Basilisk (21 page)

‘Believe me, Mr Underhill, we’re all praying for that.’

He stayed at the hospital until the sky began to grow pale, and the street lights flickered off. One of the nurses came in and said, ‘We’re going to give your wife a wash now, Mr Underhill, and change her sheets. Why don’t you take a break, get yourself some sleep? We don’t want
you
to be sick.’

‘Yes,’ he said, wearily. ‘Good idea.’

He drove home. He had only just stepped in through the front door when he heard the phone warbling. He picked it up and carried it across the living room, so that he could sit down and ease off his shoes while he answered it.

‘Professor Underhill, this is Detective Cremer. How’s your wife, Professor? Any improvement?’

‘Still stable, but still comatose.’

‘Sorry to hear that, sir. Hope she gets out of it real soon. Listen – the reason I’m calling you is that we now have a final count of the victims we recovered from the Murdstone Rest Home. Twenty-nine, all told. Twenty-six residents and three staff. Some of the bodies were very badly burned, but we managed to identify them all from the rest home’s records.’

‘How about Doctor Zauber? Did you find
his
body?’

‘No, sir. No sign of Doctor Zauber in the building, alive or dead. He wasn’t at his home, either. We went around there and found that he had left. A neighbor said that she saw him carrying a suitcase out to his car around six thirty in the morning. We searched the house and there was no sign of any personal papers or documentation, and no personal items of any value except for clothing and shoes in the bedroom closet.’

‘So he’s vamoosed?’

‘It sure looks like it. We checked every conceivable form of transportation. Airlines, buses, trains, rental cars. Then about an hour ago we discovered that he chartered a Cessna Citation out of Brandywine Airport. He took off around twelve noon headed for Montréal. I’m waiting for the Mounties to get back to me, to see if they can find out where he went after that.’

Nathan felt a cold sliding sensation in his stomach: a sensation of utter hopelessness. If Doctor Zauber had managed to leave the country, God knows how he was ever going to track him down. Maybe he was being hopelessly optimistic in thinking that Doctor Zauber knew a way to rouse Grace out of her coma. But if anybody could, he could, and Nathan had to find out for sure.

‘If you find out where he went, you’ll be sure to call me, won’t you?’

‘Sure,’ said Detective Cremer. ‘No problem at all. Oh – and there’s one more thing I meant to tell you. The fire at the Murdstone was started deliberately, as far as the fire guys can tell. But there was no trace of your usual accelerants. They said it looked more like somebody walked around the second floor with a giant blowtorch, playing it all over the walls and the carpets and the woodwork.’

‘Strange way to set a fire.’

‘Tell me something about this case that
ain’t
strange. So far, the MEs haven’t found a single victim that died of smoke inhalation. All twenty-nine of them must have cashed in their chips long before the fire was started, including the nurses and the orderly. They weren’t shot and they weren’t stabbed and nobody used a blunt instrument to whack them over the head. There’s no trace of poison in their systems, either, so nobody laced their bedtime chocolate with strychnine. So how do you kill twenty-nine people without leaving a trace?’

Nathan could think of only one answer to that.
Basilisk
.

He showered, and then he made himself a pot of strong black coffee and a slice of wholemeal toast, with honey, although he could manage only one bite before he dropped it into the bin. His mouth was desert dry and his throat was constricted with tension, and he had no appetite at all. He chewed, and chewed, and then he spat.

He could only think of Grace, in her hospital bed, and Doctor Zauber, wherever he was. He wondered what Doctor Zauber had done with the basilisk. He could hardly have taken it with him, especially since he had left Philadelphia in daylight, when the basilisk would have been hiding in some darkened crevice – in an attic someplace, or a closet, or a crawlspace.

He called Denver. Denver’s voice sounded as if his nose was stuffed up. He was subdued but no longer angry. He and Stu had decided to take the day off school so that they could chill together and listen to deathgrind music. He promised to come back later, in time for supper.

Nathan said, ‘I’m not too sure I feel like cooking. I’m not too sure I feel like
eating
. But I think we should try to have regular meals. Maybe we’ll go the Trolley Car Diner for
quesadilla
.’

‘OK, Pops. Sounds cool to me.’

He sat down on the couch, eased his feet up, and tried to read through the final notes and graphs that Keira had prepared for the gryphon project. Nearly an hour later, the file dropped on to the floor and woke him up. At first he couldn’t think where he was, or why. But then he sat up and looked around. The house was almost silent, except for the skittering of dry leaves across the yard. It had become very gloomy outside, as if a storm were brewing up.

He thought that he might as well get dressed and go back to the hospital. He couldn’t concentrate on work; and there was nothing he could do to find Doctor Zauber, not until Detective Cremer got back to him.

He was just about to go upstairs when the doorbell chimed. He tightened the sash of his bathrobe and went to open it. It was Patti Laquelle, with a sympathetic smile on her face.

‘I heard your wife is still sick. I’m so sorry.’

‘Thanks. I was just about to go back and sit with her. What do you want?’

‘I wanted to talk to you about the way you went into that burning rest home. I mean, that was an incredibly brave thing to do. But I’m really interested to know what you were doing there, and why you went inside. It has all the makings of a great
Web
story.’

‘Oh, really? “Dragons’ Egg Egghead Scrambles For Safety”?’

‘You’re a funny guy, Professor. In both senses of the word, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

Nathan held the door open wider. ‘You may as well come inside. You’ll have to excuse the way I’m dressed.’

Patti stepped inside. ‘I’ve seen worse. Councilman Pobjoy answered the door to me once wearing nothing but a kitchen apron. You should have seen him when he turned around. Well, as a matter of fact, you
shouldn’t
have seen him when he turned around. What a GPA.’

Nathan led her into the living room. She perched herself on the arm of one of his armchairs, and took out her digital recorder.

‘What I’m really interested in is whether you knew any of the people in the rest home. Is that why you were there, visiting somebody?’

‘Do you want to keep this off the record?’ Nathan asked her. ‘Just for now, anyhow.’

Patti looked dubious, but she said, ‘OK . . . so long as I don’t go away with no story at all.’

‘I was looking for Doctor Zauber, the owner.’

‘Oh, yes? And did you find him?’

‘Doctor Zauber had left, maybe only minutes before I got there. The night before, my wife and I had entered the rest home looking for something very special.’

He stood up, went across to the bookcase, and came back with a copy of
The Black Book
. He opened it, and showed her the woodcut of the basilisk.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Patti. ‘You were looking for this book?’

‘Unh-hunh. We were looking for
that
thing. Part-lizard, part-cockerel, with some unidentifiable mammal DNA thrown in, for good measure. The basilisk, which actually means “little king” in Latin, on account of the horns that grow on top of its head, like antlers.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘Not at all. I explained to you, didn’t I, all about the mythological hybrids that I was trying to breed? The basilisk is one of them.’

‘And you and your wife thought that there was a basilisk at the Murdstone Rest Home? Even if a thing like that really exists, what was it doing
there
?’

Nathan told her everything. He told her about Richard, stealing his research. He told her about Doris Bellman, her cockatoo and her ivy plants. And he told her what had happened to Grace, when Doctor Zauber and his basilisk had cornered them on the second floor of the rest home.

When he had finished, Patti sat with her mouth wide open, saying nothing.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ Nathan asked her.

‘I saw the gryphon you were trying to hatch out, and that was like nothing that I ever saw before, and I mean not
ever
, and I’ve seen a German shepherd that was born with two bodies, and a goose with no head that could walk around the barnyard and lay eggs.’

‘So you
do
believe me?’

She came up close to him and spread her arms wide. ‘I
want
to believe you. Like, what a story that would be! “If Looks Could Kill”! But let’s face it, Professor. If I tried to file anything about a basilisk, my editor would definitely think that I had a hole in my screen door. Or else he’d fire me.’

Nathan looked her straight in the eye, trying to convey how serious he was. ‘Patti . . . I’m telling you the truth. That was what actually happened. I know you can’t file a story like that. But you
could
help me to locate Doctor Zauber, couldn’t you? If you can ask your readers if they’ve seen him anyplace, or know where he might have disappeared to, that would be terrific.’

‘What about my story? “Egghead’s Hair-Raising Rescue Bid”?’

‘How’s this: I was driving past the Murdstone Rest Home when I saw smoke coming out of the upstairs windows. My wife treats some of the residents there, so I stopped and ran inside, to see if anybody needed to be rescued. Unfortunately the smoke and the heat were too much for me, so I had to come back out again, without being able to save anybody. That’s all you have to say.’

‘And Doctor Zauber?’

‘The Philly police want to ask him some questions about how the fire might have gotten started.’

‘Do they suspect him of torching the place himself?’

‘You’ll have to ask them that.’

‘I already did,’ said Patti. ‘They wouldn’t say yes and they wouldn’t say no. They wouldn’t even say maybe. What do
you
think?’

‘I think that I’m very worried and I’m very tired, but if there’s anything at all that you can do to help me, I’ll appreciate it more than you can know.’

Patti stood up. She took hold of his hands, and squeezed them, and then she gave him an unexpected kiss on the forehead, as if he were her favorite uncle. ‘I’ll see what I can do. No promises. But the deal is, you have to let me know
everything
that happens. On the record, and off. Even if you think it sounds totally loony, like everything you’ve told me today.’

‘OK, deal. I need to tell
somebody
, and apart from Denver, who else is going to believe me?’

Patti picked up her purse and walked to the front door. Before he could open it for her, she looked up at him and said, ‘So what happened to the basilisk? I don’t see how Doctor Zauber could have taken something like that on a charter jet, do you?’

‘That’s what I’ve been asking myself. I shot at it, and he said that I’d hurt it, but I don’t have any idea how badly. Maybe I killed it, and he’s buried it. Maybe he’s put it down, and disposed of its body somehow. But you’re right. I don’t think he took it with him to Montréal.’

‘OK,’ said Patti. ‘But if you have any brilliant ideas—’

‘I’ll call you. Don’t worry about it.’

She opened the front door, and as she did so Denver was walking up the driveway, wearing his big loose khaki jacket and his Blue Jays cap on sideways.

‘Hey, Denver!’ said Nathan. ‘Somebody here I’d like you to meet!’

Denver came up to the porch. His face looked pasty, and there were plum-colored circles under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept. Inside the porch, above his head, there was a dreamcatcher, which Grace had bought in Colorado. As Denver came to stand underneath it, it slowly began to circle. It was only being blown by the breeze, of course, but the effect was strangely unsettling, as if he had brought last night’s nightmares with him.

‘Patti, this is my son Denver. Denver, this is Patti Laquelle, from
The
Philadelphia Web.’

‘How’s it going?’ asked Denver. He was trying to act all cool and offhand, but Nathan could tell that he liked her by the way that he was shuffling his feet.

‘Pretty good, thanks. I’ve been talking to your dad about things that go bump in the night.’

‘Oh, really? What did he tell you?’

Patti turned to Nathan as if to ask him how much she was supposed to know. Nathan said, ‘I told her everything. No reason not to. She’s going to post an article on the
Web
, asking if anybody knows where Zauber’s disappeared to.’

‘Well, I’m going to
try
,’ said Patti. ‘Depends on my editor. Pernickety schmuck that he is.’

‘Good,’ said Denver. ‘Thanks.’

‘Real scary, this basilisk,’ said Patti.

‘Sure is. I’ve really got my fingers crossed that I never get to meet it.’

‘All the same, can you imagine it? What a story.’

Denver said, ‘Pops – I just came to pick up my MP3, that’s all. I left it in the kitchen. And I was wondering if you could advance me my next week’s allowance?’

‘Sure. Just hold on a minute.’

Denver looked at Patti as if he were amazed at Nathan’s instant agreement. Like, normally, I have to pester him into the ground.

‘So – what kind of music do you like?’ asked Patti, as Nathan went back into the house.

‘Deathgrind, mostly. Circle of Dead Children, Cattle Decapitation, Brujeria.’

‘Hey!’ said Patti. ‘That’s so extraordinary. Me too. I’ll tell you my favorite band, Soilent Green. I love that southern sludge sound.’

The two of them stood together on the porch nodding at each other like dipping ducks, as they mentally agreed on the tracks that really got them going. They didn’t have to say anything: they could hear the music in their heads.