by Alex Archer
He most frequently contacted spirits. The spirits, unattached to this mortal realm or its constraints of time, provided him knowledge both from past and future.
Such knowledge was what Benjamin paid for. How certain stocks would perform, and those patents he bought and sold as if candy. Serge did not understand the man’s business, but he did not have to. The spirit he contacted understood completely, and took greedy delight in providing details. It was demonic, the vibe Serge felt when he conjured.
Rarely did he summon demons, though they had their uses.
Remembering what he was doing, Serge gave his head a shake. He’d fallen out of trance. He’d never get this right if he couldn’t concentrate.
He was so close to holding the skull. It would give him good things.
He felt it in his bones.
SHE’D BE AT TITO’S in less than ten minutes. Annja couldn’t walk fast enough. She shoved a hand in her coat pocket to retrieve her jingling cell phone.
Professor Danzinger started in without introduction. She had to chuckle at his enthusiasm.
“It’s quite incredible, Annja. I know I was initially reluctant about looking over another skull, but those carvings…Well, I don’t believe they are actual carvings.”
She paused on the street corner, waiting for a green light. The thief’s backpack, with tools intact, was slung over her shoulder. “What could they be, if not carved?”
“I don’t know! It’s as if—well, you’ll think me crazy.”
“That’s a word I’ve never heard associated with the rock-and-roll Danzinger.”
“You tease, Annja. But the markings inside the skull? It’s as if it was born that way. As if the brain’s many convolutions had somehow made the impressions on the skull’s interior. They are not carved, it is a reverse imprint.”
The light turned green. She was bustled across at the head of a crowd of pedestrians. “Born that way? Professor, what have you been smoking?”
“Nothing! Yet. Heh.”
Again she chuckled and skipped across the street to the restaurant.
“I’m mapping out the interior with the snake camera, but it’s a slow go. I stayed most of the night. It’s so incredible, I didn’t want to leave it alone.”
“Huh. Then maybe we really have something there. Do the markings give any indication to provenance? Year? Nationality?”
“Who can know? And I’m no anthropologist, so I haven’t a clue to begin assigning nationality or even sex from bone structure. It’s difficult enough with an infant’s skull. I haven’t had the opportunity to research online for anything like this. I never do trust the Internet. Not sure I’ll find time to run over to the library, either. There won’t be many researchers around because of the holiday break.”
“Right, I forgot, it’s Thanksgiving weekend.”
“I take it that means you’ve no family plans?”
“Nope, just me and the Macy’s Parade on TV.”
“I’d invite you to share the day with me, but all I can offer is turkey TV dinners.”
“Sounds like heaven. Tomorrow?”
“It’s a date. But I will be here all evening pouring over this incredible skull. Can I keep it until our date?”
Should he have termed it a date? She was not going to sleep with the man. Seriously. She was no longer a blushing college girl.
“Certainly. You know of anyone in the area who can date it for us?”
“I’ll give Lamont a call. Not sure if they have the equipment, but it’s worth a shot. That is, if anyone is around and not packed off over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house. Annja, I must let you go. I got another clear shot from inside. I’m starting to paste things together to get the big picture.”
“Call me when it’s finished. Thanks, Professor.”
Annja slid the phone into her pocket, and entered Tito’s. The hostess knew her and directed her to a table near the back. Born that way? Incredible, she thought.
But nothing—as the holder of Joan of Arc’s sword should know—was impossible.
“I ordered for you,” Bart said as she slid into a booth. “I know you like the pulled pork with sofrito.”
“Mmm, all those peppers and onions. Thanks for agreeing to meet me today.”
She rubbed her hands together and blew on them to bring up the warmth. “Wine, too? You spoil me, Bart.”
“It’s on the house.”
The owner, Maria, knew them both and always made sure they were well fed and happy. This wasn’t the first time she’d gifted Annja and Bart with wine. It was almost as if she wanted to play matchmaker, designing a romantic setting with wine and food.
“Is that the evidence?” he asked.
She nudged the backpack toward his feet under the table. “All intact, save one very interesting skull. I just talked to the professor. He’s very excited about the inner carvings.”
“Sorry, I can’t relate to anything old and dusty like you do, Annja.”
“Sure you can. You must study cold evidence? Bones dug up from backyards? Old bloodstains? It’s all the same.”
“I leave that for forensics.”
Dinner arrived. Tito’s served generous portions designed to feed a small crowd or, at the very least, a hungry archaeologist.
“I’m so glad we changed our plans, Bart. I’m starving.” Annja dug in. The plantains nestled beneath the tender pork were sweet and, combined with the savory meat, absolutely sang on her palate.
Arms crossed on the table, Bart looked her over, smiling. A tiny scar at the right of his eye gave him a heroic visage, yet Annja knew it was from falling off the swing when he was seven. He’d been trying to jump higher than the cute neighborhood girl, and had failed miserably.
“You look great, Annja. I haven’t seen you in a while. Really good,” he drew out the compliment.
“Thanks.” She shoveled two more forkfuls and a hearty swallow of water.
“And famished. Pace yourself, or we’ll need another bottle of wine before you get to dessert.”
“Nothing wrong with that. I’m no connoisseur, but this stuff is excellent.”
“It is better than anything I’ve had lately.” He dodged his glance from the wine to her face. “Is that a bruise?”
She rubbed her jaw. “Slipped on a dig.”
“I doubt it.”
Annja shrugged and sipped the white wine. The man was a detective and possessed remarkable deduction skills. She couldn’t put a lie past him if she tried. So back to redirection. “This stuff is great. I wonder if I could get another order just to take home for lunch tomorrow?”
“Avoiding the subject as usual.”
Setting down her fork and settling against the hard chair back, Annja relented. “What is the subject?”
“You and your current death-defying adventure. And me and my worries.”
“I’m a big girl, Bart.”
“You are. But big girls don’t swim in the Gowanus Canal with dead men.”
“I thought this was a reunion, not an interrogation.”
“Okay, let’s eat. But don’t fault me for caring about you.”
“I would never.” She drank more wine because it was easier when she had something to do with her hands than just sitting dumbly, open, allowing him into her personal space with his delving gaze. “So how’s it with the NYPD?”
“Great. Couldn’t be happier. Well, I could, but that’s personal.”
“Personal stuff! It’s about time. I want to hear some dirt. No girlfriends?”
“Not lately. You?”
“Girlfriend? Nope, I don’t swing that way.”
Bart chuckled. “I’m glad I got you out tonight.”
“I am, too.” She held up her wine and Bart matched the move. “To good friends.”
“Who worry about each other,” he said.
By the time they’d finished the meal and the bottle of wine Annja had learned Bart was considering online dating. Just to check it out. To lea
rn the scene, he’d used the excuse, in case it ever came up on a case.
Why a good-looking guy like Bart had to resort to finding a woman online was beyond her. It must have something to do with his broken engagement. It had hurt him, she could sense. Bart was doing the rebound thing, looking for a replacement for his fiancée. Rebounds never worked out. Even he confessed that much.
So he was basically looking to get laid, though he’d never say it outright like that. She could understand. Who didn’t want a little human contact now and then?
They stepped outside into a light flutter of snow. Before Annja could say anything, Bart pulled her in for a hug. A good hug. Not flirtatious, yet it warmed every part of her body. She clung to his shoulders before gently moving away.
“How’d you know I needed one of those?”
“Really? That one was for me.” He winked as a snowflake dashed his eyelid. “This one is for you.”
The second hug was even better than the first. Yet Annja couldn’t enjoy it completely because, much as the close contact appealed, she did not want to be Bart’s rebound girl.
12
“Daddy!”
Ben swung his briefcase into the maid’s waiting arms and glided into the living room to greet his daughter. She didn’t rise to hug him. Instead, her attention was glued on the television.
“You got home early tonight, Daddy,” Rachel announced, without looking from the plasma screen.
“I wanted to spend some time with the most beautiful girl in the world.”
“Mommy?”
“No, you, silly.” He settled on the sofa next to her, and tucked the end of the pink scarf she wore tied about her scalp behind her ear. “Where is Mommy?”
“Upstairs, taking a bath. She put supper in the microwave for you. We had beets.” Rachel managed a second away from the TV to comment on supper with a distasteful wrinkle of her nose.
“Maybe I’ll forget they’re in there?” he teased. “I had salad again today. I think we need a new cafeteria at the office. It’s either salad or cold roast-beef sandwiches.”
“Mommy said to say good-night to you.”
She always did deliver that morsel through Rachel.
Attention still fixed on the television, Rachel asked, “Why does Mommy always go upstairs as soon as she hears you drive into the garage?”
He couldn’t explain that he and Mommy were not on best of terms lately. Linda blamed him for the impossible.
Ben glanced over the back of the couch. The box of roses sat on the kitchen table, unopened. Great. Not as if he hadn’t expected that reaction, though.
“Mommy gets tired early.” He summoned the lie easily because it had become rote. “I see her when I go upstairs after you’ve gone to bed.” As I grab my shirt and suit coat from the closet for tomorrow and sneak into the guest bedroom.
“Uh-huh.”
Behold, the idiot box’s remarkable power. Ben wondered if Rachel’s teachers had ever captured her attention as easily as a six-foot plasma TV. This “coming home early to tuck the kid in” thing was going over like a boulder tossed in a pond.
“How you feeling tonight, sweetie?”
“Good. Not sick.”
“Not sick is always good.”
He stroked his fingers over the soft blond hair that snuck out from under her scarf and kissed the crown of her head. The hair had begun to grow back in superfine strands.
Rachel wrinkled her nose but snuggled in closer to him. “You smell good, Daddy. What’s the spice again?”
“Cloves. And you smell—” he sniffed her hair “—like a purple dinosaur.”
“It’s groovy grape! I love that shampoo. It’s so mummy I could eat it.”
Ben propped his heels on the coffee table and nestled beside his daughter’s warm yet frail body.
The past two months she’d been through radiation therapy. Yet even with radiation, the chordoma tumor the doctors had removed from the base of her skull could grow back. In fact, the oncologist had seemed sure of it. The relentless cancer could lie in hiding for as long as ten years, and then suddenly strike again.
Rachel had lost weight and hair—but not hope. He worried he’d break her if he hugged her too tightly.
“What are you watching that has your attention so rapt?”
“Chasing History’s Monsters. What’s ‘rapt’?”
“Rapt is what you are right now. Glued to the set. Immersed in the screen. Can’t bother to give your dad a real hug. Chasing History’s Monsters? Sounds creepy.”
“It’s not, Daddy. It’s got this really pretty woman who stalks through caves and forests and tries to find monsters. She’s really smart, too. Not like the other woman with the big knockers.”
“Knockers? Rachel, where did you pick up a word like that?”
“Tracy says her dad calls them knockers.”
“That’s not an appropriate word for little girls to use.”
And did they still use that word nowadays? Apparently so.
“Mom calls them boobs. What do you call them, Daddy?”
Ben pointed to the TV to avoid the topic. “Is that her? The one with the, er…”
“No, she’s the smart one I like.”
The chestnut-haired woman on the screen held some bit of pottery and pointed out the crack in it. Her voice commanded with a good solid tone. Droll, but punctuated with real enthusiasm. She was obviously very learned and passionate, even about some crud-encrusted bit of vase.
“She is very pretty,” he agreed.
“Her name’s Annja Creed, and she travels everywhere,” Rachel explained. “I want to be like Annja Creed someday.”
“Host of a television show?”
“No, silly, an archaeologist,” she said, indicating he was a dunderhead for not getting it straight.
“That woman’s an archaeologist? Huh.”
He had no idea pothunters were so physically appealing. And so what if her knockers weren’t so big, she was a nice package—brains, looks and confidence.
The show broke for commercial and Rachel said, “I e-mailed her the other day.”
“Who? The lady on the television?”
“Yep. It was about the Skull of Sidon.”
Ben’s heartbeat suddenly raced. How could she possibly know? “Rachel, what do you know about the Skull of Sidon?”
“Well, not much until I did research. I saw it scribbled on one of your work papers last week, Daddy. Don’t you know about it?”
“Yes, but it was just…” A stupid mistake to put questionable information out there for his daughter to find. That made him as inept as the men he’d hired to track Cooke. “It must have been something I heard on a television show. It was just a scribble, sweetie.”
“Yeah, well, I thought it would be perfect for my history report, so I researched it online and wrote an outline for my teacher. She was not happy.”
Ben rubbed a palm over his face. He wasn’t sure how much Rachel could have dug up on the skull, but if the teacher hadn’t been pleased…
“She didn’t want me writing about necrophilia! Do you know what that is, Daddy? Gross.”
“Yes, Rachel, sorry. It’s another of those things kids your age shouldn’t have to worry about. You should have asked me about it before going to your teacher with it.”
“Why are you studying old skulls and all that gross stuff?”
“I’m not, sweetie. Like I said, it was just something that caught my ear, and I wrote it down. Nonsense stuff. You know Daddy is always taking notes in case he gets ideas for work. So did the lady on TV write back to you?”
“Nah. She’s probably really busy. Too busy for a kid, I’m sure.” Rachel sighed. “I really like Annja Creed. Wish she would have wrote back to me.”
She finally shuffled in for a proper hug and Ben squeezed her gently. “It’s about time. I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten how to hug. Want me to tuck you in?”
“Can I watch the end of the show first?”
She gave him the patented pouty face, but Ben knew it wasn’t for real because she followed with a yawn. Poor thing. She’d missed two days of school this week thanks to stomach flu. Last week it had been radiation sickness.
“All right, I’ll go to bed. But will you carry me?”
Ben leaned forward and slapped his back. “Climb on, pardner.”
He secured his daughter’s legs with both arms and pounced through the living room, down the hall and up the stairs to tuck her in. He moved swiftly, because more important things than good-night kisses and wishes for sweet dreams must be tended.
On his way back down to the living room, Ben got sidetracked. The master bedroom door was open. Low light glowed across his wife’s shoulders. It had been too many months since he’d seen her bare skin. He couldn’t remember when he’d last touched it.
Pausing in the doorway, he admired Linda as she pulled the brush through her long blonde hair.
Admittedly, Rachel’s cancer had been tougher on his wife. She was the one who had to bring their daughter to her doctors’ appointments and radiation treatments. It had changed Linda. Made her harder. Distant.
Ben didn’t know how to crack that hardened exterior. So he did not try. Instead, he sought acceptance from others. Rebecca’s exterior was soft and lush and always giving. And she never blamed him for things he could not control.
Linda’s tearful tirade still lived fresh and so punishing in his memory. Two months earlier, Ben had been watching Rachel at the park. He’d wanted her to have a fun afternoon before her doctor’s appointment that day. He and Linda had been concerned about Rachel’s frequent verbal slurs and loss of equilibrium.
He’d had a lot to do that day, as usual, and had spent more time on his BlackBerry than he had watching his daughter. He’d lost her for one heart-wrenching harrowing hour.
Linda had been out of her mind by the time the Central Park police had found Rachel huddled at the base of an oak tree, oblivious to her parents’ fears as she’d chatted with her Barbie dolls.