by S. T. Joshi
The kids didn’t share my fascination. Unanimously, to varying degrees, they were nervous around the purple light, and I didn’t force them to assist me. That wouldn’t have been nice, any more than washing a Houdini fish down the drain. Admittedly, something was creepy about the ongoing glow, as if the machine, despite its destruction, were still running, performing its function, incapable of being deactivated once it had been turned on.
Yes, I could have brought in expertise from Engineering, and I might easily have lost control over my find, and credit for it as well. I’ve no naïveté about the level of respect a “soft science” like mine is accorded on this campus. Besides, did Tillinghast’s contraption necessarily operate on a principle that a run-of-the-mill technologist would grasp any better than I would? Bottom line: the material culture an archaeologist unearths is artifacts, and artifacts belong in an Anthropology Department for proper handling and conservation.
After locking up the lab come evening, I habitually strolled home and stayed put. Nocturnal crime has been on the rise of late around campus, predictably what with the lousy economy, and my Fox Point neighborhood of students, faculty, and blue-collar Portuguese families hasn’t been immune. My wife and I are blessed with a comfy third floor in a quiet triple-decker, and too bad Phoebe’s not here more to appreciate it. On the other hand, maybe being apart so often has saved us from growing apart, or at least from focusing on any expansive rift. As good a formula for wedded bliss as any?
I was, in upshot, quite used to holding the fort, which boiled down to dumping shrimp flakes into Phoebe’s tank of neon tetras. Last Friday, that and surfing for less guilty viewing than 20/20 had been about the size of my dance card. I hadn’t expected burglary to enter into it, but who does? Larceny, anyhow, was the apparent story on eventually noticing what had happened. After supper I scattered fish food across aquarium surface, only to find no takers. The wife’s lovely tropicals were gone. Stolen, I had to infer, yet nothing else was missing, and no signs of break-in were visible at doors or windows. This wasn’t even the sort of theft I could bother the police with, for all they’d do was doubt my sanity or sincerity. I unplugged the tank’s hood light, filter, and heater. Why waste power?
The hell of it was, as the night wore on, resentment at thievery cooled and ebbed away. The absence of fish in the tank rated the same blasé acceptance as the presence of fish in soap. Someone or something had poached a school of tetras, and so what? Phoebe didn’t often ask about the fish when she phoned, and I’d be foolish volunteering anything. Her initial agitation, I figured, would lapse into apathy as quickly as mine if she got the news here first. Of course, the longer she was out on the road, the longer I could avoid controversy, but that was no way for a devoted husband to think.
As I went out to retrieve the paper Saturday morning, another untoward sight awaited me, and this one too I downplayed, far longer than did me credit. Twin heaps of clothing cluttered the sidewalk. From the porch I stared them down as if reprobates still occupied them, while declining to focus on specific garments. Were these the souvenirs of sex in the bushes, or of sloppy-drunk foray to the 24-hour laundromat? I was young once myself, but good grief!
That evening, as usual, I courted disappointment by tuning in local news for any exposé on pink fish. Instead, I learned that a preppie and four East Side collegiates had gone AWOL in the past few days. Police weren’t ready to assume or rule out foul play. Voiceover appealed to the public for information, as snapshots of the missing scrolled by. Those bundles of clothing out front did spring to mind, but only to the point of pondering whether their owners were still missing in action or had slunk back to reclaim sullied articles. My lukewarm concern didn’t stir me to go check out the window.
I should have put two and two together immediately, yet shied from connecting dots between abducted youth and purloined tetras and unremarked Houdini fish and luminous debris. To fob off human potential for monstrosity on some cosmic agency felt like flawed thinking, a copout, a throwback to blaming the devil and letting moral imperative off the hook. I was too much a man of science, “soft” science or not, to lumber into that pitfall.
I next ventured out of doors for the Sunday paper. The disreputable heaps of apparel lay unmolested. This is, after all, a sleepy side street, and who more than I would want to touch them? Upstairs, I unsheathed the Journal from orange plastic sleeve, and yesterday’s snapshots of kidnapees dominated page one.
At second glance, the gravity of the situation sank in. One path to peace of mind was open. I grabbed magenta rubber gloves from under kitchen sink and rummaged a sturdy, humerus-length stick from under the boxwoods screening the porch. Struggling into the gloves would have been easier after some coffee. I refrained from poking into the castoffs that contained a bra and tampon. In the other bunch I thumped a wallet and pried it out of Dockers pocket. It held three bucks, a RISD I.D., and a Nordstrom credit card. The name embossed in plastic was not among those in the photo caption, but that didn’t exempt me from step two toward a quiet conscience.
I called the cops. The desk officer picked up on the tenth ring. Evidence maybe pertaining to the missing young people, I said, was down on my sidewalk. “What sort of evidence?” he barked.
At his combative tone I drew a momentary blank before rallying to say, “Clothing and personal effects.” Okay, he’d send a car. Begrudgingly, as if appeasing a pest. I sat with my coffee on the front steps to ensure no garments crawled off at the last minute.
During my third cup, two squad cars pulled up, a pair of uniformed cops in one and a pair of suits in the other. They glowered at the abandoned articles as if they’d seen the like before and weren’t happy to see these now. The more rumpled, putty-faced plainclothesman directed the uniforms in their forensic chores. His lean, more debonair partner introduced himself, with a jerky handshake, as Detective Delacroix. He pronounced it “Della Croy.” I presumed he dyed his hair and mustache to get them that exquisitely black. His chestnut eyes were taking continuous stock.
His questions soon acquired the character of hostile catechism. When had I first observed the suspicious items? Yesterday morning? Why didn’t I report them right away?
I’d only heard about the abductions, or whatever they were, this morning, I argued, deciding I could fudge by twelve or fourteen hours if he was going to be such a hardass.
Did I touch any of the materials under investigation? Yes, I’d removed a wallet, and it was upstairs. Why had I tampered with a crime scene? Well, I wouldn’t have considered it a crime scene had I not found the wallet, and to prevent contamination of evidence I’d been wearing gloves, for which not a tad of gratitude was forthcoming.
Would I mind if he came up and got the wallet? I couldn’t very well say no, though inwardly I vowed that henceforth someone else could reprise the thankless role of good citizen.
I couldn’t interest him in any coffee. He proceeded straight to the wallet when I pointed at it, on a corner of the dining room table. From inner jacket pocket he produced white gloves and a Ziploc container. I’d have recommended a user-friendlier brand of bags, based on my own lengthy experience securing artifacts, but with his snippy attitude, the hell with him. I was already sorry for inviting him in.
Once he’d stashed his prize, he quizzed me on my term of occupancy in the apartment, my marital status, and my livelihood. In the meantime he strode around and rubbernecked, with the overbearing air of owning the place. I’ve no idea what keepsakes he’d have deemed proper to an archaeologist, but he ogled Phoenician oil lamps, Gallo-Roman priapic statuettes, and Egyptian faience amulets as if all might be used to hide or smoke illicit substances. Or as if I’d looted them.
He brightened on reaching the aquarium, till he discovered it was empty. “No fish in here?” His tone was accusatory.
“They were stolen. Sometime Friday.” Damn, I’d rather that hadn’t come out, but his zealous tour of inspection was too off-putting for me to ad lib a sensible lie. Thank God he was mil
es from ferreting out my quarter ounce of stale cannabis.
His brown eyes narrowed dubiously. Was I joking? Trying to throw him off his game? Incredulous or not, he didn’t grill me, thank God, on why I also hadn’t reported that, or how much else was gone. I yearned for him to go jangle someone else’s nerves ASAP, and I doubt he’d have disagreed that vanished youngsters rated more attention than burgled tetras.
Then I had cause to regret that burgled tetras hadn’t distracted him. He approached an uncomfortable inch inside my personal space and demanded, “Where were you for the last six nights?”
“Monday through Friday, I left campus around suppertime and came back here. I didn’t go out again. I stayed in last night, too.” My eyes were fixed on his, with the steadfastness of the innocent.
“Who could verify that?”
“Nobody. I was by myself for the duration.”
He nodded, maintaining eye contact all the while.
“Wait a minute. You’re not implying I had anything to do with these kidnappings, are you?”
He didn’t say. He stared at the threadbare Berber carpet as if embarrassed at my outburst. “So your wife’s been out of town?”
“She’s been away for the month.”
“And when’s she coming back?”
“Next week sometime. She’s not sure yet.”
His line of sight swerved from the carpet back to me. “Do you have any accomplices?” His delivery was casual, as if asking for a glass of water.
“What?” How dare he, after I welcomed him into my home? Offered him coffee? “What the hell kind of trick question is that? Why would I have accomplices?”
“Thank you. That should do it for now.” He cast judgmental parting squint at the desolate aquarium and turned on his heel. Just like that, our interview was over. Except that my agenda found impulsive voice at the last instant. “At the precinct house, do you have pink fish in your liquid soap?” I called after him.
He brusquely about-faced with one foot out the door. “No, they’re white. Like the soap. Why?”
“The ones in my department are pink.” Not exactly a scintillating reply, and it convinced Delacroix that no further exchange with me was necessary. He resumed exiting as if I hadn’t said anything.
He neglected to shut the door behind him. I stared out at the sunny landing while trying to absorb the ugly reality of becoming a “person of interest.” And that, fundamentally, because I’d let my conscience get me “involved.” Plus, dammit, I’d forgotten my cup on porch railing, where it had to be cold by now and perhaps peppered with drowning gnats. I went and retrieved it, tossed contents unseen into the bushes, and noted that the clothes were gone, with a pair of chalk outlines in their place, as if corpora delicti had indeed occupied them.
The cops weren’t admitting yet that criminality was afoot, but that’s how they were operating. And Delacroix, it dawned on me, was likely more on the ball than he realized. No, I hadn’t waylaid people and stripped and disposed of their bodies. Yet if uncovering Tillinghast’s debris had somehow brought Houdini fish into the world, it might also have snatched victims out of it, or brought in additional, man-eating species. In which case, yes, I was at involuntary fault, though in no wise conceivable to hardheaded Delacroix.
All the same, the onus was on me. I had a unique handle, right or wrong, on the wherefore of putative crime spree. I alone might be able to stop it. Since I no longer had tetras to trot home and feed, I burned nightly oil at the department, futzing with outré filaments and pipes till headache set in. Then I washed my hands, bid Houdini fish au revoir, and flagged down University shuttle bus on Hope Street. I had nine measly blocks to ride, but doorstep service these days was preferable to the lurking perils of nocturnal promenade.
My lab work was predicated on the theory that the intact device had projected an insidious radiation in which soap-dwelling fish, and worse, entered human perceptions, and vice versa. That radiation, with its short-range purple blush, had become intrinsic to each part of the device, regardless of breakage. Were I to rebuild enough for a control panel to present itself, pulling a lever might, I prayed, switch off the machine and kill its emanations and send everything alien back where it belonged. Yes, that was my best excuse for a plan.
I wasn’t unmindful that earth had exerted a damping effect all those years on the violet radiance. I could rebury the entire load, and maybe prevent further trespass from elsewhere. But would entities already here be expelled? And had any paired off yet to breed? I had to go with my gut, and it warned of time lost, lives lost, if reinterment accomplished nothing.
I also had to resist temptation to dump fluorescing miscellany on Engineering Department doormat, ring the bell, and run. Possessive pride had earlier kept me from sharing my find, and now engineering types, safe to say, would laugh in my face halfway through my alarmist spiel. This mission of mine was strictly solo, which was just as well if the device actually had no bearing on local felonies.
When Friday rolled around again, I’d reintegrated roughly half the hundred-plus bits, shed some pounds by skipping suppers, and listened to messages on home voicemail too late to return them. Phoebe was due back on the Acela next Wednesday evening. I’d have to insist she ride a cab up the hill. To let her walk would be reckless, and my driver’s license had expired ages ago. Also, Delacroix was intent on a follow-up conversation, and would I stop in at his office tomorrow? Three such communiqués in as many days conveyed mounting impatience. Well, he knew where I lived, and where I worked. Why interrupt my vital efforts to indulge his petty bias against me?
Plus, I had to play catch-up with recent news. Two postdocs, a waitress, and a Whole Foods clerk had dropped into MIA limbo. The pressure was on, and it behooved me to chuck the whole frustrating mélange into cardboard file box and lug it home. Technically, yes, the material was University property and I was stealing it. But stealthy predator was unlikely to ease off for the weekend, and neither should I.
I slapped the lid on the box and exited into pale setting sunlight. Shuttle service wouldn’t start for two hours, forcing me to hoof it with increasingly awkward, ponderous freight. Couldn’t be helped. Purple rays escaping chinks and seams in cardboard container would prompt unwelcome attention on a nighttime bus, whereas spooky emissions shouldn’t loom as garish on daylit sidewalks, when those sidewalks theoretically posed less danger.
But how well can mere theory model reality? I had the better part of my trek to go when the urge to rest aching arms asserted itself. On my left was deconsecrated Baptist church, repurposed as condos in the ’80s. The square brick belfry’s Gothic windows framed ventilation louvers, ineffectually shielded from nesting bats and pigeons by tattered wire screens. The light had relaxed into that lambent gold unique to this town, and the iron handrails flanking granite steps looked awfully inviting.
I was about to lower my burden onto the rail and balance it against my stomach, when the gilded ambience shifted to a seasick green. Meanwhile the belfry had apparently cast an arresting shadow on me. I shuffled backward without getting out from under it and belatedly grasped the obvious. The sun was setting not behind the church but behind the houses across the street, in the west as usual. I craned my neck toward the greenish heavens, faced with two dismal choices. Either something sizable had me in its oncoming shadow, or this wasn’t a shadow according to Webster.
Too unnerved to govern my actions, I whipped around to confront anything sneaking up on me. Metal components slid and clanked to one side of the box, which would have tumbled from my hands if I hadn’t hastily clutched tighter. As it was, the lid came loose and released a mini-aurora borealis. The shadow, or whatever it was, lifted, and the dusk faded to a more wholesome gray.
I hustled on, resolving to put up with sore arms for another five blocks. If I’d been in the same danger as previous fatalities, it had passed. Too bad that believing so did nothing to calm me. The purple radiance, I conjectured, may have worked as a repellant. Or I was simply ke
yed up and attaching false importance to atmospheric subtleties. That didn’t, though, invalidate the principle I stored for future reference: we humans might be plainly visible to things from elsewhere that might be quite invisible to us.
Another sort of predator was parked out front in a late-model off-beige Impala. The driver’s head was tilted as he watched my approach through rearview mirror. He retrained his sights on me after he got out and tossed cold dregs from Dunkin’ Donuts travel mug into scraggly grass below the boxwoods. Delacroix bypassed sociable greetings. “Ignoring me’s not such a good idea. You academic types think you’re above it all, don’t you?”
I shook my earnest head. “Sorry. I’ve been tied up with urgent lab work every night.”
He didn’t bother disputing that, as if above such mealy-mouthed excuses himself. He opened passenger-side door, pitched plastic mug to the floor, and slammed the door. He nodded toward the box. “What’s in there?”
“It’s the project I’ve been losing sleep over.” Why volunteer to show him? If he wanted a peek, he wouldn’t be shy about it.
“You’re looking pretty haggard. Okay then, go ahead up. I’ll follow.” Did cops study imposing themselves at the academy, or was Delacroix inherently gifted? “I’d like to see what you’ve been so busy with, if you don’t mind.”
I let brief eye contact serve as acquiescence and trudged forward. Venting my irritation wouldn’t get me anywhere. He spared me further chat till the box perched on the table where the wallet had lain last week. I, at least, was uncomfortable in the lowering silence. Was I supposed to offer him a soft drink? A beer?
“Sometime tonight, please?” Fine, you overbearing bastard, I’ll stop trying to play the gracious host. I’d hit every light switch on the way in, including the dining room overhead, hoping to render the violet emissions less blatant. I unceremoniously flipped the cardboard lid clattering to the floor. Delacroix bent slightly closer to the opening and his eyes widened. His newly mauve complexion made me wince.