Killing Time

— five years in the local state pen.' Max's face grew even more puzzled, and his voice softened. 'Strange thing is, the day after he went up, just last week, the Indians laid concrete over the whole burial ground. So much for sacred…'

'Maybe they didn't want any more desecrations.'

'Maybe,' Max said with a shrug. 'Point is, what's this guy Kuperman's hair doing at our murder scene?'

'You're sure it's his?'

Max shrugged again. 'The universal DNA database doesn't lie. So unless he's got an identical twin—'

'That's what I'm talking about.'

'What's what you're talking about?'

'Kuperman,' I said, not quite believing Max's confused look. 'He's got a twin brother.'

Max swallowed hard. 'Screw you, Wolfe.'

'He does! Jonah Kuperman — he's an archaeologist, just as famous as his brother.'

'Well, it wasn't in any of the hits that I pulled up.'

'Jesus, Max,' I said, going back to the DNA analyzer. 'The sum total of human knowledge is supposed to be on the damned Internet — you mean they missed something as basic as that?'

'Hey, don't start with me about the Net again, Gideon, a few occasional screwups do not mean—'

Suddenly the window with the beautiful view in front of me shattered into hundreds of crashing shards. Instinctively, I went for the floor; but when I looked up, I saw Max — foolishly, I thought at that instant — still standing. I screamed for him to get down, but he only swayed strangely in the half-light of his computer. Then I noticed a bead of blood on his forehead; and looking past him I could see that his computer screen was splattered with something a good deal more vital and substantial than blood. I crawled like a pathetic crab across the floor while he crumpled with grim grace to his knees. He fell forward just as I reached him, allowing me to see that the missile that had entered his forehead so neatly had, on exiting, taken much of his brain and a good deal of his skull away with it.

CHAPTER 6

It wasn't until two days later, while I was on a filthy, packed old 767 flying from Washington to Orlando, that the full impact of Max's death descended on me. Up until that time I'd been too preoccupied with police reports and hiding all traces of what we'd been doing to really let it sink in. But when I caught sight of a large man who might have been Max's double sitting three rows in front of me on that flight, I suddenly felt like I'd been hit in the chest with a mallet. To lose one's last living connection to childhood is not an easy thing; to lose him in the way I had is the kind of event that makes you want answers — and makes you capable of doing almost anything to get them.

My first stop on the road to what I was determined would be an explanation had been the offices of several acquaintances at the FBI's national headquarters in D.C. What I heard there, along with the manner in which my contacts delivered it, was unnerving: couched in ostensibly friendly terms was a firm warning to back off of any investigation having to do with the deaths of John Price and Max Jenkins. Apparently both the attorney general and the head of the Bureau didn't much like me to start with, given that I'd had the temerity, in my book, to put some of the leading figures of American history under the psychological microscope and make a modest pile of money in the process. But there was more than just personal animosity conveyed during the meetings, and by the time they were over, I was feeling disoriented and isolated. In my line of business you come to expect idle threats from local police forces, which have always viewed profilers with deep suspicion; but to have the rug pulled out from under you by the feds — well, that's a lonely feeling.

Nonetheless, I pressed on to Florida to attempt an interview with Dr. Eli Kuperman, anthropologist and convict. He was incarcerated in the Belle Isle State Correctional Facility outside Orlando, which was yet another of the country's new corporately operated prisons. The structure had originally been intended as a high school; but given the remarkable levels of violence that had come to characterize teen behavior in the increasingly ghettoized suburbs of nearly every American city, the design of high schools was not all that different from that of prisons. Thus when Florida fell into line with the rest of the country by giving the people's mania for punishment precedence over education, converting the sheer stone and nearly windowless mass at Belle Isle into a penitentiary hadn't been much of a trick.

I arrived at midday, made my request, and found, much to my surprise, that Dr. Kuperman was not only willing but anxious to see me. He insisted, however, that he would do so only during evening visiting hours on the following day. By the time I took my seat at a clear, bulletproof panel on the second floor of Belle Isle's visitors' building at seven the next evening, it was nearly dark. A guard soon appeared through a door in the room on the other side of the transparent divider, followed by a man of moderate height and similar weight who had dark features and curly brown hair and wore delicate tortoiseshell glasses: Eli Kuperman. He recognized me as quickly as I did him and proceeded to sit eagerly opposite me. The guard switched on an intercom that allowed us to talk.

'Dr. Wolfe,' Kuperman said with a smile. 'It's an honor. I've read your book — fascinating, really.' The fact of imprisonment seemed to be having no effect on him at all.

'Dr. Kuperman,' I said, acknowledging his compliment with a nod. 'I've read a great deal about your work, too — though I'll admit I can't quite figure how it's landed you in this place.'

'Can't you?' Kuperman asked, again very pleasantly. 'Well, you'll find out soon enough. Oh, that reminds me —' He unbuttoned the cuff of his sky blue shirt, revealing a small, flexible keypad adhered to his skin. Touching a few of the keys, he then rebuttoned his cuff with another smile and looked back up. 'There. We have a few minutes yet. How would you like to pass them?'

I assumed that the 'few minutes' he was referring to was the balance of the time I'd been allowed with him, and so I put my query bluntly: 'Suppose you tell me what your brother had to do with John Price's death.'

Kuperman waved me off cordially. 'Oh, plenty of time for that later. And Malcolm will be able to explain it much more thoroughly than I can.'

'Malcolm?'

'Don't worry, you'll understand. I'm sorry about Mr. Jenkins, by the way. We'd hoped he'd come along, too.'

'Come along?' I said, now completely at a loss.

'Yes.' He moved closer to the glass. 'I know you're confused, but try to keep up some kind of a conversation, will you? Otherwise the guard—'

Kuperman suddenly stopped talking when we began to hear an extraordinary noise: a deep, rumbling hum that seemed to come from all directions at once, even from inside my own head. It grew in volume and intensity at a quick but steady rate, until the metal chairs and tables in the room began to vibrate noticeably.

Looking up at the ceiling, Kuperman checked his watch again. 'Well,' he said, strangely unconcerned. 'That was quick. They must have been closer than I thought…'

As the hum grew louder, I dashed to the only window in the visiting room and looked out into the darkness. There was precious little to be seen save the lights atop the prison walls, and then something appeared to blot even those beacons out. Moving above and across the walls was a dark mass, perhaps as long as a pair of train cars and twice as high.

'What the hell?' was all I could whisper; and then I noted Kuperman's shouting voice coming over the intercom and just cutting through the ever-intensifying hum:

'Dr. Wolfe! Dr. Wolfe, move away from the window, please!'

I did as he said, and just in time, too; for the bars outside the window, loosened by the mounting vibration, suddenly broke free of their anchors and flew away, while the wired glass panes did not so much shatter as explode. I ran back to the partition and saw that Kuperman's guard, clutching his ears, was screaming in terror.

'What is it?' I shouted through the intercom. 'Kuperman, what's happening?'

Kuperman smiled; but before he could give any explanation the wall behind him began to shake violently. In