Passage Graves

by Madyson Rush

  David cleared his throat. “I need a drink of water.”

  Lang signaled his approval with one finger and launched into another rant. “We both know you’re well out of your jurisdiction, Dr. Thatcher.”

  David flashed her a look of sympathy as he slipped out the door. She glared back, ready to kill him for leaving her.

  “Thought you might like a drink of water,” David said, offering a paper cup from the fountain in the hall.

  Ms. Mead squirmed. She pulled the ventilator from her mouth to give him a piece of her mind, but began coughing instead.

  David leaned against the open back door of the ambulance. “I wanted to apologize.”

  She quieted, but her penciled eyebrows remained skewed disproportionately and diagonally across her forehead.

  “I haven’t been myself lately, not after my father’s death.”

  The secretary’s face softened.

  David set the cup of water beside her and pulled the Polaroid from his pocket. “D.C.I. Lang was hoping you could help identify these men.” He showed her Brenton’s photograph.

  Her eyes widened with recognition. She nodded, removing the breathing device from her lips. All she could manage was a cough.

  “Try some of this.” He handed her the water.

  Sipping from the cup, she looked over at two medics crouched in the foyer of an adjacent building. They were in a losing a battle with a vending machine that had stolen their money. David stepped back behind the ambulance door so they couldn’t see him.

  “You’d think…” Ms. Mead said in a hoarse whisper. “…that they’d stay around…until I was well.”

  David nodded his sympathy.

  “A few years ago…these men worked…with…your father…in depar…”

  “In the Archeology Department,” he helped her finish the sentence, trying not to appear too impatient.

  Ms. Mead nodded. She pressed the ventilator to her mouth again and took a few dramatic breaths. Her hands began to tremble. She struggled to hold the tube to her mouth. “I’m asthmatic…Albuterol…helps.” She pointed at the machine as it beeped. “Makes me ill, though…” She rubbed her bloodshot eyes. “Shaky.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Mead, but we really need the names of these men.”

  The secretary pulled the ventilator from her mouth. “I’m not supposed…to talk…about…” she whispered. The medicine gave her breath a pungent fruity smell.

  “Not supposed to talk about what?” David asked.

  “They’re angry...” Ms. Mead nodded at the medics fighting with the vending machine.

  “The EMTs are angry?” She wasn’t making any sense.

  She shook her head. “The department…”

  David tried another approach. “Lang can protect you, but you must identify these men.” He kept the photograph in front of her.

  The secretary squinted at the picture, unable to maintain focus. “Ehrman.” She coughed, pointing to the young blond-haired man. “Post doc…”

  “The bearded man?” David hurried. Lang had to be getting suspicious by now.

  The ventilator beeped.

  “Vann…derr…kamm.” Her syllables slurred together. She took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her head tipped backwards against the door. Sweat dripped down her forehead.

  “And what about him?” David pointed to the old man in the photograph.

  “S-something’s…wrong,” she stammered.

  “I need to know this man’s name.” David pointed at the old man.

  The woman’s eyes closed. The ventilator fell from her hand. Her lips formed words, but nothing came out.

  “Ms. Mead?”

  Her chest was still. She wasn’t breathing.

  For a moment, David couldn’t move. He was there again, in the silence of Stenness. He fumbled with the ventilator, pressing it against her gray lips. The pressure of his hands made her limp body fall into the back of the cab and then collapse sideways. She hit the cement with a hollow thud that made him cringe.

  As he dropped beside her, the secretary’s body began to convulse.

  “Help us!” he screamed.

  One of the medics rushed from the building. He pushed David aside. “Protect her head!”

  The other medic took off his coat and shoved it between the cement and her skull. Spittle sprayed from her foaming mouth.

  “Did you give her something?” one of the medics yelled at David.

  David realized he’d been holding his breath. He swallowed air, fighting dizziness. “Water…I gave her water.”

  Lang burst out the door with Thatcher close behind.

  “David, what did you—?” Lang stopped mid-sentence, noticing Ms. Mead.

  The woman’s body went limp.

  One of the medics searched for a pulse. “She’s in cardiac arrest.”

  The other pulled a CPR kit from the ambulance and placed a resuscitator mask over her colorless face.

  Thatcher grabbed David’s arm. “Are you okay?”

  He was holding his breath again. He pointed at the medic doing compressions. The man’s coat hung open as he bobbed over the secretary’s chest, pumping her heart.

  Thatcher’s eyes widened in recognition.

  Holstered underneath the medic’s arm was a handgun.

  ****

  “Since when do EMTs carry firearms?” David demanded.

  Thatcher sat beside him in the backseat of Lang’s squad car. She stared out the window and rubbed her eyes as Ms. Mead’s body was lifted into the ambulance in a body bag.

  David gave an impatient huff. “They killed her. The EMTs killed her.”

  Thatcher furrowed her brow. Sure, she was apprehensive about a gun-toting medic, but it was highly doubtful anyone would knowingly murder a lowly secretary. “She was obese and asthmatic,” Thatcher tried to reason with him. “She had a preexisting heart condition.”

  “They left her alone in the cab,” he insisted. “She was given Albuterol.”

  “It’s a bronchodilator, a perfectly normal treatment for asthma.”

  “Could it kill her?”

  “No.” She frowned and corrected herself. “Well, yes, if she had an allergy or was given a lethal dose, but—”

  “All I know is the more she used that ventilator the worse she got.” He leaned his head against the window. “It had a strong smell, too. Fruity.”

  “Albuterol is odorless.”

  David raised an eyebrow.

  Thatcher shifted away from him, annoyed and reluctant. “Come off it, David. She had been chewing gum.”

  “The odor came from the ventilator. I could smell it three feet away.”

  “They shouldn’t have left her alone, I’ll give you that.” She conceded, shaking her head and refusing to participate further in the conspiracy theory. Instead, she envisioned reporting her lack of progress to Hummer, including all the pointless gallivanting across Great Britain with David. “I’ve wasted all this time.”

  David hung his head at stared at the floor.

  Sensing his guilt, she sighed. “It’s not your fault.”

  She tried to believe her own words, to force some emphasis into their meaning so they would sound sincere, but it sort of was his fault. She had foolishly hoped he would have answers. Truthfully, the man was barely holding it together. She couldn’t blame him. Not after everything he’d survived. No, this was her fault.

  “Dammit,” she said, annoyed. Hours had been squandered, her career was in the toilet, who knows what was going to happen the next time Maeshowe exploded—but despite all this, she pitied him. Without logic or reason, David Hyden, a frustrated ghost of a man, meant something to her. “You know what? Sod it all!”

  She threw him a bone. “Acetic aldehyde and acetylene tetrachloride. They each have fruity smells. When given at a sufficient dose, they can cause heart failure.”

  “She knew the men in the photograph,” he said, cradling his head in his hands.

  Thatcher sat forward. “What?”


  David pulled the Polaroid from his pocket and pointed at the youngest man. “Ehrman. He’s a post doc in the department.” He pointed to the bearded fellow. “And Van-something—Vanderkam.” He fell silent as the driver’s door opened.

  Lang took a seat, slamming the door shut behind him.

  “I told you everything was handled,” he said in a sobering tone. “You two are bang out of order. Why can’t you leave well enough alone?” He met David’s eyes in the rear view mirror.

  Lang’s face was furious red. “I located your father’s case file. It was floating between the desks at the department, just like I said.”

  David looked at Thatcher, maintaining a poker face as he pocketed the Polaroid. “I want to see it,” he replied.

  Lang revved the engine and peeled out of the parking lot. “Fine.”

  Chapter 37

  WEDNESDAY 2:57 p.m.

  St. John’s Cathedral

  Bathwick, England

  Ian sat upright.

  The woman behind the veil had stopped talking.

  He’d been in the confessional box for two hours, half-heartedly listening to parishioners. She must have finished. It was his turn to speak. “For your penance say three Our Fathers, and go and sin no more.”

  Hopefully, his timing wasn’t off. Who knows how long she’d been sitting in silence.

  “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good,” he finished, solemnly.

  The woman blew her nose. “For His mercy endures forever. Thank you, Father.” She stood, adjusted her skirt, and then exited the stall. Her high heels clapped down the aisle and out the parish door.

  Ian checked his watch. In a few minutes, he could close the chapel and visit the Rabbi. He had returned the fragment after mass that morning. It took some coercion, but the Rabbi agreed to translate the Hebrew.

  Fingering his rosary beads, Ian couldn’t think of anything but the translation. What would it say? Did it have to do with his father’s death? What ancient secret could be so devastating it was worth killing for?

  A man cleared his throat, catching Ian’s attention. The dark figure loomed behind the confessional screen.

  Ian let go of the rosary and intertwined his fingers. “Yes, my son?”

  “You’re wasting his time.” It was a coarse Irish accent, a wire brush dragging across glass.

  “I’m sorry?” Ian strained to see through the screen.

  “Leave it alone or the Rabbi is dead.”

  How could anyone know about the Rabbi?

  Ian sprang from the confessional box and tore back the curtain. The compartment was empty. He spun around just as the chapel door closed. Panic consumed him. How did they know? It had to be Javan. But if he knew about the Rabbi, did he know about the Beb’ne Hoshekh?

  Ian hurried down the aisle to the outside. The sidewalk was bustling with activity, people walked along the street, traffic clogged the roadway. He scanned the crowd from one end of the block to the other. It could be any of these men.

  He limped across the steps to the alleyway leading to the gardens.

  “Oi,” a vagrant called for him, squatting on the cathedral steps.

  “Did you see a man run out this door?” Ian asked, out of breath.

  The vagrant held out his hand for money. The smell of alcohol was heavy on his breath. He was missing a leg, and stringy gray hair hung over his face. It was obvious he was an addict.

  “Help me, Father,” the man insisted, reaching up.

  “Did you see someone leave?” Ian asked again.

  “Please, Father.”

  Exasperated, Ian searched his pockets and placed whatever he had into the man’s hands. He leaned closer. “Did you see who just left through these doors?”

  The beggar sorted through the cash and lifted his hand for more. “You holdin’ out on me?”

  “Someone just left the church.”

  The man began to laugh. His teeth were yellow with cigarette stains.

  “Go on, get out of here!” Ian waved him away.

  The beggar staggered down the sidewalk laughing to himself.

  The wound on Ian’s palm was stinging again. Blood appeared along the creases of the gauze. He shook out his hand and looked up and down the street once more.

  Whoever it was, they were long gone.

  Chapter 38

  WEDNESDAY 4:28 p.m.

  Cambridgeshire Constabulary Headquarters

  Huntingdon, England

  “This is it?” Thatcher asked, quickly reaching the end of Brenton’s case file. Minimal effort had been expended on the investigation. The paperwork looked haphazardly thrown together. “Why was no autopsy done?”

  Lang sat across the table. He had led them straight into the station’s interrogation room upon arrival. “Brenton’s wounds were thoroughly examined and documented. It was unnecessary to further deface his body.”

  “It’s protocol to autopsy all murder victims,” Thatcher said.

  Lang looked over at David and then back at her. “It was done out of respect for his religious beliefs. You know that, David.”

  David’s five o’clock shadow looked darker than normal under the room’s florescent lights. The pale glow flickered intermittently overhead. “You never reported his case.”

  Lang’s eyebrows turned upward. “I’m sorry?” he asked, confused.

  “Dr. Thatcher has a source at the Embassy. There’s no record of an investigation in London. You never reported his case.”

  Lang returned David’s firm stare. “I don’t know who gave you that information, but it’s incorrect.”

  Thatcher shook her head, uncertain what to believe.

  “Look, I’m as frustrated as you are about the lack of leads,” Lang said, “but we’ve got to stay positive. I will find Brenton’s killer. You have my word.”

  David flipped through the few pages of the file. “Lack of leads? There’s nothing here!”

  “We have suspects,” Lang insisted. “Nothing I can discuss at the present.”

  David scoffed. “Surprise, surprise.”

  “The men your father dealt with are ruthless. You know that firsthand.”

  “Are you suggesting the men Brenton worked with killed him?” Thatcher asked.

  “I’m suggesting you piss off and let me do my job.”

  David pulled the Polaroid from his pocket and flipped it onto the table. “What about these men? Are any of them suspects?”

  Lang picked up the picture and examined it. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Answer my question first,” David demanded.

  “Do you think these men are involved?” Lang asked.

  “We think they might know something about the murder,” Thatcher said.

  Lang stroked his mustache for a minute, taking in the image with no sign of recognition. He lowered the picture to the tabletop and stood, scratching his chin as if piecing together a puzzle. “Let me handle this.”

  Snatching the Polaroid off the table, David pocketed it in open rebellion.

  “I’m warning you, impeding the progress of this case will be seen as a prosecutable crime.”

  David smiled. He knew how to push all of Lang’s buttons.

  “Damn it, David!” Lang slammed his chair against the table. “You’re the key suspect in this investigation, and I’ve been working my bloody ass off to keep you out of it. I’ve stuck my neck out for you.”

  David crossed his arms. “No one asked you to do that.”

  “I made things disappear!” Lang said. “I can sure as hell bring them back.”

  “Are you threatening me, Bill?”

  Lang paused to control his temper. He took in a deep breath, swinging open the interrogation room door. “Get out of my station—both of you. I don’t want to see you under the same circumstances again.”

  “Do you believe him?” Thatcher asked, as she and David walked to the police impound lot. She gave her ticket to the attending officer, and he left to fetch her rental car.


  “He’s never lied to me before,” David said, staring at the cement. “Do you trust your source at the embassy?”

  “Brimley has never lied to me before.”

  “Well, someone’s wrong.”

  “Lang is bluffing,” she said, determined. “Why in the world would they consider you the key suspect?”

  David kept silent.

  “David?” she asked. His lack of response was unnerving. There was something important he wasn’t telling her.

  “I work regularly at the crime scene…” He shrugged her off. “I have no alibi…”

  “That hardly means you’d kill your own father.”

  “I had motive.”

  Thatcher waited for the grin, but he didn’t smile.

  “Brenton’s obsession destroyed my family,” David said, kicking the rubber soles of his boots against the curb. “We were oil and water, and our quarrels were very vocal. Every scholarly step he took forward, I was there to knock him back. For each thesis, I was the antithesis. I’m the reason he lost his tenure at Cambridge.”

  She didn’t believe him. “You would kill your own father?”

  Their conversation paused as the impound officer drove up beside them and stepped out of the car. Leaving the keys in the ignition, he looked at Thatcher expectantly, as if waiting for a tip. She ignored him and slid into the driver’s seat. David sat shotgun and stared out the window at the city streets.

  They were quiet as she drove out of the impound lot and joined traffic.

  David cleared his throat. “In my family… We’re angry. We’re ruthless. Hell, we hate each other. But none of us is violent. Hyden men exact revenge through much more constructive means. Why end the man’s life, when you can destroy his self-respect?”

  “That’s comforting...”

  They drove in silence for a few more blocks. Her mind was racing, contemplating the possibility of David as the killer. He had identified the body. He knew Stonehenge. But the red particles of sand in Brenton’s lungs, and the lethal subsonic noise that ravaged Brenton’s organs, how could David possibly be responsible for that?