3 Blood Lines (12 page)

She laughed humorlessly. “When isn’t it? I just wish I had more for you. I went over Dr. Rax’s office again after your people left and I couldn’t find anything missing except that suit.”

Which at least gave them the relative size of the intruder—if there had even been an intruder. The ROM had excellent security and there’d been no evidence of anyone entering or leaving. It could have been an inside job; a friend of the dead janitor maybe, up poking around, who’d panicked when Dr. Rax had his heart attack. The name Dr. Von Thorne had come up a couple of times during yesterday’s questioning as one of Dr. Rax’s least favorite people. Maybe he’d been poking around and panicked—except that they’d already questioned Dr. Von Thorne and he had an airtight alibi, not to mention an extremely protective wife. Still, there were a number of possibilities that had nothing to do with an apparently nonexistent mummy.

While various theories were chasing each other’s tails in Celluci’s head, part of him watched appreciatively as Dr. Shane came around from behind her desk.

“You mentioned on the phone that you wanted to see the sarcophagus?” she said, heading for the door.

He followed her out. “I’d like to, yes.”

“It wasn’t in the workroom, you know. We’d already moved it across the hall.”

“To the storage room.” He could feel the stare of the departmental secretary as they crossed the outer office.
“What are you doing hanging around here?
” it said.
“Why aren’t you out catching the one who did this?”
It was a stare he could identify at fifty paces just by the way it impacted with his back. Over the years, he’d learned to ignore it. Mostly.

“You’ll find it’s just a little large to maneuver around.” Dr. Shane stopped across from the workroom and pulled out her keys. “That’s why we moved it.”

While the workroom doors were bright yellow, the storeroom doors bordered on day-glo orange.

“What’s with the color scheme?” Celluci asked.

Dr. Shane’s head swiveled between the two sets of doors. “I haven’t,” she said at last, forehead slightly puckered, “the faintest idea.”

To Celluci’s eyes the sarcophagus looked like a rectangular box of black rock. He had to actually run his fingers along the edge before he could find the seam where the top had been fitted into the sides. “How can you tell that something like this is Sixteenth Dynasty?” he asked, crouching down and peering in the open end.

“Mostly because the only other one ever found in this particular style was very definitely dated Sixteenth.”

“But the coffin was Eighteenth?” He could see faint marks where the coffin had rested.

“No doubt about it.”

“Is that unusual? Mixing time periods?”

Dr. Shane leaned on the sarcophagus and crossed her arms. “Well, we’ve never run into it before, but that may be because we’ve run into very few undisturbed grave sites. Usually, if we find a sarcophagus, the coffin is missing entirely.”

“Hard to run away with one of these,” Celluci muttered, straightening and having a look at the end panel. “Any theories?”

“On why this one was mixed?” Dr. Shane shrugged. “Maybe the family of the deceased was saving money.”

Celluci looked up and smiled. “Got a good deal on it secondhand?”

Dr. Shane found herself smiling back. “Perhaps.”

Moving the sliding panel into its grooves, Celluci let it gently down, then just as gently eased it up again. There was a three-inch lip on the inside that blocked the bottom edge. He frowned.

“What’s the matter?” Dr. Shane asked, leaning forward a little anxiously. Pretty much indestructible or not, this was still a three-thousand-year-old artifact.

“They might also have chosen this style because once inside, it’d be the next thing to impossible to get out. There’s no way to get a grip on this door and because it slides, brute force would do bugger all.”

“Yes. But that’s usually not a factor . . .”

“No, of course not.” He released the panel and stepped back. Maybe Dave was right. Maybe he was fixating on this nonexistent mummy. “Just a random observation. You, uh, get used to throwing strange details together in this job.”

“In my job, too.”

She really did have a terrific smile. And she smelled great. He recognized Chanel No. 5, the same cologne Vicki used. “Look, it’s . . .” He checked his watch. “. . . eleven forty-five. How about lunch?”

“Lunch?”

“You do eat, don’t you?”

She thought about it for a moment, then she laughed. “Yes, I do.”

“Then it’s lunch?”

“I guess it is, Detective.”

“Mike.”

“Rachel.”

His grandmother had always said food was the fastest way to friendship. Of course, his grandmother was old country Italian and believed in no less than four courses for breakfast while what he had in mind was a little closer to a burger and fries. Still, he could ask Dr. Shane—Rachel—her opinion on the undead while they ate.

The second time Celluci left the museum that day, he headed for the comer and a phone. Lunch had been . . . interesting. Dr. Rachel Shane was a fascinating woman; brilliant, self-assured, with a velvet glove over an iron core.
Which made a nice change,
he observed dryly to himself,
because with Vicki the gloves were usually off.
He liked her wry sense of humor; he enjoyed watching her hands sketch possibilities in the air while she talked. He’d gotten her to tell him about Elias Rax, about his often singleminded pursuit of an idea, about his dedication to the museum. She’d touched on his rivalry with Dr. Von Thorne and Celluci made a mental note to look into it. He hadn’t brought up the mummy.

The closest they’d actually gotten to an analysis of the undead had been an animated discussion of old horror films. Her opinion of those had decided him against mentioning, in even a theoretical way, the idea that seemed to have possessed him.

Possessed . . .
He shoved his hands deep into his jacket pockets and hunched his shoulders against the chill wind.
Let’s come up with another word, shall we. . . .

When it came right down to it, there was only one person he could tell who’d listen to everything he had to say before she told him that he’d lost his mind.

“Nelson. Private investigations.”

“Christ, Vicki, it’s one seventeen in the afternoon. Don’t tell me you’re still asleep.”

“You know, Celluci . . .” She yawned audibly and stretched into a more comfortable position in the recliner. “. . . you’re beginning to sound like my mother.”

She heard him snort. “You spend the night with Fitzroy?”

“Not exactly.” When she’d finally gone to bed, having slept most of the day, she’d had to leave the bedroom light on. Lying there in the dark, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was beside her again, lifeless and empty. What sleep she’d managed to eventually get, had been fitful and dream filled. Just before dawn, she’d called Henry. Although he’d convinced her—and at the same time, she suspected, himself—that this morning at least he had no intention of giving his life to the sun, guilt about not actually being there had kept her awake until long after sunrise. She’d been dozing off and on all day.

“Look, Vicki,” Celluci took a deep breath, audible over the phone lines, “what do you know about mummies?”

“Well, mine’s a pain in the butt.” The silence didn’t sound all that amused, so she continued. “The ancient embalmed Egyptian kind or the monster movie matinee kind?”

“Both.”

Vicki frowned at the receiver. Missing from that single word had been the arrogant self-confidence that usually colored everything Mike Celluci said. “You’re on the ROM case.” She knew he was; all three papers had mentioned him as the investigating officer.

“Yeah.”

“You want to tell me about it?” Even at the height of their competitiveness, they’d bounced ideas off each other, arguing them down to bare essentials, then rebuilding the case from the ground up.

“I think . . .” He sighed and her frown deepened. “. . . I’m going to need to see your face.”

“Now?”

“No.
I
still work for a living. How about dinner? I’ll buy.”

Shit, this is serious.
She pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Champion House at six?”

“Five thirty. I’ll meet you there.”

Vicki sat for a moment, staring down at the phone. She’d never heard Celluci sound so out of his depth. “Mummies . . .” she said at last and headed for the pile of “to be recycled” newspapers in her office. Spreading them out on her weight bench, she scanned the articles on the recent deaths at the museum. Forty minutes later, she picked up a hand weight and absently began doing biceps curls. Her memory hadn’t been faulty; according to Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci,
there was no mummy.

 

It was cold and it was raining as he walked from Queen’s Park back to his hotel, but then, it was October and it was Toronto. According to the ka of Dr. Rax, when the latter conditions were met, the former naturally followed. He decided that, for now, he would treat it as a new experience to be examined and endured, but that later, when his god had acquired more power, perhaps something could be done about the weather.

It had been a most productive day and the day was not yet over.

He had spent the morning sitting and weighing the currents of power eddying about the large room full of shouting men and women. Question period they called it. The name seemed apt, for although there were plenty of questions there seemed to be very few answers. He had been pleased to see that government—and those who sought positions in it—had not changed significantly in millennia. The provinces of Egypt had been very like the provinces of this new land, essentially autonomous and only nominally under the control of the central government. It was a system he understood and could work with.

Amazed at how little both adult ka he had devoured knew of politics, he had convinced a scribe—now called a press secretary—to join him for food. After using barely enough power to ripple the surface of the man’s mind, he had sat and listened to an outpouring of information, both professional and personal, about the Members of the Provincial Parliament that lasted almost two and a half hours. Taking the man’s ka would have been faster, but until he consolidated his power he had no wish to leave a trail of bodies behind him. While he couldn’t be stopped, neither did he wish to be delayed.

Later this afternoon, he would meet with the man now called the Solicitor General. The Solicitor General controlled the police. The police were essentially a standing army. He would prepare the necessary spells and begin his empire from a position of strength.

And then, having set the future in motion, there were loose ends that needed tying off; two ka still carried thoughts of him that must be erased.

 

Vicki pushed a congealing mushroom around her plate and squinted at Celluci. The light levels in the restaurant were just barely high enough for her to see his face but nowhere near high enough if she actually wanted to pick up nuances of expression. She should have thought of that when she suggested the place and it infuriated her that she hadn’t.
Next time it’s MacDonalds, right under the biggest block of fluorescent lights I can find.

He’d told her about the case while they ate, laying out the facts without opinions to color them; the groundwork had been laid and now it was time to cut to the chase.

She watched him play with his teacup for a moment longer, the ceramic bowl looking absurdly small in his hand, then reached across the table and smacked him on the knuckle with one of her chopsticks. “Shit or get off the pot,” she suggested.

Celluci grabbed for the chopstick and missed. “And they say after dinner conversation is dead,” he muttered, wiping sesame-lemon sauce off his hand. He stared down at the crumpled napkin, then up at her.

It might have been the lack of light, but Vicki could’ve sworn he looked tentative, and as far as she knew, Michael Celluci had never looked tentative in his life. When he started to speak, he even sounded tentative and Vicki got a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“I told you how PC Trembley said there’d been a mummy when I talked to her that morning?”

“Yeah.” Vicki wasn’t sure she liked where this was heading. “But everyone else said there wasn’t, so she must’ve been wrong.”

“I don’t think she was.” He squared his shoulders and laid both palms flat on the table. “I think she did see a mummy, and I think that it’s responsible for both of the deaths at the museum.”

A mummy? Lurching around downtown Toronto, trailing rotting bandages and inducing heart attacks? In this day and age the entire concept was ludicrous. Of course, so was a nerd with a pentagram in his living room, a family of werewolves raising sheep outside London, and, when you got right down to it, so was the concept of Henry Fitzroy, bastard son of Henry the VIII, vampire and romance writer. Vicki adjusted her glasses and leaned forward, elbows propped, chin on hands. Life used to be so much simpler. “Tell me,” she sighed.