Elisha’s Bones (26 page)

The Mustang crests the top of the hill, and Laverton opens up before us, the whole of the town bordered by gradual rises that highlight the vastness of the surrounding desert, as well as offer a buffer.

Espy stirs. She does a half stretch, which one must do in a cramped car, then opens her eyes. It takes her a little while to absorb the scene outside the car. I can tell the second she’s fully awake, because I see her grimace. Not that I blame her. A vista of sand, sky, barren hills, and a city so exposed to the elements must appear strange to someone used to jungle and urban areas, even if Espy is more traveled than most.

“Have we died and gone to hell?” she asks.

“Once you taste Meredith’s cooking, you’ll think we’re in heaven.”

It’s the wrong thing to say; my stomach has been growling for the last two hours. I press down on the gas pedal, moving the dirty red car onward and hoping that Meredith has made her coffee cake.

While the house is old, an original of its period, the large pond it overlooks is all Jim’s doing. My friend has always loved water, and although an affinity for the town and its people caused him to make his home here in the dry plains, he brought the water with him. I don’t know how much it cost him to dig out seven acres of dirt and rock to a depth of ten feet, then fill the area with water, but it must have been an astronomical sum. His father was a steel baron in Britain, and Jim netted a grand inheritance when the man passed. Still, what he’s accomplished here seems beyond the means of someone who has never appeared to have a lot of money.

What impresses me more, though, is that he built the wraparound porch by himself, along with the chairs on which we’re seated.

The cigar in my hand has burned down an inch and a half, and its smoke, combined with the sweeter scent of Jim’s pipe, is a simple pleasure enhanced by the setting.

My eyes are on the small motorboat tied off at the dock, gentle waves giving the vessel a light bobbing against the taut line. It’s the same boat we took out to the center of the pond the last time I was here, when I’d failed to catch anything, even though the water was seeded with trout, which have bred to copious amounts within their liquid enclosure.

“I could get used to this.”

Jim chuckles and says, “I don’t think so.”

I look over at him, and his eyes are focused on some spot far beyond the pond. “Why?”

He taps his pipe in the palm of his hand. “While you’ve always had a bit of the hermit in you, this sort of solitude would drive you crazy.”

Jim has aged well, if such a thing can be said about the violating process of adding years at the expense of robustness. He is still slim but he’s also softer, which, I suppose, comes from the fact that he has a house, and a wife, and nothing left to prove in his field. And the solidness of his work, his research, means that he doesn’t have much left to defend.

“Maybe. But right now I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.”

“I would guess you said the same thing about Brazil, and Ecuador, and Burkina Faso, and Nizhniy Novgorod.” He leaves out Egypt. “It’s about the work, my boy. The setting is incidental.”

I don’t give him an answer because I’m not sure what to think of his assertion. The last five years would certainly seem to belie it but, considered through the filter of recent events, it sounds like a plausible hypothesis. I’m supposed to be back at Evanston soon, and I can’t remember a time when a place seemed like such a distant idea. Except, of course, for my cactus, which I can see in my mind’s eye withering on the windowsill beneath the winter sun.

Through the screen door I can hear Meredith and Esperanza moving about the kitchen. But except for a muffled word or two, their conversation remains their own. I’m not at all surprised they are getting on well. They’re cut from different parts of the same cloth.

“She’s a lovely woman,” Jim says.

The old professor remains sharp, his intuitive skill bordering on the eerie.

“I know,” I say.

He turns silent for a few seconds and then gives a small
harrumph
before taking a puff from his pipe. From somewhere out over the pond I hear a single bird call.

“You should have married her,” he says.

I have no answer, except to suspect that he’s probably right. He must sense that I’m not going to be baited, as if I were a grad student again and arguing some finer point of archaeological theory. He removes the pipe from his mouth and fixes warm and wise eyes on me.

“Are you going to tell me what you want?” When I don’t respond right away, he adds, “I know you didn’t come to the other side of the world just to sit on my porch.”

“Technically, I was already on the other side of the world. So it was only a matter of a few hundred miles.”

He shakes his head. “You were always saying something smart like that, as I recall. All right, have it your way. What is it that brings you a few hundred miles to here, Australia’s premier vacationland?”

There’s something inside me that doesn’t care to broach the subject. I’m more at peace right now than I can remember feeling for quite some time, and forcing the conversation to the events of the last couple of weeks can only serve to dampen the mood. I let go a sigh that’s louder than I intended, but Jim says nothing. He knows I’ll tell him when I’m ready.

And I do. It’s like some Jack Kerouac stream of consciousness that has me divulging everything that’s happened since I took this job: the exhilarating finds, the mounting bodies, the flights from one continent to another. Through it all, Jim listens, and I’m not looking at him to gauge his reaction, even though the portion connecting my present circumstances with the events at KV65 must have hit him hard. My eyes stay on the calm water. I’m not sure how long I speak, or if my story makes any sense. Yet it doesn’t really matter because it’s another much-needed catharsis. If the trip out here proves to be nothing more than a visit to a comfortable confessional, it will have been worth it, even accepting the fact that I’m not Catholic.

After I’ve finished, when I’ve reached empty, Jim is quiet. I look over at him and see him mulling over everything I’ve said. The afternoon is beginning to cross into early evening, not noticeable so much by any change in the light as by a certain feel in the air.

“Do you believe the bones are real?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s an important detail. Whether you’re a skeptic or a believer speaks volumes about where you go from here.”

“You mean whether to continue the search or go home?”

“In a nutshell.” He takes a long, thoughtful draw on his pipe. A moment later he pulls it away from his mouth and releases a cloud of gray smoke, then points the pipe at me. “If you don’t believe the bones exist, then you’re putting your own life—not to mention the lives of your loved ones—in jeopardy for no reason. If, on the other hand, you firmly believe they exist, and that they possess the power that Reese and the biblical record claim, then you’re making a conscious decision to value this magnificent artifact above your own well-being.”

I’m bothered by my friend’s nutshell, because I’m not sure the Occam’s razor principle works here. It’s not an either/or, a belief or a rejection of belief. There’s room for something else. Manheim’s actions—and Reese’s to a lesser extent—have woven me into the fabric of the unfinished narrative. I’m still here to dig into what was behind Will’s death, and I want to see Manheim pay for what he did. For now, I can tell myself that the bones are incidental.

“What about Will?” I ask.

A cloud drops over Jim, and it’s not something I’m happy about. I don’t know what Jim has carried with him over the last five years, or what he’s feeling now that I’ve told him what I know. He is quiet for a long time, until I’m not sure he’s going to answer. But then his face gives way to a sad smile and he says, “I’m sorry I didn’t do more to find out what happened to Will.”

I start to protest but he waves me silent.

“I knew that what happened was no accident. Everyone knew it.”

I’m gathered up in that sentence. I’ve always known, yet I ran away.

“I should have pressed for an investigation,” Jim says. “Instead, I packed up and went home. And I let you do the same.”

There’s nothing I can say in response to this candid admission, except to be grateful that he’s made the gesture. Sitting in silence with him is my forgiveness.

I ponder his words while whatever passes for the Australian equivalent of an erne makes a dive toward the still water. There is the barest hint of a splash before the bird beats its wings furiously to rise back up into the air. I think its talons are empty, although I can’t be sure.

“Dinner’s ready,” Meredith calls from the doorway.

I grind my cigar in the ashtray balanced on the arm of the chair until the glowing tip dies and then I slip it into my breast pocket. As Jim gets up and starts for the door, I gesture that I’ll follow in a minute. Once the door swings shut behind him, I pull out my phone and, after a brief hesitation, dial the one number I haven’t wanted to call.

“Jack.”

“Hello, Mr. Reese.”

Neither of us speaks for a time and I imagine it’s because we both know how much water has passed under the bridge.

He’s the first to break the silence.

“Do you believe in them, Jack?”

I sigh, my eyes searching the sky. Finally I say, “Hardy’s dead, Gordon.”

“I know that.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

Any answer he might give is forestalled by a coughing fit.

It’s a bad episode; I can hear the man gasping for breath. I am unmoved. We’re all dying. A full minute, maybe two, goes by before he can talk. When he does, he says the only thing that can shake me.

“She’s nine, you know. My granddaughter. Her name’s Sophie.”

I say nothing.

“She’ll be dead soon. Unless—”

“I would have given them to you, Gordon. But then you tried to have me killed.”

I end the call there, not moving for a long time. At some point I hear someone come to the screen door, but whoever it is leaves without saying anything.

Jim leans back in his seat, his hand resting on his belly as if he would undo his belt.

“I don’t eat that well unless there’s company,” he says.

“Then I’m glad I could help.”

“Don’t believe him, Jack,” Meredith laughs. “A waistline like Jim’s doesn’t happen based on the few people who come to visit us.”

Meredith Winfield is a woman with whom I will always be partially in love, and I don’t feel at all guilty about it. Even now, when gray has claimed most of her hair color, when wrinkles have found purchase beneath her eyes and along her forehead, she is one of the most striking women I’ve ever met. She has the type of beauty that’s independent of age—a conglomeration of perfect attributes. She holds doctorates in both philosophy and political science, has a razor-sharp wit, infinite patience, and a pair of eyes that tunnel into infinity. Like Homer’s Helen, Meredith’s eyes could launch a fleet of vessels helmed by desperate men.

Jim scowls at his wife, who smiles back at him as she begins removing the dirty plates from the table. Espy rises to help. Reaching for his pipe with a mottled hand, Jim locates the matches in his shirt pocket with the other and relights its contents. I think about doing the same with my half-spent cigar but let the inclination pass.

“What are you going to do?” Jim asks.

“I’m not sure.” I shrug. “Allow entropy to run its course?”

He doesn’t reply but instead puffs away at the pipe until a haze forms above him and spreads through the dining room. There’s no eye contact. His are focused on some point between here and God, and mine are on the grease spots that stain the tan tablecloth. Without a word, he rights his chair and stands and, with the look of the professor—the look that used to send his students scurrying—he beckons me to follow.

Cutting through the living room, we enter Jim’s office, or rather library, where he heads for his computer. He takes hold of the mouse, moves and clicks, and a search engine pops up. He steps back and gestures toward the machine.

“Know your enemy,” he says.

It takes a while before I realize what he’s talking about, but when understanding strikes, it all makes perfect sense. Jim knows I’m going to keep pursuing this, that there will be another meeting with Victor Manheim. So it makes sense that I learn all I can about the man.

Grinning, I take a seat and get to work. I begin by searching through a large volume of query results using a wide array of keywords. Before I know it, an hour has passed. At some point Espy joins me. Together we go from site to site, document to document, looking for anything that would explain Manheim’s involvement. Birth and death records, newspaper articles, press releases, business acquisitions—his is an impressive, influential family. What I’m not finding, though, is anything I can use against him.

When my eyes start to hurt, I take a break, and Esperanza slides into the driver’s seat. It’s as I start to walk away to peruse Jim’s library, to relax a little, that Espy switches to an image search rather than the standard text. The first page that pops up features a bevy of people I’ve seen when digging through other sites. Victor has many entries; his mug has far too much presence in the cyber world. But he’s in politics, so that is no surprise. Espy clicks to the next page. The images generate, hang there for seconds, and Espy is about to move on when something clicks in my brain and I tell her to stop.

I’m not sure how long I stare at it before the thing comes into focus, but it’s like a shot to my nerves when I realize the meaning. My throat tightens until all I can utter are strangled noises.

It’s there, right in front of me. A symbol I’ve carried with me for years, rubbed and photographed from the Quetzl-Quezo wall half a world away—the last in a line of strange glyphs that have defied translation. It’s the Manheim family crest.

My eyes hurt. I blink several times in an attempt to lubricate them but can’t seem to produce any moisture. I think this is nature’s way of forcing sleep on someone too self-absorbed to understand what the body requires. Ever obstinate, I use both hands to massage my eyeballs, probably harder than I need to, and I convince myself they feel fresher, more alert as a result.