Relics

by K. T. Tomb

  “Haven’t you guys even been paying attention to Professor Grindlay all this time? I mean you spent more time with him than I did and I was able to pick up on his obsession.”

  “What are you talking about? He was the least obsessed person I knew,” Piers offered.

  “Then you’re even dumber than jockstrap over there,” Sheila interjected.

  “Now hold on a minute,” Robert said in his defense.

  “The professor excavated or analyzed the findings from every church excavation over the last forty years. Did you think that was only a coincidence? What’s the first lecture he gives every class of students he gets, whether they’re 101’s or post grads?”

  “The betrayal of Jesus and the curse of Judas Iscariot and his thirty pieces of silver,” Piers replied.

  “Precisely,” Valery confirmed. “It was his obsession. It’s what he has been looking for all of these years.”

  “Wow.” Gerald paused to analyze one detail after another as he continued to examine the coin. “Amazing. Do you really think these could be…”

  Valery beamed with excitement while Gerald was at a loss for words, but Robert, still not quite sober enough to take in the information, spoke severely as he tossed his own coin around.

  “Judas’ coins? Really? I seriously doubt it, but who cares! Do you know how much these are probably worth? How much do you think a museum or collector would pay for just one of these, much less thirty?”

  His voice had almost risen to a yell and the others were watching him with suspicious concern.

  Sheila was the only one to speak; though Valery wanted to, she could never find it in her soul to speak against Robert.

  “Are you kidding me? These are relics, history in our hands, and all you can think of is how much money they are worth? What’s wrong with you? We need to have these authenticated right away.”

  “I thought that was why we had Valery,” Robert retorted. “Valery is our authenticator. We could make more off of these coins than all of our careers combined.”

  Sheila was angry, and the effects of the liquor buzzing inside of her only added to her heat. Robert loved to push buttons, to push everyone to their breaking point and then laugh. Well, she would reach her breaking point if he pushed the issue further. It was unthinkable to discuss selling such a precious find. For the moment, she held her piece, hoping that the others would support her and join the discussion on her side.

  Robert stumbled a bit as he paced the room.

  “Money?” he grunted. “No, not just money; riches and glory! Think about it!”

  He turned to the group, huddled around the desk, fawning over the silver. He laughed heartily, but it sounded hollow echoing in an otherwise silent, concentrated room. He reached over Julie, who was bent over the coins with intrigue, and snatched a handful of the silver.

  “I’ll just take my share then, and you do what you want with yours.”

  At that, Valery finally stood from her slouch and, though Robert loomed over her by at least six inches, she glared over her glasses in disappointment and anger.

  “Put them down, Bobby!”

  Robert was taken aback by her tone; no one remembered ever having heard her so much as raise her voice, much less in the form of a command. She grasped his fist and forced the coins out of his hand with authority.

  “You are taking these coins nowhere and the last thing you are going to do is sell them!”

  Robert was a brute, but something about Valery’s tone made him loosen his grip on them without argument.

  “Whatever,” he said and turned to Piers, nonchalantly. “I need a drink and to be somewhere loud. Coming?”

  He was already half out the door, not caring one way or the other if Piers was coming. Julie looked up at Piers, already knowing he was going to go with him.

  “Someone’s got to keep an eye on the idiot,” he muttered with a sigh.

  She wouldn’t argue because they were all well aware of how Robert was when he was alone. Someone needed to be there to reel him in and keep him in line. One of these days, he was going to get himself killed. She nodded, brushed a kiss across his lips and then shoved him towards the door.

  “I’ll be home in a few hours. Love you.”

  “We should have these tested,” Sheila remarked thoughtfully. With Robert out of the way, they could have a more serious discussion about the coins. “Gerald? Do you think you could use the lab at the museum?”

  “Yeah, not a problem,” he said as he slipped a coin into a plastic bag from the filing cabinet across the room. “It’ll take a little time, but I’ll get it done.”

  “I’ll do a bit of research, too. Maybe I can find something in the archives that will help us place them. Wouldn’t it be amazing if they actually are the coins?” Valery slipped a coin in a bag and then into her pocket.

  Her confrontation with Robert seemed forgotten in the excitement of what the coins could be. Sheila stood from her chair and stretched.

  “I think I’m going to call it a night,” she said as she gathered the remaining coins and placed them back into the leather pouch, cinching it closed once more. “It’s been too long of a day and the liquor is only making things worse. I’ll talk to you guys tomorrow.”

  The others agreed and, locking the coin purse and all of the bagged and tagged salvages into a filing cabinet, followed her through the door. The light in the office went out as if snuffing out the last bit of existence of the professor.

  Chapter Two

  She didn’t so much hear the door swing open as feel his presence standing at the end of the bed. She squinted in the dark as he stood there unmoving, but she could see nothing more than a shadow, illuminated only by the deathly red numbers on the clock, flashing 3:43 a.m.

  “What’s wrong, babe? What’d he do this time?”

  It wasn’t such an unusual thing for Robert to start a fight or get too rowdy at the bar, and Piers was typically the one left to break things up and clean up the mess. As much as Robert had drunk in the past three days, she expected as much had happened that night as well. Piers crossed the room and kneeled at her side of the bed. He laid his head on the comforter and Julie could feel him heaving as he fought tears. Julie jolted upright and wrapped her arms around her fiancé.

  “Oh God! What’s wrong? What happened?”

  Piers made no attempt to reply as she held him.

  “Please. Tell me what happened. You’re scaring me.”

  “He…” He fumbled on the words, which were already barely audible between his sobs, “he’s gone.”

  “Of course he is, we all know he’s…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

  Julie only rocked him gently in hope of calming him, but he only cried louder. His face was soaked with his tears, red from the strain of it, from the pounding of his heart. He looked as though he had been crying for hours already. It baffled her. Piers had not been so torn up earlier. Some people grieved differently than others.

  “I don’t know what happened,” Piers burst forth. “I left him for just a minute. I should never have left him!”

  It didn’t seem like he was talking about the professor any longer, or he was so drunk that he was losing his grip on reality. Was he blaming himself? Instead of contesting his statement, she decided to take a different tack.

  “Piers, what are you talking about, baby?” She tried to coerce more from him, but he was silent. She kissed his forehead gently. “What happened? Who’s gone?”

  “Bobby!” he suddenly burst out. “Oh God, it was awful. I don’t know how. I don’t. He was cool, he, oh God, the blood.”

  Julie felt her stomach clench tightly. Was he serious? Robert? Gone? Blood? What in the hell had happened? She’d thought earlier that he was going to get himself killed one day, but surely that hadn’t been a prediction, surely it hadn’t actually happened. Not to their Bobby. Questions rushed through her mind, but forming them into words was impossible.

  Piers continued in
rapid gulps. “It was so quick. I tried, Jesus, I did try, but it was so fast. Damn it, Bobby!”

  ***

  No amount of caffeine or alcohol, or a combination of the two, could relieve any of their hearts that morning.

  When he had finally calmed enough to allow Julie to turn on the lights, Piers had been covered in blood. It nearly covered his shirt entirely, from when he had pulled Robert into his lap, screaming for someone to help him save his friend. His hands were soaked in it from where he had tried to stop the bleeding. His pants were saturated where the blood had exited the wound in Robert’s belly and ran freely.

  Julie made calls to Sheila, Gerald, and Valery, who had all gathered in the apartment, sullen and silent moments later. Each of them was full of questions and in shock, as they tried to sort through what they had just been told. They’d all been together only a few hours before, and now Robert was lying on a bed of steel under a thin white sheet while his funeral arrangements were being made. Hadn’t they just gone through that very thing? Hadn’t they, only days before, mourned the loss of a friend? They’d all known Robert for the hot temper that he had, but Piers had sworn that when he’d left their table to grab another round from the bar, their friend had been calm and cool, though still fantasizing about selling the coins and what it could mean for each of them.

  When Piers had returned, Robert was already on the ground, blood pouring out from beneath him, and his assailant standing over him with a knife in his hand; confusion and uncertainty on his face. Piers could swear that as the man was dragged away from the scene in handcuffs, he kept muttering about how he didn’t know what had happened, or how it had happened. He’d said he’d never even spoken to Robert, yet the evidence was there and the body was already growing cold. Piers couldn’t help but blame himself. Somehow, there was something he could have done. Should have done. He should have known, somehow. But how could he have known? What could he have done? Exhausted and full of plenty of booze himself, Piers eventually passed out after Julie had finished cleaning him up and into some fresh clothing. Julie left him sleeping while she joined the others.

  Sheila and Gerald sat on wobbly stools at the bar, each tightly clutching a steaming mug, the white of their fingers matching the white shocked look on their faces. Valery was curled up on the couch with a box of tissues snugly at her side, her glasses streaked with her tears. The notebook with her findings on the coins was spread out on the coffee table, untouched and forgotten with the revelation of what had happened. She’d wasted no time with her research. About the time the knife had been buried in Robert’s stomach, she was hard at work in the Harvard Divinity School library, searching through archives that likely hadn’t been touched since the building had been erected. Too excited to return to her home to get some much-needed sleep, she was still poring over books in the library. When she had received the call to come to Julie’s immediately, she had just replaced the last book on its shelf and was excited about what she had discovered. Julie hadn’t given her a reason for the call and had only said that it was urgent. Had she known that the man she loved was being sent to a morgue, she’d have followed him there instead of going over to Julie’s house. She had arrived before the others and had eagerly spread out the notebook to talk about what she had found when Julie broke the news to her.

  Valery hadn't spoken to anyone since she’d heard the news two hours before. She’d gone into the fetal position almost immediately and was often so still that someone would lean over her just to be sure she was still breathing. Robert, no matter his attitude towards others, had always been kind to Valery, winning her heart from the start; and he was gone.

  “Val? You want some coffee?” Julie asked, but Valery made no indication that she heard her friend’s words. “What about something to eat?”

  Again, there was no reply from the girl. Julie sighed, giving up for the moment. She rejoined Gerald and Sheila.

  “I know it’s not right, but I still think he probably deserved it.” Gerald whispered so as not to let Valery hear his heinous words, but Sheila’s eyes were daggers digging into Gerald’s skull. “I said it’s not right! But you can’t argue that he always managed to find trouble. He probably started something and, this time, he lost.”

  Gerald shrugged, though anyone could see that he was bothered by it, even through his nonchalance.

  Julie leaned across the bar facing her friends.

  “Piers said he’s pretty certain that Bobby didn’t start anything.”

  She hugged her own coffee mug against her, feeling the heat penetrate her cold, clammy skin.

  “Look, I’m not saying he deserved the stabbing, but you know how hot he always ran,” Sheila began. “Always ready to explode or push someone near to their breaking point. Gerald is right on that point, at least.”

  Sheila looked as if she hadn’t slept all night. She held one of the coins from the thirty, playing with it between her fingers. Every few minutes or so she would stop to look at it, lost in her thoughts.

  Julie wasn’t sure what to believe. She knew about Robert’s anger, she knew how easily it was triggered, but something in Piers face told her that something more had happened during the night.

  “I’m not convinced that he did start anything, this time,” she said after some moments of silence.

  Sheila was lost in the reflection of the coin, as if it provided her some sort of solace to the events that were whirling around them, but Gerald looked toward Julie as she spoke.

  “You’re not going to make this any easier on yourself by thinking that way.” He looked to her as a concerned friend. “And neither will he.”

  Gerald shrugged towards the bedroom door where Piers slept restlessly. He was sincere with his words, concerned that if Julie continued to believe that Robert hadn’t initiated the fight, she would over-think and overanalyze what had happened.

  “What’s done is done, and he’s gone because of it. There’s no point in worrying over why or how, because it won’t change anything.”

  Julie lowered her head, frustrated and tired. Was this how it was going to be, then? They had lost a friend, another friend, and they were treating it as though someone hadn’t done well on a research paper or final exam. In spite of the fact that she wanted to lash out against that sort of thinking and fight for some sort of sense to it all, she simply had no energy to do so.

  “I know it won’t, but Piers, my God, I wish you all could have seen him when he came in. He wasn’t just upset, it’s like he was scared; but not of the guy, not like the guy was going to come back for him or anything like that, but scared like something didn’t feel right.”

  She searched Gerald’s eyes as she spoke, hoping to find some answers or encouragement in them. “It was like he was being hunted or something. Like he was being pulled at and he was or is fighting so hard against it.”

  She sighed heavily, feeling deflated. “I don’t know.”

  Gerald said nothing and Julie was silent for a long time. They each sipped their coffee while the random sob escaped Valery on the couch and reached their ears. Sheila continued to fix her fascinated gaze on the coin, oblivious to the conversation or lack of conversation taking place.

  With the sun peeking through the kitchen curtains, filling the room with streaks of yellow-white, Gerald finally spoke.

  “He’s upset, Julie. It’s not like you see someone die every day. Not like you see someone brutally stabbed like that. I’m sure that he is just going through denial about what happened, trying to make sense of it and by believing that even the guy didn’t know what he was doing, maybe Piers could change things. I don’t know. I just think it’s shock, and later on today, after he’s gotten some rest, I think he’ll see things a bit more clearly.”

  Julie sighed as she slipped back from the bar and leaned against the counter, her back and legs beginning to hurt, either from the way she stood or from the exhaustion she was feeling. Maybe both.

  “I know, I just…I don’t know. He was so convi
nced, and maybe you’re right, but it’s so damned awful either way.” Her thoughts were disrupted by a scream coming from the couch. She, Gerald, and Sheila, finally breaking from her trance, dashed to Valery’s side.

  “Are you okay? What’s wrong? What happened?” Sheila asked frantically. “Val? What’s wrong baby?”

  Sheila sat beside the girl and pulled her into her lap, but Valery showed no signs of understanding.

  “Val? You need to answer me. I know you’re upset, but you can give me at least a nod so I know you’re okay and understand me.”

  Valery nodded.

  “It’ll be okay,” Sheila told the girl, though it seemed she spoke to the entire group. She opened her palm to the coin that was still pressed against her skin. “It’ll be okay. It will be over soon.”

  Chapter Three

  Robert looked odd without the golden, glowing tan which his skin usually held.

  Nothing of the buff, confident Robert remained. His face was paler, sicklier, even with the makeup applied by the mortician. His cheeks seemed hollowed, his mouth partially opened as though he were sleeping, but his chest did not rise and fall, his eyes did not twitch from his dreams, moist breath did not pass through his lips. Only Gerald and Sheila had said their farewells personally and they were beginning to regret that decision. Robert didn’t look, well, like Robert. He appeared helpless and weak, and that certainly wasn’t the Robert that they had all known and, to some extent, come to love. The Robert they had known just wasn’t there anymore.

  Piers sat in one of the furthest pews in the small chapel at the funeral home with Julie at his side. He’d come around to some degree, but was far from being his old self. In spite of the fact that the others had patiently tried to dissuade him, he still swore something hadn’t been right about their friend’s death; because of his doubts, because of his surety that there was more at play than what they could see, he chose to stay as far from the body as he could. Julie felt the same, as if Robert’s death was an omen, as if his misfortune would become theirs as well if they were to linger too closely. No, they would choose to keep their distance.