weighs 225 pounds. He was apprehended in a burning cane field some thirty-six hours ago, breathing comfortably in an atmosphere that was heavily polluted with smoke. He is now in our lab, and doing well.” The pointer moved on to Josh Malani’s image. “This is another seventeen-year-old boy, five feet eight, and weighing 135 pounds. Mixed heritage. Less than twenty-four hours ago, while under our surveillance, he collapsed in a parking lot near one of the beaches. He was kept alive by administration of a mixture of carbon monoxide, methane, and ammonia, and is also now doing well in our lab.”
“And the third boy?” someone asked from the back of the room.
Jameson studied the image of Michael Sundquist for several seconds. “This one is most interesting,” he finally said. “This is a sixteen-year-old Caucasian of Swedish descent, and though we didn’t specifically choose him for our project, any more than we chose the other three locals, he is proving to be one of our most intriguing subjects. We do not expect complete success with him, of course, but I think that at such time as he dies, his autopsy will greatly advance our understanding of precisely how the substance affects the human body.”
A heavily accented voice spoke from the back of the room. “And if, by chance, he doesn’t die?”
Jameson smiled, but there was no warmth in it. “Believe me, Herr von Schmidt, one way or another, all these boys will die.”
CHAPTER 24
“Mrs. Reynolds?” Katharine said when a woman’s voice answered the phone. Katharine, seated in Rob’s office, was staring through the French doors at the idyllic scene outside: flowers everywhere, filling the balmy Hawaiian morning with a rainbow of colors that stood in stark contrast to the cold, gray fear that had cloaked Katharine in the half hour since she’d emerged from the laboratories on the lower level of the research pavilion’s south wing.
The first thing she’d done upon returning to Rob’s office was to locate the village in the Philippines from which the skull had come. Exactly as she guessed yesterday, the skull had been collected from the slopes of Mount Pinatubo. And if it was, indeed, the skull of a child, it had been breathing fumes — pollution — from the volcano its entire life.
Then, from the depths of her pocket, she’d retrieved the identifying tag she’d found on the toe of the corpse. The boy’s name, neatly typed on the cardboard tag, was Mark Reynolds. Along with his dates of birth and death, the label revealed an address on North Maple Drive, in Beverly Hills, California. Right in the middle of metropolitan Los Angeles — one of the most polluted cities in the country. But polluted enough to have killed him? She had to know. First she’d called the hospital where Mark Reynolds had died, only to be told that she could be given no information over the phone. Perhaps if she’d care to make a request in writing?
No, she had not cared to make a request in writing. And so, reluctantly, Katharine dialed the number she’d found on the card, part of her burning to find answers to her questions, but another part hating to make this call to Mark Reynolds’s mother, who was listed as his next of kin. The phone had been answered on the second ring. Now there was no backing out.
“Elaine Carter Reynolds?” she asked, repeating the name into the telephone exactly as it was written on the piece of cardboard.
“Yes,” a voice replied, desolation so clear in the woman’s tone that Katharine wanted to hang up.
But she knew she couldn’t. “You had a son named Mark?” she asked.
A silence, then, again, a single word: “Yes.”
Katharine took a deep breath. “Mrs. Reynolds, my name is Katharine Sundquist. I need to talk to you about Mark. I know it’s going to be very difficult for you, but I need some information and I hope you’ll be able to give it to me.”
What sounded like a stifled sob came through the phone, but then Elaine Reynolds spoke again, and for the first time there was a trace of life in her voice. “It can’t be any more difficult than what I’ve already been through,” the woman replied.
“I don’t think there can be anything worse than having a child die,” Katharine said.
“Mark didn’t just die, Mrs.…” She faltered, unable to remember the name she’d been given.
“Sundquist,” Katharine said quickly. “But please call me Katharine.”
“Thank you,” Elaine Reynolds murmured. Again she was silent for a moment, and Katharine waited, sensing that the older woman was working her way up to something. Finally Elaine Reynolds blurted it out. “My son committed suicide, Katharine,” she said. “Mark killed himself.”
The words stunned Katharine. Killed himself? “I–I’m sorry—” she stammered. “I thought—” She fell suddenly silent, having no idea what to say.
“What did you think, Katharine?” Elaine Reynolds said, and now there was more than just a faint hint of interest. When Katharine finally voiced her idea that Mark’s death must somehow have been related to the polluted air in Los Angeles, a single bark of bitter laughter erupted from Elaine Reynolds’s throat. “I suppose some people would call carbon monoxide pollution,” she said. Her voice catching on almost every sentence, and having to pause twice to regain control over her emotions, Elaine described to Katharine Sundquist the scene of her son’s suicide. “But they got there too late,” she said. “They gave him oxygen, but it was too late. He died on the way to the hospital.”
An image of the puppy that had died in her arms a little while ago — a puppy that suddenly had trouble breathing the air outside its cage full of poisonous gases — rose in Katharine’s mind. “Your son died while they were giving him oxygen, Mrs. Reynolds?” she asked, praying that she’d heard wrong.
Her voice breaking, Elaine recounted Mark’s struggles in the ambulance. “He fought them,” she finished. “I’m sure he had no idea what he was doing, but he fought against the oxygen mask. And there was nothing I could do. You have no idea how helpless I felt.” She paused, then: “Katharine? What is this about? You still haven’t told me exactly why you called me.”
“I’m calling from Hawaii,” Katharine began. “I’m working for a man who’s very interested in pollution—”
“In Honolulu?” Elaine Reynolds interrupted. “I would have thought the air there would be as clean as anywhere in the world. Although actually the vog was pretty bad for a day or two while Mark and I were on Maui over Christmas.”
Katharine froze. “Maui?” she echoed. What was going on? Could it possibly be only coincidence that Mark Reynolds had been on Maui a few months ago? “Mrs. Reynolds — Elaine — what were you doing on Maui?”
“Just vacationing. Why?”
“Elaine, I’m on Maui, not in Honolulu. And I’ve come across something.…” She paused, not wanting to cause Elaine Reynolds any more pain than she absolutely had to. “Well, something strange,” she finally went on. “It appears that for some reason your son’s lungs are being studied.”
“But how could they?” Elaine asked. “I mean, without his body, what are they studying?”
Katharine hesitated, but quickly realized she had no choice but to tell the woman the truth. “His body is here, Elaine,” she said.
“I’m afraid there’s been some mistake,” Elaine Reynolds said after Katharine’s words had sunk in. “Mark’s body was buried right after his funeral.”
Buried? What was she talking about? Was it possible that she was wrong? That she was somehow talking to the wrong person? “Mrs. Reynolds,” Katharine said, unconsciously slipping back into the more formal term of address, “would you mind if I — well, if I told you what the boy I saw today looked like?” There was a long pause, but finally Elaine Reynolds murmured her assent. Katharine summoned an image of the face she’d seen in the morgue drawer downstairs, and began describing it as dispassionately as she could. It was when she mentioned the cleft in the boy’s chin that a soft but agonized moan came from the woman at the other end of the line.
“Why?” Elaine whispered a moment later. “Why would they have taken him out there? And why would they have lied to me about burying him?”
“I wish I could tell you, Elaine,” Katharine said softly. “But I’m afraid I don’t know any more than you do.” Then: “What about when you were out here? Did anything happen then? I mean anything unusual?”
“No,” Elaine sighed. “It was a wonderful trip. Except for the dive, of course.”
