thee, and have power to release thee?”
Porter said nothing. He knew it could kill him. But he also knew Clusser would be back. Stan had a gun, if that meant anything. And if Porter was wanted by the government now, Clusser would be obliged to protect him. So would the guard outside.
He looked around for a buzzer to call for the nurse in the case he needed her. But what could she do?
Arnott turned to the man behind him. “All right,” he said, leaving the room.
The man with the mustache said to the officer beyond the door. “Would you come in for a minute. I don’t want any problems with this guy.”
“Yes, Detective Mercer.”
Porter’s heart sunk through the bed. His limbs went limp.
The detective returned with the policeman in a dark blue uniform behind him.
“John Porter,” said the balding detective.
“Yes,” he said with dread.
“I’m placing you officially under arrest for possession of stolen materials and artifacts from a foreign country. You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak with an attorney and to have the attorney present during questioning. If you so desire and cannot afford one-”
“I understand my rights,” said Porter, having heard it a million times on TV while growing up. “I just have one question. How much did it cost to corrupt a cop?”
The detective tightened his face. “If you so desire and cannot afford one, an attorney will be appointed for you…”
CHAPTER TWENTY — FOUR
7:23 p.m. PST
Stabbing her middle finger into her left temple, Alred fought against the throbbing in her head. She squinted her eyes and kept reading her written dissertation. I have come to the conclusion that KM-2 does not as yet contain enough evidence to substantiate the underlying theories of Dr. Dennis Albright and Dr. Alexander Peterson that there is in fact an Old World connection with this newfound Mesoamerican culture. As has been explained, the relative ambiguity of Dr. Ulman’s discovery may conclude many factors, insinuating possible ancient sea voyages or validating our old Bering Strait suppositions. When we think of how nearly impossible, or how highly improbable, our very own existence is-that we as human beings evolved one plane at a time from minuscule compounds of unorganized matter in a primordial swamp to the super-complex mass of genetic machinery making up our modern forms-one may easily devise the polemic that the apparent similarities between the Kalpa Culture and the Middle East are more than spontaneous aberrations, which we as scientists with pre-programmed paradigms may tie together and term as a new scientific discovery for fame and fortune. But is our ultimate and all-compelling goal to gain greater scholarly status? Though spectacular researchers they may be, I believe the aforementioned professors who have insinuated and outwardly professed relations between the KM manuscripts and the lands of ancient Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine have only proven the power of rhetoric and the amazing and dangerous ability to link two unrelated things by means of perceived similar attributes. The KM-2 document suggests the same Alred slapped the paper into her lap with a groan.
None of this mattered anymore.
Staring at the walls of Kinnard’s silent office, she rubbed the tip of her tongue between the molars on the right side of her mouth. She closed her eyes and waited, but no one walked up the echoey hallway. Her jade eyes looked at the partly open door. Then they turned to the uncovered window, letting in the twilight darkness. It was the gaping hole she’d seen Porter glancing at as if it hid a beast about to spring. But there was something…the feeling she was being examined from afar by unseen eyes. She imagined Kinnard, Masterson, and the other backstabbing professors standing in a building across the way, watching her with a telescope and binoculars, laughing as she waited for advisors who wouldn’t come.
Rubbing her moist palms against the navy skirt wrapping her legs, she looked again at her nearly completed doctoral thesis. Yes, they said she couldn’t turn this in. KM-2 was gone.
There was nothing in her notes about KM-3 or Dr. Ulman’s paper. Ever wary of the thought police, Alred didn’t dare reveal the existence of the new codex. But surely she could still petition to present a version of the paper in her hands, omitting the illegally procured codex. Albright and Peterson had already published their thoughts on the matter. Why couldn’t she adjust her work to counter theirs? Porter would still publish something, no doubt. He was a froth-mouthed dog gone mad long ago.
What was she thinking?!?
Alred just couldn’t see this semester go completely to rot. All the time she’d spent tearing through ancient documents. All the stress working with John D(etermined) Porter. Listening to his moanings and constant arguments for why the codex had to be valid and why everyone was trying to kill him…
And what were her convictions about the project? What did she really believe?
She’d toss it all. It was the only conclusion.
Kinnard hadn’t asked her here to discuss anything more about her dissertation anyway. In fact, Alred had the peculiar sensation that she wasn’t supposed to be waiting in his office at all, that she should stand and sneak out of the building immediately.
A secretary had left the professor’s message on her answering machine. But what if the secretary had called the wrong person…no, that was silly.
So why had she brought her dissertation?
She refused to answer the thought.
Standing, she went to the window and stared at the parking lot smashed between the buildings below. She saw shadows move among the Datsuns, mini-vans, Ford trucks, and cars with the letter Z hidden somewhere in the shadows on their bodies.
From the voice inside her head, she heard new words: What if someone else had asked her to the office?
One of the shapes in the blue light below stepped away from a red Ford van.
Alred’s breath went solid in her lungs.
His hair had grown longer than she remembered it. He walked a little more hunched over than she recalled. His large nose and balding brow, and the way he looked in every direction as best he could, like a textbook paranoid case-it all gave him away with a scream: It was Dr. Ulman, striding quickly toward the office structure’s rear entrance, three floors beneath Alred’s feet.
She pressed her hands, her nose, her forehead against the glass as her heart doubled its pulsing pace. Ulman looked so small, standing far below in a woolen coat made of varying green threads.
The professor moved with determination, leaning slightly forward, driving his toes ahead of him as sensors while his eyes looked behind, to the left, the other side, forward, and back again…
Alred rapped on the window pane four times. She swallowed back the urge to shout his name, a useless gesture considering their distance and the obstacles between them. The window was locked permanently in place.
But there he was in the twilight. And he was alive! And no doubt he had called her! The secrets he could tell! The answers!
Her eyes touched quickly on the horizon, where the sun was now gone but firing yellow beams which the dark blue abyss overhead absorbed.
An almost black Crown Victoria stopped between Ulman and the office building. The rear doors opened on either side of the car.
What was this?
The man closest to the professor looked directly at Ulman, who froze like a rabbit weary of predators.
Alred watched words pass between Ulman and the stranger, though neither of them moved. She felt ice moving through her arteries. Both of the men who had exited the car stood within a footfall of the door that
