• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He stalled me. He said something about not having the key. I mentioned that Mort would have one. Most reluctantly he produced one, and we made our way over there. I don’t know why. I found nothing there out of the ordinary. Except, perhaps, for the barest whiff of a scent vaguely familiar and disturbing to me.

“So why not just store your overload in here?” I said to Alger.

“It doesn’t have the proper climate controls,” he said.

“But if they’re all surplus skulls, who cares what happens to them?”

He nodded as though in agreement, but still with an odd reluctance.

Returning to my office, I learned that Lieutenant Tracy was on his way over to see me. Doreen offered to fetch coffee, and I sat down pondering what news the Seaboard constabulary had come up with that could not be trusted to the telephone. All the while, I was conscious of Corny’s tape lying on my desk like an accusation.

The coffee served, the door closed, the lieutenant got right down to business. The preliminary analysis of blood and tissue from Bert and Betti indicate that they ingested compounds similar if not identical to those found in Ossmann and Woodley.

“Dr. Cutler called you?” I asked.

“Right. He says the dosage may have been different, but he can’t really tell.”

It does not reflect well on me, I know, but my real concern upon hearing this news involved the media. I did not want another circus. The lieutenant understood when I voiced my misgivings, agreeing that it was important not to have the information released until we had it all and until we had decided how best to handle it.

He then asked me about my follow-up to the incident in the library involving the two employees and their accusations of mutual date rape. I told him I had drawn a blank so far. I recounted how, despite my initial resolve, I had, like any dutiful citizen of the institution, asked permission from Professor Athol to interview the disputants privately. He said he would have to refer the request to University Office of General Counsel, a veritable law firm, before taking any action.

We discussed as well Celeste Tangent and the slow progress we were both having in obtaining her CV. It was then I realized something I already knew: Lieutenant Tracy had other cases, lots of them. Indeed, he told me then of a body they had just found behind a derelict gas station in Seaboard’s Old Town, a dicey sort of area.

“Not Korky Kummerbund’s?”

“I doubt it. A middle-aged man. Been there too long. We’ve called in Strom Weedly from the Herbarium.”

“The forensic botanist.”

“Right. He’s looking at ground cover, root invasion, fungal growths. Competent guy.”

He got up to go, his coffee scarcely touched. An altogether decent man, I thought, considering how much of his life is spent dealing with the dark side of human existence.

So here I am, with the cursor blinking at me, as though my words had a heartbeat. The tape and keys to the Twitchell Room are in the drawer. My responsibility to the museum and to the Chard family is to go downstairs, put the tape in the VCR, and watch the damn thing. But courage takes energy, and right now I am utterly drained. I scarcely have the wherewithal to go home. It seems that everywhere I turn death has come or death awaits and I suffer the awful realization that in life the only escape from death is death itself.

17

My quandary regarding the Corny Chard tape is worse than ever. I came in this afternoon with the express purpose of taking the tape to the Twitchell Room, putting it in the VCR, turning it on, and watching it. Which, indeed, is what I did. To a point.

But not without stalling for a while, I have to admit. I joined the public for a stroll through the Diorama of Paleolithic Life in Neanderthal Hall, the space on the ground floor that undercuts the galleries in the atrium above. What a superb job young Edwards, our Director of Exhibits, and Thad Pilty have done. Many of the sensitive issues were sorted out finally. The individual Neanderthals