“I just wanted to check something in the can,” Lexi said.
“Check what? It’s garbage.” Simon turned and gently prodded her to follow. “Come on, we should get to the station so you can make your statement.”
“Yeah in a minute, I just want to check something.”
Simon released her and watched as she tried to pry the lid off. “Well?” she said playfully when it refused to budge. “Time to be a manly man.”
The fireman responded before Simon, taking his pry bar to the dinged lid. There was a bag of melted, acrid garbage stuck to the bottom, but where the old oak box had been there was now only empty space, not even the ash of burnt wood or the stiffened remains of old brass hinges.
“Garbage, right?” Simon asked. “Can we go now?”
Lexi thanked the fireman and turned to follow Simon, pretending not to be disturbed. But her dungeon was quickly filling up with half-baked theories.
“Hey, I’ll meet you at the station. I just have to make a call.” She stood on her toes to give him a peck on the cheek, impressed with her own convincing cavalier attitude. He agreed and watched him take off in his Dodge Intrepid police cruiser.
A couple minutes later, over the phone, Linnux boasted: “I just finished my biology class and was about to enter the labyrinthine world of the web in search of our immortal un-beloved. What’s going on?”
“Remember that box I told you about, that one Gramps gave me the other day?”
“Duh.”
“Well it’s gone.” She looked around the street and waved at Mrs. Smith who was staring. Her gaze falling on the fireman, it seemed as if he too had been watching her. Lexi fought the urge to cover her mouth the way pitchers and catchers do when conferring on the mound.
“I put the box in a metal garbage can and now it’s gone.”
“As in, someone took it and set your house aflame to cover it up?” Linnux asked, for once in a serious manner. “Maybe these people are more serious than I thought. Did you tell your friend, Detective square-jaw?”
“He doesn’t have a square jaw. And no I didn’t tell him.” She sighed. “But I think he knows.”
“Well can you trust square-jaw guy?”
“I don’t know. I think so, it’s just . . .”
“What?”
“Nothing, I’m just being paranoid. I’m sure we can trust him. And that’s good since we may need his help if these people find out about what we have at Gramps’ house. Be careful.”
She ran her fingers through her hair and let out a little squeal of pain when her fingers caught Gordian-type snarls and yanked her head back.
Nosy Mrs. Smith had gone back inside and the fireman was coiling his last hose, ignoring her completely. “You’re losing it, Lexi.”
The station was hot and dry, with the Bull Cooling guys toiling over the air conditioning system. “Ah New York,” Simon jibed as he led her to his desk. “You never know what the weather will be one day to the next. Snow, sleet, rain, brimstone.”
“No matter what month it is,” Lexi added with a wry smile. If there’s one thing New Yorkers agree on it’s that the weather is a fickle bitch, especially in Genesee County where the Lakes and the Canadian air always complicate things.
“So, tell me what happened,” Simon asked once they were sitting and sweating at his desk and an accident report lay before him. “What time was it when you discovered the fire?”
Throughout the armchair investigation Lexi opted for a series of truth-bending answers, sensing everything was hush-hush and a big-poobah secret. She knew she would have to cut tonight as punishment for mistrusting Simon. Always he had been good to her. When their fathers died he was the one who’d given her a shoulder to cry on.
To make up for keeping the chests secret, she told Simon about Mr. Boetie.
“He seemed agitated, as though someone was watching him.”
“Do you think someone was?” he asked without lifting his eyes from the report.
She watched his expression carefully; the pursing of his lips, the curl of his brow when she mentioned Mr. Boetie’s eccentric behavior. “I have no idea. But he wasn’t pretending.”
Simon clapped once. “Well I think we’re done here. If you remember anything about last night, call me, anytime.” He wheeled his chair over to her and pushed aside stray strands. “You look exhausted. Want me to stay with you for a few days?”
She stood too quickly. “No, I’m sure it’s all a flight of fancy brought on by bad meat. Maybe we could have dinner Friday, my treat.”
As she turned and headed for the doors, Simon asked in a cursory manner, “Whatever happened to that old box your gramps gave you?”
She stopped dead in her tracks. His query seemed genuine, the words uttered without inflection. There was no rise at the final pronoun; the question had come off impromptu.
“Must have been consumed by the fire,” with a shrug.
“Did you look inside before the fire got it?”
She waited a moment, confusion crinkling her kittenish features. “No, I hadn’t gotten around to it. See ya.”
Back in the truck she grabbed a bottle of Excedrin and popped two pills before heading out to GCC, where she hoped to bury herself in some good old psychology research.
Hours later her cell bleeped out the theme to Beethoven’s Fifth, waking her from a strange dream of magpie’s and blurry viscounts—one of those pointless dreams that make us question whether or not dreams can possibly mean anything.
“Lexi,” Linnux enthused through the phone. “Can I come over tonight? You got to see what I found.”
“Sure. Hey wait,” she had been about to hang up. “Do you know how to access the DMV database?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Can you find out who owns a 2011 red Camaro?”
“Yeah but you have to narrow it down, I mean there’s probably a dozen people in Batavia with that car.”
“The one I’m interested in has government plates.”
Chapter 8
Oh my God,” Linnux cried at the door. “What are you . . . I know it’s been rough, but—”
“How did you get inside? Get out. Get out now!” Lexi screamed as panic arose, crushing her senses and stealing the thrill of the experience. Linnux did eventually close the bathroom door, but only after she bared the chromed Stanley razor knife at him.
“Damn damn damn!” she slammed a blood-flecked fist against the floor. There was no way she could pretend it was an accident. He had walked in while she was calmly making her eighth cut along the upper thigh. By that point the last few cuts were weeping little beads of blood while the first two were dripping sticky crimson fluid all over the linoleum and pooling in a small puddle next to her buttock. A flesh ladder, its rungs bloody cuts.
No doubt he would assume she’d been trying to off herself.
He knocked on the door a few times as she busied with the clean up. It took a quarter roll of toilet paper to soak up the congealed puddle and wipe her leg clean. She slapped on a patchwork of band aids and donned some long johns under jeans to soak up whatever seeped through.
She opened the door. Linnux locked eyes before looking down at her leg. “I didn’t know you were this bad off. What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t trying to off myself. I mean, come on,” Lexi offered a contrived smile.
“Yeah, sure.” He looked away, hurt distorting his face.
She grabbed his shoulders. “Come on, genius, think. If I wanted to kill myself would I take a razor to the thickest part of my body? That’s just stupid.”
He stared at her for a moment, their eyes level at sixty-three inches off the floor. “So what were you doing then?”
She walked out to the living room, Linnux trailing. This was the moment long feared; though in her imaginings she had never assumed it would be Linnux who discovered the secret. “It’s just something I do to help me . . . you know, overcome certain feelings.”
“Like a drug?”
>
“Exactly.” She played with her hair. “Sometimes I need to feel in control and cutting helps me do that.” This was only a half truth; she wasn’t about to tell him about the punching episodes or the homemade whip that had burned up in her house, or that she enjoyed it all.
“How did you get in anyway?”
Though seemingly convinced that suicide was never on the menu, Linnux still spoke slowly, as to a baby. “I know how worried you’ve been lately and so when you didn’t answer my knocks I picked the lock. Your Gramps shouldn’t have left so many supplies in his garage.” He stared down at her. “I got to get my computer. I left it in the garage. I’ll be right back, okay?”
“Jeez, I’m not going to cut.”
“Ever?”
The stark contrast of her eyes with the smile of a moment ago seemed to strike him deep. “Just go get your computer.”
The silence of the house hung like a specter, watching, waiting. She flipped on the tube, surfed until tight-bloused Alison appeared. She was announcing the deaths of a few US soldiers in Iraq with disturbing lack of empathy. Then a digital image appeared to the right of Alison’s head showing the supposed trajectory of the meteoroid, Wormwood, followed by the first picture of the latest space opera.
There were what appeared to be rocks collected in a pattern that Alison said “Baffles NASA.” Each rock looked like a dirty snowball with stunning dust tails.
When Linnux returned from the garage he handed her a jewel case. “What’s this? You know I don’t listen to anything but—”
“What about that depressing song you were playing just now, upstairs, when you were, you know?” He put his hands up when she gave him another scowl. “Okay, that topic is off limits. Anyway this is Beethoven’s Ninth, just a little more . . . bizarre. You’ll like it. I downloaded it from the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange.”
She took the jewel case and gave him a dubious look.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of it. Jeez alouise you need to get out more.” He dropped it in the Bluray tray and soon the rising beat of the Ninth was filling the room. Lexi listened with every intention of denigrating it but the playful tune forced a smile.
“Told ya,” Linnux crowed.
“All right, it’s not completely horrible. So what did you find out about Dorl?”
The last daylight slowly and inexorably disappeared as Linnux bragged about his discoveries. At first neither he nor Lexi noticed that they were sitting in darkness dispelled only by the pale blue neon light of his computer. It wasn’t until he withdrew some papers from his back pack—which Lexi found rather endearing as it boasted a lightning bolt and was far too colorful to be collegiate—that they noticed how dark it was.
After flipping on the brass lamp Lexi took the pages from Linnux. The Thieving Magpie danced out of the speakers as she read. CLASSIFIED, scrolled in faint gray print, almost like a watermark, was stretched from corner to corner on every page. “Did you steal these?”
“Well yeah,” he confessed. “The government isn’t in the habit of handing out its deepest darkest secrets.”
“Are these deep dark secrets?”
“Oh yeah, they were buried deeper than hell . . . digital hell. Oh never mind. Anyway I have no idea why these were buried so deeply. Some of this is pedestrian, almost academic. And the interesting parts don’t reveal the work of a criminal mastermind or a zealous terrorist.”
The pages were flavored with numbers and terminology that came across as Sanskrit. A slight wind coursed through the house and Lexi stood to retrieve a sweatshirt. On returning Linnux pointed out the growing red blotch on her pant leg. “I’m fine. It’ll stop once I’m sitting again. Tell me what these mean.”
“Mr. Dorl displayed a remarkable aptitude for invention.”
“Yeah, Gramps used to talk about anti-bruise serum and stuff like that.”
“Yeah, about him,” here he hesitated, “there are a lot of references to Virgil Montaigne in these files. It seems the government was intrigued by your grandfather.”
“What sort of references?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what Gramps had to do with the government, but their feet were already wet.
“Well, you know that Silas Godspeed we heard on the reel?” he waited for her to answer. “Well apparently he was sending your gramps reels and intelligence on Dorl until one day both Dorl and Silas disappeared.”
“When was this?” Lexi scooted close to Linnux, forgetting the fact that he was a hormone laced kid. When he continued staring instead of answering, Lexi closed her bathrobe and snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Hey.”
“Sorry, it’s just, when I pictured you in your panties you weren’t covered in blood.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that, since I need your help—for now.”
“Sorry. Dorl and Silas disappeared in 1951, just after Dorl’s factory in Prague exploded, or I should say imploded. There is no more data on Silas after that and if there is more on Dorl, the SCIA has it under lock and key and locked keystrokes.”
“Maybe they died in the implosion.” Lexi said after noticing Linnux’s expression. “I’m not ready to believe in immortality. Why were my grandfather and the government so interested in someone who, though eccentric, seemed to pose no real threat?”
“His inventions. Anti-bruise serum, everlasting batteries, advancements in inoculations and something called the Perpetual Motion Machine for Continuous Energy. I think the SCIA wanted to capture his R and D but his tech always disappeared with him. And he never filed for a single patent—” He stopped at the sound of a branch creaking just outside the window.
Lexi got up first to look outside. The light of the living room prevented this. They laughed at their skittishness. “So why did that guy on the interview seem so frightened if Dorl—or Mr. Rold—wasn’t a threat?”
“I don’t know. Whether or not Mr. Dorl is Rold or if there is a cabal of mysterious men, we need to be careful, because there’s more.” Just as he was about to continue, a car roared down the street with an exhaust leak at the manifold, obvious by the accelerating ticking sound as the car raced away.
“You should know that I found another man’s name scattered throughout the SCIA files. Captain Chuck Colson. Didn’t you say your cop friends name was Simon Colson? Any relation?”
“Yes,” Lexi said, surprise cracking her voice. “Captain Colson was Simon’s grandfather. Gramps worked under him—in the fifties, I think. Why is his name in the files?”
“Captain Colson is referred to as the division head of the Bureau in western New York. I think he was spying your father for the Bureau.”
Chapter 9
Two Weeks Later
Lexi had caught the red Camaro trailing on one other occasion but it had disappeared and she began to settle into the house on Vernon Avenue. For all her doubts about Simon, he had proved forthcoming about his grandfather when she confronted him about it. He admitted that grandpa Colson had worked as an informant for the government but stipulated by saying: “I can’t imagine why the government would spy on your father.”
The police discovered no evidence of foul play at the house on Lewiston, claiming that the fire was a consequence of old, leaking gas pipes in the basement, and so the case was closed. With the insurance money from that and with $25,000 inherited from gramps, Lexi found herself for once out of debt and able to focus on her book Universal Psychology.
With the completion of the Kinesics chapter, she was halfway through. Lexi celebrated by making a date with Simon at Alex’s Steakhouse. He showed up looking smashing in a snug blue t-shirt, an open white-striped Level Ten button down with a pair of black Dockers hanging just right on his waist. She smiled at him as he approached her table; he leaned down to kiss her.
“You smell divine. Suddenly I’m hungry for more than steak.”
“You’re always hungry for more.” The tables were so close that they were forced to lean in and whisper.
; “So, Miss Montaigne,” Simon whispered in the charming way she liked. “Besides the money and house, did your Gramps leave you anything else: A stereo, a collection of coins, a Honus Wagner T206?”
She watched as his lips flattened and his eyes searched hers. It was the first time since that morning in the station after making her statement that she had that vague, unsettling doubt clawing its way through the dungeon walls. What is he fishing for?
“No, just whatever was in the house.” She hated the way the words felt forced. She still hadn’t told him about the chests. At her response, he straightened up and looked away.
The waiter offered the wine choices. Simon looked at Lexi and said, “I think we’ll skip the wine tonight.”
It had been nearly two weeks since she cut, and giving him the cold shoulder would be a definite trigger. So she said, “We’ll take two glasses of Dom.” When the waiter left, Lexi took Simon’s hand, and said, “Dom Perignon always gets me in the mood.”
Simon perked up after that.
Men were easy.
At home an hour later petting and stroking in the dark. The heat of the wine and the lust of the eyes raised their heartbeats and cast aside all else. After the climax, while still flush with ecstasy, she was careful to keep his wandering fingers from roaming to her thighs where the pale raised lines of over eighty tracks would be obvious against the pads of his fingers.
Later, she walked through the dark house, dressed only in his pale blue shirt. Just as her fingers landed on the living room light switch she heard the same sound of rustling branches that she and Linnux had heard two weeks earlier. The sound reached her in a rush of wind. That paroxysm of fear that strikes the breast when alone struck her then and she froze.
Her fingers still on the switch, Lexi waited for the sound to cease as it had before.
It continued.
She ran to the bedroom and tried to wake Simon, but he’d had more wine than her and sleep always owned him after the deed. She threw on pants and grabbed the baseball bat from under the bed, turned, and flew out of the house.
Circled round to the elm that bordered the north side, its branches tickling the eaves and shading the windows. Her knuckles felt arthritic for the grasp she used on the bat. A shadow broke loose from the night and fled down the street. Lexi gave chase, bat raised and feet tramping damp grass. The shadowy figure never turned around.
The Fifth Descent of Lexi Montaigne Page 5
