One by one, he handed the 8.5 x 11 inch papers back to Alpert. It took five pages in all.
It didn’t look like much. Putting the rubbings in her backpack she said, “We’ll have to see this in better light.” McCauley stepped away. He was onto something.
“Okay. Your turn again. Come back in here and close your eyes. Get a sense of the larger picture as you feel the wall. Tell me what you see,” he said to Alpert.
Katrina started again. It took her a few tries to come to a blind observation. “A pattern, but I don’t get exactly what it is.” She began to count just as McCauley had.
“Aloud.”
As she counted out, McCauley wrote the numbers down.
“I still don’t see anything,” she said.
“Come on, Dr. Alpert. Think.”
She started all over again. The other students watched in wonder. McCauley was seeing it come together on paper as she called out the seemingly random numbers.
Suddenly she stopped. “A…a…pyramid.”
Later that afternoon, Quinn was on Expedia looking into airfares. At first, he thought he’d go it alone, but he realized he needed a counter balance. Tamburro? No. He should stay with Chohany. Jaffe? Maybe. Then he considered another possibility. He’d put Jaffe in charge of the site and ask Katrina Alpert to join him. If nothing else, in the short time that he’d known her, McCauley was impressed that she didn’t hold anything back. Worth a try.
McCauley found her in the mess tent pouring a cup of coffee.
“I’ve decided to take Tamburro’s recommendation.”
She wasn’t sure what that was.
“To go meet the conspiracy nut we heard on the radio. What do you think?”
“Conspiracy nut?”
“Well, it’s a label. I suppose he does some credible research. I just thought that under the circumstances…”
“Unusual circumstances,” she replied.
“Completely unusual.”
“Given that, what the hell. I say go.”
McCauley was actually surprised.
“You do?”
“Sure. Go. I can help here.”
“Thank you, but I thought,” he began to fumble, “I thought that maybe I needed someone to tag along to keep me sane. You’ve been doing a good job of that since you joined up. So, I figured you should be the voice of reason. What do you say?”
“Really?”
“Really.”
Now she was surprised.
“Where?” Alpert asked.
“Bakersfield, California.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Well, apparently it just hasn’t made your bucket list yet. It’s north of Los Angeles by an hour or so. Pack for a few nights.”
“Promise me no underwear on doorknobs?”
“I’ll do better than that. Separate rooms.”
“Oh, you got that right, mister.”
“Then you’re up for it?”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Great, because we’ve got a plane out of Glendive at four fifty-two. First, I’m going to run into town to see if I can get the pictures printed up. We might need them.”
Thirty
The teenage boy working the cash register at the CVS put the film through the processor and the finished prints into the sleeves without comment. McCauley thanked him. He didn’t look at the pictures until he returned to his SUV. There, he open up the sleeves. The electronic part of the camera, the flash, hadn’t worked. But his decision to buy the disposable cameras was still rewarded.
During the first leg, McCauley removed a sheet of paper from his Johnson & Murphy shoulder bag.
“What’s this?” Dr. Alpert asked, scanning the sheet.
“A sketch of what you felt in the cave.”
Now, with McCauley’s handwritten scribbling, the pyramid had indeed taken shape, but with far greater impact. Not just a pyramid, but a pyramid of numbers. Very familiar numbers.
The introduction at the door had been cordial and quick. Greene, actually awake at mid-day, invited the two paleontologists into his home. He was in his early thirties, about two hundred pounds, five-eight, with short military length black hair, and an open moon face. This was not the look of a conspiracy theorist or whatever McCauley had imagined a conspiracy theorist to be.
His mid-century house was another thing. It was lacking in all amenities. If there was furniture to be found, it was under boxes that lined every hallway, the living and dining rooms, and, McCauley presumed, the bedrooms and bathrooms.
“So nice of you to come all this way,” Greene said as he led them through his maze. “You have to understand I get the weirdest calls from people all over the world. That’s why my phone message sounds the way it does.” Greene was positively apologetic. “It’s designed to discourage people. Most I don’t even answer. I mean, who would want to talk to them?”
Greene’s stock went up in McCauley’s estimation. “I understand. We have some of the same in our world.”
“The Lost World,” Greene declared.
“Excuse me?” Katrina was confused.
“The Lost World. One of the classic dinosaur movies.”
She still didn’t get the reference.
“Michael Rennie, you know, he played Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Claude Rains, Fernando Lamas. David Hedison. And,” he turned to McCauley, “my heart be still, a very hot and young Jill St. John.”
McCauley nodded yes, though Greene wasn’t sure if it was because of the reference to Jill St. John or the movie. So he went on…and on.
“1960, based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel. He also wrote Sherlock Holmes.”
Katrina was trying to keep up, but it was difficult.
“Explorers investigate a mysterious mountain in Venezuela. They get past the cannibals, only to have to contend with man-eating plants and then giant spiders. But it’s the dinosaurs that make it so cool. Well, not dinosaurs in any sense you know. The budget was so low that the director, Irwin Allen, used lizards instead of models or stop motion. The Lost World—you should see if sometime.”
“Matter of fact, I have,” McCauley volunteered. “And the 1920s original. The effects are actually better. And there’s Lost Continent from the ’50s, but that’s not even worth talking about.”
“Well, I guess I’ve met my match. Sorry. Sometimes I get wound up pretty tightly.”
Quinn McCauley smiled. He just bonded with Robert Greene and they hadn’t even gotten to the reason for the visit. “Not a problem.”
“How about coffee?”
“Sure,” McCauley replied.
“Tea?” Alpert asked.
“Got both.” He led them through the obstacle course he called home on the way to the kitchen. While the water was heating, they chatted about more dinosaur films. With their drinks in hand, Greene took them into his office which contained three computers and blacked out windows.
“Welcome to World Headquarters. Doesn’t look like much.”
Alpert agreed. “Definitely not.”
Greene laughed. “Doesn’t need to. The picture I use on my website is a fake created in photoshop. It’s my dream office.”
“I thought you’re all about the truth?”