The Einstein Prophecy (25 page)

There was only another ten or twenty yards to go—he could see a laundry truck rumbling by on the street—and he prayed that once he got out in the open—into the light, onto the sidewalk—the chase would end. Already, he was getting winded, not from the distance, but from the sheer overload of panic and fear.

He staggered over some old refuse littering the ground, and as he straightened up for the final sprint, something landed on his back so hard it was as though a sack of cement had dropped from a roof. The gun flew from his grip as he sprawled headfirst on the hard dirt and loose gravel. The air was jarred from his lungs, his front teeth cracked in half, and the weight, instead of letting up, bore down even harder, grinding him into the earth. Hot breath scorched the back of his neck—it felt like the blast from a blowtorch—and claws digging deep into his skin pinned his shoulders flat. He was no more able to breathe than he was to flip over and see, with his own eyes, what was even then squeezing the last bits of life out of him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Lucas awoke to a ray of pale sunshine falling across his face. Reaching over Simone’s sleeping shoulder, he was able to snag his wristwatch from the bedside table, hold it up, and see that it was almost eight o’clock already.

From the kitchen downstairs, he could smell pancakes, coffee, and bacon frying in the pan.

He lay back, with Simone’s body, clad only in one of his flannel shirts, snug against him beneath the quilt. Her suitcases were stacked by the door. The events of the night before had left them both so shaken that as soon as they had crept into his room, hoping not to disturb Mrs. Caputo or Amy on their way upstairs, they had simply fallen into each other’s embrace. The narrow bed had creaked and groaned, but its very narrowness had served them well; they wanted not an inch of space between them. When Lucas kissed her good night, Simone’s arms wrapped around his shoulders and pressed him down, holding him there. Separating, his eye patch came loose, and as he fumbled to reposition it, Simone whispered, “Leave it.”

“No, it’s best if you don’t—”

“I know what’s best,” she said, “not you.”

She slipped one finger under the loop and drew the patch over his head, then dropped it on the quilt.

He was painfully aware of what she could now see—a glass eye of a murky brown, badly fitted, and staring sightlessly straight ahead.

“There,” she said.

“There what?”

“I’ve seen the worst of your secrets.”

She leaned her head up and tenderly kissed his brow.

“And lived to tell the tale,” she said.

For the first time in his life, he had been overwhelmed with the urge to share all of his secrets, to reveal himself to this woman in a way he had never revealed himself to anyone. In return, he wanted to know her, too. He wanted to comfort her, and cradle her, he wanted to protect her from the evils that he now knew, in a way he never had before, existed in this world. He doubted if even his famous neighbor across the street, whose thoughts had traveled farther than anyone’s since Newton, could have accounted for the catalogue of horrors he had witnessed since the arrival of the ancient ossuary. But Lucas knew, and Simone knew, and sharing that knowledge bound them together in a way that nothing else could have done. He wanted to ask her everything, and then listen to her voice, with its exotic lilt of English and Arabic, reply.

As she stirred awake now, he whispered in her ear, “So, what was it that you said to me in bed, back at the hotel?”

“What?”

“You know, before all hell broke loose?”

She blushed, but before she could answer, there was a thumping on the bedroom door, and Amy’s voice shouting, “Get up! Get up! It’s pancake time.”

Simone’s eyes went wide, and even as she pulled the quilt up to her chin, the door opened, and Amy poked her head inside. “Mom wants to know how many you want.”

That was when Amy’s eyes met Simone’s, and everything just sort of stopped.

“Amy, close the door now,” Lucas said. “I’ll be right down.”

But she didn’t move.

“This is my friend Simone. Now scat.”

Amy pulled the door closed again, and he could hear her feet scampering, as fast as they could take her, back down the stairs.

“I hope I haven’t broken the house rules,” Simone said.

“We’ll find out,” Lucas said, easing himself up and over her on his way to the bathroom. When he came back out again, tucking his shirt into his pants, Simone was still in the bed—where else was there to go in a room this size?—staring absently out the window. He feared she was reliving the horrific events at the hotel. “I’ll go down and get the lay of the land.”

She turned her head toward him. “Should I leave?”

“And go where?” he said, crouching down beside her. “I want you to stay with me.”

“So do I.”

“Is that what you said in Arabic?”

“It was close,” she said.

He waited for the rest.

“It’s just an old Bedouin saying.”

“Give me the rough translation.”

“I would not trade you for a thousand goats.”

Lucas laughed. “I’m glad to hear it.” Then he leaned forward, kissed her, and said, “Be advised—the hot water never lasts more than two minutes. Plan accordingly.”

On his way downstairs, he stopped at Taylor’s door on the second floor and listened for any noise within. There was none. And not much more in the kitchen, either. Amy was sitting at the Formica table, plowing her way through a plate of pancakes while her mom sat sipping her coffee over the morning newspaper.

“Morning.”

Mrs. Caputo got up, lips primly sealed, and fixed him a plate of pancakes and bacon. She set it down opposite Amy, who looked up long enough to push the syrup bottle toward him. “Who’s that girl?” she asked around a forkful of pancakes. “Is she going to live with us?”

“Amy,” her mother said, “why don’t you go upstairs and make your bed?”

“I already did.”

“Lucas and I have some grown-up things to talk about.”

This time Amy grudgingly took the cue, and when they were alone, Lucas said, “I can explain.”

Mrs. Caputo looked at him, not entirely unsympathetically, over the rim of her coffee cup. “I don’t want to sound like a prude, Lucas—”

“You don’t.”

“But you know how it is. I don’t want to set a bad example for Amy.”

“I get it,” he said, but before he could explain anything more, they were interrupted by the tromping of heavy feet on the front steps.

“Who can that be,” she said, “at this hour?”

When Mrs. Caputo had finished wiping her hands on her apron and opened the front door, Lucas saw a couple of cops, led by Police Chief Farrell, holding empty cardboard boxes. Farrell thrust an official paper at her and said, “We have orders to remove all private belongings from Mr. Raymond Taylor’s room.”

“What? Why?”

“Which room is it, ma’am?

“Second floor. Front.”

The two cops maneuvered around her, dutifully wiped their shoes on the floor mat in the hall, and headed up the stairs.

“What’s going on?” Lucas said.

“Maybe you can tell me,” Farrell said, motioning for Lucas to step out onto the porch with him. Once he had taken him aside, he said, “It’s about your fellow boarder, Ray Taylor.”

“What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

Lucas was stunned into silence.

“His body was found a couple of hours ago. In the alley across the street. That part of town is getting to be mighty dangerous.”

Fallen leaves, driven by a chill wind, tumbled across the front yard.

“What happened to him?” Lucas asked, dreading the answer.

“You might as well ask what happened to that young prof Andy Brandt,” Farrell countered. “Or why some janitor, also from the university, would attack Einstein with a knife. All I know is this, my friend—anytime something bad happens, you’re connected to it somehow.”

Lucas’s mind was already churning. Why Taylor? Had he, too, presented some obstacle to the malevolent force Lucas had seen at work in Simone’s hotel room?

“So, for the record, where were you last night?”

“The Nassau Inn.”

“With that Rashid woman?”

There was no use in lying about it, and even less in telling him she was upstairs right now. “Yes.” There was something else, however, he wanted to know. “How did Taylor die?”

Farrell gave him a long, appraising look. “That’s a good question. Come and see.”

By the time Lucas had retrieved his coat—and found that Simone had fallen right back to sleep, curled up under the quilt—Farrell was already at the curb, jotting in a notepad. Together, they walked around the corner, then a short distance down the alley.

Taylor’s body hadn’t yet been moved any farther than the back of a morgue ambulance. It was parked in the alleyway, back doors open, in an area marked off by two black-and-yellow-striped sawhorses. The coroner pulled back the sheet and let Lucas see the mauled corpse.

“Whatever got Brandt, it got Taylor, too,” Farrell said.

The coroner started to replace the sheet, but Lucas stopped him to make a closer examination of Taylor’s neck and shoulders, where there were visible claw marks.

Farrell, taking note of his interest, said, “Yeah. It’s got talons, or teeth, or fangs. Whatever the hell it is. But last I checked, we don’t have a lot of lions and tigers in New Jersey.”

Lucas hated to think what they might have instead.

“We found a few bullet casings,” Farrell said, “but who knows if he hit the damn thing.”

Lucas looked down the alleyway, past the battered trashcans and potholes, noting their proximity to Einstein’s backyard. And his concern grew, as did his guilt—hadn’t he been the one who advised Taylor to keep a close eye on the place?

After a few more minutes of questioning, during which Farrell acted as if he smelled a rat but was at a loss to catch it, Lucas managed to excuse himself, and then headed down the alley, as if taking a shortcut home.

All along the way, he was on the lookout for any sign of Taylor’s having passed this direction. The chances of finding a footprint, or much else, were awfully slim, however, and Lucas got all the way to Einstein’s garage without spotting a single clue. Glancing back toward the crime scene, he made sure that the police chief was looking the other way when he ducked into the professor’s backyard.

The grass had long since gone brown, and he saw that a shiny new padlock had been affixed to the garage doors. In the upstairs study, he could see Einstein himself hunched over his desk, scribbling something down, and looking perfectly all right. At least, Lucas thought, his worst fears were assuaged, and he was just about to retreat from sight, when, as if pausing to ponder some problem, the professor raised his eyes from his work and saw him there in the yard.

For a moment, they both just looked at each other, then Einstein, cocking his head to one side, raised a hand and waved him toward the back door of the house.

Now it was too late to make a clean getaway.

Lucas went to the stoop and waited there until, a minute later, Helen Dukas, looking puzzled, opened the door.

“What are you doing out here?” she said, standing to one side to let him in.

How, Lucas wondered, should he answer that?

“Let the man come in first,” the professor said from the kitchen. “Then we can find out why he has come to visit.”

As Helen closed the door, Lucas shook hands with Einstein, who was wearing an old terrycloth bathrobe, pajamas, and below his bare ankles, a pair of moccasins embroidered with red and yellow beads. Einstein saw that he had noticed the footwear.

“A gift, from the Navajo tribe,” he said proudly, wiggling his toes. “The Navajo tribe.”

“And he won’t take them off,” Helen said, pulling a chair from the kitchen table and gesturing for Lucas to sit. “I think he sleeps in them now.”

“They are very comfortable.”

Einstein drew up a chair, too, and Helen poured them tea and put a plate of muffins on the table. “They’re poppy seed,” she said, “and only from yesterday.”

Out of courtesy, Lucas helped himself—the muffin was so dry, he washed it down quickly with a gulp of the hot tea—while Einstein looked on approvingly. Although Lucas had only seen him up close on a couple of occasions, Einstein appeared unusually animated and alert today. Perhaps he was happy to take a break, and perhaps he was hoping that Lucas was there to smuggle him some tobacco.

“He has been up all the night,” Helen said, “pacing up and down.” She blew out a sigh of resignation. “Maybe you can tell him that he must take a rest now and then. He is no spring chicken.”

“But when the ideas come, you must take hold of them,” Einstein said, clenching his fist. “Or sometimes they do not come again.”

“They can come after a good night’s sleep, too,” Helen replied.

They bickered, Lucas thought, like an old married couple.

“And last night,” he said, directly to their guest, “they were coming very well.
Ja
, this old brain of mine was young again.”

“What were you working on?” Lucas asked, though anything but the most cursory answer would probably make no sense to him.

“It was a problem that was practical, and not so much theoretical,” he said. “It was something I had promised I would do, but that I could not solve. Round and round I went. For weeks, I could not solve it.”

“I hope you have now,” Helen said, as she dried some dishes and put them in the rack.

“I have,” he said, almost gleefully. “I have written the answers down, and I have put them in an envelope, and now I may relax a bit. Maybe I will take the
Tinef
out on Lake Carnegie. To celebrate.”

“No sailing today,” Helen said. “The weather forecast is for rain.”

“The forecast in New Jersey is always for rain.”

“We are playing bridge at Kurt and Adele’s tonight.”

“I am taking a walk with him this afternoon. We can play the game later.”

Plainly, they liked going back and forth like this, and might have kept the volley going if the doorbell hadn’t rung.

“There they are already,” Helen said. “They don’t waste any time.”

Looking down the hallway, Lucas saw Helen take an envelope from the hall table and, opening the front door, hand it to a burly man in an army uniform. At the curb beyond, Lucas glimpsed a jeep idling at the curb, its exhaust fumes pluming in the autumn air.