INTO THE DARK : A TOM DEATON NOVEL

by Richard B. Schwartz

  “You can’t take your eyes off of them,” Diana said. “That’s why they picked that stone to paint. Imagine it in torchlight—the centerpiece of the hall—visited perhaps once in a generation. The paintings are magnificent, but in their setting they’re breathtaking.”

  “Walt,” Tom said in a whisper, “we can’t spend our time going through the whole tour. We’ve got to get down to the horses now.” McNeise spoke to the officers and the guide, who looked perturbed. He directed them to a path and they made their way down to the frieze. Surrounded by yellow rock formations glistening in the direct and reflected light, Tom looked up toward the ceiling from which the stone on which the horses were painted had fallen. He looked over at Diana. She had taken her brother’s pictures from her jacket and she was studying them intently.

  The guide went into his full presentation, pointing out the red fish behind the horses, telling them that it was drawn first, then talking about the horses themselves and their possible dates. The hand negatives were described as parts of prehistoric rituals, as were the large spots (which he called ‘dots’) inside the horses and along their backs, highlighting and outlining them. He was very sure of himself with regard to dates and purposes; he was not the sort of man who would welcome being questioned. “Les ‘Chevaux Ponctués’,” he said, in summary. “They are fantastic, are they not? So very beautiful.”

  Tom nodded in agreement. Diana was looking up and down, from the frieze to her brother’s pictures. She whispered something to Tom and he struggled to hold his expression. He whispered something in return. She answered, he nodded, and then walked around to the side of the stone and looked at the point where it met the floor. He squatted down and got closer to it. “Please, you may not touch it,” the guide said.

  Tom signalled to McNeise and the senior officer, Cossard. “What is it?” McNeise said. “Look,” Tom answered. “It’s green.”

  Cossard became agitated. “Vert?” he said. “Sur les Chevaux Ponctués?”

  “Not moss, not disease,” Tom said. Cossard was confused. McNeise translated for him and he suddenly looked relieved.

  “No, not green moss,” Tom said. “It’s green cement. The paintings are forged. The substitute stone was attached to the floor and the cement hasn’t dried yet.”

  McNeise translated and the Frenchmen looked at him as if he had just told them that their children had been killed. “No, no,” the tour guide said. “That cannot be.”

  “Look,” Diana said. She showed them the photographs of David’s work, then pictures of the original paintings. “He left out one of the red dots. Count them.” She traced her finger along the painting of the horse on the left. “There should be a triangle of dots . . . there. The bottom one is missing.”

  “But why would he do such a thing?” the guide asked.

  “He wanted to tell us that he could never copy the original, no matter how expert the work,” Diana said.

  “No,” the guide said again. “It cannot be. These are the horses of Pech-Merle, these!”

  “They are very beautiful,” Diana said, “but they are not the Chevaux Ponctués.”

  Cossard was shaking his head. “Impossible, impossible,” he said.

  “No, it was very easy,” Tom said. “With the cave sealed and the heavy equipment they brought in they could have made the switch easily. David Bennett’s work was difficult; this wasn’t.”

  “We should go outside now,” the guide said. “The lights, the gas.”

  “There was no green disease,” Tom said, as McNeise translated. “Someone left some lights on, probably brought in some pollen and a tank or two of carbon dioxide, and then called the director and showed him the results. The director panicked and closed the cave. At that point he was probably held incommunicado until the ventilation men could come in and switch the stones. His murder was faked to look like a suicide and the government officials organized a delegation to drive to Pech-Merle and pick up the pieces. By then the real paintings were long gone.”

  “No, no, why here? Why?” the guide said, his voice shaking.

  “Because the paintings are so wonderful and because they’re portable,” Diana said. McNeise was translating and the officers were hanging on every word. “You cannot carve the bulls from the walls of Lascaux or the mammoths from Rouffignac or the polychrome bison from Font-de-Gaume without destroying them. The Chevaux Ponctués could be stolen.”

  “This is the theft of our soul,” the guide said.

  “That’s exactly what it is,” Tom said. “The planning had to be equal to the stakes.”

  “The planning? But you said this was easy,” the guide said.

  “The switch was easy. Having the forgery ready and coordinating the substitution for the original with the movement of the equipment and the murder of the director was very difficult.”

  He looked at Diana. She was staring at the stone, the tears welling in her eyes. “This was his last work,” she said, “and so beautiful.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Le Bugue

  Tuesday, 5:48 p.m.

  “They’ll try to find out the name of the Englishman who first spotted the moss and get back to us,” McNeise said. “The director’s secretary may have made a note of the meeting. Her name is Hélène Scaviner; she lives in Cahors but she’s in Cherbourg visiting her sister and they haven’t been able to reach her yet. They say she was close to the director, a man named Ponge. They have learned that the heavy equipment was rented. No big surprise there. They’re trying to trace the identity of the contractor, but there was nothing in Ponge’s records and no notes or chits or letterhead left in any of the equipment itself. None of the guides or museum employees remember seeing any names on the cars or shirts of the contractors and none of the workmen paid for anything with credit cards. They’ll try other sources, but since the bureaus are all closed by now it will take some time.”

  They were sitting in an Italian restaurant called La Pergola, a block from the Vézère in a village called Le Bugue. The sky was steel gray, the river brown. They were drinking Lacryma Christi rosso, absorbing the impact of the day. They talked about the paintings and about the cave, about David and about his work. Diana was eating small pieces of bread and some broth. There was no street traffic except for an occasional bicycle. They could hear the sound of the river in the distance.

  “Quite a feat,” McNeise said. “How do you bring a section of rock that size six or seven thousand miles?”

  “By private aircraft,” Tom said. “The window of opportunity was too tight for anything but a plane and the stone slab was too big for a common carrier. Besides, it would have attracted too much attention; it would have been like a grand piano crate with the weight of a tank. We’re talking more than organization to pull this off. We’re talking very big money.”

  “Not as a return on investment,” McNeise said. “The paintings would be priceless.”

  “But who would front the money?”

  “No one connected. They prefer sure things like numbers or dope; they wouldn’t invest in ice-age cave paintings.”

  “It has to be a single-source contract,” Tom said. “A rich collector who wanted something unique and who had the means to buy it.”

  “Along with two murders.”

  “Two that we know of,” Tom said.

  “True. There’s something else we can say about the person who wanted the paintings of the horses,” McNeise added. “He’s somebody who doesn’t feel the need to share. No one’s ever going to see the paintings except for him. He left the copy for everyone else. That tells you something too. He doesn’t want just art—the copy’s beautiful—he wants the object. And he doesn’t want anybody else to have it.”

  “David would never have done that for money,” Diana said, breaking her silence. She paused for a moment before speaking again. “Tom’s right. He must have been threatene
d or coerced in some way.”

  “They probably threatened to hurt you,” Tom said. “I didn’t want to say anything earlier, but it’s pretty obvious, don’t you think? Your parents are gone. There was no one with whom your brother was involved. The two of you were extremely close. What else would they threaten him with? What else could they take away? This was big. It wasn’t just a simple favor. The project would have taken weeks, probably months. The way he would have gone about it it could have taken even longer. Did you ever feel as if you were being watched or followed—I mean months before his death.”

  “I don’t know. Nothing specific. I live alone and spend a lot of time in the worst parts of the city. I sometimes feel as if someone might be watching. We all feel that way sometimes, don’t we?”

  “Yes, but it’s usually not true,” Tom said. “Did anyone contact you, anyone suspicious?”

  She shook her head and didn’t respond further; her thoughts were on her brother and the things he must have suffered in trying to protect her. The silence would have been the worst—keeping it all to himself, not being able to tell her what he was going through. Dealing with thieves and murderers. Being forced to use his talents for terrible people and terrible purposes.

  “I’ll call the Chief,” Tom said. “I’ll bring him up to date and ask him to check your brother’s client list. Most of them would be wealthy but not in the league to pull off something like this. Obviously whoever’s behind this admired your brother’s work. Perhaps he had purchased something else earlier.”

  “I can make a discreet run through our data bases,” McNeise said. “Art collecting and homicide are an unusual mix; we’ll see if we can turn anything. We can also take some shots in the dark. We can ask the IRS to check on big tax write-offs for gifts to museums or art schools and see what names fall out. We’ll check on calls to and from all the heavy equipment contractors in France. We can check the rentals of private aircraft and registered flight plans in California and France.”

  “What was the poison used to kill the director?” Tom asked.

  “Arsenic,” McNeise answered.

  “Too many industrial applications. That could have come from anywhere. How about car and truck rentals in France? They had to get around somehow.”

  “The French are checking on that,” McNeise said. “They’re also checking credit card chits from all restaurants and service stations within a fifty-mile radius of the area.”

  “Good,” Tom said.

  “That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?” Diana said, taking a drink of her wine and then putting down the glass.

  “What’s that?” Tom asked.

  “They kill and steal and we have to study records, work our way through lists, check and cross check, ask questions, jog memories.”

  “Unless they show themselves,” Tom said. “Then it can happen much more quickly. There’s only one problem . . .”

  “They already have what they wanted here. Their only reason for showing themselves now would be if they wanted to kill a few more of us,” Diana said.

  Tom nodded as McNeise got up from the table. “I’m going to check in with Jeff and see what’s happening.”

  He returned in three minutes. “That’s odd,” he said. “I asked him to stay in your room, to wait for calls, turn the lights off and on, run the television set, and generally make people think you were there. He’s not answering.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Les Eyzies de Tayac

  Tuesday, 7:40 p.m.

  They stopped in the lot of the Centenaire at the south end of the village and talked their way through possible scenarios. “If something has happened and they’re waiting for us, we’ll be walking down a tunnel like silhouetted targets,” Tom said. “There’s only one road to the hotel, straight through the village, with shops on either side, open parking lots below and sloping rock shelters above. Think about it from their point of view. Your victims are coming toward you along a single path. Where would you position your people if you wanted to do maximum damage? In cars in the hotel parking lot or in the shrubs and trees along the lot’s perimeter? In the stairwells of the hotel? In the woods above the hotel in case we were suspicious and tried to circle around and come in through the rear?”

  “Possibly somewhere along the street,” Diana said. “Sitting at that pizza and ice cream place, watching the traffic, or just on the edge of one of the buildings, smoking cigarettes and checking faces and license plates. They’d want to know when we were approaching the hotel and how many of us there were. They could call ahead to people waiting at the hotel or direct fire from snipers in the woods or in second-floor windows. It’s only a few minutes’ walk from one end of the village to the other. Even with the pedestrian traffic, you’re exposed. They can see you coming and pick their opportunity.”

  “They could have explosives in the room and a sensor device,” McNeise said, “first-day-of-school technique. Or they could have a shooter out in the trees waiting for one of you to come to the window to close the shutters. Hell, they could lob in a grenade. Your window is no more than ten or eleven feet from the ground. They’ve got plenty of choices.”

  “Let’s try this,” Tom said. “Diana can stay here with the car. I’ll climb up to the path on the level above the street, the walkway the tourists use to visit the rock shelters. I’ll start down by the Prehistory Museum and then work my way up into the woods above the shelters, then circle around to the edge of the treeline behind the hotel. I’ll take my time and play cautious. You swing around to the left, down by the parking lots and the kiddie railroad, behind the shops on the main street. What time is it now?”

  “Ten of eight,” McNeise said.

  “It’ll be dark by 8:30. We’ll converge then on the rear of the hotel parking lot from opposite sides. I’ll be watching the trees and shrubs; I’ll have better visibility from above. You watch the cars and the areas at the edge of the building. If the lot’s clear we’ll go into the building, through the hotel kitchen and up the back stairs to the top level, then work our way down to the second floor and find out why your man’s not answering the phone.”

  “I’m not going to stay here,” Diana said. “What good will that do?”

  “It will be one less target if they try to kill us,” Tom said.

  “That means more bullets for the two of you,” she answered.

  “Look, I work for you,” Tom said, “not the other way around. I can’t afford to start losing cooperative citizens; it’ll kill the reputation of the department. Just sit tight here. We’ll be back at 9:00 or earlier.”

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “I’m fine, don’t worry,” he answered.

  “You have your automatic?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  Diana sat back in her seat and turned her head away. She cupped her face in her left hand and stared out the window. “Be careful,” she said, as they got out of the car.

  Tom climbed the steps to the rock shelter path above the village and passed the larger-than-life statue of Neanderthal Man, a tourist magnet. The sculpture was standing next to the railing, looking across the valley of the Vézère, the reason for his presence there (in lieu of Cro-Magnon man) not entirely clear. With his thick brow and hunched body he seemed tired and uncomprehending. Fifteen minutes later Tom was in the woods above the hotel. Crawling among the rocks, leaves, and pine needles, he was beginning to feel lightheaded. He checked his watch: 8:18. He surveyed the parking lot and the surrounding trees and shrubs. Except for a well-dressed elderly couple arriving for dinner the area was quiet.

  By 8:25 he had changed positions twice, each time trying for a better field of vision on the area below. He looked for McNeise in the distance but couldn’t see him. At 8:27 another car entered the lot, this one with a younger man and woman. They got out of their car, looked around the edge of the building, check
ed the lot a second time, locked their car, and left. With every parking place on the street occupied they were using the lot of the hotel illegally rather than driving to the more remote public lots below the village.

  At 8:30 Tom came out of the treeline and slipped down to the rear of the lot. He stepped on some dried leaves, froze, and then saw movement twenty yards ahead. It was McNeise, rising from a prone position. A few seconds later he was walking toward him. When they approached one another neither spoke. Tom pointed to the entrance to the kitchen at the rear of the building, they walked in, said their excusez-moi’s to the apprehensive staff and hurried to the rear stairs.

  The stairwell was empty. On the third floor Walt listened at the door of the man posted above Tom and Diana’s room. His name was Alain. Silence. They went back to the rear stairwell and walked down to the second floor. Walt put up his hand, signaling Tom to wait. He went into the linen closet at the end of the hall, slipped on a starched, white jacket, and put a freshly-folded towel over his right arm. In his left hand he held some miniature rosettes of soap; in his right he held a 9mm automatic.

  He knocked on the door and said, “Service.” There was no answer. He tried the knob and the door opened. The room was dark. He turned on the light and saw Jeff. He was sitting in a chair in the corner nearest the window. It was an overstuffed wing chair with flowered upholstery. It looked as if it might have been comfortable. Jeff was sitting upright, fully clothed, his hands on the armrests. There was a red and black bullet hole in the center of his forehead, his face webbed with tiny rivulets of blood. His mouth was distended by a salmon-colored napkin that had muffled any attempted cries. By then Tom was in the room, his weapon drawn. “His fingers have all been broken,” Walt said.

  Before Tom could respond, the door across the hallway flew open and two figures with ski masks and automatic pistols rushed toward them, spraying the room with fire. McNeise’s body contorted with the impact of multiple rounds. He fired back as he hit the wall. The wall lamp next to Tom was shattered by a burst of automatic fire and shards of glass tore into his neck and cheek. The figure at the edge of the doorway dove into the hall as Tom shot the other, standing under the light at the edge of the room. He lurched, fired four rounds in Tom’s direction, and stumbled back into the hallway. The other figure was already gone. The wounded man braced his arm against the wall and limped toward the stairwell, blurry and disoriented. Just then Diana appeared before him. He started to raise his pistol toward her and she leaped forward, driving her right fist into the center of his throat. His body jerked in pain and his neck and chest throbbed with spasmodic heaves as he fell to the floor. She ground the full weight of her right heel into his wrist and the pistol slid over his fingertips, a joint at a time.