Clan Novel Setite: Book 4 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Kathleen Ryan

  “Can you wait half an hour? This is almost done.”

  “Sure.”

  Wednesday, 7 July 1999, 2:03 PM

  Laurel Ridge Farm

  Columbia, Maryland

  “Morning, Asp.” Elizabeth leaned over the central island of the kitchen, and watched the cook work on some kind of pinky-gray mixture in a steel bowl. She raised an eyebrow.

  “Tuna-fish Pâté,” he said. “We’re playing ‘guess that meal’ again. It’s breakfast for you, isn’t it? The boss is having early lunch—or late lunch, I’m not sure, and good old Ron hasn’t made an appearance yet. So the plan is sandwiches.”

  In the bowl’s mirror-like finish, he watched the woman sit down at the table with her book and soda. He concentrated on the ingredients his brother had left ready for lunch. He wished Gabriel had a less professional hand in the kitchen….

  “Relish?” he asked, when the bread was sliced and ready.

  “Relish what?” she punned shamelessly, but the Asp didn’t catch the joke. “Sorry. Yes, please. Sweet relish—provided it’s pickles and nothing weird like okra or guava or something.”

  Raphael laughed again. Elizabeth looked up, startled.

  “You have something against nouvelle cuisine?” He frowned into the condiments; he wasn’t paying much attention to her.

  “Don’t you?” she inquired, watching him.

  “Well, I’m with Ron. If it’s such a bad idea that you have to say it in French, he’s against it…with,” snickered Raphael, “a few exceptions….” He brandished his wide knife over the various mixtures in front of him and began pasting relish onto slices of bread. Elizabeth took the food with a smile, fled down the stairs, and looked back toward the kitchen with something like fear. Silly, she knew, to suddenly shun a man because his laughter was…a little…different. Had she misjudged his sense of humor? She’d come to think of Angelo as a—not yet a friend, but certainly as a potential friend. She was afraid, now that she knew him better, that he would be someone to be tolerated rather than liked.

  “Thompson,” said Hesha. “Your new assignment?” The old cop closed his notebook. “Miss Dimitros and I are completely Liz and Ron now, sir. She likes baseball, chocolate, mysteries, and drama. She thinks Vegel had wonderful taste in adventure stories and whodunits, and we dropped in at a bookstore on the way home. She’s started me on Shakespeare, and I found a police-procedural series that she wasn’t familiar with. She’s the little sister I never had—”

  “Yes.” Hesha said dryly. “Very well. Look to business. I’m intending a long session with her this evening.” He walked to his apartment door, disappeared within, and came back out wearing his most elderly-looking spectacles. “They add ten years, sir.”

  “Good. I hope that’s enough.”

  During conversation over the papyrus, Hesha turned the subject toward his goal. “What’s all this I hear about your dissertation?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Thompson’s been going on about bulls and eyes and fish for almost a week now. Somehow,” he smiled, “I have the feeling he’s gotten things a bit garbled.”

  Thompson, listening in from the security bunker, snorted. He’d reported the bull story in total accuracy, and understood every word. Still, if it took the boss where they needed to go…. Yes. There she went.

  Elizabeth brought out a sturdy manuscript box, and Hesha pointed to the largest empty table. Talking with the speed and enthusiasm displayed only by graduate students in mid-theory, she spread notes, drawings, and timelines across the polished surface. She pulled up a straight-backed chair and sat in it cock-eyed, one leg tucked beneath her, passing diagrams and summaries to Hesha as fast as he could read them. The glasses came out of their case, and his best professorial, fatherly manner came out with them.

  Thompson, taking a rest from his own work, turned up the sound on the central screen again. Elizabeth’s notes completely covered the surface of the huge table, and there were open books—some of them Vegel’s—scattered on top of them. Light blue sticky-notes nearly hid the edges of the largest volume, and he recognized it as one she’d fastened onto the moment she was shown the dead man’s room.

  “…Good. Strong argument, strong defense.” He settled back into the big chair. “But you’ll never make a dissertation of it.”

  Elizabeth went red, and started to speak. Hesha cut her off with an open hand.

  “How long have you been trying?” The girl’s face grew angry-white. “There’s too much here, Elizabeth. You have an entire book, possibly a multiple volume work in this. Take five percent of it, limit the scope, and write that. Take the degree and start publishing pieces in the journals. But this…this is too much.”

  Relieved, resentful, but generally pleased, Elizabeth relaxed a little into the straight-back. Hesha patted her hand reassuringly.

  The debate went on, but Thompson wasn’t listening anymore. He’d seen what happened to the girl’s eyes when Hesha touched her. Ten-year glasses weren’t going to be enough. He hoped that Hesha had noticed the look on Elizabeth’s face—and he prayed that Hesha had expected it.

  Thursday, 8 July 1999, 9:14 AM

  Laurel Ridge Farm

  Columbia, Maryland

  Ronald Thompson awoke with a jolt.

  An alarm—somewhere inside the house, by the tone. He threw off the covers and opened a panel by his bed— the perimeter lights were green—the house itself secure, according to the system—but an intruder had made it so far as Vegel’s vault. The sun streaming in through the windows reminded him that Hesha would be asleep—sound asleep….

  Thompson ran down the hall and jumped most of the stairs to the first floor, bellowing for the Asp as he went. Thank god it was Raphael here—if they had to fight, that murderous little creature was the better of the twins.

  He whipped the elevator door aside and took the car down to the second basement as fast as it would go. His stomach objected to the drop, and he cursed Liz for the charade they all had to play. He belonged in his room off the security bunker, not upstairs in that draughty relic of a house. Thompson swore, and snatched one of the guns from the rack by the shaft doors. His eyes scanned the light codes as he ran through the surveillance station, and he swore again. No need to curse Liz. The intruder’s entry point was from her room; the damned Cainite would have taken care of her before cracking the door open. Vegel must have been captured, not killed….

  The door from Vegel’s vault into Hesha’s was still closed. Good. There might be time to see who or what had found its way inside. He brought the lights and the camera into full play in the carved stone room, and stopped cold.

  Elizabeth Dimitros, clad in light-blue striped pajamas, was stumbling aimlessly around the crypt. The door into her room—Vegel’s room—hung ajar behind her. No light shone from the apartment.

  Thompson set down his gun. He hit the intercom to his ally, and called the killer off. “It’s only Liz, Asp. Looks like she’s sleepwalking.”

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “No. The catch on the door must be faulty. I’ll go up and put her back to bed before she knocks her head on a rock and wakes up.” Thompson turned the lights in the vault down to a candle’s power, replaced the automatic, and set about putting the house in order.

  Hesha emerged from his resting place to the outer chamber. He was mildly surprised to see Thompson already in the room, and still more put off by the fact that his servant was not waiting for him. The door to Vegel’s apartment was open, and Thompson’s hands were busy with the delicate mechanisms that held it shut.

  “Thompson?” Hesha lifted an ebon eyebrow, and his man rose to speak.

  “The catch was loose, sir.” He opened his mouth to go on, but Hesha cut in.

  “Where is Elizabeth?”

  “I asked her to pick up the mail. It’s all right—I set up the box with only the kinds of things she ought to see there. But I had to get her out of the house to work on this.”

  “And we a
bsolutely must fix this catch today because—?”

  Thompson clenched his teeth at the Setite’s tone, but answered calmly enough. “Because our Liz sleepwalks, and this morning she stumbled through Vegel’s door without realizing it. I thought you’d like the secure areas secure, sir.”

  Hesha nodded. “Of course.” He looked at the door’s lock edge and scrutinized the work. “Thank you, Thompson.”

  After the sundown conference, Hesha followed Thompson to the bunker, and the mortal pulled the morning’s tapes for his employer.

  Elizabeth, they saw through the cameras, was working on the boulder, steadily whittling down a previously untouched area of the mud. Hesha dismissed Thompson to double-check all the concealed doors, panels, drop chutes, and caches in the other parts of the house.

  Hesha sat down at the console and popped video after video into the machines. He set the counters to start the entire bank of recordings at the same time—roughly an hour before Thompson’s frantic morning dash. He waited with the patience of death, and eventually movement began in the view of Vegel’s room.

  The woman’s sleeping form tossed uncomfortably on the massive bed. The sheets tangled around her legs, and her pajama top had slid up until the first button nearly choked her. In another ten minutes, her jerking, unconscious movements had freed her legs, but now they dangled over the side of the mattress. A toe touched the floor, and she sat up. She slipped off the bed and wandered to the closets. Uncertain hands opened a drawer, and she pulled apart a pair of socks. The socks were then set on the bed, and apparently forgotten.

  Elizabeth, her eyes half open, shuffled to the desk now. With the eraser end of a pencil, she wrote nothing—partly on the pad of paper that sat cockeyed on the desk, partly on the wood and leather of the desktop. She followed the pin-cushion wall back to the closet end of the room, playing vaguely with the tacked-up notes and articles. Her body hid the spring-latch from the camera’s eye, so he couldn’t see how the accident happened, but the door opened a crack, and the woman walked through onto the cold stone floor of the crypt.

  Hesha observed idly as the other cameras began to show action—half-clad Thompson running about the house like a jumping jack—the Asp gliding sinuously down the stairs from the kitchen, weapons ready—Thompson in the elevator, in the bunker, in the room with the sleepwalker, plucking her sleeve, closing the door, and nudging her gently toward the bed.

  Hesha watched Thompson watching Elizabeth as she slid back into real sleep. The old cop stood still as a statue for eight minutes, then turned and went out by the visible door. For the full eight minutes the Setite watched the mortals captured on camera, and then his finger jabbed the off button.

  “Secure?” Hesha asked Thompson, who was just returning from his rounds.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Their eyes leapt at the same moment to the center monitor. With the players off, the settings had reverted to Thompson’s last arrangement, and Elizabeth and the boulder were displayed in soundless color. The Asp had just entered the view.

  Raphael Mercurio carried a tray—chili, which Thompson knew gratefully was the reheated work of the other twin. Elizabeth smiled politely, but moved to the farthest corner of the work zone.

  The Asp dusted off a little table. He set his burden down upon it, just outside the canvas, with a graceful flourish, smile, and jest. Elizabeth smiled again, but her eyes shivered and she stayed where she was. A dusty finger pointed to the mud, and she said something—Hesha leaned forward and called up the sound.

  “—This last inch beforehand.” Her thin smile came out again. “But thanks for bringing it down. It’s very nice of you.”

  “No, no. It’s my job—I got to make sure you don’t starve, Liz. You’re a pretty girl—you should keep the skin on your bones and the roses in your cheeks, you know? It’s not just me here; you’re dealing with generations of Mercurio grandmothers standing over my left shoulder, and they keep going on about it.” He laughed, and she tried to smile.

  The Asp left Elizabeth to her dinner. She didn’t leave the safety of her canvas carpet until his foot was off the top stair cleat, and the relief in her face was patently obvious.

  “Holy shit…” whispered Thompson. “She knows?”

  Hesha watched his guest wipe her hands clean and sit down to eat. She sniffed at the food suspiciously, and took up the spoon without enthusiasm. “No,” said Hesha. “I think not. Merely good instincts. She’s afraid of him…and that’s interesting.” He swiveled in the console chair, and faced his protege.

  “Should I call Gabe in from town?”

  “I think that would be for the best. Fear can induce restless sleep. Keep Raphael out of her way until we can make the switch.”

  “Would you care to do the honors?” asked Elizabeth, steadying a nearly freed fragment of shard and mud between her gloved hands.

  “Thank you,” Hesha said evenly. He took up the dentist’s pick and, with professional skill, scraped away the thin ridges of clay that supported the jug-side and handle in the boulder. In less than a minute, the fragile pottery piece shifted in the matrix, and he took up the receiving tray.

  Elizabeth tipped the leaf-shaped fragment gently into the little bin, taking time to select a position that kept the shard’s own weight from endangering it. “Down,” she said.

  “Down,” confirmed Hesha, and he set the tray aside.

  They leaned back against the canvas steps and regarded their hard-won treasure. Still covered with dirt and dust from its prison, it was an unimpressive, crumbly brown.

  “It’s not much, is it?” mourned Elizabeth.

  Hesha shook his head and smiled. “It’s older than we are. That’s enough, for the moment. And it may match some of Vegel’s shards.”

  “It’s still not much. I’m sorry I dragged you out here for this, but at that last stage…two hands weren’t enough, and I couldn’t find Ron.”

  Hesha nodded, but ventured, “Mercurio’s in the kitchen….”

  Elizabeth turned pink and dove back into the boulder.

  Hesha read the flush, keeping Thompson’s briefing in mind. It might be fear of the Asp that brought her color up, but he suspected she hadn’t even looked for either man…a loose fragment was a fine excuse for seeing him, Hesha, personally. He determined to keep the footing businesslike for the evening. Perching on the edge of the canvas box, he silently examined the progress of the work. The woman had given up entirely on what Vegel had always thought were the most promising sections, and her hands were busy inside a large crater below them.

  Elizabeth grimaced inwardly. So the Asp, now that she knew him better, made her back hairs rise and her fists itch—she still should have gone to him, rather than bothering her employer. Self-consciously, she tucked a few loose strands of hair behind her ears. Foolishness had its advantages, however. She confessed to herself she was glad that Hesha had come out of his office. He was sitting not three feet from her. His perfect white shirt-sleeves were rolled up, creased, and dirty from the work; his jetty eyes were smoldering… intent on the rock, completely oblivious to her, of course.

  “What are you doing?” Hesha asked. He used the scholarly voice she’d responded well to over her dissertation. Elizabeth stuffed cloth wadding into the deepest part of the hole and tested the top section with two fingers. She cleared her throat.

  “Well, Professor,” she began, playing (as he had hoped) the earnest young student, “it occurred to me that the layer Mr. Vegel had exposed was far too cluttered for real progress to go on. I intend to isolate the shard-laden projection and remove it from the body of the excavation. I expect that it will then be easier to separate the shards…working from the rear, as it were.

  “Go on, Miss Dimitros.”

  “That’s it.” She laughed self-consciously. “If Vegel’s guess as to the sedimentation order of this thing is correct, I’m probably going to have to go back to doing it the hard way. But I think he was only mostly right.” Hesha studied the rock. “And the
rock is just ‘this thing’?” She stared blankly back at him. “It’s not a he, or a she, or…” Elizabeth reddened, and Hesha grinned. “What is it?”

  “Oh, Lord.” She kicked resentfully at the canvas draping. “I tell you a story once….”

  “Go on.”

  “This is an it. This is the rock of Sisyphus. It’s big, and bulky, and whenever you get to the goal with it—” she gestured at the leaf-shaped shard in the bin, “—you wind up back where you started, horrendously disappointed that there was nothing beyond the goal but another goal, exactly the same as the first.” She scowled into the hole. “How long did Vegel work on this thing?”

  Hesha frowned. “A long time.”

  “And Sisyphus is probably still heaving his misery and guilt and shame up that mountain. He’s supposed to have been a smart guy; you’d think he’d do something about it.” She caught Hesha’s inquisitive gaze, and went on. “There must be other rocks in hell. If he picked up one and gave the boulder a good whack in the same place every time, eventually he’d have a crack started…and one of these millennia, the whole thing would break open as it bounded down the mountain. Sorry; I’m babbling. They probably rolled up his wisdom somewhere in the rock…it’s an allegory, after all.”

  Hesha said nothing, and Elizabeth returned to the crater she was boring into metaphor. Sisyphus…futility…how appropriate…keep your mind on the job, Lizzie…and keep away from him. Resolutely, she kept scraping away at the rock. Best to go home to the Rutherfords without making a fool of yourself. Important client…strong business relationship…give you one up on Miss Agnes…he wants paintings done, you’re damn good with conservation…

  “What next?” Hesha asked.

  “Stabilization of the inner surface. It’s glazed…” she tapered off, looking at the rock. And maybe you’ll find something decent in this thing…unbroken…or finely decorated…or bones…or even…metal….