“Absolutely,” Carter said, though even he could feel the strange oppressiveness of their surroundings. It wasn’t often that you found yourself deep underground, surrounded by millions of bones and petrified artifacts. He doubted that Hector ever made this floor a part of his regular rounds.
The object he’d retrieved from the grasp of the La Brea Man hung heavy in the other pocket of his jacket, and he looked forward to coming back the next day and examining it — down here, away from Gunderson’s prying eyes.
At the end of the corridor, under a bank of fluorescents, there was a wide table with a couple of glass jars holding some basic tools of the trade — chisels, scalpels, brushes, razor blades — and a pair of metal stools. It was here that Carter had examined the remains of the La Brea Woman.
“Why’d you need to come down here now?” Hector asked, a peeved note in his voice. “What couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”
“I’ll be done in a minute,” Carter said, taking his keys out of his pocket and searching for the small one that unlocked the padlock on the top drawer of the cabinet.
“One of the other guards,” Hector said, “he told me he saw Geronimo.”
“Really,” Carter said, noncommittally, finding the right key.
“Yesterday.”
Carter fitted the key into the lock and said, “That seems pretty unlikely, doesn’t it? Geronimo — William Blackhawk Smith,” he corrected himself, “has been dead for over a week.” Carter removed the padlock and put it on the worktable behind him.
Hector shrugged. “Funny things happen around here all the time.”
And one of them was happening right now, Carter thought. Before he’d had a chance to touch it, the drawer containing the remains of the La Brea Woman was sliding open, as if on rails. Normally, these drawers were pretty sticky and you had to tug on them a bit. But not this one. This one was opening as if of its own volition.
The crushed skull lay back in the center of the drawer, its empty eye sockets angled up at the ceiling.
Hector, who hadn’t seen the drawer open, came around to Carter’s side now, crossed himself, and stared down at the ancient skull. “That’s the woman they found in the pits? All those years ago?”
“Yes.” Carter drew the white handkerchief containing the object from upstairs out of his pocket. It would have been better if Hector had not witnessed this, but there didn’t seem to be much of a choice. Carter removed the hankie, which fluttered to the floor, and placed the tar-covered stone, or whatever it would prove to be, in the drawer. This was the safest and most secure place he could think of.
Something stirred in the air, blowing the handkerchief, now smudged with tar, over their feet.
Hector’s head snapped around. He pulled the flashlight off his utility belt and flashed it in all directions.
“It’s just the vents,” Carter said, picking up the handkerchief and tossing it into the drawer.
But Hector didn’t appear convinced. “Something moved,” he said, “over there.” He motioned at the next aisle.
“If something did, it was probably a mouse.”
Carter started to push the drawer closed again, but now it did stick. As easily as it had come out, that was how hard it was to get it closed. He asked Hector for the flashlight, who surrendered it reluctantly, then played the beam over the front and sides of the drawer. There were long lateral scratches on the metal, and even a couple of small dents at either end. Some of these cabinets were decades old, but Carter didn’t remember this one looking quite so battered.
He tried closing it again, and this time the drawer almost seemed to push back. There was a screeching sound — the drawer refusing to return — and Hector said, “What’s the problem? We got to go.”
“I can’t get the drawer closed.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Hector said. “Nobody else is coming down here tonight.”
“I’m not going to leave this open,” Carter said, shimmying the drawer to either side. “These bones are too valuable.”
“I won’t let anybody down here,” Hector insisted, his head swiveling in all directions. “Come on!”
And then, even though Carter had stopped trying to force it, the drawer began to shake. Carter stood back, staring, as the ancient artifacts rattled against the bottom and sides of the drawer. It was as if an unseen hand was rocking first the drawer, and then the whole cabinet.
“It’s an earthquake!” Hector shouted. “We got to get out of here — now!”
Was that it? Carter hadn’t been in California long enough to experience a quake yet. But this couldn’t be a quake — nothing else was shaking. Not the floor, not the ceiling lights, not the table or stools.
Just this one cabinet, with the bones of the La Brea Woman — and the artifact he had just placed among them.
Hector had already taken off in the direction of the elevators, and Carter waited, watching. The air stirred again, and this time he wasn’t so sure it was a vent, after all.
When the shaking subsided, as it did after a minute or so, Carter gently tried closing the drawer again, and this time it slid closed effortlessly — as if whatever force had been resisting him had given up, or run out of strength.
He put the padlock back on, and studied the scratched surface of the cabinet. What had just happened here? Had some unseen force been at play? He tugged on the padlock to make sure it was secure. Had he sealed something in that was trying to get out… or had he kept something out that had been trying to get in?
“I’m holding the elevator!” he heard Hector calling from the far end of the floor, his words echoing eerily around the closed walls. There was barely controlled panic in his voice. “But I’m not going to stick around forever, okay?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
How could she stay so fat, Greer wondered, with nothing but low-fat, low-carb, low-cal crap in all the cupboards? He rummaged around on the shelves looking for a can or a box of anything edible. A bag of baked, salt- free veggie chips fell out and onto the counter and his mother said, “What are you looking for?”
“What do you think?” Greer said.
His mother picked up the chips and stuffed them back where they belonged. “Just tell me what you want and I’ll find it for you.”
“What I want, you don’t have.”
“Then maybe you should try shopping for yourself sometime, buster.”
She was in almost as bad a mood as he was. Greer had just gotten up — it was a little past noon — and he knew she thought it was a crime to sleep that late. But what else did he have to do? It wasn’t as if he held a job anywhere. And the night before, he’d been back at the Blue Bayou till all hours, drinking, popping pills, and trying not to think about the one thing he couldn’t stop thinking about.
Why hadn’t al-Kalli called him yet? He must have gotten the letter. Greer had put his cell phone number under his signature, and he hadn’t gone anywhere without the phone now for days. He even slept with it on the pillow next to his head.
“How about cheese?” Greer said. “We got any cheese?”
His mother, who already had her head in the fridge, yanked open a plastic drawer and handed him a pack of low-fat — big surprise — American singles. If he could rustle up some bread, he’d be halfway to a grilled cheese sandwich.
The phone on the wall rang and his mother picked it up. She still had the TV blaring in the living room — Greer could hear a talk-show host noisily welcoming Katie Holmes — and right after “Hello,” she said “Who?” And then she stood there, in what she called her housecoat — a big wide hunk of cloth in vertical, “slimming” stripes — listening to whatever crap the guy on the phone was no doubt trying to sell her.
Greer elbowed past her and found some cracked-wheat bread in the breadbox.
His mother was still listening to the caller. And then she said, “Yes, I am,” in a markedly different tone.
Christ, Greer thought, she’s
“I’m very pleased to hear that,” she said. “I had no idea.”
