With a shock, he realized that the water was rising. It was already at his knees and the ripple layer was appearing across the top of the front passenger seat. He watched as a loose paper lying there gently rose from the bone-dry seat cover, floating on phantom waters.
Belasco looked out the side window, fully expecting the glittering layer to be covering the whole parking lot. After all, such an effect could hardly be localized, whether or not it existed only in his own mind. He was surprised and alarmed to see it was not. Outside looked perfectly normal; the water that was not water was confined to his car, and it was still rising. When it reached his waist, he decided it was past time to put scientific observation aside and vacate himself from the experiment in progress.
The door wouldn’t open. It didn’t feel locked; there was no give in the handle at all. It might as well have been cast directly as part of the door. He undid his seat belt easily enough, the non-water splashing with his movements, and he tried the handle again. It refused to move even slightly. He turned the key to switch on the electrical systems, and the dashboard illuminated as normal. He’d feared they might short, but apparently the non-water was non-conductive.
Belasco pushed the toggle to lower his window. Nothing happened. He could hear the motor laboring, but the window wouldn’t move at all.
The water was up to his chest.
He was still not panicking, but worry was becoming fear. He tried the door handle again, but it still resisted even when he put his weight behind it, moving not a millimeter. He reached across to the passenger door and, as he did so, his face dipped beneath the surface of the glittering nothing.
He couldn’t breathe. Nothing filled his mouth, nothing at all. Certainly not air.
He sat up, eyes wide, gasping. It was as if the car was filling with a heavy, unbreathable gas. He found himself thinking in those terms because it was easier to rationalize than the concept of ghost water. He ignored how the light glittered across a liquid that was itself invisible and almost intangible. He ignored how it splashed and how he felt drops of nothing strike his skin, to leave it dry but for his sweat.
Keeping his head above the layer, he tried the passenger door, but it would not open, as intractably sealed as the other.
Finally, fear blossomed into panic. Belasco lay across the seat and kicked at the passenger window. He felt the water resist his movements, saw the surface surge in reaction to his movements, held his breath as his mouth dipped below the glittering reflections. The window might as well have been made of steel. His kicks did not even make the glass vibrate under the blows. He turned and braced himself with his back against the seat and his feet against the windshield, then tried to force it out. The glass did not bow even the tiniest fraction to all his frantic strength.
James Belasco was observed as he died. The increasingly desperate responses to his deteriorating situation were mentally noted as the experiment approached its conclusion. How the car slowly lowered on its suspension as it filled with water that wasn’t there. How the shell of the car, its body, doors, and glass, all behaved anomalously. How Belasco clung on to the very end, pushing his face into the diminishing layer of breathable air in the compartment.
When even that layer had gone, Belasco writhed and convulsed, drowning on dry land. It lasted almost a minute. Then he hung there in the roof space, floating facedown.
The body slowly sank to lie sprawled across both front seats as the car simultaneously rose on its suspension. Less than two minutes later, all was normal once more, but for the small detail of the corpse of a man who had died as no man had ever died before.
* * *
Carter’s cell phone rang. He checked the display before accepting the call. The number wasn’t withheld, but neither he nor his phone’s directory recognized it.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Carter?” said a voice. He didn’t know it. The ambience on the line sounded as if the caller was outdoors. “The private investigator?”
“Speaking.”
“Mr. Carter, my name is James Belasco. I’m a professor of mathematics at Clave College. I…”
There was a pause of several seconds. Carter was about to speak when Belasco continued, “I believe I’m in danger. Would it be possible for you to come to the math department as soon as possible?”
Carter wasn’t even sure where Clave College was. It only rang a few distant bells. Before he could ask for directions, Belasco said, “No, that might not be safe. Meet me in the east parking lot. I drive a silver Ford Focus.”
“If you’re in danger, Professor, you should call the—”
Belasco hung up.
Carter looked at the phone, nonplussed. He called the number back, but after ringing for thirty seconds, it was put through to voice mail.
Carter was in his office, so he did a fast search. Clave College, it transpired, was in Providence.
Carter pushed his chair back, a chair still blissfully on casters, and rubbed his mouth as he thought. He’d been intending to go back to Providence for the weekend anyway, and the Leverson case, such as it was, had tied itself up in a gift bow; he’d already had his last meeting with Mrs. Leverson. She’d nodded a few times, said very little as he laid out what he had learned, paid him in cash, and left very quickly. He got the feeling she’d somehow been hoping to be proved wrong, despite everything.
His schedule was clear. Fine, he would head up to Rhode Island a couple of days earlier than planned.
* * *
There were police vehicles in the parking lot, and an ambulance pulling away as Carter approached. The lot was taped off and so Carter had to go around the block to find a parking place. He walked back and joined the crowd of students and gawkers who were just starting to dissipate.
“Hey,” said Carter to a group of three who were talking about getting a drink, “what happened here?”
“They found a dead guy in that car,” said one, and pointed to the silver Ford Focus that was the center of CSU attention.
“Suicide,” said another.
“Dude, you don’t know that,” said the first.
Carter thanked them, and they headed off to find a bar. The CSUs were taking away a cell phone in an evidence bag. Carter guessed that meant they’d found it in the car rather than on the body. On impulse, he took out his own cell, selected the call he’d had from Belasco, and returned it.
The crime scene tech carrying the bag stopped as the phone in it illuminated and vibrated.
Carter stepped over the line and approached the nearest cop, holding up his wallet to show the PI license in the window. He nodded at the tech who was passing the ringing phone to a colleague, and held up his own phone.
“That’s me,” said Carter. “I need to speak to the detective in charge.”
* * *
The senior detective’s name was Harrelson. Carter had never heard of him, but Harrelson knew Carter.
“I know that name,” he said when he examined Carter’s license.
“It’s not an uncommon one,” said Carter, knowing what was coming.
“You used to be a cop?”
Carter nodded.
“The Child-Catcher? That was your pinch?”
Carter nodded again. He knew there was more to come.
Harrelson, a raw, broad man with razor rash on the folds in his neck, handed Carter’s license back to him. “That was rough about your partner, man. I’m sorry.”
Carter smiled the tight little smile he kept for these times. He said the words automatically, a reflex he had conditioned so his mind could be elsewhere as the words rolled out. “Thanks. It just happened. There was no warning, no hint. Never really know why he did it.”
The syllables slid out of Carter’s mouth, less an explanation than a catechism. As always, they worked, because the listener never really wanted to hear them anyway.
“So,” said Harrelson, the “brotherhood of cops” business out of the way to his satisfaction, “you knew the deceased?”
“No. Not
at all. I just got a call from him at”—he checked the call log of his phone—“13:06. I’d never heard of him before. Said his name was James Belasco, he was a math professor here, and he thought he was in danger. Asked me to meet him at the college, then changed his mind and said the lot. Told me he was in a silver Ford Focus.”
Harrelson looked across the asphalt at the car. “You get many calls like that in your work?”
“None,” said Carter. “Never before. I was coming up to Providence anyway, so I thought I’d check it out. Work’s work.”
“You didn’t call him back.”
“I did, twice. Went to voice mail both times. Your techs will find my messages when they go through his cell.”
Harrelson nodded, still looking at the car rather than at Carter. He seemed distracted.
“What happened to him?” asked Carter. He wasn’t expecting a straight answer, if he got one at all.
“Don’t know. The ME’s gonna love this one.” He rubbed his neck where the shirt collar chafed the skin.
Carter hid his surprise. Harrelson actually wanted to tell him. “Oh?” he said, priming the pump. “Why’s that?”
“Only time I ever seen a body with foam on its lips like that, it wasn’t drugs. It was drowning.”
“In a parking lot?”
“In a dry parking lot, yeah.” Harrelson laughed. “It’ll be some kind of poisoning. Maybe his lungs filled. Breathing in chlorine gas can do that.”
“Maybe.” Chlorine gas was fractionally more likely than a man drowning in his car, Carter guessed. “This place have a chemistry department?”
“Yeah, but not a big one. Chlorine’s easy to make, though. They used it in World War One, didn’t they?” Carter shrugged. “Yeah, they did. Must be pretty easy to make.” Harrelson finally looked at Carter. “We’ll take a statement now, while you’re here. Take a look at your phone to check the call timings, too. Okay?”
* * *
Carter reached Hill’s Books just as Lovecraft was closing the place. “Well, hello,” she said, opening the door to his wave through the window. She smiled and frowned at the same time. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”
“Work brought me up to Providence, so I thought I might as well stay over,” he said. “How’s business, partner?”
“Not so bad, partner,” she replied, letting him in. Her body language was tense, but happily so. She was having a hard time hiding a grin.
“What’s going on?” Carter asked slowly.
The grin broke out. “A coup,” she said, “an absolute solid gold coup. I’ve been hugging myself for the last twenty-four hours. Get this: two days ago I had an inquiry after a pretty obscure book, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada by William Cecil, the Baron Burghley. Burghley was a big deal in the court of Elizabeth the First.” Carter looked at her blankly. She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, the client wants it in a first edition. A first edition.” Carter still wasn’t showing the requisite excitement. “That’s 1588, Dan! So I check it out, and all I find is that a copy came up for auction a year or two ago, and went for over thirty K. That’s too rich for this business. We’ve never dealt with anything that rare. So I put the inquiry to one side with half a plan to put it the way of some of the bigger fish and maybe wrangle a commission out of it if it happens.
“This morning I’m going through my e-mails and find a sales list from an English country house. They’re not going to auction. They want the money fast, so they got in somebody to price the books and just put them straight on sale, first come, first served.” She raised her eyebrows, encouraging him to speak.
He obliged her. “And they had this Armada book?”
“And they had the Armada book! First edition, not excellent condition, reboarded last century, good but not great binding, and going for … five thousand! That’s pounds, so about eight and half thousand dollars. The list was sent in the late evening there, so I’m guessing not many of the Brits are awake, and not many collectors outside the UK will be as interested as them. But time’s ticking. I didn’t have time to get in touch with the potential buyer, so I made an executive decision and bought it. Sale confirmed first thing next morning, UK time. Few hours later, the buyer agrees it’s the best copy they’ll realistically get, and pays out…” She could hardly stop herself from laughing. “Eighteen thousand! About nine and half thousand dollars gross profit for a few hours’ work. How awesome is that?”
“Especially since you never even saw the book.”
“I will never see the book. Got a colleague in the UK who’ll handle the exchange for me for a commission. Nothing big, three hundred and change, plus the courier expenses. Even then, we’re still nine thousand ahead.” She shook her head, excited by the retelling. “Weird never even seeing the book. I feel like a speculator. ‘Hey, stuff! Go from here to there, and make me some money.’”
“You look like you’d have burst if you hadn’t had someone to tell that story to,” said Carter, laughing with her.
“Ah, I told Ken, but he doesn’t get it. Difficult for him to think down to a level where nine thousand is a big deal. That’s not a criticism. It’s just the way it is.” Talking about it reduced her excitement a little and the words no longer flowed, but broke against the rocks as the torrent of her enthusiasm subsided.
“I haven’t eaten,” said Carter. “Have you?”
“No. No chance this afternoon.” She brightened. “I am going to buy you dinner, to celebrate my business acumen and all-around genius.”
“No,” said Carter, “the business is going to buy us dinner to celebrate your business acumen and all-around genius.”
“That’s kind of the business.”
“It’s the least it can do.”
Chapter 9
THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY
Carter took a brusque phone call from the Providence Police Department the next morning, asking him to come in as soon as possible.
He had suffered a bad night’s sleep again, and was beginning to think he and the little studio over the shop would never get along very well. This time the dreams had been chaotic and so metamorphic that he could barely remember any of the cavalcade of faces and events he had been dragged through by his unconscious mind. All through them, he had a feeling of being observed. It was nothing to start with, no worse than the sense of being under the eyes of the proctors during a school exam. As the dreams, the many, many twisting and interconnected dreams, writhed on with him as an unwilling passenger, however, the observation became first critical, then antagonistic, and finally fully malevolent. He’d awoken—he’d dreamed he’d awoken—to find the figure from his first dream in the building sitting on the end of his bed, face turned away. Then he’d awoken again, alone. He did not remember ever suffering from such double awakenings before.
He arrived at the station house, identified himself, was badged as a visitor, and taken to an office. When he was shown in, his stomach sank. Harrelson was there, looking uncomfortable, and so were two other men, one white, one black, both in their forties. Carter made a mental bet with himself that the white guy with the silver foxing at the temples was Harrelson’s lieutenant, and the slim black guy in the nice gray suit was his captain.
“Mr. Carter,” said Detective Harrelson, “I’d like to introduce you to Lieutenant Piers—” The white guy with the silver foxing extended his hand. Carter shook it. “And Captain Aspinall.” The slim black guy in the nice gray suit extended his hand. Carter shook it.
“You’ve been on the job, Mr. Carter, so we’ll skip to the chase,” said Aspinall. He took some report sheet from the desk against which he was leaning. “In your statement, you said you had never heard of the deceased, James Belasco?”
“That’s correct,” said Carter.
“Never met him? You’re sure?”
Carter was beginning to regret the good food and wine of the previous evening. He’d gone straight to bed when he got back. Maybe an hour’s research on Belasco would have sto
od him in better stead.
“I’m sure. Or, if I have met him, it would’ve been casually and his name never came up.”
Piers said nothing, but watched Carter steadily. Carter had a feeling this had all gotten the captain’s attention too early in the investigation for Piers’s comfort, and there was something too mild to be real resentment there as a result.
Harrelson handed Carter a photograph, a blowup of a license picture. “Recognize him?”
Belasco didn’t look comfortable in the picture. He was in his fifties, and probably used hair coloring. The immediacy of the DMV photo had robbed him of the opportunity to organize his hair properly, and the parting looked a lot like a comb-over. Belasco must have hated that picture.
Carter shook his head. “No. He’s pretty distinctive. I think I’d have remembered him.” He handed the picture back. “And I have no idea what the danger he was worried about was, or even why he called me when there must be a hundred PI offices between Providence and Red Hook.”
This caused a pause, and the exchange of significant glances between the police officers. Carter knew better than to ask why; they’d get around to it any minute.
“We pulled the camera feed from the parking lot,” said Harrelson. “It’s not great quality, and Belasco’s car was in the corner of the frame. We got some usable images, though.”
He opened the file and produced prints of time-coded images. “Here’s Belasco getting into his car.” The code read 12:57.
“The camera angle’s too high to see him in there. Take a look at this.”
It was simply a picture of the silver Ford Focus sitting there, timed at 13:01. There was something wrong about the picture. Carter looked hard at it.
Harrelson passed him the next. It was identical to the last, but the code was 13:04. No, not identical. The shadow was different. It took Carter a moment to understand why that should be. “What’s going on with the suspension? Why is it higher on this one?”
“That’s a good question, ain’t it?” said Harrelson.
“Nobody gets in or out after Belasco,” said Piers, “but it bellies down on its shocks, and then rises up again. CSU estimate you’d have to put at least three other adults in there to do that.”
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