Passage Graves (14 page)

Chapter 34

WEDNESDAY 7:43 a.m.

St. John the Baptist’s Cathedral

Bathwick, England

Morning sunlight poked through the library window. Ian stirred awake, forgetting for a moment where he was and what had transpired earlier that morning. It slowly came back to him as he rubbed a cramp from his neck and wiped drool off his cheek.

The Rabb
i.

The
Beb’ne Hoshekh
.

Some of his saliva had fallen onto the fragment. He tried to brush it off with his sleeve, but it soaked deeper into the parchment instead. The wet permeated through to the back, so he lifted the fragment over his head to blow it dry. Sun illuminated the vellum, lighting it from behind, and tiny lines of print suddenly appeared underneath the Aramaic words. He lowered the fragment out of the s
unlight and the marks vanished.

Holding it into the light again, he laughed as the tiny symbols returned. There was hidden lettering, written sideways across the page in faint red ink. It was
invisible beneath the surface text unless wetted and held into the light.

Brenton mus
t have made the same discovery.

Ian spat on another corner of fragment and held it into the light. There were at least two dozen microscopic letters in the
damp portion of the vellum. He could barely make out the fine nuances of the sweeping Hebrew block of each character. Underneath the vertical and black Aramaic text were hundreds of lines of red script. He laughed again, quickly covering his mouth to avoid drawing any attention.

It was brilliant!

Dipping the vellum into the glass of water beside him on the table, he wetted a larger portion of the page. The red ink began to bleed. He quickly dried the fragment with his sleeve. Too much moisture ruined the hidden message. Deciphering was going to be a tedious process, one drop of liquid, quarter-inch by quarter-inch.

The clock tower outside began to chime. He only
had fifteen minutes until mass.

Jumping up from the
table, he gathered together his notepapers, careful not to damage the fragment. Excitement bubbled up in his stomach. By some miracle, he had done it. He found the second breadcrumb on his father’s trail. For the first time since Brenton’s death, Ian felt good. Persistence would pay off. The dead would not stay silent.

Ian couldn’t read Hebrew, but he
knew a man who could.

Ch
apter 35

WEDNESDAY 8:05 a.m.

Archeology Department

Cambridge, England

“You threw everything away?” The veins along David’s neck started to
pop out. “It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since I cleaned out his office!”

The plump secretary of Cambridge’s Department of Archeology chewed her gum with rapid, spitfire bites. She hid behind giant blonde ringlets, black horn-rimmed glasses, and the stacks of paper cluttering her desk. “Dr. Hyden had ample time to collect his things,” she said. Her voice was whiny and anxious.
Thatcher wanted to pity her and slap her at the same time.

“I rang him nearly every day for a week and left four messages on his answering mach—”

“He’s dead!” David’s voice echoed along the corridor.

Thatcher touched his arm to calm him.

The secretary’s lower lip curled down into her double chin, and she looked as though she was about to cry. “If you needed to keep something from his office, why did you put it in the disposal bags?”

David shook his head in
disbelief. “I didn’t know we’d need it.”

The secretary shrank in her chair. Her dopey, mascara-laden eyes slanted and t
hen flapped behind her glasses.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Mead,
” Thatcher tried. “Dr. Hyden just lost his father. He’s upset. We’d just like to know what happened to Brenton’s rubbish after it left his office. Where has it gone?”

“They
disposed of it this morning,” she said in a tiny voice.

“Who are ‘they’?” Thatcher
asked.

Ms
. Mead’s face puckered. “The janitorial service. Campus Collections.”

“Where’d they take it?” David
demanded.

“T
o the skips along the back alleyway.” The secretary signaled to a back exit across the hall. “Until the trucks take it away.”

“When does that happen?” Thatcher asked.

“Sometime this morning.”

David met Thatc
her’s eyes. He ran to the door.

Ms. Mead jumped out of her seat. Her miniskirt barely covered her gigantic pear-shaped backside. “Wa
it, sir! You can’t go through there. It’s an emergency exit.” She turned to Thatcher, pleading for help. “He’s not allowed in the alley. Some of those bins are for medical waste. I’ll be sacked if they know you two are messing about.”

Thatcher pulled her
NATO badge from her jacket. “I’m a doctor. We’ll be careful, you have my word.”

The secretary glanced at her credentials. Her face blanched. “No, you don’t understand. I’m not to let
anyone
back there.”

“We’ll be alright,” Thatcher insisted
. She followed David outside and down a cement ramp that led into the narrow alley.

Ms. Mead staggered behind them in
her heels.

Three l
arge disposal bins abutted the back of the biology building. David flipped open one of the skips. The lid slammed against the back of the container.

“S
ir!” the secretary pleaded from the doorway. She slumped dramatically against the door frame. “I’m going to get sacked.”

David un
buttoned the collar of his shirt and folded up his sleeves. “If I’m not back in twenty minutes, come in after me.” He winked at Thatcher and disappeared over the top.

Thatcher bit her lip, watching the secretary bounce from heel to heel. All this for some Polaroid photogra
ph? It seemed silly, but no one in the department even knew until recently that Brenton had an office on campus, let alone who he fraternized with over the years. Just like David had insisted, Brenton never credited anybody else in his published material. They had no other leads.

“This will only take a minute, Ms. Mead.” She gave the secretary an apologetic smile as the canister rocked from side to side. “Good L
ord, David.”

“Sure a lot of crap in here!” he called out.

After a few minutes, he reappeared over the top, empty-handed.

Thatcher nodded to a neig
hboring bin. “Give that one a go?”

David rolled up his sleeves
even further and climbed over.

“Are you po
sitive they put the bags here, Ms. Mead?” Thatcher asked. She saw the tail of the woman’s skirt as the woman ran back inside. Thatcher’s stomach knotted. “David, you might want to speed things up a bit.”

David’s head bobbed along the top of the bin as he tore open
each plastic sack. Unsuccessful, he jumped out of the bin and into the last dumpster.

“It
must be that one,” Thatcher encouraged. She could hear him tearing open plastic bags.

“Got
it!” He held up a handful of burnt papers. “Wait,” he hesitated, shuffling through them. “It’s not it. Some student burned his love letters.”

He kicked the bag into the corner and
jumped out empty handed.

She pulled a candy wrapper out of his hair. “The
y’ve got to be somewhere.”

He swatted her away
. “You think?”

“There are coll
ection sites all over campus.”

David glared at her, unenthusiastic about
swimming in garbage all day. He wiped sweat from his forehead and nodded across the alley at another dumpster. “She said something about a biological hazard?”

A
medical waste unit was attached to the back of the adjacent building. The size of a train car, the bin was connected to the building with a specialized disposal chute and covered with toxic waste warnings.

“
Yes, she did.” Thatcher knew exactly what he was thinking.

David wiggled his eyebrows. “This’ll be fun.”

She stepped back as he forced open the lid. “Be careful,” she said, reading the BIOHAZARD and TOXIC WASTE warning signs. “There might be needles.”

He
lowered his body slowly into the bin and threw a plastic-wrapped, partially dissected frog carcass at her feet. “Biology 101,” he announced.

The rottin
g creatures stank of formaldehyde. “Thanks.” She frowned.

David peeked over the top. “I need your help in here.”

Thatcher hesitated. With a sigh, she grabbed hold of the bin and lifted her leg over the top. She dropped into the heap of dissected amphibians. “This is revolting.”

“Dig in.” He sifte
d through the layers of trash.

Ms. Mead burst from the office door and limped down the ramp. One of her high-h
eels had broken. She held it by the leather strap and waved her hands wildly in the air. “Those two!” She pointed as a short line of campus security guards funneled out the door behind her.

Thatcher locate
d a black plastic bag. “David!”

They strained to pull the bag out from under the
frogs.

A m
an bellowed at them from below.

Ignoring him,
they tore open the sack. A cloud of ash wafted up from the plastic. David sifted madly through charred paperwork with both hands, and by some miracle pulled out Brenton’s Polaroid.

A young campus police officer peered over the top of the bin, holding a canister of mace awkwardly in one hand. “Out of the bin!”

David shoved the Polaroid into his coat pocket. Thatcher nodded at him exhausted.

They shared a brief smile.

Chapter 36

WEDNESDAY 11:20 a.m.

Cambridge University, England

“What the hell were you thinking?” Chief Inspector Lang’s yell echoed along the halls of the Cambridge University Security Office. “Trespassing on private property? Reckless endangerment? You better hope I can talk the University out of pressing charges.”

David endured the verbal blows without debate. Leaning back in his chair, he notice
d Ms. Mead down the corridor just outside the building. She sat alone at the back of an ambulance receiving treatment. The poor lady had a panic attack.

David cleared his throat. “I need a drink of water.”

Lang signaled his approval with one finger and launched into another rant.  “We both know you’re well out of your jurisdiction, Dr. Thatcher.”

David flashed her a look of sympathy as he slipped out the door. She glared back
, ready to kill him for leaving her.

“Thought you might like a drink of water,” David said, offering a paper cup
from the fountain in the hall.

Ms. Mead squirmed. She pulled the ventilator from her mouth to give him a piece of her min
d, but began coughing instead.

David leaned against the open back door of the ambulance. “I wanted to apologize.”

She quieted, but her penciled eyebrows remained skewed disproportionately and diagonally across her forehead.

“I haven’t been myself lately,
not after my father’s death.”

The secretary’s face softened.

David set the cup of water beside her and pulled the Polaroid from his pocket. “D.C.I. Lang was hoping you could help identify these men.” He showed her Brenton’s photograph.

H
er eyes widened with recognition. She nodded, removing the breathing device from her lips. All she could manage was a cough.

“Try some of this.” He handed her the water.

Sipping from the cup, she looked over at two medics crouched in the foyer of an adjacent building. They were in a losing a battle with a vending machine that had stolen their money. David stepped back behind the ambulance door so they couldn’t see him.

“You’d think…” Ms. Mead said in a hoarse whisper. “…that they’d stay around…until I was well.”

David nodded his sympathy.

“A few years ago…these men
worked…with…your father…in depar…”

“In the Archeology Department,” he helped her finish
the sentence, trying not to appear too impatient.

Ms. Mead nodded. She pressed the ventilator to her mouth again and took a few dramatic breaths. Her hands bega
n to tremble. She struggled to hold the tube to her mouth. “I’m asthmatic…Albuterol…helps.” She pointed at the machine as it beeped. “Makes me ill, though…” She rubbed her bloodshot eyes. “Shaky.”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Mead, but
we really need the names of these men.”

The secretary pulled the ventilator from her mouth. “I’m not supposed…to talk…about…” she whispered. The medicine gave her breath a pungent fruity smell.

“Not supposed to talk about what?” David asked.

“They’re angry...” Ms. Mead nodded at the medics fighting with the vending machine.

“The EMTs are angry?” She wasn’t making any sense.

She shook her head. “The department…”

David tried another approach. “Lang can protect you, but you must identify these men.” He kept the photograph in front of her.

The secretary squinted at the picture, unable to maintain focus. “Ehrman.” She
coughed, pointing to the young blond-haired man. “Post doc…”

“T
he bearded man?” David hurried. Lang had to be getting suspicious by now.

The ventilator be
eped.

“Vann…derr…kamm
.” Her syllables slurred together. She took in a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her head tipped backwards against the door. Sweat dripped down her forehead.

“
And what about him?” David pointed to the old man in the photograph.

“S-som
ething’s…wrong,” she stammered.

“I need to know this man’s name.” David pointed at the old man.

The woman’s eyes closed. The ventilator fell from her hand. Her lips formed words, but nothing came out.

“Ms. Mead?”

Her chest was still. She wasn’t breathing.

For a moment, D
avid couldn’t move. He was there again, in the silence of Stenness. He fumbled with the ventilator, pressing it against her gray lips. The pressure of his hands made her limp body fall into the back of the cab and then collapse sideways. She hit the cement with a hollow thud that made him cringe.

As he
dropped beside her, the secretary’s body began to convulse.

“Help us!” he s
creamed.

One of the medics
rushed from the building. He pushed David aside. “Protect her head!”

The other medic
took off his coat and shoved it between the cement and her skull. Spittle sprayed from her foaming mouth.

“Did you give her
something?” one of the medics yelled at David.

David realized he’d been holding his breath. He swallowed air, fighting dizzin
ess. “Water…I gave her water.”

Lang burst out the do
or with Thatcher close behind.

“David, what did you—?” Lang stopped mid-sentence, noticing Ms. Mead.

The woman’s body went limp.

One of the medics searched for a pulse
. “She’s in cardiac arrest.”

The other pulled a CPR kit from the ambulance and placed a resuscitator mask over her colorless face.

Thatcher grabbed David’s arm. “Are you okay?”

He was holding
his breath again. He pointed at the medic doing compressions. The man’s coat hung open as he bobbed over the secretary’s chest, pumping her heart.

Thatcher’s eyes widened in recognition.

Holstered underneath the medic’s arm was a handgun.

****

“Since when do EMTs carry firearms?” David demanded.

Thatcher
sat beside him in the backseat of Lang’s squad car. She stared out the window and rubbed her eyes as Ms. Mead’s body was lifted into the ambulance in a body bag.

David gave an impatient huff. “They kil
led her. The EMTs killed her.”

Thatcher furrowed her brow. Sure, she was
apprehensive about a gun-toting medic, but it was highly doubtful anyone would knowingly murder a lowly secretary. “She was obese and asthmatic,” Thatcher tried to reason with him. “She had a preexisting heart condition.”

“They left her alone in the cab
,” he insisted. “She was given Albuterol.”

“It’s a bronchodilator, a
perfectly normal treatment for asthma.”

“Could it kill her?”

“No.” She frowned and corrected herself. “Well, yes, if she had an allergy or was given a lethal dose, but—”

“All I know is the more she used that ventilator the worse she got.” He leaned his head against the window. “It had a strong smell, too. Fruity.”

“Albuterol is odorless.”

David raised an eyebrow.

Thatcher shifted away from him, annoyed and reluctant. “Come off it, David. She had been chewing gum.”

“The odor came from the ventilator. I co
uld smell it three feet away.”

“They shouldn’t have left her alone, I’ll give you that.”
She conceded, shaking her head and refusing to participate further in the conspiracy theory. Instead, she envisioned reporting her lack of progress to Hummer, including all the pointless gallivanting across Great Britain with David. “I’ve wasted all this time.”

David hung hi
s head at stared at the floor.

Sensing his guilt, she sighed. “It
’s not your fault.”

She tried to believe her own words,
to force some emphasis into their meaning so they would sound sincere, but it sort of
was
his fault. She had foolishly hoped he would have answers. Truthfully, the man was barely holding it together. She couldn’t blame him. Not after everything he’d survived. No, this was her fault.

“Dammit,” she said, annoyed. Hours had been squandered, her career was in the toilet, who knows what was going to happen the next time Maeshowe exploded—but despite all this, she pitied him. Without logic or reason, David Hyden, a frustrated ghost of a man, meant something to her.
“You know what? Sod it all!”

She threw him a bone
. “Acetic aldehyde and acetylene tetrachloride. They each have fruity smells. When given at a sufficient dose, they can cause heart failure.”

“She knew the men in the photograph,” he said, cradling his head in his hands.

Thatcher sat forward. “What?”

David pulled the Polaroid from his pocket and pointed
at the youngest man. “Ehrman. He’s a post doc in the department.” He pointed to the bearded fellow. “And Van-something—Vanderkam.” He fell silent as the driver’s door opened.

Lang took a seat, slam
ming the door shut behind him.

“I told y
ou everything was handled,” he said in a sobering tone. “You two are bang out of order. Why can’t you leave well enough alone?” He met David’s eyes in the rear view mirror.

Lang’s face
was furious red. “I located your father’s case file. It was floating between the desks at the department, just like I said.”

David looked at Thatcher, maintaining a poker face as he pocketed the Polaroid. “I want to see it,” he replied.

Lang revved the engine and peeled out of the parking lot. “Fine.”