Bestiary

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

If Carter had hoped his absences wouldn’t be noticed, he soon discovered he was dead wrong. By the time he checked into his office late one afternoon, he had a stack of While You Were Out slips piled next to his phone. At least two of them were from his angry boss, Gunderson. And when he checked his e-mail, the list went on and on — everyone from a federal official writing to let him know that a NAGPRA form hadn’t been filled out properly (he had already wasted countless hours on the bureaucratic red tape created by the discovery of the La Brea Man) to a scary hacker (how did these people find him?) declaring that “the blood of William Blackhawk Smith will be avenged.” There was even a plaintive e-mail from Del, asking if he should pack up and go back to Tacoma or was Carter planning to resume work soon?

There was so much explaining he should do — Carter knew that — but there was so little he could actually say.

His mail, too, was spilling out of his in-box. He did a quick riffle through it all, and stopped only when he found the oversized envelope from Dr. Permut’s lab at New York University. He and Permut had had their ups and downs, but when it came to analyzing and dating lab specimens, he was still the best in the game — and Carter had prevailed upon him to do him this one last favor. He ripped open the envelope, scanned the graphs stapled to the cursory cover letter, and found what he was looking for: the human bones Carter had retrieved from Pit 91 were approximately nine thousand years old, give or take a century or two.

And that was right in keeping with the bones of the La Brea Woman, discovered in a neighboring pit years ago.

It was something he could share — and was anxious to share — with Del, but at this hour he wasn’t likely to be anywhere in the museum. It was dark outside, and all Carter could see when he looked out his office window was his own reflection — and he didn’t look good. His shirt was rumpled and untucked, his hair needed combing, and his features looked drawn; he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since first seeing the bestiary, and he’d spent most of each day either researching the animals or observing them firsthand. Between the strain of the work, and the strain of keeping it all under his hat, he was starting to fray.

Even now, he knew he should just go home, get a good night’s sleep, and the next day report back for work — at the museum, not at the al-Kalli estate — but he couldn’t let go. Too much was happening, too much was in the wind. He felt guilty for letting Beth take up so much of the slack at home, and guilty for leaving Del in the lurch. Maybe now, he should just see where Del had left off the work on the La Brea Man, and drop off the carbon-dating report. Del would be as intrigued as he was by the results.

First, of course, he had to persuade Hector to take him down to the sub-basement, where he and Del had set up their makeshift lab. And though the standing orders from Gunderson limited Carter to the museum’s normal operating hours, and as a result, he expected some resistance, all he got instead was, “Only if you promise to come back with your friend.”

“My friend?”

“The man with the long white hair.”

Del was there?

“He’s as bad as you,” Hector said, turning the key to unlock the elevator. “I tell him, you have to stop working now or I could lose my job, and he says, ‘Hector, no one will know — and I will bring you a Big Mac when I go out later to get my dinner.’” Hector snorted as he let Carter into the elevator. “I can buy my own burgers,” he said, “but I can’t get another job so easy.”

“I’ll bring him back with me,” Carter said, “I promise.”

Hector snorted again, said, “I’ll leave the elevator running,” then headed back to his regular post between the dire wolves and the giant sloth.

Carter was elated. He could tell Del about the carbon-dating report in person, and at the same time he could apologize for going MIA. But what could he say by way of explanation? Del would know that for Carter to desert something as important as the La Brea Man, there would have to be something else of almost immeasurable significance hanging in the balance. And although that was exactly the case, it was the one thing Carter couldn’t say.

The lights, insufficient though they were, were on, and in the far distance, back where they’d set up the work space, he could hear the faint strains of Tammy Wynette. As he walked down the corridor, his sneakered feet making barely any noise, he felt himself still haunted by the al-Kalli creatures. They constituted the most spectacular collection imaginable. And he could see, the more he studied them, where their ancient mythological names and reputations had come from. The basilisk, whose breath could reputedly kill, was in fact an ankylosaurid whose breathing passages followed an extremely convoluted passage within the skull, allowing the animal to cool and humidify desert air before it reached its lungs. The griffin — or homotherium — had passed into legend as a winged lion, but the wings were actually just a massive mane of thick black fur that billowed out as the creature launched itself at its prey. The phoenix, a prehistoric vulture, surely did not rise from its own fiery nest, but perhaps its chicks could be mistaken for spits of bright red flame; Carter had yet to scale the aerie to see if there were any. And as for the manticore — or gorgon, as the scientific community would one day acknowledge it to be — its baleful glare and fearful jaws were enough to ensure its reputation as the man-eating predator of lore.

But if Carter was to figure out what was ailing these creatures — and how to remedy it — he would need so much more time to study them. And as al-Kalli had made abundantly clear, time was running out.

Del’s head was down as he worked in a pool of light shed by a goosenecked lamp they had brought down; an extension cord trailed off down the next aisle. The boom box was on top of the metal cabinet where the bones of the La Brea Woman were housed. Carter said, “Del,” but he wasn’t heard over Tammy. He came closer, and his shadow fell onto the disarticulated bones that Del was bent over. Del’s head whipped up, his white hair flying, real surprise in his eyes.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief, “you could have given me some warning.”

“I did,” Carter said, “but Ms. Wynette was louder.”

Del plopped back on a high stool behind him with his hands in his lap. “Nice of you to drop by,” he said. “After all this time, I’m glad you remembered where to find us.”

“Okay, I get it,” Carter said, knowing that he would be catching some flak. “I’m sorry I haven’t been more on top of this.”

“Just tell me it’s not because you’ve been on top of something else.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not horsing around with somebody — like maybe that Miranda kid who was working on the dig at Pit 91?”

“What in the world would make you even say that?” Carter replied.

Del shrugged. “I just couldn’t think of anything else big enough to keep you away. Especially something that Beth wouldn’t know about. She had no idea where you were last Sunday, and she called here looking for you today.” He bent down and picked up a can of Sprite resting on the floor beneath the worktable. “It’s just not like you, Bones.”

And Carter knew he was right; it wasn’t. But he should have planned for this confrontation. He should have come up with some excuse in advance. “I’ve had Gunderson breathing down my neck about the NAGPRA problems,” he improvised. “Unless we want to wind up consigning these bones to some Native American burial ground, I’ve got to cross every i and dot every t.”

“That’s cross every t and dot every i,” Del corrected him.

“Oh. Right.”

Del gave him a long look and shook his head. “Anybody ever tell you you’re the worst liar on earth?” He sipped from the soda can, then put it safely back on the floor, away from the exposed fossils. “But I figure you’ll tell me the truth when you’re ready.”

“Mind if I ask you one question?” Carter said, stepping up to the worktable to survey what Del was doing.

“Shoot.”

“How come you nearly jumped out of your skin when I showed up a few seconds ago?”

Del didn’t look up, but cocked his head slightly, as if in embarrassment. “No reason,” he said. “It’s just that it does get a little spooky down here at times.”

Carter laughed. “You? The guy who’s crawled into caves on his belly? Who’s slept alone on fossil beds in Kazakhstan?”

Del smiled. “Yeah, well, there’s something about this guy,” he said, referring to the tar-blackened bones before him, “that sort of gets to you after a while. You get the feeling his ghost is looking over your shoulder. A couple of times I’ve apologized out loud when I’ve had to scrape extra hard on the plaster and tar.”

“Did he say you’re excused?”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Del replied, indicating that the ribbing was at an end. “Why don’t you roll up your sleeves and help me out here?”

“Glad to,” Carter said, literally rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt.

“You can start by telling me what happened to the mystery object.”

“The what?”

“The thing he’d been holding in his hand when he died. The thing that I can only presume you stashed somewhere for safekeeping.” Del glanced across the table at Carter. “Tell me you do know where it is.”

Carter nodded and turned around. He fished in his pocket for the padlock key, found it, then realized, with a terrible start, that he wouldn’t need it. The padlock on the drawer holding the bones of the La Brea Woman — the same drawer where he’d concealed the mystery object — was open, hanging loose on the hasp. There were long, deep scratches on the metal cabinet all around it.

He pulled the loose padlock away and yanked open the drawer, dreading what he might find — or not find — there.

All that was left in the drawer was the white handkerchief in which he’d wrapped the object when he’d stashed it here. The bones were gone, the skull was gone. The paper lining of the drawer bore only the faint imprint of the skeletal fragments that had been safely stored here for so many decades.

Until Carter had intruded on them.

“I should have known,” Del said from behind him; from his perspective, he would not be able to see that the drawer had been plundered. “It’s a safe bet you wouldn’t have let it go far.” Carter heard him putting a new tape in the boom box.

Carter was flabbergasted. He couldn’t imagine how this could have happened. He stood staring into the empty drawer, as if by doing so he could conjure up the bones again. As if he could will them back into the cabinet where they belonged.

The new tape started, Johnny Cash this time. Del had gone back to work on the bones of the La Brea Man. “Bring it on,” Del said exuberantly. “Let us solve, once and for all, the riddle of the secret stone.” Del’s theory was that it would prove to be a sacred artifact of some kind.

Carter didn’t know what to do, or say.

“Carter? You okay?” Del finally said.

“It’s gone,” Carter mumbled.

“What’s gone? The stone?” Del quickly came to his side and stared into the open drawer.

“It’s all gone,” Carter said.

“What is? What was in here?”

“La Brea Woman was in here.”

“Jesus,” Del said as he absorbed the magnitude of what Carter was saying. He plucked the handkerchief up, just to see if there was anything left under it, then let it drop back into the drawer. “How’d they know she was here?”

“How’d who know she was here?”

“The protestors, the NAGPRA people.” He looked at Carter as if wondering why he hadn’t already put it together, too. “They wanted her bones back, too; they wanted to inter them in some sacred burial ground. And now they’ve got ’em.” He scratched his head. “But how the hell did they get down here? Hector isn’t exactly easy to get around.”

Was that it? Carter wondered. Was it simply the supporters of William Blackhawk Smith and the Native American grave repatriation act? Was it only an elaborate and cunning theft?

“But why,” Carter asked, “would they have taken her, and not him?” he said, glancing back at the bones of the La Brea Man laid out on the worktable. It would have been so easy to make off with it all.

Even Del had to think for a second. “They must have done it between the time you stashed the stone in the drawer and we brought the man’s bones down. If you’d been around more, you’d have noticed it sooner.” He was sorry it had come out that way, but in fact it was true — and Del, too, had had a stake in deciphering the mystery object. He was angry. “We’ve got to call the police. Maybe the FBI. I don’t even know who’d have jurisdiction in something like this.”

But that was the last thing Carter wanted to have happen. It would surely be the last nail in his own coffin at the Page Museum and, considering what had happened at NYU, probably his professional career. One disaster could be forgiven, two would brand him forever as either criminally incompetent, or cursed.

And he didn’t believe that was what had happened, anyway. It just felt to Carter as though something else was going on here, something more… elusive.

“Let me have a day to figure this out,” Carter said.

“To figure what out? Some crazy bastard snuck down here, jimmied the lock, and stole the bones. It doesn’t take Detective Columbo to see what happened here.”

“You’re probably right.” He turned to Del. “But let me think this through. Once it comes to light…” He didn’t have to finish the sentence for Del to see what he was getting at. “Okay?”

Del swallowed his own eagerness to get the police on the case and said, “Okay, Bones. I get it.” He shook his head sadly over the pillaged drawer. “But let’s not give the bastards too much time to make their getaway.”

“I won’t,” Carter said, though if what Del believed was true, the bones could be buried anywhere by now, never again to be found.

“And let’s keep these,” Del added, referring to the bones of the La Brea Man, “somewhere they can’t find ’em.”