The Presence

CHAPTER 24

“Mrs. Reynolds?” Katharine said when a woman’s voice answered the phone. Katharine, seated in Rob’s office, was staring through the French doors at the idyllic scene outside: flowers everywhere, filling the balmy Hawaiian morning with a rainbow of colors that stood in stark contrast to the cold, gray fear that had cloaked Katharine in the half hour since she’d emerged from the laboratories on the lower level of the research pavilion’s south wing.

The first thing she’d done upon returning to Rob’s office was to locate the village in the Philippines from which the skull had come. Exactly as she guessed yesterday, the skull had been collected from the slopes of Mount Pinatubo. And if it was, indeed, the skull of a child, it had been breathing fumes — pollution — from the volcano its entire life.

Then, from the depths of her pocket, she’d retrieved the identifying tag she’d found on the toe of the corpse. The boy’s name, neatly typed on the cardboard tag, was Mark Reynolds. Along with his dates of birth and death, the label revealed an address on North Maple Drive, in Beverly Hills, California. Right in the middle of metropolitan Los Angeles — one of the most polluted cities in the country. But polluted enough to have killed him? She had to know. First she’d called the hospital where Mark Reynolds had died, only to be told that she could be given no information over the phone. Perhaps if she’d care to make a request in writing?

No, she had not cared to make a request in writing. And so, reluctantly, Katharine dialed the number she’d found on the card, part of her burning to find answers to her questions, but another part hating to make this call to Mark Reynolds’s mother, who was listed as his next of kin. The phone had been answered on the second ring. Now there was no backing out.

“Elaine Carter Reynolds?” she asked, repeating the name into the telephone exactly as it was written on the piece of cardboard.

“Yes,” a voice replied, desolation so clear in the woman’s tone that Katharine wanted to hang up.

But she knew she couldn’t. “You had a son named Mark?” she asked.

A silence, then, again, a single word: “Yes.”

Katharine took a deep breath. “Mrs. Reynolds, my name is Katharine Sundquist. I need to talk to you about Mark. I know it’s going to be very difficult for you, but I need some information and I hope you’ll be able to give it to me.”

What sounded like a stifled sob came through the phone, but then Elaine Reynolds spoke again, and for the first time there was a trace of life in her voice. “It can’t be any more difficult than what I’ve already been through,” the woman replied.

“I don’t think there can be anything worse than having a child die,” Katharine said.

“Mark didn’t just die, Mrs.…” She faltered, unable to remember the name she’d been given.

“Sundquist,” Katharine said quickly. “But please call me Katharine.”

“Thank you,” Elaine Reynolds murmured. Again she was silent for a moment, and Katharine waited, sensing that the older woman was working her way up to something. Finally Elaine Reynolds blurted it out. “My son committed suicide, Katharine,” she said. “Mark killed himself.”

The words stunned Katharine. Killed himself? “I–I’m sorry—” she stammered. “I thought—” She fell suddenly silent, having no idea what to say.

“What did you think, Katharine?” Elaine Reynolds said, and now there was more than just a faint hint of interest. When Katharine finally voiced her idea that Mark’s death must somehow have been related to the polluted air in Los Angeles, a single bark of bitter laughter erupted from Elaine Reynolds’s throat. “I suppose some people would call carbon monoxide pollution,” she said. Her voice catching on almost every sentence, and having to pause twice to regain control over her emotions, Elaine described to Katharine Sundquist the scene of her son’s suicide. “But they got there too late,” she said. “They gave him oxygen, but it was too late. He died on the way to the hospital.”

An image of the puppy that had died in her arms a little while ago — a puppy that suddenly had trouble breathing the air outside its cage full of poisonous gases — rose in Katharine’s mind. “Your son died while they were giving him oxygen, Mrs. Reynolds?” she asked, praying that she’d heard wrong.

Her voice breaking, Elaine recounted Mark’s struggles in the ambulance. “He fought them,” she finished. “I’m sure he had no idea what he was doing, but he fought against the oxygen mask. And there was nothing I could do. You have no idea how helpless I felt.” She paused, then: “Katharine? What is this about? You still haven’t told me exactly why you called me.”

“I’m calling from Hawaii,” Katharine began. “I’m working for a man who’s very interested in pollution—”

“In Honolulu?” Elaine Reynolds interrupted. “I would have thought the air there would be as clean as anywhere in the world. Although actually the vog was pretty bad for a day or two while Mark and I were on Maui over Christmas.”

Katharine froze. “Maui?” she echoed. What was going on? Could it possibly be only coincidence that Mark Reynolds had been on Maui a few months ago? “Mrs. Reynolds — Elaine — what were you doing on Maui?”

“Just vacationing. Why?”

“Elaine, I’m on Maui, not in Honolulu. And I’ve come across something.…” She paused, not wanting to cause Elaine Reynolds any more pain than she absolutely had to. “Well, something strange,” she finally went on. “It appears that for some reason your son’s lungs are being studied.”

“But how could they?” Elaine asked. “I mean, without his body, what are they studying?”

Katharine hesitated, but quickly realized she had no choice but to tell the woman the truth. “His body is here, Elaine,” she said.

“I’m afraid there’s been some mistake,” Elaine Reynolds said after Katharine’s words had sunk in. “Mark’s body was buried right after his funeral.”

Buried? What was she talking about? Was it possible that she was wrong? That she was somehow talking to the wrong person? “Mrs. Reynolds,” Katharine said, unconsciously slipping back into the more formal term of address, “would you mind if I — well, if I told you what the boy I saw today looked like?” There was a long pause, but finally Elaine Reynolds murmured her assent. Katharine summoned an image of the face she’d seen in the morgue drawer downstairs, and began describing it as dispassionately as she could. It was when she mentioned the cleft in the boy’s chin that a soft but agonized moan came from the woman at the other end of the line.

“Why?” Elaine whispered a moment later. “Why would they have taken him out there? And why would they have lied to me about burying him?”

“I wish I could tell you, Elaine,” Katharine said softly. “But I’m afraid I don’t know any more than you do.” Then: “What about when you were out here? Did anything happen then? I mean anything unusual?”

“No,” Elaine sighed. “It was a wonderful trip. Except for the dive, of course.”

Katharine felt a chill pass over her. “The dive?” she repeated.

“Mark went out with some other boys, and they had some trouble with their tanks. Some of the boys had to come up fast, and I guess it was pretty scary. Anyway, it scared me enough that I didn’t let Mark go again. And I still keep wondering if that was what started his breathing problems.”

Katharine’s chill worsened as she heard the last two words, and the knot of fear that had been in her stomach since last night tightened. The night after he’d gone diving, Michael had had breathing problems, and even last night—

And then she remembered. Kioki! What about him? Why had he died? And Jeff Kina. Had he come home yet? Or had the same thing happened to him that had happened to Kioki Santoya? But even as the questions tumbled through her mind, so also did a memory of Michael’s voice: “Aw, come on, Mom. They don’t even know what happened to Kioki!”

“Elaine?” she said, her voice quavering. “What about the other boys who went on the dive with your son? Do you remember any of their names? Or where they might have been from?”

“I don’t think I do,” Elaine began. “But maybe — wait! There was a boy named Shane, from New Jersey, who Mark palled around with a lot after the dive. Hold on a minute.” After what seemed an endless wait, Elaine came back on the line. “I found it,” she said. “Mark had it written down on a scrap of paper in his wallet. His name is Shane Shelby and he lives in Trenton, New Jersey.” As Elaine read her the address and phone number, Katharine scribbled it down on the back of the tag she’d taken from Mark Reynolds’s body. “Let me know if you find anything out, will you?” Elaine asked.

“I will,” Katharine promised. “Of course I will.”

Immediately, she dialed the area code and number Elaine Reynolds had given her. On the fourth ring a man’s voice answered.

“Keith Shelby.”

Katharine struggled to keep her voice from breaking as she asked her question. “Mr. Shelby, my name is Dr. Katharine Sundquist. Are you the father of a boy named Shane?”

A long silence echoed hollowly from the receiver, and for a moment Katharine was afraid the man had hung up. But then Shelby spoke again, his voice betraying uncertainty. “Who did you say this is?”

Once again Katharine identified herself. “I know it sounds strange, Mr. Shelby, but I have to know if your son is all right.”

There was another long silence — far longer than the last — and Katharine had a terrible premonition about what he was going to say. Finally, she said it herself. “He’s not all right, is he, Mr. Shelby?”

“He’s dead, Dr. Sundquist,” Keith Shelby said, his tone one of utter defeat. “It was his lungs. They never found out exactly what it was. The best guess was that it was some new kind of virus or something. I don’t know anything at all about things like that, but they tell me those things mutate all the time. We thought maybe he picked it up on the flight back from Maui. After that, he was never really very well.”

When the call was finally over, Katharine sat numbly, staring out the window.

What on earth was going on?

Was Shane Shelby’s body hidden away somewhere on the estate, too?

For several long minutes Katharine sat gazing out the window into the garden, but she saw nothing. Her mind was starting to feel fogged, partly with the exhaustion of the last two nearly sleepless nights, but just as much with strange bits and pieces of information that floated just out of her grasp, parts of a single puzzle that she couldn’t quite fit together.

Think! she told herself. The answers are here. Find them!

Pushing her fear and exhaustion away, Katharine went to work.

In the conference room at the Hotel Hana Maui, Takeo Yoshihara felt the cellular phone in his jacket pocket vibrate. Stepping out into the corridor, he flipped the phone open and held it to his ear. “Yes?” He listened for a moment, then spoke again: “Exactly whom did Dr. Sundquist call?” he asked the caller who had just interrupted his meeting with his associates in the Serinus Project.

As he broke the connection several seconds later and returned to the conference room, Takeo Yoshihara was already considering the most efficient way to deal with Katharine Sundquist. And her son.

From the moment he woke up that morning, Michael hadn’t felt right. His chest felt tight, and his whole body hurt, but he didn’t want to complain to his mother, who would hustle him back to Dr. Jameson. So instead of saying anything, he’d taken the bus to school, where the first thing he’d done was hunt for Josh Malani.

Josh was nowhere to be found. Finally, Michael called his house. His father — sounding as if he were still sleeping off a binge from the night before — growled that Josh wasn’t home, but when Michael asked if he’d been home at all last night, Sam Malani only mumbled something about not caring where the hell Josh was and hung up. Through the rest of the morning, Michael grew more and more worried about Josh, and his chest kept getting worse as well.

During third period, when he was starting to wonder if maybe he was going to have an asthma attack, he’d barely been able to breathe. Trying to work the tightness out in gym class didn’t do any good.

At lunchtime Rick Pieper tried to convince him to see the school nurse, but Michael knew what would happen if he did — the nurse would call his mother; his mother would come pick him up and haul him to Dr. Jameson, who would start jabbing needles in him and sticking things down his throat.

And he’d feel worse than he already did.

After lunch he barely made it through his last two classes. Fortunately, the windows of both rooms were wide open, and in both classes he sat close to them, struggling to suck as much of the fresh air into his aching lungs as he could.

By the time the last bell rang, his chest was still hurting and he was starting to feel kind of weak. Dizzy.

Maybe he should just skip track practice and go home.

He rejected the thought in an instant, as old memories rose in his mind. There had been times back in New York a couple of years ago when the asthma was so bad he’d had to catch a taxi just to get the five blocks from school to their apartment. Well, he’d worked for too long to get past that to let it start screwing up his life again. He’d grit his teeth, ignore the pain and the weakness, and break through it on the track. He’d start running, and keep going until the pain either went away or he couldn’t feel it anymore.

As the clanging of the bell faded away, Michael packed his books into his bag and joined the throng of students pushing their way out the door. Emerging onto the covered walkway that edged the building, he had to pause to catch his breath before trusting himself even to make it to the locker room next to the gym.

Pulling open the door, he stepped into the humid room. The air was redolent with the mingled odors of perspiration, soap, disinfectant, and half a dozen other chemicals. Michael went to his locker, opened it, and, stripping naked, pulled on the gym clothes that were still damp from his fourth-period workout. Then he fished around for a pair of clean socks, unwilling to subject his feet to the stinking pair he’d used earlier in the day.

As he put on his track clothes, he began to feel a little better, and flushed with pride for resisting the urge to skip practice. Finished dressing, he headed toward the rest room.

It was as he was standing at the urinal that he became aware of a new odor drifting into his nostrils. Instinctively, Michael expanded his chest, drawing it deep into his lungs. The pungency of the scent almost made him dizzy, but the constriction in his chest immediately eased and he felt some of the fatigue leave his body.

Glancing around, Michael searched for the source of the odor, but all he saw was the closet in which Josh Malani had found the bottle of ammonia yesterday. The door was slightly ajar. Finished at the urinal, Michael adjusted his shorts and pulled at the lever that flushed the porcelain basin. He moved to the sinks, which stood between the urinals and the closet, and the scent grew stronger. Unable to contain his curiosity, he approached the closet and pulled the door wide open.

The cleaning supplies were lined up on the shelf, just as they’d been yesterday. There were nearly a dozen different containers, holding chemicals ranging from window cleaner to scrubbing powder, from toilet cleaners to solvents powerful enough to remove practically anything from the school’s walls, be they painted, tiled, or bare concrete. But there was nothing that could account for the peculiar odor he’d been breathing for the last couple of minutes.

His eyes fell on the ammonia bottle that Josh had been sniffing. Almost without thinking, he reached out, picked it up, unscrewed its cap, and sniffed at it.

The odor grew stronger, and he felt a heat spread through his body.

Frowning, Michael studied the label. Something had replaced the familiar acrid ammonia odor he would ordinarily have recognized.

All the label contained was the usual list of warnings against using the product in an enclosed area, inhaling its fumes, or ingesting it.

Picking up the bottle’s cap to screw it back on, he hesitated. His frown deepening, Michael held the bottle to his nose and took another sniff, breathing more deeply this time. The warmth spread through him, setting his whole body tingling.

Was this what Josh had felt yesterday? Glancing around the rest room as furtively as if he were about to shoot heroin into his veins, Michael sucked the fumes in again, and then yet again. With each breath he felt more strength surge into his body, and the last of the fatigue and pain he’d been feeling all day evaporated. He drew a dozen more breaths, and was still holding the bottle in his hand when the rest room door slammed open.

“Jesus! It stinks in here!”

Quickly putting the cap back on the bottle, Michael stepped out of the closet to find himself facing the janitor. “Someone left the cap off the ammonia bottle,” he said.

“Musta been Joe,” the janitor said, so quickly that Michael was sure that Joe — whoever he was — got the blame for anything that went wrong in the maintenance department. “Christ! How can you stand to even be in here?” Obviously neither expecting nor wanting an answer to his question, the janitor propped the door open to let the fumes out of the rest room and started pulling supplies out of the closet.

“See you later,” Michael offered as he walked back out into the locker room. The janitor barely grunted a reply.

Ten minutes later, the wondrous effects of the ammonia fumes still infusing his body with a strength he’d never felt before, Michael ran his first timed one-hundred-meter sprint of the afternoon.

He beat his own best time by nearly three-fifths of a second, and the school record by thirty-eight hundredths.