“My friend?”
“The man with the long white hair.”
Del was there?
“He’s as bad as you,” Hector said, turning the key to unlock the elevator. “I tell him, you have to stop working now or I could lose my job, and he says, ‘Hector, no one will know — and I will bring you a Big Mac when I go out later to get my dinner.’” Hector snorted as he let Carter into the elevator. “I can buy my own burgers,” he said, “but I can’t get another job so easy.”
“I’ll bring him back with me,” Carter said, “I promise.”
Hector snorted again, said, “I’ll leave the elevator running,” then headed back to his regular post between the dire wolves and the giant sloth.
Carter was elated. He could tell Del about the carbon-dating report in person, and at the same time he could apologize for going MIA. But what could he say by way of explanation? Del would know that for Carter to desert something as important as the La Brea Man, there would have to be something else of almost immeasurable significance hanging in the balance. And although that was exactly the case, it was the one thing Carter couldn’t say.
The lights, insufficient though they were, were on, and in the far distance, back where they’d set up the work space, he could hear the faint strains of Tammy Wynette. As he walked down the corridor, his sneakered feet making barely any noise, he felt himself still haunted by the al-Kalli creatures. They constituted the most spectacular collection imaginable. And he could see, the more he studied them, where their ancient mythological names and reputations had come from. The basilisk, whose breath could reputedly kill, was in fact an ankylosaurid whose breathing passages followed an extremely convoluted passage within the skull, allowing the animal to cool and humidify desert air before it reached its lungs. The griffin — or homotherium — had passed into legend as a winged lion, but the wings were actually just a massive mane of thick black fur that billowed out as the creature launched itself at its prey. The phoenix, a prehistoric vulture, surely did not rise from its own fiery nest, but perhaps its chicks could be mistaken for spits of bright red flame; Carter had yet to scale the aerie to see if there were any. And as for the manticore — or gorgon, as the scientific community would one day acknowledge it to be — its baleful glare and fearful jaws were enough to ensure its reputation as the man-eating predator of lore.
But if Carter was to figure out what was ailing these creatures — and how to remedy it — he would need so much more time to study them. And as al-Kalli had made abundantly clear, time was running out.
Del’s head was down as he worked in a pool of light shed by a goosenecked lamp they had brought down; an extension cord trailed off down the next aisle. The boom box was on top of the metal cabinet where the bones of the La Brea Woman were housed. Carter said, “Del,” but he wasn’t heard over Tammy. He came closer, and his shadow fell onto the disarticulated bones that Del was bent over. Del’s head whipped up, his white hair flying, real surprise in his eyes.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief, “you could have given me some warning.”
“I did,” Carter said, “but Ms. Wynette was louder.”
Del plopped back on a high stool behind him with his hands in his lap. “Nice of you to drop by,” he said. “After all this time, I’m glad you remembered where to find us.”
“Okay, I get it,” Carter said, knowing that he would be catching some flak. “I’m sorry I haven’t been more on top of this.”
“Just tell me it’s not because you’ve been on top of something else.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re not horsing around with somebody — like maybe that Miranda kid who was working on the dig at Pit 91?”
“What in the world would make you even say that?” Carter replied.
Del shrugged. “I just couldn’t think of anything else big enough to keep you away. Especially something that Beth wouldn’t know about. She had no idea where you were last Sunday, and she called here looking for you today.” He bent down and picked up a can of Sprite resting on the floor beneath the worktable. “It’s just not like you, Bones.”
And Carter knew he was right; it wasn’t. But he should have planned for this confrontation. He should have come up with some excuse in advance. “I’ve had Gunderson breathing down my neck about the NAGPRA problems,” he improvised. “Unless we want to wind up consigning these bones to some Native American burial ground, I’ve got to cross every i and dot every t.”
“That’s cross every t and dot every i,” Del corrected him.
“Oh. Right.”
Del gave him a long look and shook his head. “Anybody ever tell you you’re the worst liar on earth?” He sipped from the soda can, then put it safely back on the floor, away from the exposed fossils. “But I figure you’ll tell me the truth when you’re ready.”
“Mind if I ask you one question?” Carter said, stepping up to the worktable to survey what Del was doing.
“Shoot.”
“How come you nearly jumped out of your skin when I showed up a few seconds ago?”
Del didn’t look up, but cocked his head slightly, as if in embarrassment. “No reason,” he said. “It’s just that it does get a little spooky down here at times.”
Carter laughed. “You? The guy who’s crawled into caves on his belly? Who’s slept alone on fossil beds in Kazakhstan?”
Del smiled. “Yeah, well, there’s something about this guy,” he said, referring to the tar-blackened bones before him, “that sort of gets to you after a while. You get the feeling his ghost is looking over your shoulder. A couple of times I’ve apologized out loud when I’ve had to scrape extra hard on the plaster and tar.”
“Did he say you’re excused?”
“Okay, that’s enough,” Del replied, indicating that the ribbing was at an end. “Why don’t you roll up your sleeves and help me out here?”
“Glad to,” Carter said, literally rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt.
“You can start by telling me what happened to the mystery object.”
“The what?”
“The thing he’d been holding in his hand when he died. The thing that I can only presume you stashed somewhere for safekeeping.” Del glanced across the table at Carter. “Tell me you do know where it is.”
Carter nodded and turned around. He fished in his pocket for the padlock key, found it, then realized, with a terrible start, that he wouldn’t need it. The padlock on the drawer holding the bones of the La Brea Woman — the same drawer where he’d concealed the mystery object — was open, hanging loose on the hasp. There were long, deep scratches on the metal cabinet all around it.
He pulled the loose padlock away and yanked open the drawer, dreading what he might find — or not find — there.
All that was left in the drawer was the white handkerchief in which he’d wrapped the object when he’d stashed it here. The bones were gone, the skull was gone. The paper lining of the drawer bore only the faint imprint of the skeletal fragments that had been safely stored here for so many decades.
Until Carter had intruded on them.
“I should have known,” Del said from behind him; from his perspective, he would not be able to see that the drawer had been plundered. “It’s a safe bet you wouldn’t have let it go far.” Carter heard him putting a new tape in the boom box.
Carter was flabbergasted. He couldn’t imagine how this could have happened. He stood staring into the empty drawer, as if by doing so he could conjure up the bones again. As if he could will them back into the cabinet where they belonged.