The Secret of the Stones

by Ernest Dempsey

  “Your husband must have really enjoyed studying religion,” Sean broke the silence again. It must have been difficult for the newly widowed woman to reenter a room where her husband surely spent a great deal of his time.

  “Yes,” she replied. “He loved to read by candlelight. Sometimes, we would read together downstairs, but after I would go to bed he would come in here and continue. His search was tireless.”

  “Search?” Allyson queried.

  “His search for God, dear. My husband did not accept the traditional views of God: an old man with white hair up in the sky. He wanted to know who God truly was. If he could find out what God was, then perhaps he could know his creator even better.”

  “Sounds like quite a heavy task,” Sean continued.

  “Most people spend their whole lives believing what they were taught since they were children. My husband did not simply just accept what was given to him. It was simple enough for him to believe in a higher power. He could never wrap his mind around the mathematical improbabilities that would produce a world full of species through mere chance. Believing in a creator was easy. The intricate way in which organisms work and behave is a delicate design, one which Frank had the utmost respect for.”

  “So he believed there is a God. He just wasn’t sure which one was the right one?” Allyson’s comment was uncertain.

  “Not exactly, dear,” Mrs. Borringer looked fondly at the books on the shelf, her gray-blue eyes weary. “You see, Frank believed that there was a small piece of truth inside each religion. At one point, thousands of years ago, we all came from one place. Most people know it as Eden. From there, the story of God mutated and changed as the population of the Earth migrated farther and farther from the epicenter and as the years passed. The many different stories you read in the Koran, Bible, and Torah came from what was at one point a single truth. Even all of the pagan religions had bits of the truth within.”

  “Like one of those team-building exercises,” Sean said. Allyson and Mrs. Borringer gave him a similar look of confusion. He explained, “It was something I did once in college. The professor took the class of about twenty-five people and made us stand in a circle. He then went to one person and told them to repeat what he told them to the next person in line. After whispering the secret in the person’s ear, that person leaned over and whispered to the next student in line. This process was repeated around the room until the last student had heard the professor’s message. At that point, he asked the final student what the phrase was. Although it was similar to what he had told the first person in line, what he had whispered into the first ear had changed to something very different in mere minutes.”

  “That’s exactly what my husband thought happened with the original religion,” she smiled at him. “I am not sure what it is you are looking for, but if there is something to find, it would be in this room.” Her hand waved carelessly toward the desk and the rest of the contents of the room.

  The two guests exchanged a puzzled look. Sean said what they were thinking, “Didn’t the police come look through this stuff?”

  “They came up here and went through everything. The first group of officers was very respectful of Frank’s things. They were thorough but were careful to leave everything the way they found it.”

  Her sweet face turned to a sort of scowl, “That Officer Jurgenson was quite the opposite though. He tore through everything, leaving books lying around all over the place. The garage was an even bigger mess. He went through our trash, leaving garbage all over the place. The house was a total mess after that fellow left.”

  Sean was feeling more and more certain that this Jurgenson character was not who he pretended to be. Cops could be insensitive at times, but not to an old lady who had just lost her husband to a brutal murder. No, even the biggest of blue-clad jerks knew how to treat a situation like that. He wasn’t a cop but felt compelled to apologize anyway. Then he thought better of it.

  She continued, “It took several hours to put everything back in its place, but it gave me a chance to look back on some fond memories.”

  This lady definitely seemed to be a glass-half-full type.

  Her eyes returned from a distant gaze to the present. “Mr. Wyatt, you and the young lady may look through any of my husband’s things that you wish. I trust you. If you are able to find what it is you seek, you may keep it.”

  “If we do find something…” he began.

  “You may keep it,” she repeated for him. “Whatever you find, I hope it helps you find Tommy and whoever killed Frank.” She smiled again and disappeared around the door and into the hallway.

  “Can she not just tell us what we are looking for and where it is?” Allyson pondered out loud.

  Sean had to smile. Sometimes, historians could be a little socially awkward. He supposed this couple was no different. Those kinds of people spent their whole lives researching and analyzing the lives of other people from many different cultures and time periods. That was bound to have an effect on one’s social skills. He couldn’t help but wonder if Mrs. Borringer knew more than she was letting on. Sean considered the events of the last twenty-four hours. He had to help his friend. Apparently, the woman downstairs wasn’t going to help any more than telling him that the first step to unraveling this mystery might be somewhere in this room.

  “What are we looking for?” Allyson asked, interrupting his thoughts.

  “I’m not sure.” He began looking at the old religious texts, flipping through pages, scanning for some kind of bookmark that someone else might have missed.

  Allyson, too, began looking through some the professor’s things. She joined Sean at the bookshelf, picking up the copy of Poe’s works. She opened it and looked through the table of contents. “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Raven,” “Black Cat,” “The Gold Bug,” and a plethora of other stories and poems, some she’d heard of and some that were beyond her memory of high school English. Most were probably never covered in class. Leafing through a few of the pages, she didn’t recognize anything that should lead them to any kind of clue.

  “Maybe it isn’t here.” She brushed against him slightly as she continued thumbing through the pages.

  The touch of her skin sent an electric chill up and down his spine. He looked up and smiled at her. “I’m sorry you’re involved in this.” His gaze was sincere.

  She smiled back at him. “I have to say, I don’t enjoy being shot at,” she paused, “but this is going to be one amazing story for the paper.”

  He snorted a laugh. Shaking his head, he continued his search.

  Ten minutes went by, and still the pair had found nothing they believed to be what Dr. Borringer had been working on. It was starting to feel like a dead end.

  Allyson interrupted his beleaguered thoughts. “I don’t know much about Poe, but I don‘t think that he knew anything about the Golden Chambers.” Sean spun the chair at the desk around and plopped down while she perused the pages as she paced the small room.

  “It doesn’t look like there is anything to help to us here,” he broke the silence a few minutes later. If there had been anything there, the police or Jurgenson would have certainly found it. He hoped it wasn’t the latter. Nothing seemed to point to any sort of clue, and frustration had settled in. Without a starting point, there was no way they were going to find Tommy.

  Allyson had only begun to pace back from the window in the room when suddenly she stopped. Lifting her head, she smiled at Sean.

  “What?” he asked and cocked his head curiously.

  Her smile was joined by a nod. “I think I know what we’re looking for.”

  She took a step over to the desk and set the book down on the shiny black surface. “Did you ever read ‘The Purloined Letter’?” she asked him as her hand reached down for the envelopes on the table.

  “Not that I remember. But high school English class was a long time ago.”

  “Well, in that story, Poe’s main character is trying to hide
a vital piece of information from the police and some other villains. The detectives and other investigators come to search his house, but they can never find what they are looking for. Essentially, they completely tear the house apart, but to no avail. Finally, the main character’s friend comes over and asks where the letter is hidden. He is directed to a pile of letters that look like ordinary bills and correspondence. In fact, if I remember correctly, the protagonist of the story had gone to extra lengths to make the letter look old and unimportant.”

  “So, basically, the guy left it sitting right there out in the open where everyone could see it but where no one would think something secret should be. Pretty smart or really stupid.”

  “Yeah,” she replied, pulling a very ordinary-looking letter from the small pile. “Sean, what is your middle name?”

  “Matthew. Why?” His eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “I think we just found what we were looking for.”

  16

  Blue Ridge Mountains

  Ulrich left the car parked on the street in a parallel spot about a half block from Tommy’s home. Bringing the captive archaeologist along would have been too difficult. Instead, leaving him behind in the care of his associates seemed the more logical thing to do.

  As he approached the house, Ulrich moved stealthily from the open view of the street to the cover of a neighbor’s home a couple of doors down. More than likely, if the cops were there, they would be stationed at the front and back of the house. He crept around the back porch of the first house, careful to stay low and in the shadows. Inside, an enormous flatscreen television was aglow with some late-night police drama.

  Ulrich reached the corner and maneuvered to the house directly next to Tommy’s. There, he crouched behind a wooden fence and waited next to a small gate. He reached up and cautiously unhooked the latch, careful not to make any noise. The last thing he needed right now was a dog to wake up. Fortunately, no canine appeared.

  Keeping close to the back wall, Ulrich moved closer to his target. He could see the silhouette of what had to be a cop standing on the back porch, smoking a cigarette. Amateurs. Any moron could have seen the guard from a mile away. The man was pacing back and forth, obviously bored with his assignment for the night. As he turned in the opposite direction, Ulrich silently scuffed under the porch, squatting as he moved. Fortunately, the porch was about five feet high. Crickets chirped their night songs loudly. Hardly enough sound cover, but he didn’t need much. To get in the house, he would have to take out the guard. Maybe he didn’t need to kill the man. Knocking him unconscious could have the same effect. Ulrich preferred not to leave loose ends, though. Killing was something he’d been doing a long time, and through the years he had become quite proficient at it.

  Above him, through the cracks of wood, the guard stopped his movement and spun slowly back the way he’d just come. His moment at hand, Ulrich was on the steps, flying up them in twos, careful not to trip. Unfortunately for the police officer, none of the planks made a sound, and in one swift motion, the long blade was pushed through the back of the cop’s neck and out the front of his throat. A sickening gurgle was the only noise he made before falling to the deck, shock imprinted lifelessly in his wide eyes. Blood poured freely from the wound and oozed in between the gaps in the wood to the ground below.

  Ulrich wiped the blade clean on the man’s shirt then took a quick inventory, making sure there was no one standing directly inside. There wasn’t. He stepped to the door. It was unlocked. He imagined if he had shown up thirty minutes later the guards might have been discovered passed out on the couch with ESPN playing in the background. Little wonder crime was so rampant in parts of the city.

  Carefully opening the door, he slipped into what seemed to be the dining room. The house was dark with the exception of a fluorescent light in the kitchen casting a pale glow into the adjoining rooms nearby. Ulrich moved stealthily across the hardwood floor. Rounding the dining room corner, he could make out the shape of the other officer through the front window, standing, obliviously unaware to what had just happened to his partner. A few quiet steps up the stairs, and Ulrich was standing in Tommy’s study.

  He had to search quickly. It would only be a matter of time before the other police officer would go back to check on his partner. Schultz had said there was an envelope on his desk that contained what he needed.

  Ulrich scanned the workstation for the parcel. He’d taken a big chance coming here. It was fortunate that Atlanta’s finest had never received a level of training to deal with his skills. Still, had there been a larger force, things may have got sticky.

  A stack of envelopes sat at the edge of the desk. Setting the blade down on the black wooden surface, he picked up the letters and shuffled them through his gloved fingers, not sure what he was looking for. He arrived at the bottom of the stack, having found nothing but ordinary junk mail and statements from various service institutions. Frustrated, he let the bunch fall back to the surface of the desk next to his knife.

  Had he been tricked? He’d considered the possibility that Schultz had sent him here knowing full well there would be police around the area. Perhaps the archaeologist had underestimated the talents Ulrich possessed. Then again, surely his captive would not be so foolish as to trust that the police would be able to subdue him. No. It had to be here. He picked up the envelopes again and scanned them more meticulously. About halfway through the pile, he stopped at one that seemed peculiar. It was from a financial institution he’d never heard of. Granted, there were a million financial advisers out there, but this one struck him as odd. It had already been opened, whereas the rest were still sealed. Unconsciously dropping the other mail, he removed a piece of paper from within the frayed top. At the bottom of the correspondence he recognized the name of the professor he’d killed a few nights before. It was a letter from Dr. Borringer, and on it were the translations of the disc Schultz had found in North Georgia. The words were still in the form of a riddle: “The chambers will light your path.” A chill went up his spine as he read the last few words. This had to be it.

  Suddenly, a noise came from downstairs. The front door closed. Ulrich tucked the letter into a cargo pocket in his black pants as he shifted over to the door of the study. Below, he could hear the careless footsteps of someone who had no idea what had happened and what was about to. As the sound of the shoes on the hardwood moved toward the kitchen, Ulrich took a few precipitous steps downward, pressing close to the wall. Even though this flatfoot beat cop was surely no match for his level of talent, the blond assassin still preferred to always use the element of surprise if it was available, a policy that had probably saved his hide more than once.

  In the kitchen, the refrigerator door opened, the light flooding the kitchen with a mixture of natural and florescent light.

  “Hey, Billy!” The gruff voice of the cop froze Ulrich on the bottom step of the staircase. “This guy’s got some Cokes in here. You want one?”

  The Southern accent grated against Ulrich’s European ears. The hapless cop, probably about five feet ten inches tall, looked more like a reject from a junior varsity offensive line. Ulrich judged his weight to be around 250 pounds and from the looks of him. He watched as the chubby man reached into the refrigerator and grabbed two red cans from the bottom drawer. Receiving no response from his partner on the back porch, he called out again, “Hey, Billy! You thirsty?” Silence.

  Setting down the cans, the cop stalked toward the dining room where the door to the back deck was located. “Dadgummit, Billy! If you’re on that cell phone again, I’m gonna kick your…” The officer stopped in midsentence as he stared out through the glass door at the prostrate body on the other side. “What the…Billy?!” Panic flooded his face as he reach for the handle of the sliding door.

  Abruptly, he felt something thin and cold run across the breadth of his neck.

  With fleshy hands, the blubbery cop clutched his throat and turned around to see a tall blond-haired man holdin
g a knife. Blood gushed from the open artery and vein, his fingers doing little more than filtering the flow. The man’s beady eyes quickly clouded, and the room began to spin. Finally, his heavy body crashed to the floor, torso and head leaning up against glass. After only a few seconds, the head toppled onto a shoulder, lifeless.

  Ulrich simply stood for a moment watching the last few ounces of life spurt from the wound. Then, turning, he strode swiftly toward the front of the house, concealing the blade in its jacket sheath. He closed the front door of the house casually and returned to the quiet suburban sidewalk, unaware of the eyes that watched him from a black luxury sedan nearby.

  17

  Atlanta

  Allyson handed the envelope to Sean. “Would you like to do the honors?” She smiled at him like a kid who’d just found the last Easter egg.

  What he took from her hand looked, on the outside, like an ordinary correspondence to a financial advisement company. The men who had come in to the Borringer house looking for something profoundly significant would have passed it off to be a typical everyday letter.

  They would have no way of knowing that the institution to which the letter was addressed did not exist. In fact, the only people that might recognize the initials were the two people looking at it at that very moment. In the center of the envelope, the words SMW Financial Advisers were the send-to address.

  Sean stared at the envelope. “That clever dog,” he laughed. “A purloined letter with my initials on it, no one else would have ever realized.”

  Allyson smiled proudly.

  He opened the envelope carefully and removed the contents. Inside was something that Sean did not expect. Instead of finding a translation of some ancient code, as he assumed, he realized it was a letter written specifically to him by Dr. Borringer.