, he’d track down every shipment of vials that Ajax had sent. He’d find any stockpiles Ajax had lying around. He’d have to do it quietly, have to keep the vials from falling into the wrong hands. The pharmaceutical corporations would have a field day with Ajax’s little invention.
He walked upstairs to Rupert’s door and walked through the yellow tape. In the bedroom, he walked around the Lahti rifle, opened the window, and removed the screen. Why hadn’t the Chief confiscated the Lahti? Laziness or giving him one free crack at Ajax?
He pulled off the lens cap. The cross-hairs were aligned on the middle window of Ajax’s office, the same window he’d looked out of earlier when questioning the great man.
The gun mounts were locked in place, sealed with drops of red Lock-Tite.
Three large holes were milled in the magazine, and he saw the shells nested inside like sleeping hawks. He rotated the ungainly charging handle. The bolt, forged, he guessed, from a billet of Finnish steel, slid back on oiled runners. The AP round disappeared into the massive receiver with a click. He moved the heavy feeling safety lever to fire.
This was not the plan that the Chief had been laughing about. This was no plan at all. This was winging it and he doubted that if after he was done anyone would be laughing, especially Ajax.
Rusty looked at her watch. Her appointment with Ajax was for three o’clock. Three minutes early. The guard left her in front of the red doors this time, as tall and ornately carved, the gold-embossed dragons curiously alive, as the green doors down the hall.
A stream of air escaped above her head, and the doors slid into the walls. Ajax rose from his chair and glided to her, both hands open in welcome. Without thinking she took his hands and kissed his cheek. He guided her to a chair at the desk and sat back down. There was a neutral smell about him like long-dried manure. Why had she kissed him?
He looked older today. Bleaker. Almost barren. His eyes were rheumy, the lids swollen, the cheeks stark white. A strip of flesh-colored plastic showed under the sleeve of his shirt. He looked to be falling apart.
Behind him, through the windows she could see Santa Marina spreading out to the sea. This was the first time she’d been in his office.
“I want to apologize for not coming to the excavation directly,” Ajax said in his clear voice. His mouth was dark, like the gums were turning black. “But I’ve been busy. I hope you’ll understand.”
“The whole town’s been busy.” She tried not to look at him. The view was spectacular through oddly-glinting bronze windows, sweeping from Point Pinos to the rocks at Pelican Bay, a post card decoration, she thought, a vista, a rich man’s view. “Your arm?”
He quickly pulled down the jacket sleeve. “A slight infection, I’m afraid. I’m using a herb paste. It really looks worse than it is.” He chuckled politely and changed the subject. “Amazing is it not? A murder spree in Santa Marina.”
“You sound happy about it.”
“I’m not,” Ajax protested. “No. No. Not at all. Father Ramon didn’t really deserve to die. Or the rest of them, for that matter. I’m again sorry the police inconvenienced you. You never should have been arrested.”
“The police have already forgotten about me,” she said. “They even had themselves another suspect.” She wiped her forehead. It was hot in the room.
“Had?”
“Fortunately, he’s dead.”
“Fortunately?”
“For the real killer. It gives him breathing room. The suspect, the alleged suspect, was a homeless man, an alcoholic. He broke out of the jail, literally.”
“Then what happened?”
“Reese happened.”
“Reese. I warned you.”
“He is something.”
Ajax did not answer.
She said, “To get out of jail, this homeless guy broke down two doors, steel doors. He ran for a mile and a half before Reese caught up with him. This was after the chief of police shot him. Actually shot off his lower mandible with a 12 gauge.”
Ajax thought for a moment. “You don’t think the police had the right man?”
“Do you?”
Ajax shrugged, looked philosophical. “The homeless. Not much of a life, I suppose. They can be violent. Nothing to live for.”
“The homeless are generally the victims, not predators, not homicidal maniacs. Not without a little help.”
“Help?”
“A little push,” she suggested. “Apparently, he was under the influence of a drug. A special drug. Know anything about that?”
“Drugs? Yes, that sounds right. It’s their only avenue of escape,” he said and then shrugged as if to say that what the homeless did or did not do was hardly of any consequence. She looked away from his genteel sneer to a silver art deco picture frame on the desk, a black and white picture of Raul Pavoni, a studio shot, dressed in a tux, blandly holding a cigarette, the smoke curling around his dead stare. She looked back at him. “I didn’t know you smoked.”
Ajax smiled mysteriously. With a measured slowness, he opened the drawer and slid the picture away. “I never have it out. I was posing a few years ago for Hans Malken, the Life photographer. He thought I had a movie star’s face. Pure vanity, I’m afraid.”
“The picture looks like Raul Pavoni. A remarkable likeness.”
“Who?”
His face showed no surprise, yet behind the eyes, far down, she felt he was telling her who he was, telling her, in subtext, what he was. Warning her to stay out or inviting her in?
“He was a star in the early thirties,” she said and still saw no reaction. “He’d be well over a
hundred if he was still alive.”
“Really? I’m sure he’s dead, then. Or in a home.” He touched something beneath his desk. She heard a click and a side door appeared on the bare wall next to a painting of a lady sawing at a man’s neck with a sword. The Slaying of Holoferness. Fifteenth century, she guessed. Italian. The scene was popular and hundreds had been painted. Probably an original from Florence. Ajax could afford it. And what had Reese said about a woman cutting off a man’s head who looked like Ajax? Well, there was a similarity. Anyway, Ajax could also afford to hire any archeologist he wanted. But had he killed Father Ramon and Thomkins? Had he killed Cheevy and Dean Everett? Was he the man Reese claimed he was? Better yet, was he Raul Pavoni? Had he been Father Delgado?
To the right of the painting were the row of glass cases Reese had described. She saw a wooden doll, the twin of the one she’d found at the mission. She saw the three jade whistles, the darker spot where the fourth had been. A pair of sandals. Could Reese be right about Ajax killing three girls for stealing a pair of sandals, a gold cross, and a whistle? Or were they both nuts? And what about the jade whistle now in her pocket? Had Ajax somehow acquired the same whistle that Hamsun had found years earlier? Did it belong with the other three?
The painting was not as garish as the man who walked through the door. He was a little over six feet, closer to six-five if straightened out. He was heavy: at least two hundred and ninety pounds. Not all of it fat.
The right side of his face was scrambled with bright red scar tissue. His eyes stared independently of each other. He was dressed in a white tunic, like a waiter or a Peruvian admiral, and carried a drink tray with several bottles, a bucket of ice, and glasses. The hair on the back of his hands looked like a raccoon coat. More black hair sprouted from under his collar like a small animal trying to escape.
“Something to drink?” Ajax asked, the perfect host.
“Water will be fine.” She’d tell him she was quitting after the water. Drinking water was not caving in to his hospitality.
The man put the tray between them and crab-stepped through the door, clicking it shut. He was limping and favoring one side. Had Thomkins wounded him at the mission?
Ajax filled a crystal glass with water and pushed it to her. He poured brandy into his own glass. “Ted is a remarkable specimen, don’t you think?”
“Ted?” She could not think of a more incongruous name. “From what standpoint?”
“The scientific one. Ted had been a dwarf until he had a spurt of growth. Iksoskinomosis is the scientific term. He is actually a giant. A giant dwarf. It ruined his bones, of course, and his sense of humor.”
“Dependable?”
“I hadn’t thought of it, but I suppose he is. His wife burned him. She was part of their circus duo, billed as the Magnificent Hersheys. They did tricks, I believe. A little acrobatics. They wrestled each other. Whatever amuses people who patronize the circus. When he started to grow, the team was no longer feasible. He began dating normal people, normal women I mean. They have a fantastic sex drive you know. In a fit of jealously, she, the wife that is, threw boiling molasses on him. It sticks, you see.”
“He’s limping. Has he been shot?”
“Shot? Of course not,” Ajax said. “That’s his usual look. The sudden growth twisted his long bones. There’s a certain gruesomeness to it. As well as dignity. Why do you ask?”
“The cop shot his killer.”
“You think it was Ted?”
“He have an alibi?”
“Absolutely.”
“Good help must be hard to find,” she said. She drank, set the glass down, and laid her hands flat on the desk. “I’ll be finishing tomorrow. All I have to do is back-fill and pick up my tools. I’ll send you a report.”
“But you said the garden might be full of bodies.” His look was of mild astonishment. “I only assumed you have a lot of work left to do. You’re not leaving already?
“I misspoke. I found only three.”
“You still claim the bones are Indian?”
“I have no reason to believe anything else.” She decided not to tell him about finding Dean Everett. Let someone else break the news. She was definitely not telling him Reese’s suspicions, let Reese do it.
It seemed crazy now, sitting in front of Ajax, that he wanted to poison the world, that he had killed as many people as Reese had claimed, that he was Raul Pavoni, despite the picture and the movie. It was even possible that Dean Everett’s death was the work of someone else, not that a lot of killers ever went to the trouble of burying their victims in custom coffins.
“There’s no evidence of other remains,” she said. “The first two skeletons were destroyed during removal. The third set of bones I removed last night and are in the custody of Professor Hamsun.”
He frowned. His face went gray. “Impossible,” he snapped, a jump in his energy level, a snake sensing danger. He banged the desk. “Bring the remains here!” He pointed to the glass cases. “The museum. I want the bones for the museum. Hamsun has nothing to do with it.”
She stifled the urge to tell him to go to hell. To hide her anger, she stood, took another long drink, and walked to the window. She was too old for temperamental tycoons. She was too old for this shit, period. If she’d been unsure about quitting Ajax earlier, she was now positive.
“Because of the stakes?” she asked. She tapped the windowsill and turned. “You think the bones belong in your vampire museum because of the stakes?”
“Vampire museum?”
“That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
“It’s a museum of natural history,” he snapped. “A history of the area people.” She watched Ajax bring himself under control, a tightening of his features. “Their essence. The essence of the bones,” he said in a calmer voice, “is very important to me. I’m sorry, I - ”
“What do you care about the bones? I thought all you wanted was artifacts?”
“I’m sorry if you - ”
She did not let him apologize. “As land owner you have no claim to the bones. I have to search for the most likely descendant to get a release - that’s the law - it could takes years. If we let the university keep them, in the meantime, then there’s no hassle. It’s like putting the bones in escrow. I’ve already explained this to you.”
“The most likely descendant?” Ajax laughed at this. His brittle laugh, she thought. His falling apart laugh. “Fine,” Ajax said. “Let Professor Hamsun have the bones. Case is closed. Now then, when do we start?”
“Start?”
“Alexander the Great?”
“I need to get back.”
“Get back?”
“Get back to my life. A real life. Maybe start teaching.”
“Teaching?” His voice rose on the question. “But I’m already engaged in talks with the Pakistanis. Our ambassador, Fredericks, has nearly hammered out a deal. They’ve agreed to partially fund the expedition. With my generous help of course. The wheels are turning, dear. My lawyers are working on our contract. Just as you said. Pay or Play. Do you expect me to tell everyone that my lead archeologist has decided to pursue a career in teaching?”
“Get someone else,” she said. It was a lot of money, a million dollars, but not worth her life, not worth dealing with Ajax, especially now that her so-called boyfriend was bent on killing him.
His eyes turned red. “WHO do I get! You wrote the paper.” His lips trembled. “You have the details. It’s your plan.”
“It was a student paper, Ajax, not a blueprint for an expedition. Deal with it.”
His anger faded as quickly as it had appeared. He smiled. What the hell was he up to? “Fine. Forget about Pakistan for now. Stay here as my personal assistant.” He extended his good arm, the one that wasn’t flaking. He gestured to her and the room. “You’ll have the run of the house and a large stipend. Your duties will be minimal.”
She could see it now, the castle freaks. Her, Ted, and Ajax. One happy family. She’d fit rig
ht in. She could invite Reese for sleep-overs. There was a thought.
“I’ll have Ted open the east wing. You’ll be most comfortable there. The light is beautiful in the morning. Once you get away from Reese Tarrant you’ll see the need for the expedition much more clearly.”
She was about to argue that Reese had nothing to do with her decision, but who was she kidding? She looked to the door. “I’ll need a day to think about it.” She wanted out. She’d say anything.
“Fine,” he said, “oh, and by the way, did you happen to find a small jade charm stone? Maybe with one of the skeletons?”
“Charm stone? The one you bought from Hamsun?”
“It’s actually a whistle. The shamans used it to summon certain….” he paused and touched his lips as if afraid he might speak the truth. “I’d like it back. It could be dangerous in the wrong hands.”
“You’d like it back? How did a whistle Professor Hamsun found in 1963 make it into the hands of a 200 year old Indian girl?”
His eyes went dreamy. “I’d like you to stay with us, truly. It can be a highly paid sabbatical for you, a grant to pursue your studies. You can rest, possibly I can convince you to honor our agreement, and you won’t have to teach those dreadful children. I’ll give you the million dollars as grant money.”
“You were never giving me a million dollars,” she said and backed away from him. When she felt the door against her back, she said it, “You were there. In Romania. You were waiting in the coffin.”
“What?” Ajax was up now and moving toward her. “Please don’t say that.”
“You were under the castle.” She turned her body, put her weight on her back foot, ready to kick his legs out from under him. “You were waiting for me.”
Ajax was about to answer when a spray of glass, bright as diamonds, shredded the air to the side of them, a crystal scythe rushing past. She ducked in slow motion. Ajax came for her in heavy fog. His mouth moved but he made no noise. She started for the door. She was getting the hell out.
Reese looked though the scope. He adjusted the focus. The cross-hairs narrowed. The bronze windows were mirror finished, but he was able to see the long skull’s shadow, not clearly, but the way the head was cocked, that angle of aloofness, told him he was looking at the back of Ajax’s elegant head. The cross-hairs intersected the center of the cranial vault. He touched the trigger and hoped that Rupert had sighted properly.