The Columbus Affair: A Novel

The final nail was removed.

The medical examiner stepped aside: Now was time for the heir to do whatever it was that had compelled the exhumation. Since he was that person, all eyes locked on him.

But Ms. Lawyer started toward the table.

He grabbed her arm. “I’ll handle it.”

“I think it would be better if I did.” Her eyes conveyed an even more emphatic message. Stay out of this.

But she wasn’t the man in Barnes & Noble. “I’m his son. The petitioner. I’ll handle it.”

She held her ground and his eyes conveyed their own message.

Don’t screw with me.

She caught his drift and backed off.

“All right,” she said. “Handle it.”

———

ZACHARIAH CHECKED HIS WATCH.

10:20 A.M.

The lawyer he’d hired to both obtain the court order and be on site had called twenty minutes ago to say Sagan had arrived. They should be inside by now, and things should be over shortly. The report from Vienna was good. Alle Becket was a problem no more. Nothing would be learned by anyone from her. Rocha sat beside him in the car, just off an overnight flight from Austria to Orlando, via Miami. He’d taken the flight Alle had thought would be hers.

Tom Sagan required handling.

With no daughter to produce once the exhumation was complete, the only course was to eliminate the last remaining witness.

They’d actually be doing Sagan a favor.

He wanted to die.

So Rocha would oblige him.

———

TOM CAUGHT THE BITING SMELL OF DECAY. THE MEDICAL EXAMINER advised him to move quickly as things would only get worse.

He stepped close and peered into the coffin.

Not much remained. Alle had apparently kept to tradition and not embalmed. The corpse was wrapped in a white shroud, most of which had disintegrated, exposing what little was left of a face. Empty eye sockets looked like black caves—the querulous, sometimes hostile gaze he remembered was gone. Flesh and muscle had collapsed. A fold of skin, like the wattle of a lizard, sagged from the neck. He tried to recall the last time he’d seen that face alive.

Five years ago?

No, closer to nine. Before the fall. At his mother’s funeral.

Had it been that long?

Not once in the intervening years had Abiram tried to contact him. No note, letter, card, email, nothing. While the press and pundits destroyed him, his only surviving parent remained silent. Only after dying, in his final note, sent with the deed to the house, had some consolation been offered—“I felt the pain of your destruction”—but that was nowhere near enough. True, Tom could have called, but he never did, either. They were both at fault. Neither willing to give.

And they’d both lost.

He struggled with waves of fear, apathy, resentment, and resignation. But he drew himself up and regained a measure of poise.

A sealed packet lay embedded in what had once been Abiram’s chest. It appeared vacuum-sealed, airtight creases evidencing that fact. He reached for it, but the medical examiner removed it for him.

“Better that way,” the man said, displaying gloved hands. “Bacteria is everywhere on a corpse.”

The packet was paper-thin, about a foot square, and appeared light. The medical examiner asked if there was anything else. He saw nothing else unusual inside so he shook his head.

The lid was replaced.

A sink adorned one wall—used, he remembered, for cleansing. The medical examiner rinsed the package off and brought it over to him.

Ms. Lawyer stepped forward. “I’ll take that.”

“Like hell you will,” Tom said. “Last I looked, I’m the petitioner here.”

Anger fortified him.

“And by the way,” he said. “Do you have something for me?”

She seemed to understand and retreated to a satchel that lay on the floor. From within she removed a small FedEx box and handed it to him. She then turned back to the medical examiner and asked for the packet again.