Time Travelers Never Die - Jack McDevitt [7]
Because the investigators could construct no easy explanation for the robes—there were six—they removed them. They also boxed everything that had been on top of the desk, including his index cards and the Rolodex. Even the pens went away.
A day later, Thursday, the Inquirer got the story. EMINENT PHYSICIST MISSING, read the headline. There was no mention of the locked doors and windows.
The FBI arrived Friday with a search warrant. “Strictly routine,” they told him. “But your father did some consultation work for the government, so naturally we’re interested.” Had Shel ever noticed any unusual strangers talking to his father? (That description fit at least half of those with whom his father routinely dealt.) Had he noticed people with foreign accents? They asked about the robes. Had he ever seen his father wearing one? Did Shel know what they were used for? Was it possible his father had been living some sort of double life? Was he gay? Did he belong to a secret society of some sort? They showed him photos and asked whether any of the faces were familiar.
Meantime, calls came in from friends and relatives. “Sorry to hear about your dad.” “Everything’ll be all right.” “Let us know if there’s anything we can do.”
Nobody ever knows what to say at such times. In some ways, this was even more difficult than it would have been had his father died. His old friend Dave Dryden admitted there simply were no words.
Dave was a big, easygoing guy who’d been around since they were kids. While Shel had played baseball on the high-school team, Dave, who even then was almost six-four, had been strictly debating and chess team. Still, there’d been a chemistry between them, and they’d kept the friendship alive when most of the other people from that era had drifted apart. When Shel had arrived at a point at which he needed to talk to somebody, he automatically reached out to Dave.
Friday evening, they met at Lenny Pound’s Bar and Grill. Dave was the biggest guy in the place, with red hair and green eyes. He moved with the fluidity of a natural athlete and, moreover, was left-handed. He taught languages and classics at Penn. “A wasted life,” Shel had told him. “You could have played for the Phillies.”
Dave was fascinated by the appearance of the FBI. “What kind of project was your father involved in?”
Shel shrugged. “No idea. He never talked about it.”
“You mean he figured you couldn’t handle the math?”
“Probably.”
Lenny’s was usually loud on Friday nights, and this was no exception. You had to project if you wanted to be heard. It wasn’t the place Shel would have chosen for a quiet talk, but they’d gotten into the habit of going there because it drew a lot of women. The sound system was banging away, and the level of conversation was at about a thousand decibels.
There wasn’t much to be said, though. Nobody had reported any progress on the search. The FBI had been interested in the locked doors, but they’d concluded that, whatever had happened, Shel’s father had been a party to it.
Eventually, by unstated mutual agreement, they changed the subject: “Shel, are you still going to the show next week?”
He’d forgotten. They were members of the Devil’s Disciples, a group of theater devotees. Shel enjoyed live theater, but that wasn’t why he belonged to the group. Membership in the Disciples, for reasons he did not understand, drew an inordinate number of attractive young women. Tuesday night they’d be seeing Arms and the Man. Shel had never seen a play by Shaw that he hadn’t liked. But this didn’t seem like the right time. “I think I’ll pass, Dave.”
Dave showed disapproval. “You can’t really do anything to help, Shel. I don’t think it’s a good idea to sit around in your apartment all night.”
THE Saturday morning media turned up with details of the disappearance, primarily that there seemed no way Michael Shelborne could have gotten out of the house. Within hours, online news had found a deranged physicist who talked about quantum flux and how the government had a secret project that could lead to someone simply stepping into