“Atlantis.” Marcia said and shrugged her shoulders. “The legends say the crystal skulls came from Atlantis.”
There was a profound silence in the room. Suddenly there was a burst of laughter from behind them.
“I’m sorry,” Lucy said, clutching the doorway. “I can’t help it.”
Then they were all laughing helplessly. Marcia smiled at them sadly, raising her hands in the air in a see-I-told-you-so gesture.
“So be careful what you tell your University friends,” she said. “Archeologists and anthropologists tend to get pretty feisty about Atlantis legends. If you know what I mean.”
“I’m sorry, Marcia,” Eileen said, wiping at her eyes. “It’s Lucy’s fault.”
“Is not!” came Lucy’s voice indignantly from the doorway.
“It’s always Lucy’s fault,” Joe said. “I swear.”
“No, really, thanks for the warning,” Eileen said. “This is fascinating and I’m glad we know about the skulls. I don’t know how this helps find our murderer.”
“I have an idea,” Marcia said.
“What?” Eileen asked.
“Ask the skull,” she said, and pointed at the screen. “Figure out how it works, and ask it.”
Chapter Eleven
Marriott Hotel Conference Center, Room 1420, Los Angeles
“Such a beautiful view,” Chin Leh said, looking out the window.
“Lovelier every year,” Rene said in liquid Chinese. He had a flair for languages. Though he couldn’t read or write Chinese, he could speak it quite well. Chin Leh was a representative of the Chinese government, an Undersecretary for Hong Kong, and was delighted to run into a fluent Chinese speaker at the taxi stand at the airport.
They discussed the pleasures of Hong Kong, the jewel added so quietly to the crown of China, over a lovely dinner of Thai food. They discussed the latest Merlot from France and the grape crop from the Napa valley. Finally they retired to Chin Leh’s room, where the Chinese bureaucrat ordered a bottle of brandy. He had received all the signals from Rene, all the proper small glances and looks, and was undoubtedly looking forward to an evening of sexual adventure with the enormous Frenchman.
What he received was death, and quickly. Rene was in no mood for games. He had business in Wyoming to attend to. Rene broke the smaller man’s neck with his garrote, careful not to snap through the skin. Chin Leh died with only the smallest expression of surprise on his face. Rene wiped his prints, poured out the bottle of brandy, and left the room within thirty seconds of Leh’s death. He would receive a fat check for this, the other half of a payment made by a Hong Kong rival of Chin Leh’s.
As the door closed behind him Rene walked quickly to the stairway. His heart was beating far too fast for a man his size. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t crave power, or wealth, or women who were required to submit to him. The death behind him meant less than nothing to him. It was the death yet to come he craved. He craved revenge, a lifetime worth of it, and he was determined to get his full measure. He was going to drink it like fine wine, and it was going to be delicious.
He walked down three flights, then left the stairwell and hastened to the elevators. He had to get to the airport and back to Colorado. He couldn’t wait to kill Joe Tanner.
The Reed Ranch, Wyoming
“What is this?” a woman asked in a loud voice.
Joe felt like the time when he was ten and he’d been caught going through the hall closet looking for his birthday presents. He jumped.
Eileen and Lucy were no better. Lucy dropped the screwdriver she’d been holding and uttered a little shriek. Eileen started violently and Joe saw her draw her gun. It was the first time he’d ever seen her do that. She was incredibly fast. It was like a magician’s trick.
Then the gun disappeared, as quickly as it had come. Joe wasn’t sure the girl had even seen Eileen’s gun. She was looking at the dressmaker’s dummy they’d hauled down from Tracy’s attic sewing room. The dummy was draped in an old black tablecloth Tracy had rummaged up for them. Lucy had been attaching a dowel to the neck of the dummy when the woman entered.
The woman had to be Jorie Rothman. Her face was beautiful, with high cheekbones and full lips. Her hair was thick and blonde and her body was as promising as her face. She was gorgeous, but there was nothing about her that interested Joe. Even in a single flashing glance he could see the seething anger and bitterness that dominated the girl. If she didn’t get rid of that interior ugliness, the face she wore at fifty would be very different from the one she was blessed with now. She stood with her fists on her rounded hips, her brows drawn together and her face thunderous.
“We’re checking out a theory,” Eileen said coolly.
“Whose theory? Who gave you permission to get the skull out?”
“Joe Tanner, meet Jorie Rothman,” Lucy said with a little grin. She picked up her screwdriver and continued the awkward business of setting the sharpened dowel into the neck of the dummy. “Jorie doesn’t hold much with polite niceties.”
“Nice to meet you, Jorie,” Joe said. Jorie frowned at him, evidently noticing him for the first time.
“Who are you?”
“Joe Tanner,” he said, and held out his hand. “I’m engaged to Eileen.”
“What happened to your face?” she said, ignoring his hand.
“Car accident. I came up to recover,” he said, and offered a smile. She pursed her lips and folded her arms and looked up through her lashes at him. She was angry, but she knew what she looked like to men. The stance pushed her lovely breasts up and swung a mass of glittering hair over one shoulder. She was a piece of work, this Jorie. Joe could see Lucy working the screwdriver, her black eyes narrowed dangerously.
“So what are you doing with the artifact?”
“We spoke to an expert on the Aztec civilization,” Eileen said. “She said that the skull may be set up to move and, er…” She trailed off and Joe saw a stain of red climb her cheeks. Joe knew how she felt. It seemed ridiculous, all of a sudden, to expect a rock crystal artifact to come to life and tell them who killed Jon McBride.
“It might be a form of recorder,” Lucy finished smoothly, driving the last screw home as Eileen held the dummy. “We’re just checking it out, that’s all, Jorie. Could you get the necklace from the towel over there?”
It worked. Jorie picked up the necklace, scowling, and was directed by Lucy to drape it over the shoulders of the dress dummy.
“Time for the skull,” Eileen said nervously. Joe felt the same way. The family room, full of sunlight and ordinary things like couches and tables, seemed charged with a sort of bright light.
“What are you doing?” Jorie said again, but her eyes were on the skull. Joe picked up the skull. The jawbone dropped slightly; it was a separate piece of carved crystal, as beautifully detailed as the head, attached to each corner by a crystal pin.
“Is there a hole, like Marcia said?” Lucy asked.
“Yes,” Joe said, and handed the skull to Eileen. She took it carefully and set it on the sharpened dowel. The skull wobbled for a second as she searched for the hole in the bottom of the skull.
It was positively eerie. The skull settled onto the dowel, turned lightly, and looked directly at Jorie. She made a tiny little squealing sound and then put a hand to her mouth as though disgusted at herself.
“It looks like those dog statues with the bobbly heads,” Lucy said. She was grinning in delight. Then her mouth dropped open. As she spoke, the skull bobbed around and looked at her.
“Whoa,” Eileen whispered, and the skull slowly spun to face her.
“Does it work for me, too?” Joe said softly. The skull bobbed in his direction, nodding gently as though agreeing.
“This is nothing more than a simple trick,” Jorie said, folding her arms nervously. “This has nothing to do with a murder investigation. You’re playing around with a priceless artifact and I don’t—”
“Oh, Jorie,” Lucy said. “We’re just trying to f
igure out what we’re dealing with here. The skull may contain information, and if it does we might be able to get the information out of it.”
“Right, by asking it?” Jorie said scornfully. Joe was beginning to understand why Lucy and Eileen had that bitten-lemon look when speaking of Jorie. “You think you’ll get the answer like you’re consulting a magic eight ball?”
“We haven’t tried that one, yet,” Joe said cheerfully. The skull, as though relieved, bobbed in his direction. “Let’s ask it a question and turn it over. What do you think, Bob?”
“Bob?”
“Sure, Jorie, we had to call him something,” Eileen said casually. Lucy worked her lips, obviously trying to keep from bursting into laughter.
“Yeah, he seems like a Bob to us. Doesn’t he look like a Bob to you?”
“He does not look like a Bob,” Jorie spat.
“Well, he doesn’t talk, anyway,” Joe said. “We were just checking to see if he might.”
“And who told you he might talk?” Jorie asked. She leaned a hip against the couch and shook her hair back over her shoulder, gestures graceful and naturally enticing and each one aimed at Joe. Joe would have thought a lesbian would have been flirting with lovely Eileen. Lucy, too, was a petite little beauty. Why was Jorie aiming her pointy big breasts at him?
“A friend of mine, a retired schoolteacher who specializes in odd knowledge,” Eileen said calmly. She didn’t appear to notice that Jorie was interested in Joe. Joe wasn’t sure that Jorie knew. Lucy, however, threw a hot dark glance at Jorie and tapped the screwdriver she was still holding against her palm, as though contemplating how it would look bouncing off Jorie’s golden head.
“Jorie?” A voice called from the hall. A woman who had to be the other University scholar entered the room and stopped dead, eyes round and mouth falling open in stunned surprise. She was older than Jorie and heavier, with bristly short dark hair and a round, cheerful face.
“Hi,” Eileen said in resignation. “This is Joe Tanner, my fiancé. Beryl Penrose, Joe. She’s an anthropologist.”
“What are you doing?” Beryl whispered. She never took her eyes off the skull and her expression became even more stunned as the skull, barely moving now, shifted slowly in her direction. Joe thought he might be able to explain the skull’s movement to the sound of a voice, watching it slowly turn to face Beryl. If the skull were still, it wouldn’t shift to follow voices. It had to be moving to react to the vibrations of a voice the way a tuning fork could cause glasses to vibrate. Given time, he bet he could write a mathematical equation to describe the movement. Still, the trick was amazing and terrifically spooky.
“They’re calling it Bob,” Jorie said, sounding all of eight years old. “They were trying to make it talk.”
“And boy don’t we feel foolish now,” Eileen said, with a sigh. “Let’s put it away, guys, before Sheriff King comes along and figures out some way to arrest me. It’s beautiful but it definitely isn’t going to—”
“Wait,” Beryl said. She walked past Jorie and approached the skull. Her face was rapt. Joe liked her much more than Jorie. She smelled strongly of bug spray, sunscreen lotion, and dirt. He noticed the three gold earrings in one ear and a small loop in her eyebrow. Her hand, grimed with dirt, touched the brow of the skull as gently as a moth. The skull bobbed happily at her, grinning his eternal fixed grin. Reflections from the light shining on the crystal made water-like reflections dance on the ceiling of the room.
“Such a beautiful artifact,” she said finally, turning from the skull. She looked at Eileen and Lucy. “You’ve obviously discovered the Atlantis legend.”
“Atlantis?” Jorie said in a high, breathless voice.
“Atlantis, dear,” Beryl said absently. “Don’t worry, I’m not upset that you got out the skull. But I’m not a believer in the Atlantis theory. I believe that the Aztecs were an incredibly advanced civilization all on their own. But I do know about the Atlantis legend.”
“So you think this skull may be a data storage device?” Joe asked. Beryl turned her gaze to Joe. She had beautiful, intense hazel eyes and thick, expressive brows. She made Jorie look like a plastic doll in a discount store, and she must have seen Joe’s obvious admiration. Her brows twitched slightly and her mouth curled in an amused smile.
“Yes, I think it may be. The Atlantis legend is the white man’s way of explaining away the accomplishments of the Aztecs. Of course primitive brown men couldn’t possibly have had an advanced culture, so white men from the destroyed island of Atlantis must have founded the Aztec civilization and given all their technology to the inferior natives. It’s a racist concept, and I despise it.”
“That’s what our schoolteacher friend said,” Eileen said, nodding.
“Well that’s one point in your friend’s favor,” Beryl said. “I don’t think we have the technology to pull data from this device. Or to put it another way, we don’t have the magic to make the skull talk. I think we need to study this skull, and by we I mean scientists. Not detectives and their friends.” She looked at Eileen, Joe and Lucy sternly. Joe felt like hanging his head like a child caught with a forbidden treat.
“We have no mojo,” Lucy said mournfully, irrepressible as always. Beryl laughed.
“Exactly,” she said. “I’d like you to put the skull back in the safe, please.”
“Yes, ma’am. Back in the safe, Bob,” Joe said to the skull, which bobbed around to look at him. Was it Joe’s imagination, or did the skull look unhappy?
Chapter Twelve
Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, California
Rene gazed moodily at the Los Angeles air traffic control tower. It sat across the tarmac in the sparkling California sun, looking like a silly robot spider from a B-grade horror movie. He was stuck again, waiting for his flight to be called, and he was trapped again into thoughts about his father.
Jacques Dubois never hated the actor who became President, Ronald Reagan. Perhaps Rene, his son, fixated on Reagan because he was visible. It didn’t matter, ultimately. McCarthy was long dead, most of the committee members were faceless. But Reagan testified before Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee. He testified out of principle, Rene had read, not out of a desire to save his career. Reagan genuinely hated communism and the American communists who were so obviously run by the Soviet Union. His principled actions, his all-American attitude, his good looks, gave gloss and meaning to McCarthy’s witch hunt. And he was visible. Always on television or in the movies, always smiling, playing the hero.
Reagan was long gone into politics when Jacques Dubois was blackballed in Hollywood, but Rene became convinced the actor was ultimately responsible for the destruction of his beloved father. Six year old Rene hated Ronald Reagan. He hated him with a child’s uncomplicated purity.
Rene at eighteen was working at a wine shop in Paris when he was recruited, abruptly, into a branch of the Russian Mafia. His father was near death with the lung cancer that was stealing his life away. Rene carried tons of boxes of liquor and wine and spent the money on heroin to help kill his father’s pain. The Russians that were going to enforce protection money for the shop were in the midst of administering a beating to the shop owner when Rene came out of the stock room.
Rene had very little memory of the fight. He remembered the taste of his own blood in his mouth, and the feel of pain in a broken finger. But the rest was a blur of ecstasy. Every untutored blow was joy, the joy of released anger that had festered inside him for so long it was like a monster finally let free of its chains. One man later died of his injuries, and the other never walked again. Rene thought he would be targeted for assassination and was, instead, issued an invitation to join. His father died without ever knowing how Rene could suddenly afford the finest heroin and hashish. At that point, he didn’t notice much. Rene cared, though, that his father was as comfortable as possible in his final miserable year of life.
When Ronald Reagan was elected President, Rene was
incandescent with fury and rage. He was an assassin, although a novice one. He was beginning to plan his own attempt when John Hinckley, Junior, stepped out of a Washington crowd and shot the American President. Rene had a copy of the tape showing the shooting. He’d played it until it wore out, then he had it digitized so it would never wear out again.
He liked watching Reagan get shot, which was undeniable. But he also watched the fully automatic weapons appear magically, as though conjured, by Secret Service agents. He studied other attempts, successful and failed: Oswald’s assassination of Kennedy, Squeaky Fromme’s attempt on Ford, even the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
Ultimately he decided he couldn’t kill the President without being caught. He thought about other options. He’d recently finished a contract assassination. He kidnapped a Taiwanese diplomat’s mistress, a young thing with a pout much like little Iris in Taxi Driver, John Hinckley’s favorite movie. The diplomat, madly in love with the girl, had driven right into Rene’s hands while trying to save her. He and the girl were together now, forever, at the bottom of an oil barrel filled with cement. Even at the end he was trying to protect her, trying to cover her body with his as Rene filled the barrel with liquid cement.
Rene thought about Reagan’s children, his wife, his former wife. All of them had potential, but none called to him. Obsession, after all, was an arcane and elegant thing. It had to be satisfied in its own way.
Rene stirred in his lounge chair and blinked sleepily at the air traffic control tower. Why did Reagan’s missile defense system call to him so powerfully? Why did it beg to be destroyed? He wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter. Killing scientists, just because they worked in missile defense, turned out to be terrific fun. He was still a contract assassin but took time out at least once a year to indulge in his hobby. Quietly, always masked as a suicide or an accident, but always the most brilliant, the most far-reaching scientists and engineers. After a while it became a game he couldn’t stop playing. Reagan was long gone now, Dubois was getting old, but he couldn’t stop. Every death filled him with a joy that was curdled like old milk, sour and sweet at the same time…
The Thirteenth Skull Page 13
