"Yes, but you don't believe it. It's written all over your face."
"Not that long ago, you would have been right. I wouldn't have believed your account. But what you see in me now is astonishment, mixed perhaps with skepticism, not disbelief. I'm a good doctor, Anna, and yet, I'm here plowing through these volumes because of a growing belief that both I and a friend of mine, who is also a fine physician, have each recently pronounced patients dead in our hospital who were, in fact, very much alive."
The woman glanced at the volumes. Then she nodded and smiled knowingly, as if the pieces of a puzzle had fallen in place.
"Tetrodotoxin," she said, almost reverently.
"Exactly. Do you know much about it?"
"I do. For one thing, it will most likely be a full chapter in my thesis, if not more. And for another, some of my roots are Haitian-my father, I have been told, though I never knew him, was born there."
"Do you believe the drug has the power to slow metabolism without stopping it? To take a body to the line of death without crossing over?"
"Do you?"
"I… I don't know what to believe.
Once again Anna Delacroix's eyes held fire.
"The drug can do what you ask… and more," she said.
Eric felt her energy, her heat. He ran the edge of his hand across the sweat on his forehead.
"How do you know?" he asked hoarsely. "Is there proof? Proof a scientist could not refute?"
For more than a minute she said nothing. Eric studied her exquisite face, her perfect mouth, and silently prayed that she would at least share with him what she knew.
Finally she took one of her file cards, carefully printed an address on it, and passed it to him.
"This place is in Allston," she said. "Can you find it?"
He glanced at the card. "I can find it."
"Ten o'clock tonight, then. Come alone and meet me there, Dr. Eric, and you shall have your proof."
She stood. "Perhaps when this night is over, you will know in your heart that there are those who can fly… and those who can die without dying."
She turned quickly, picked up her notes and her jacket, and moments later was gone.
Shielded by a new-moon darkness, Laura and Bernard Nelson made their way from the alley where he had parked, down several more alleys, and finally across the street to the entrance of the Gates of Heaven Funeral Home. For two hours they had placed periodic calls to the mortuary, each time reaching only Donald Devine's answering machine.
Finally, Nelson had shrugged and said simply, "I guess we go."
The detective carried with him a small black medical bag, containing what he called his "tools of truth"-two powerful-penlights, various Exacto knives, screwdrivers, tape, a crowbar, pliers, a voltage meter and battery-powered soldering iron, wire, suction cups, a ring of keys and other odly cut pieces of metal… and one Littman Cardiosonic stethoscope.
"If we're stopped by the police," he said as they set off, "you had better do a damn good job of convincing them that I'm your family doctor making a house call on your ailing aunt. If they ever open this little kit of mine, we're cooked."
The wooden shutters on the upstairs windows were pulled closed.
Nelson checked the windows on the alley side of the structure and reported that they, too, were shuttered. They rang the doorbell several times, listening each time to the melodic chimes echoing from within.
"What tune are those playing?" Laura whispered.
The detective smiled.
"It would appear our Mr. Devine has a sense of humor," he said.
"They're playing Tchaikovsky. A snippet of the death of Odette it-from Swan Lake."
"You could tell that from seven or eight notes?"
" Maggie's a ballet nut. After six or seven years of being dragged, I finally gave up and got interested."
"You're amazing."
"Tell me that after we're inside," Nelson said, tossing his cigar stub aside as he scanned first the edge of the doorjamb, and then the windows.
"You're sure you want to do this?" she asked.
"That's still up to you. How committed are you to finding out what this mysterious mortician is up to?"
"Very committed."
"In that case, stay in close to the building, in the shadows, and keep your eye on the street. I'm going back into these and nd to the rear.
Listen for a t si you oor tap from he de of e d. If it's clear for me to open it, tap back twice. If not, tap once and then head back to the car. I'll meet you there."
Nelson reached in his medical bag and withdrew щ nip of Jack Daniel's.
"To the truth," he said.
"To the truth," Laura echoed.
She took a small sip, and in a single quick gulp, Bernard Nelson disposed of the remainder. he then slid along the side of the Gates of Heaven and disappeared down the alley.
Over the long minutes that followed, only one car drove past the darkened mortuary. Laura zipped up the thin black leather jacket Bernard had given her, and pressed herself tightly against the building.
She had tried calling Eric any number of times since the nightmare on Harrison Avenue, but without success.
In a way, she was grateful. He almost certainly would have insisted on coming along, and if for any reason they were caught in their illegal entry, the negative publicity would doubtless kill whatever chance he still had for the White Memorial promotion.
A couple, holding hands, crossed the narrow street just two doors away.
Laura froze, easily holding her breath for more than a minute until they had let themselves into their building. She glanced down at the doorknob. What is taking so long? She thought about the man who had called himself Roger Ansell.
He had probably once stood somewhere right on this street, watching as she and Eric paid their visit to Donald Devine. Did he have a wife?
Children? First Scott, now him. Regardless of the reasons, it seemed stupid and senseless and sad.
The taps-two of them from inside the mortuary-were barely audible.
Laura responded with two of her own. Bernard Nelson opened the door, and she stepped into a darkness that was so complete, so palpably dense, that she instantly relived the moment when her flash failed during a night dive in a massive undersea grotto called the Sultan's Cave.
"Wait a minute," she whispered. "I've got to let my eyes adjust."
"There's no light for them to adjust to," Nelson said. "Here."
He passed her a pair of surgical gloves and then a slim penlight, which cast a narrow but surprisingly potent beam. "Just keep it low, away from our faces."
"Hey, I dive for a living, remember? There's no verbing eighty feet down, so we live and die by using our lights the right way."
"Sorry. Sorry I took so long too. The security system in this place turned out to be rather sophisticated.
"Are You sure it's deactivated?"
"That's the weird thing. The system wasn't on in the one of the keys on my inside in two seconds iin the air here to grar T ey moved carefully from the foyer to Devine's parlor, Laura keeping her flash fixed on the floor while Nelson swept his beam along the walls.
"What are we looking for?" Laura asked.
"shelves, bookcases, drawers, a wall safethat sort of thing.
If this Devine is the meticulous little mouse you describe, I'd be amazed if he doesn't have records of whatever he's into. I wish I felt comfortable turning on a light, but frankly, that's a risk I'm not willing to take except as a last resort. If our divine friend happens to return, even a sliver of light through a window could warn him and cost us escape time." Bernard pulled a tool from his kit, POPPed open the drawer of Devine's imitation Chippendale desk, and rifled quickly through its contents, scanning sheets, then-carefully replacing them.
"Pull every book off those shelves Laura carefully," he said, moti orang to one wall. "Check to be sure each is what the binding says it is, and then set it right back where it was.". It took twenty minutes to finish with the room, and another ten to search the small chapel adjacent to it.