“You were so confident of her status that you brought her in like a stowaway in the middle of the night.”
Brooks kept his silence.
“Why now, Agent Brooks? What is her interest in the score?”
Brooks had thought all morning about what he was willing to offer if it came to this. Now he didn’t hesitate. Giving a little might stir things up and send a few rocks tumbling down from on high. They might hit his head, but then, maybe he would learn something about their composition. “She knows someone who was exposed in the Boston event, someone who took Nepenthe and then went on to have a kid. She believes the kid may have a vocal mutation, like the one Daruis Marlowe simulated with the lab-grown larynx.”
“Pretend I can’t make the connection myself. Why would that make her want to steal The Invisible Symphony?”
“Because according to her father, who devoted years to its study, the score contains an apocalyptic choral section that could, if sung with the proper harmonics, shatter the membrane between worlds permanently. Until recently, we thought that was impossible. But if there’s one child out there with the voice, there may be more.”
McDermott leaned forward. “You’re admitting that if you found the score in the vault, you would have helped her steal and destroy it.”
“Seems like that would be a lot cleaner than doing something morally questionable to a group of children we may not even be able to find.”
McDermott stroked the stem of his coffee cup, but didn’t drink. “We haven’t been able to find the score, either,” he said.
“I didn’t know we were looking for it. I figured Northrup might have swept it up after Luke Philips died at the Wade House, and locked it away for safekeeping.”
“But you didn’t come to me with these concerns when Becca Philips reached out to you.”
“She wouldn’t tell me anything without my word that I’d keep it confidential. She’s worried about what might happen to her friend’s child.”
“Your word.” McDermott ran his tongue across his teeth behind closed lips, accentuating his lantern jaw and prominent chin. He didn’t need to say it. Brooks was a covert agent; his word was whatever advanced the SPECTRA agenda.
“We’ve been through a lot together,” Brooks said. “She’s served the agency at great personal cost.”
“You count her as a friend.”
“Yes.”
“Who is the child?”
“I don’t know. She wouldn’t say.”
“Careful, Agent Brooks.”
“I don’t know.”
“Find out if it’s one of these.” McDermott slid a folder across the desktop. Brooks opened the folder. Stapled to the top corner of the first page was a school portrait of a child Noah’s age, a boy with hollow eyes. His smile looked like he hadn’t broken it in yet. Name: PHINEAS MALIK. Behind the first file were six more, Noah’s among them. Brooks’ heart rate kicked up at the familiar face. He steadied and deepened his breath, taking care not to show that he was doing so. McDermott watched his body language, a crane stalking the reeds of a riverbank with quiet patience, waiting for a frog to spear.
“You’re already looking for the kids,” Brooks said.
McDermott nodded. “There have been incidents.”
“Incidents?”
“You can read up on the plane to Arizona where the first one lives. See Caroline for your tickets. That’s all for now.”
* * *
Brooks left his car in the garage for Becca to use while he was away, and arranged for Merrit to pick him up on the morning of their flight. Becca watched from behind a curtain in her second floor bedroom while Brooks put his carry-on bag in the trunk and climbed into the car. Merrit’s face behind the windshield was obscured by the glare, but she had the sense that he was scanning the house for signs of her and took a step back from the window. Probably paranoia. Hanging around with spies, she supposed it was contagious.
Brooks had said that he would be gone for at least two days, depending on how things went in Arizona. She made him promise to keep his weapon unloaded overnight and to continue setting the alarm at his motel. This had led to a brief discussion of time zones, a problem that hadn’t occurred to either of them before. Brooks believed that the dream would come to him on East Coast time, like a television show airing simultaneously in different parts of the country. “If it’s a telepathic signal going out worldwide at the same time every night, I’ll adjust for the difference and get up two hours earlier. At least accounting isn’t making me share a room with Merrit.”
Becca, in turn, had promised to stay at the house, where all of the reflective surfaces were ”Cthulhu proof.” They’d shared a chuckle about that, and off he’d gone, leaving her feeling lonely the minute he’d left. It was a weird sensation, she realized, and a new one. She was used to living alone with only Django for company. She had lived in her father’s cabin for the past few years, isolated in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and she was by nature introverted to the extent that crowded places like the supermarket scrambled her brain and set her nerves on edge. And yet, Brooks’ company had become a great comfort in a short time.
Nonetheless, there was work to be done while he was away. Her first task, they had agreed, was to warn Tom Petrie that he should expect an official interview with agents Brooks and Merrit within the next three days. She would have to do it in person, as they were now more certain than ever that Tom’s phone and email were being monitored by SPECTRA.
The second task on Becca’s agenda was one that she hadn’t yet shared with Brooks: She would drive to Arkham and search Miskatonic University to see if her grandmother’s collection included the book Northrup had mentioned—or any notes pertaining to it.
She took the stolen dagger from under her mattress and tucked it into her shoulder bag with her notebook, pens, and a smartphone with no Internet connection that she carried mainly for snapping photos of documents.
She would tell Brooks about the dagger when he returned, she promised herself. For now, it was a relief that his boss hadn’t pressed him on it. At least if it had come up, he could’ve pleaded ignorance with all honesty. So far, it seemed, its absence hadn’t been noted.
She laid a blanket over the backseat of the car for Django, and headed north in the early afternoon. The trip from Malden to Andover was a straight shot up I-93, not much of a detour on the way to Arkham. She kept the GPS off in the car, as a weak precaution against SPECTRA tracking, and recognized the neighborhood when she found it. She’d made no effort to disguise herself but checked each parked car she passed on the street for occupants. All were empty.
Tom’s wife, Susan, answered the door, as Becca had expected. On a weekday, Tom would be in the city where he worked as a network admin and Susan would be taking care of Noah. She looked better than she had the first time they’d met. On that occasion, Susan was in a white-hot terror over her child slashing his little hand open to finger-paint the tub with his blood while chanting R’lyeh over and over. Today Susan Petrie only looked as tired and exasperated as any full-time mother of a five-year-old answering the door to an unexpected caller.
She looked Becca over, recognition dawning slowly, and possibly only clicking when she noted a quirky, stylized character painted on one of Becca’s combat boots. One of Rafael’s. The colors were faded despite the clear coat Becca had sprayed on the boots to protect them after Raf’s death. She had put enough additional miles on the boots in Brazil and New Hampshire to have almost worn them out, but the characters were the kind of detail that might have imprinted on Susan’s memory at a moment of crisis, and lingered long after the face of the woman who wore them had faded.
Susan’s eyes widened. She shot a look at Django, sitting on the long bottom step behind Becca, and began to close the door. Slowly, as if in a dream, not knowing how to deal with anyone who might represent the agency when Tom wasn’t at home. Or did she know what to do? Had the couple made a plan for such an eventuality, and if so, what
might that involve? Becca thought of what mothers of all species were willing to do to protect their young when cornered, and suddenly, coming here face-to-face without backup or advance notice seemed profoundly unwise.
“Wait,” Becca said. “I have a message. Just a message. From Brooks.”
“Why didn’t he come himself?” Susan asked through a three-inch crack between the door and frame in which Becca could now see only one of the woman’s eyes.
“He’s out-of-state. He’ll be here sometime in the next few days with another agent. An official visit. This other agent doesn’t know that Brooks has stayed in contact with you; at least he shouldn’t know. But SPECTRA is looking into children like Noah now. They might even be able to help, I don’t know. The important thing is that you and Tom have to act like you don’t know Brooks.”
“But Tom met him through SPECTRA, when they rounded up witnesses, when all hell broke loose in Boston.”
“Yes, Susan. But Tom hasn’t seen Brooks since then, understand? Don’t be familiar. Tom hasn’t seen Brooks since before Noah was born, and you’ve never met him at all. Okay?”
“Puppy.” A child’s voice. Noah had appeared and wedged himself in front of his mother. The door opened a little wider as Susan used both hands to pull him back, but he was already reaching through the gap, offering something to Becca. It sparkled blue in his hand.
“I made it myself,” Noah said. “You have it.”
Becca took the object, a cardboard disk the size of a quarter, covered in blue and green glitter and blobs of Elmer’s glue.
“Thank you, Noah. Are you sure?”
Susan watched the exchange warily. Noah nodded. “We’re doing planet crafts! That’s Neptune.”
“It’s very nice,” Becca said, closing her fingers around it.
“What’s puppy’s name?”
“Django,” Becca said.
“Can I pet him?”
“No, sweetie.” Susan pulled the boy toward her with a gentle hand on his shoulder and shut the door.
Pulling the car away from the curb, Becca glanced in the rearview mirror. Something black caught her eye, glistening on the verge of visibility, then wriggling out of sight. She hit the brakes and jerked forward over the wheel, felt Django hit the back of her seat.
Looking back at the house, she saw Noah’s pale face framed between the parted curtains of a first floor window, eyes vacant, mouth moving as if singing. He withdrew suddenly, the curtain tugged shut by an unseen hand.
Becca waited for her heart to slow, then eased the car onto the road. She wondered if the family would still be here when the agents arrived.
* * *
The dogwood trees were flowering when Becca arrived at Miskatonic University. The day, which had been cold and windy to the south, was mild, almost balmy by the time she reached Arkham. She parked the car, cracked the windows for Django, and walked across the campus, relishing the fragrance of the trees in bloom, letting it soothe her rattled nerves. For a moment, she could almost believe that she was still in her teens, strolling across the quad to visit Catherine at her office in the Anthropology Department.
Becca had intentionally driven the long way around town, avoiding Crane Street and the house where she’d lived with her grandparents after her mother’s suicide and her father’s departure. She didn’t know if the new owners had painted it or changed anything, nor did she want to find out. For now, she would let it remain a place frozen in time, its good and bad memories preserved like insects in amber.
She made her way directly to the ivy-fringed library, where the cool shade of the stacks leeched the heat from her skin and left her feeling more her age.
At the special collections desk, she presented her driver’s license and explained that she was not a student but rather a relative of the esteemed Dr. Catherine Philips, and could she please spend some time with her grandmother’s papers, manuscripts, and rare works. After a lot of keypunching, the librarian explained that most of the material was boxed up in storage.
Becca replied that she didn’t mind looking through it in a storage room. The librarian sighed. Perhaps Becca could return on a different day, after submitting a request to have the collection transferred to a reading room, the severe, thin-lipped woman suggested in a beleaguered tone. She was sorry, she said (though she didn’t sound sorry at all to Becca), but it would have been easier to accommodate the request if Becca had made an appointment to view the Philips collection a week or more in advance.
By this time, Becca was feeling fatigued from the stresses of visiting Tom’s house, compounded by the emotionally charged memories the trip to Arkham was stirring. For a moment, she had to stop and take stock of herself. Was she really the same person who had stared down cultists and government agents? Who had taken on gods and monsters with little more than her wits? There had been times in the past few years when she’d felt that these experiences had helped her to break through to a new level of self-assurance, but right here and now, sleep deprived and unsure of her goal, it seemed impossible to believe that those actions had been undertaken by the same person who could barely summon the resolve to stand her ground against a bitchy librarian.
She was about to give up the quest for the day and head back to Malden, after maybe finding something to give her blood sugar a lift, when a reedy voice from over her shoulder said, “Did I hear the name Philips?”
Becca turned toward the man emerging from the stacks—old but not frail, bright blue eyes gleaming with mischievous cheer between a neatly trimmed white beard and a mane of thinning hair that still held a trace of gold. His hands, gnarled and liver-spotted, dangled claw-like from the cuffs of his tweed jacket, swinging as he walked.
“Lo and behold,” he said, “I hear my old friend’s name and this must be her ghost. Is it true, then, that we get to reclaim our prime in the afterlife?”
Annoyed for a second by this puzzling distraction from an objective that was getting harder to attain by the minute, Becca soon found herself smiling as the sense of the words sunk in. “You knew my grandmother?”
“Ah, you must be Rebecca, then.” He shook Becca’s hand with a surprisingly lively grip and introduced himself. “Anton DuQuette. Catherine was a friend and colleague. We met as students in Dr. Morgan’s archaeology class.”
“Really,” Becca said. “Then this is a lucky meeting. I was hoping to look at my grandmother’s collection today, while I have a rare opportunity to visit the college, and the book I was hoping to find is one that you dedicated to her.”
Something flickered in DuQuette’s eyes, but he didn’t ask for the title or miss a beat, only turned his bright, expectant gaze on the librarian. “I’m sure we can accommodate the young Ms. Philip’s request, Larissa. Can’t we?”
“I was just explaining that it may take a while, Professor. The materials need to be moved from Storage B, the interns are at lunch, and the reading rooms are occupied.”
“No worries, then,” the old man said, producing a crowded key ring and shaking it like a maraca. He raised his chin and scanned the tables of students. “I’ll recruit the requisite muscle myself and have the boxes brought to the faculty conference room.”
The librarian opened her mouth, but before she could argue, DuQuette called across the room to a pair of athletic looking boys hunched over notebooks with an open textbook between them. “MacLeod! Nunnally! Come give an old man a hand, will you?”
* * *
After directing the transfer of the boxes to a long oval table in a room with a whiteboard, Professor DuQuette lingered in the doorway.
“You really do resemble her.” He smiled sadly. “But if you’re looking for a copy of The Voice of the Void, I doubt you’ll find it here.”
“Wouldn’t she have kept a rare book that was dedicated to her?”
“It’s rare for a reason. My own last copy was destroyed in a house fire. Catherine’s, I believe, was stolen from her office by a student. The Starry Wisdom Church has been hellbe
nt on erasing the book from history since the nineties. I’d be very interested to know why you’re looking for it now.”
Becca considered the man for a moment. Northrup had given her his name, but was it too convenient that he’d showed up and offered help right at the outset of her search?
“Forgive me,” Becca said, “but I don’t remember you from the funeral.”
“I was sorry I couldn’t make it. I was abroad at the time.”
On impulse, Becca decided to prod for a reaction. “I met one of Catherine’s star pupils in Boston. Maybe you knew Maurice Ramirez?”
DuQuette’s weathered face turned introspective, as if a shadow passed over it. He swallowed, and when he spoke, there was a deeper sorrow in his voice and eyes. “Maurice made great sacrifices to save a world that failed him.”
A ripple of gooseflesh passed over Becca’s arms and she drew a deep breath to tamp down the swell of emotion. She nodded and, through tight lips, said, “He did.”
“I hear you were with him at the end.”
Becca looked past DuQuette at the door, calculating the distance. “Who told you that? It wasn’t in any of the papers.”
“Frater Ramirez was a member of the Golden Bough, a hermetic order to which I also belong. He broke with the order when he decided we were too cautious and slow to action. Maybe he was right. Even so, I’m afraid he got in too deep and it damaged him. I tried to help. But by the time the Starry Wisdom Church acquired the technology to give voice to the mantras in their dread tomes, he trusted no one.”
“Could you have helped?”
“Perhaps not. By the time we understood what was happening, the only weapon we knew of to aid in the fight was missing.” DuQuette had approached the table while speaking. He rested his hands on a chair back and his gaze fell on Becca’s chest. She knew he wasn’t imagining her breasts beneath her shirt and rayon scarf.
“Do you still have it?”
She nodded. “But it’s only a keepsake now. The gem is gone.”
Spectra Files 03 Cthulhu Blues Page 8
