Ghosts of Atlantis (Immortal Montero Book 3)
Page 15
“Based on today’s market price of $838 dollars an ounce and assuming the case weighs one kilo, it would cost $33,520.”
The tech glanced at Hamilton, who held his hands up.
“Whatever,” she said, and carried the shiny box out of the room.
“Are we done here?” I asked.
“Yes, I suppose,” Hamilton said. “Elliott can finish up with SID.”
“What do you want to do next?”
“You say the wall looked different and you sent readings to Preston. How can you be sure this is some door to another world? Is it that easy to tell? What if it was nothing?”
“Why don’t we ask the man himself?”
Chapter 24
Saturday, February 14, 11:48 a.m.
I turned onto Camellia Avenue in Studio City and cruised into the BioLaw parking lot, sliding the Italia into my reserved slot.
Hamilton and I rode the elevator to the second floor.
Dexter Preston did not buy his clothes at a store. Several tailors around the world had his measurements and provided him with the shirts and pants he liked. He charged his wardrobe to his expense account.
When he interviewed for the position, he only asked one question.
“Do I have complete autonomy?”
“You do.” I never hesitated. I had chosen him carefully, but had wondered if I could get him, even with the temptation of a seven-figure salary. Obese he may be, but only a handful of men on the planet had comparable gray matter. He accepted the assignment because BioLaw was a cutting-edge scientific and research company, and I promised him the opportunity to study his pet subjects, so long as BioLaw held the patents on anything he created.
His 17.2 million-dollar salary was also an incentive.
His desk was still neat and the only nod to his greasy-spoon diet was an unlabeled stained brown paper bag and a crumpled white-and-yellow single-serve packet of mustard. A bottle of Perrier sat on a thirsty stone.
And once again, he was crisp, even elegant, in a pale blue long sleeve silk shirt tucked into dark wool slacks.
Hamilton and I sank into the guest chairs facing him.
“Have you lost weight, Mr. Preston?”
“Stuff it.” He flicked his eyes at Hamilton.
“I told Steve about the interdimensional door,” I said.
“Told him?”
“It was no longer active when LAPD arrived.”
“Yes, I expected that.” Preston drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. I knew he wanted to grind me into bits over that lost opportunity. I was not very popular these days. Hamilton wanted to strangle me for more than one reason, and if he and Preston could get together, they’d probably figure out a way to roast me.
None of that compared to my loss of popularity with Aliena. No matter what problem I focused on, the background of my mind pulsed with fear for her, a strobe of red light tinging every thought.
Preston turned to his computer. “We’ve done an analysis of the readings you transmitted.” He pulled a second screen across his desk, facing Hamilton and me.
The screen filled with the video of the undulating blue gel.
“Whoa.” Hamilton shifted in his seat to get a better look. “That’s the wall in Spellman’s office?”
“At five this morning, yes,” I said.
Preston pointed to a series of numbers on the bottom of the screen. “Definitely a hyperdimensional environment. Electromagnetic readings indicate a quantum field of entangled particles.”
“What’s causing it?” Hamilton asked.
“Unknown. Whatever makes it go, the mechanism would need a lot of power.”
“So something controls it,” I said, thinking of Darius’s instructions.
“No doubt about it.”
“Wait a minute,” Hamilton said. “What do you mean, mechanism? Whose mechanism?”
“The billion-dollar question,” Preston said.
“No ideas?” I asked.
“Nothing worth talking about. It’s not like we have a lot to go on. I’m working on it.”
The litter of ancient weapons in Spellman’s dining room came to mind. How old was he? Marcus had avoided that question. When the sun set tonight, I intended to press the man for the answer to that and other questions relating to the late acolyte.
After I called Aliena and made sure she was safe.
“What is this hyper…whatever you call it?” Hamilton asked.
“What do you know about quantum mechanics, and the concept of entanglement?”
“I’m fucking Einstein on that shit.”
“That’s what I thought,” Preston commented. “As for Einstein, he thought the theory was flawed, but’s it’s been proven experimentally. The phenomena arise like this: when molecules like protons are close together, they can become entangled, meaning their properties become linked. If one molecule assumes a certain state, its entangled partner will assume a correlative state. Instantly. And it does not matter how great the distance between the molecules. That’s the bizarre part. It violates the rule of general relativity that says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. This information travels at superluminal speeds. Einstein called it “spooky action at a distance.””
Hamilton looked at me. “You get that?”
“Yes.”
“Your ass.”
I gave Preston a keen glance. “Entanglement provides the molecular basis for teleportation.”
“That’s right,” Preston said. “The phenomena in Spellman’s place could only occur if molecules in different realities were entangled with one other, creating the potential for a dimensional doorway.”
“Could the same action be true of the Archon cards?”
“Not bad, Sebastian. Yes, it’s likely.”
The card Aliena used to get to Bar Sinister was one of the Tarot of the Archons. We already knew the majors teleported a traveler to distant locations on the planet. Would it bring one home even if the person was travelling between realities?
Hamilton held his hands toward Preston as if pleading. “Wait, okay, just wait. Are you saying this doorway lets people from a different dimension into ours?”
“That’s right. And we can travel to theirs.”
“What would a different dimension be like?”
“If it’s not just different, but parallel, it would likely have a similar physical layout. There’s no way to know until someone travels there—and returns. But the science necessary to control this portal tells us their technology is far beyond ours.”
“Spellman must have known the doorway was there,” I said.
“Which means he probably traveled back and forth, so the doorway must be safe for humans.”
Darius was not human. That distinction might not be important. I was still irritated that Aliena had not allowed me to test the door.
“There was one anomaly in the data readings you sent us,” Preston said. He tapped his keyboard, moved his mouse, and brought up the video of the interdimensional rift. “This is slowed to half speed. Now watch…right there.” He clicked his mouse, pausing the playback. “See that bright flash right of center?”
A starburst glowed like a nova, eclipsing the surrounding silver-blue field with its whiteness. I remembered the tiny, intense flash when I filmed the phenomena.
“What is it?” Hamilton asked.
“Unknown. During the eighty-two seconds of video capture, there was only this one burst. Whatever it is, it does not appear to be part of the interdimensional field.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It is inside the flux. It may even be caused by it. We’re not sure. There is one thing we are sure of. That burst was intensely hot.”
“Oh?” Hamilton said. “How hot?”
“We pegged it in excess of 6,000 Celsius.”
“That’s hotter than a crematorium oven.”
“Much hotter.”
“Hot enough to burn a person to ashes?” Hamilton asked.
“What about the way he was burned?” I asked. “Anything on that?”
“Nothing on the ashes. Once a body is burned that completely, any DNA is destroyed. As for method, the fire investigator says electrical, but admits it’s a best guess. He has no idea how this could have happened.”
“Yeah, he told us. Did you talk to Watanabe?”
“I have her on a Skype session.” Preston leaned forward, moved his mouse, and opened a dialogue box. A live camera shot of an autopsy room at the LA County Coroner’s Office appeared on his monitor. “Tasha, you still with me?”
“Be right there,” said a distant voice. A few moments later, the microphones picked up the rustling sound of moving fabric. The picture filled with a white jacket momentarily. Deputy ME Watanabe moved in front of her computer’s camera, sat, and scooted forward. “Hi Dex. Are you ready?”
Dex?
“Yes. I have Sebastian and Detective Hamilton with me.” Preston angled his computer screen so Watanabe could see all three of us.
“Hello, you two.” Watanabe’s blue-black hair shone in the harsh lights of the autopsy room. “I’m afraid I don’t have much for you. The victim burned from intense heat, but we can find no traces of an outside accelerant as the cause.”
“Could it have been something electrical?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I read Mike’s report, too. If it was electrical, it would have to be something very unusual. I can’t even imagine a scenario where a man in contact with mega-voltage would be reduced to ashes.”
“SHC?” Preston said.
“Spontaneous Human Combustion? You are so funny.”
“Unexplained cases abound…” They laughed together. I had the strangest feeling the two of them had forgotten about Hamilton and me.
“I can’t wait to spread it around you suggested SHC,” Tasha said.
“Do that and I will take you over my knee,” Preston warned.
“Promise?”
It was not necessary to see Hamilton’s face to know it wore an expression of bewilderment at this repartee between Preston and our sexy Deputy Medical Examiner. Only my many years of witnessing the unexpected allowed me to maintain my aplomb.
“Tash,” Preston said coolly, “the samples you forwarded to us are ashes. Were the remains uniformly powdered like that?”
“Yes.”
“No chunks, no tiny bone fragments?”
“Nothing. We didn’t even get a bit of fried torso.”
They chuckled. Science humor.
“I don’t get it,” Preston said. “Not even a crematorium oven reduces a body completely to ash.”
“It sounds impossible, I know. And I can’t find anything in our database similar to this.”
“Neither can I.” Preston turned to Hamilton and me. “Well, anything else you can think of?”
I shook my head. I was sure I knew what had caused the demise of Darius the vampire. Unfortunately, my explanation suffered from one glaring problem: At 49, Marcus had spoken with the head priest, and confirmed the Apollo Ring had been under guard when the murder occurred.
“No,” Hamilton said. “Thanks, Tasha.”
“Sure. Call me later, Dex?”
“You got it.” Preston closed the Skype box.
Hamilton asked the question with no incredulity in his voice. “You and Watanabe got a thing going on?”
“Yeah, three times a week, at midnight.”
Hamilton opened his mouth, closed it.
“What about Mr. Darius Spellman?” I asked. “Been able to dig up anything on him?”
“A lot of useless information. Motorcycle purchases. Owned the house on Whitsett and several other properties in the Valley. Outstanding credit score. Clean DMV record. No other associations I can find. The guy’s a cipher. Did he have a computer?”
“We’ve got it in the lab,” Hamilton said.
“Hm.” Preston’s lips compressed.
I pulled the flash drive out of my pocket and handed it to him.
“Spellman’s?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You did some decent work last night, Sebastian,” he said, slotting the device in a USB port.
Hamilton shot me a look I did not return.
“It will take some time to analyze this,” Preston said, clicking his mouse rapidly.
“We’ll get out of your way.”
Chapter 25
Saturday, February 14, 2:28 p.m.
Riding down in the elevator, I tried to keep my attention on the mysterious circumstances surrounding Spellman’s death, but Aliena’s face continued to surface in my mind, her expression distant and cold.
February in the San Fernando Valley can run the gamut of weather conditions. Today it was dry, the temperature in the eighties, bright sunshine heliographing off the windshields of passing cars.
After Hamilton and I climbed into the Ferrari, he turned to me.
“You okay, Sebastian?”
“What do you mean?”
“All day you’ve looked distracted.”
“Just thinking about the case.”
I accelerated out of the parking lot, made a right turn onto Moorpark and headed for Van Nuys Boulevard.
“What do you think about Preston and Tasha?” Hamilton asked. “He was blushing, did you see that?”
“Yes.”
A short, barking laugh. “Wow. You think they’re doing it?”
“Do you?”
He shook his head. “If someone had even suggested the possibility, I would have said he was delusional. But his face…and she called him Dex.”
“They work together a great deal these days.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
The thought of Preston and Watanabe together drew my mind inexorably back to Aliena and how close we had become in the last few months. For many decades, I had known I loved her, but had held my feelings in check, recognizing her aloofness.
And then the miracle had happened: she fell in love with me. I had proposed to her and she had said yes. Holding her in my arms immediately after she accepted me, remembering how my spirit had soared when we kissed, was an exquisitely poignant memory.
My joy at our impending nuptials had lasted less than ten minutes. It astonished me that I had no idea if we would ever be together again.
Hamilton’s voice brought me out of my painful ruminations.
“How do you think this portal figures into Spellman’s death?”
“No idea, but I think you’re right—it has something to do with it.”
“How is Aliena doing?”
The sudden question caught me off guard. For a long moment, I did not know how to answer him.
“So that’s why you look funny,” he said softly. “Is she in trouble?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Then nothing.”
He rapped his knuckles against the window. “You’re usually a good liar, Sebastian.”
I accelerated through a yellow light. As much as I would have liked to share my fears with Hamilton, it was not possible to disclose Aliena’s current circumstances.
Normally, no mortal would ever be able to discern my mood from my expression, not even an exceptionally observant man such as Hamilton.
“I swear, I hate this,” he said. “It makes me wonder, you know?”
“Wonder what?”
“How much you’re not telling me.”
Chapter 26
Saturday, February 14, 3:39 p.m.
I drove home after dropping Hamilton at the Van Nuys station. Preston’s analysis of Darius’s hard drive would take two or three hours—longer if the files were heavily encrypted. I did not have much hope that we would learn anything new from the vampire’s computer, but the drill was necessary.
Shrugging out of my jacket, I tossed it on the couch. I toed
my shoes off, switched on the air conditioner, and lay down on the carpet next to the long coffee table, my feet pointed toward the fireplace.
Closing my eyes, I allowed my mind to slip into the past, that I might temporarily escape the dreadful reality of the present.
Tarragona observed the Festival of Santa Tecla every year in September, a two-day celebration that began with vespers at sunset. Karina and I rode to the city’s ancient cathedral in the early evening with a retinue of my men and their families. The streets had been cleaned and the houses festooned with ribbons in preparation for the many traditional dances that would parade through the town.
It had been four months since Karina and I had married.
With quiet authority, she had taken my household staff in hand and now managed my home, leaving me to tend the vineyards and work with my men.
We ate dinner together every night. In my private bachelor life before Alejandro summoned me, I had dined frequently at the town inn, where I would occasionally choose one of the serving girls to entertain me upstairs.
Karina and I never went there.
At the end of the day, we often rode along the shore. She was an experienced rider and her mare, Andromeda, a fleet four-year-old. Some evenings, the two of them would suddenly gallop away, Andromeda kicking up chunks of sand, Karina shouting a challenge. Perseus and I would pound after them, pushed to our limits to run the pair down.
When we finally caught up with them and reined in, Karina and I steered the horses into the shallow surf, the four of us panting from the chase. As the day’s final rays disappeared into the darkling Mediterranean, Karina and I would hold hands, Perseus and Andromeda rubbing their noses together, the four of us spiritually connected in those moments. If you’ve never had a horse, it is difficult to explain the complexity of this bond. I knew the horses found the sunset as mystically sublime as Karina and I did.
We spent our evenings in quiet companionship, often reading poems to one another. She had remained in contact with the bookseller she knew in Barcelona. During the second year of our marriage, we purchased all the books in his stock—a grand total of seventeen volumes. The books included three Bibles, each in a different language. Added to the seven volumes she already had, she owned more books than most churches.