Cemetery Dance

Chapter 16

Midnight. Nora Kelly walked briskly through the dark heart of the museum's basement, her heels tapping softly against the polished stone floor. The corridors were on after — hours lighting, and shadows yawned from open doorways. There was nobody around: even the most hard — core curator had left for home hours ago, and most of the guards' rounds were through the museum's public spaces.

She came to a halt at a stainless — steel door labeled PCR LAB. As she'd hoped, the door's wire — covered window was dark. She turned to the keypad lock, typed in a sequence of numbers. An LED set into the pad turned from red to green.

She pushed open the door, ducked inside, and turned on the light, stopping to look around. She had been in the lab only a few times on casual visits, on the occasions she'd dropped off samples for testing. The thermal cycler for the PCR stood on a spotless stainless — steel table, shrouded in plastic. She stepped up, pulled away the plastic, folded it and laid it aside. The machine — an Eppendorf Master — cycler 5330—was made of white plastic, its ugly, low — tech appearance belying its sophisticated innards. She rummaged in her bag and removed a printed document she had downloaded from the Internet with directions on how to use it.

The door had locked behind her automatically. She took a deep breath, then hunted around behind the machine with one hand, at last locating the power switch and turning it on. The manual stated it would take a full fifteen minutes to warm up.

Laying her bag on the table, she removed a Styrofoam container, took off the lid, and began carefully withdrawing pencil — thin test tubes and racking them. One tube contained a bit of hair, another a fiber, another a piece of Kleenex, still another freeze — dried fragments of blood, all of which Pendergast had given her.

She passed a hand over her brow, noticing as she did so that her fingertips were trembling slightly. She tried not to think of anything beyond the lab work. She had to be finished and long gone by dawn. Her head pounded; she was dead tired; she hadn't slept since returning home two days before. But her anger and her grief gave her energy, fed her, kept her going. Pendergast needed the DNA results as soon as possible. She was grateful for the chance to be of use — any use — if it would help catch Bill's murderer.

From a lab refrigerator, she took out a strip of eight PCR tubes: tiny, bullet — shaped sealed plastic containers pre — filled with buffer solution, Taq polymerase, dNTPs, and other reagents. With exquisite care, she used a pair of sterilized tweezers to transfer minuscule samples of the biological material from her test tubes to the PCR tubes, quickly resealing each one as she did so. By the time the machine trilled its readiness, she had filled thirty — two: the maximum the PCR cycler could hold in a single run.

She slipped a few extra tubes into her pocket for later use, then went over the instructions for the third time. She opened the cycler, slotted in the reaction tubes, then closed and locked it down. Setting the controls, she gingerly pressed the start button.

It would take forty thermal cycles, each lasting three minutes, to complete the PCR reaction. Two hours. Then, she knew, she would have to submit the results to gel electrophoresis in order to identify the DNA.

The machine issued another soft chime, and a screen indicated that the first thermal cycle was in progress. Nora sat back, waiting. Only now did she realize how deathly silent it was in the lab. There wasn't even the usual sound of air moving through the circulation system. The room smelled of dust, mold, and the faint sweetness of para — dichlorobenzene from the nearby storage areas.

She glanced up at the clock: twelve twenty — five. She should have brought a book. In the silent lab, she found herself alone with her thoughts — and they were terrible thoughts.

She got up and paced across the lab, returned to the table, sat down, got up once again. She hunted through cupboards for something to read, finding only manuals. She thought of going up to her office, but there was always the danger of running into someone and having to explain why she was in the museum at such a late hour. She had no clearance to be in the PCR lab. She hadn't signed up for it, she hadn't recorded her presence in the log. Even if she had, she wasn't authorized to use the machine… Suddenly she halted, listening. She had heard a noise, or thought she had. Outside the door.

She glanced over to the little window, but there was nothing to see except the dim hallway beyond, illuminated by a lightbulb in a metal cage. The LED in the door's keypad glowed red: it was still locked.

With a groan, she clenched her fists together. It was hopeless: horrible images kept coming, unbidden, sweeping into her consciousness without warning. She squeezed her eyes closed, tightened her fists still further, trying to think of anything but that first glimpse…anything …

Her eyes popped open again. There was that noise again, and this time she identified it: a soft scraping against the lab door. Glancing up quickly, she just caught a shape moving beyond the window. She had the distinct feeling that someone had just looked in on her.

One of the night watchmen? It was possible. With a stab of anxiety, she wondered if they would report her unauthorized presence. Then she shook her head. If they'd suspected anything, they would have come in and confronted her. How would they know she wasn't supposed to be there? After all, she had her ID and was clearly a curator. It was her mind, playing tricks on her again. It had been doing that ever since… She turned her eyes away from the window. Maybe shewas going crazy.

The sound came again, and her eyes shot back toward the window. This time, she saw a dark silhouette of a head bobbing in the hallway beyond, swaying a little, backlit and indistinct. It loomed in the little window — and then, as it pressed up against the glass, the light from the lab revealed its features.

She caught her breath, blinked, and stared again.

It was Colin Fearing.