Vigil (35 page)

What was it meant to be, she wondered? Something out of a Paul Bowles novel? It appeared to be a vaguely Moroccan décor, a boudoir fantasy complete with Kilim rugs, beaten copper ornaments, and a huge bed partly concealed by a pale yellow gossamer curtain. Through an arched doorway was a painted scrim of undulating sand dunes, glistening silver in the moonlight. The artist, she thought, had done an exemplary job; it was surprisingly convincing.

The whole interior, in fact, was well done—and very inviting. Maybe too much so. Suddenly, the weariness in her bones seemed to grow, and her eyes grew heavy. All day long she’d felt tired, but now she felt as if she were about to collapse on the spot. She needed to lie down, she needed to close her eyes for just a few minutes . . . and the gossamer-curtained bed was only a velvet rope away.

No, she couldn’t; she knew that. But the desire was fast becoming irresistible.

And who would know? It would only be for a few minutes. No one was there; no one would see her behind the curtain . . . especially if she moved quickly.
If she made up her mind and just did it.

Before she knew it, her foot was over the velvet rope and she was padding across the Kilim rugs. The bed was a heavy, high affair, and she had to climb up onto it. Part of her knew this was insane, and the other part simply told her not to muss the coverlet and curtains. That would be wrong.

The spread must have been made of the finest, softest cotton ever spun, and the brocaded pillows seemed perfectly placed, ready to cradle her sleepy head and aching shoulders. Never in her life had a bed been so beckoning, so comfortable. She would lie there, she told herself, for just a few minutes. She would lie very still, concealed by the gauzy curtain; no one would notice, and no one would know.

Her eyelids fluttered shut. The design staff must have scented the air, too; they thought of everything. It smelled like . . . rain-washed leaves. She had the most delicious sense of well-being. Oh, if only she could kick off her shoes and just crawl in under the cool, smooth sheets; she felt like she could sleep there forever . . . untroubled by bad dreams, undisturbed by anything.

Somewhere far away, she thought she heard someone say her name. But she was too tired to respond.

She heard it again, a little closer, and this time she did open her eyes, just enough to gaze out the arched doorway, toward the painted backdrop of endless rolling sand dunes. Someone, she could see now, was standing atop one of them. Someone outlined in silver by the painted moon.

She closed her eyes, smiling. What a fantastically talented artist; she should probably find out who it was. He or she was too good to be painting scrims for department stores.

She wondered where Carter was right now. Probably at the hospital, with his poor friend Russo. God, how awful. The only thing that could make it worse was if Carter continued to blame himself for what had happened; she knew that he did, and she was fighting a losing battle to convince him otherwise.

Her name came again, and when she looked out at the dunes now, the figure was much closer . . . the silhouette of a tall man. He was walking slowly, deliberately, across the sand . . . and her sleepy brain struggled to reconcile this. How in the world could the artist have achieved such an effect?

She wanted to get up and go look, but her limbs felt like lead. Her head felt so heavy she doubted that she would ever again be able to raise it from the pile of ornate pillows it rested on.

The man came closer still, his shadow falling through the arched doorway now, his perfectly chiseled features gradually becoming clear . . . and that was when she felt her stomach lurch, and a hot flood in her throat.

“Beth!” she heard. “There you are!”

She turned on her side and, with nowhere else to do it, threw up into a gleaming brass pot that had been arranged by the side of the bed.

“Oh my God!” Abbie cried, sweeping back the pale yellow curtains. “Oh my God!”

Beth heaved again, unable to control herself.

“Get some towels!” Abbie ordered the salesgirl, who was standing, aghast, behind her.

“This is so totally not allowed!” the salesgirl exclaimed. “The model rooms are off limits and—”

“Just get me a damn towel!” Abbie shouted, before sitting on the bed beside Beth and putting an arm around her shoulders. “Is that it?” she asked, gently. “You feel any better now?”

Beth nodded, mortified—then glanced up toward the arched doorway and the painted scrim. No one was there.

The salesgirl returned with some Ralph Lauren towels and handed them, sullenly, to Abbie. “You’ll have to pay for these,” she said.

“Fine—put ’em on my charge card, along with that chamber pot.” She dabbed at Beth’s chin with the corner of a towel, then handed it to her. Beth buried her face in the thick, comforting fabric and thought to herself,
I don’t ever want to come out of here.

“You want to lie down again,” Abbie asked her, “or can you get up?”

“Up, I think,” Beth said, still clutching the towel. She got up unsteadily from the bed as the salesgirl peered through the archway in both directions.

“Your friend’s gone too,” she said to Beth.

“What are you talking about?” Abbie retorted.

“There was a man here,” the salesgirl replied, “but at least
he’s
gone now.” She glanced at the splattered brass pot. “Shit.”

Abbie put her arm around Beth’s shoulder and guided her out of the model room. “Send that to my apartment,” she said, “after it’s been emptied.”

At the ladies’ room, Beth asked Abbie to wait outside while she cleaned up. What she really wanted was to be alone, to just sink through the floor and have this whole incident to never have happened. She ran the cold water and rinsed her face, leaving black stains under her eyes that she then had to wipe away with the new towel she was still carrying. What, she wondered, was wrong with her? She remembered the dream, the hallucination of the man walking toward her, across the sand . . . but hadn’t the salesgirl said she’d seen someone, too?

If it wasn’t a bad dream, then what was it?

Abbie poked her head in and said, “You okay?”

“Yes,” Beth said, turning off the water. “I’ll just never show my face again at Bloomingdale’s.”

Abbie kept one arm around her waist as they walked toward the escalators. “You sure you’re not pregnant?” she said, half-jokingly.

“I’m sure,” Beth said.

“Then all you need is a warm bed and a snootful of Nyquil. You’re definitely running a temperature.” At the escalators, they waited for a moment as a woman with two little kids and a folding stroller stepped on.

“I’m going to take you home in a cab,” Abbie said, “and make you some broth.”

That sounded good to Beth. They stepped onto the escalator and as it took them down, Beth stole a quick look back toward the model room.

The salesgirl was carrying the brass pot out, concealed under a towel. But the archway behind her was empty, and through it Beth could see nothing but the sand dunes, rolling on forever.

Carter knew the ruined lab was off limits, but he had
gone in, anyway, through the back corridors. He had to see, one more time, the site of what should have been his greatest triumph . . . even though it had become, without a doubt, the site, instead, of his greatest tragedy. The police and city inspectors had already done whatever they had to do, and taken whatever samples they needed, but when he went out again to the street, he still had to duck under the yellow police tape.

He was on his way to the biomed lab, where he was going to meet up with Ezra. Dr. Permut had apparently finished analyzing the ink and the fabric of the scroll, and he was prepared to go over the results with them. Carter was waiting to cross the street when a dirty brown sedan pulled up alongside him, and he heard a voice say, “You know, that’s still the site of an arson investigation. You’re not supposed to go in there.”

He stopped and looked in the car. It was the police detective, Finley.

“Sorry.”

“Where you headed? I’ll give you a lift.”

“Just a few blocks,” Carter said, “no need.”

“Come on,” Finley said, waving an arm. “Hop in.”

Carter had the impression it was more than an offer, and after the detective brushed some rubbish off the front seat and onto the floor, he got in. “Straight ahead,” Carter said, “to Sixth, and then you can make a right.”

“Fact is,” Finley said, pushing his heavy black eyeglasses back up onto the bridge of his nose, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

Exactly what Carter dreaded. “About that body I found?” File that, Carter thought, under sentences I never thought I’d utter.

“What else,” Finley said, reaching into the breast pocket of his car coat and pulling out a folded sheet. “But take a look at that.”

Carter took the paper and unfolded it. The car, he noticed, reeked of stale coffee and greasy burgers. On the paper, he saw a photocopy of two fingerprints. Carter looked over at the detective.

“We picked those up from the railing in the stairwell.”

“They look very clear,” Carter said, wondering what you were supposed to say about fingerprints. He’d never seen any up close before.

“They do, don’t they?” Finley said. “And way too perfect.”

Carter looked again, and now he could see that the whorls of the prints were indeed admirably complete and intact, perfect circles at the center, perfect oblongs on the outside, without a single break or deviation.

“Perfect fingerprints don’t exist,” Finley added. “If they did, we’d never be able to use them to catch anybody.” He pulled a none-too-clean handkerchief out of his pocket and swiped at his glasses, and then at the inside of the windshield. “You’re a scientist—what do you make of that?”

“The fingerprint? I haven’t a clue. Maybe it’s a lab error.”

The detective shook his head. “Nah, I did the whole thing myself.”

Carter let a silence fall. The only thing he could suggest was that the perfect fingerprint had been left by a perfect being—something, perhaps, like an angel—but he wasn’t about to add insanity to any of the other charges the detective might be thinking he was guilty of.

“You can give me that back now,” Finley said, taking the paper and folding it back into his pocket.

“Sorry I can’t help,” Carter said.

The detective nodded, and made a right turn. “What address?”

“Three blocks down, at the corner.”

The detective drove in silence, then said, “Maybe there is one other thing you can help me with.”

“I’ll try.”

“The coroner said that the victim died of immolation.”

Carter waited—wasn’t that pretty obvious?

“But here’s the odd thing. The body had burned from the inside out.”

Carter was puzzled. “If you’re asking me if spontaneous combustion can really occur, I have to say no.”

“That’s what I thought, too. I took science in high school. But seeing as the only other two burn victims I’ve seen this year were working in your lab, right across the street from this one, I thought you might be able to help me out with this.”

Carter didn’t know what to say. “Coincidence?” he finally offered.

The detective pulled the car over at the corner and stopped. “Maybe,” he said. “But it sure is an awful big one.”

You could say that again, Carter thought, though he kept it to himself. “Thanks for the ride,” Carter said, trying not to look too hasty getting out.

The detective waited until Carter had crossed the street in front of him and then pulled away.

Carter took a deep breath, the first one since getting into Finley’s car. He had the terrible feeling that he’d be seeing him again.

When he got to Dr. Permut’s lab, Ezra was already there—punctuality, Carter was learning, was not one of Ezra’s problems—but Carter would hardly have recognized his faculty colleague. Last time, when he’d stopped in to leave the scrap of Ezra’s scroll for analysis, Permut had been as neat as a pin, not a hair out of place, his white lab coat spotless and buttoned from top to bottom.

But now he looked like he hadn’t slept in days; his hair wasn’t brushed, his lab coat was rumpled and dingy, and even behind his glasses Carter could see dark rings under his eyes.

“Glad you could make it today,” Dr. Permut said, conspicuously locking the door behind them. No one else was there. “I didn’t want this to wait any longer.”

“Neither did we,” said Carter. “Ezra here, in case he hasn’t told you, is the owner of the scroll you’ve been analyzing.”

“Yes, he had mentioned it,” Dr. Permut said, quickly turning toward a lab counter. “I’m going to walk you through the results, such as they are,” he said, “and you are welcome to make of them what you will.”

Carter and Ezra exchanged a look, then followed the clearly perturbed scientist to the counter, where wide data sheets with dense sequences of numbers and letters on them were spread out. Even though he couldn’t decipher them any better than he had the first time, Carter again recognized them for what they were. So, apparently, did Ezra.

“These are DNA readouts,” Ezra said. “I’ve seen them before.”

“Good,” Dr. Permut said, fumbling in his pocket and pulling out a roll of Tums. “That’s one less thing I have to explain.” With one finger, he jabbed at the printout on the right and said to Carter, “These are the results I showed you last time, from the fossil fragment.”

“Okay,” Carter said. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“They’re what I referred to as theoretical DNA,” he explained to Ezra. “Most of it we were able to piece together, but at a few critical junctures we had to make educated guesses to fill in and bridge the gaps.”

Ezra nodded as Permut popped a Tums into his mouth, then stuck the roll back into his pocket.

“We did that through a process called PCR, or polymerase chain reaction.”