The Vaults (42 page)

It was a new kind of challenge. In the Vaults, he had been saddled with the decisions and quirks and even contradictions of his predecessors. He did not have to navigate the treacherous waters of rape files, for instance, that Abramowitz considered a crime of violence and that
his
predecessor, Decatur, had considered a sex crime. Puskis was liberated to make his own decisions from the outset, creativity that energized him such that he had only slept for three or four hours at a time since beginning this task several weeks ago.

The room was littered with short piles of paper, arranged in the synthesis of subject and chronology that was Puskis’s organizing system. He finished a section on the mad Turk Belioglu and walked to the kitchen, made a fresh pot of tea, and closed his eyes, letting the smell of mint and orange and cinnamon drift up to his face and past. He walked back to the study and looked out a window onto the narrow, enclosed garden that constituted Van Vossen’s backyard. The killing frost had come two weeks ago, and the garden soil was littered with the remains of dead flowers. In the middle of the garden was a barely perceptible mound, roughly six feet in length and perhaps three feet wide. Unconsciously, Puskis rotated his shoulders, remembering the physical strain of digging the grave for Van Vossen and how that strain had been exacerbated by extracting the needle
from Van Vossen’s lifeless arm, dragging his corpse out to the garden, and replacing the rich garden soil.

The first week had been nerve-racking. Puskis stayed alert for the dreaded sound of the doorbell, or a hard knock, or a footfall in the entranceway. But it never came. No one seemed to miss Van Vossen, and Frings wondered who the man ever saw other than the clerk at the grocer’s.

Puskis was now thoroughly assimilated into the house and into his new routine. He worked on Van Vossen’s manuscript because Van Vossen had known that Puskis would, and that was why Van Vossen had finally allowed himself the peace of death. Puskis worked on Van Vossen’s manuscript because, having destroyed the Vaults, he was now re-creating the vital knowledge that the Vaults held. Puskis worked on the manuscript because, in the end, he couldn’t not work on the manuscript.

Puskis turned from the window and resettled himself in the chair at the table. He picked up the chapter on the counterfeiter Pericles Nickopolidis and began to write in the margin with Van Vossen’s green ink.