He ran through the names of the major coastal islands, then Valdosta, Georgia. There were literally hundreds of articles — too many to read thoroughly — but even when he narrowed the search, he came up with nothing helpful. He then tried the names Skyler had mentioned. "Baptiste" yielded nothing; there were dozens and dozens of listings, but without a first name, it was impossible to pinpoint the search. He scanned them; none appeared to suggest an affiliation with a scientific organization. He tried "Rincon, Dr." There was a single listing — for a Dr. Jacob Rincon of Santa Monica, California, arrested for embezzlement and fraud during a federal investigation into misuse of Medicare funds three years ago. That didn't sound right. A search for the word Lab ended with a small box on the screen, inside of which was written: "Your search has resulted in 0 articles. Please try another category."
Jude signed off. He left his computer screen on, opened an old notebook and put it on his desk, and scattered around some books and papers and a ballpoint. Then he took his jacket from a locker, draped it across the back of his chair, and snuck down the back corridor. He took the freight elevator down to the first floor, cut through the lobby and took a staircase down to the basement, where the old morgue had been relocated. The morgue was the memory bank of the newspaper; it contained stories that had appeared in the Mirror since 1907, laboriously cut out by hand and filed away under scores of topics, by minions long since retired or dead. In times past, the morgue had held pride of place in the main floor of the newsroom, but ever since it had been discontinued in 1980, when Nexis had taken over, it had been consigned to purgatory. Rarely these days did anyone visit the subterranean vault. Its corridors were poorly lighted by dangling green lamps and banked by filing cabinets extending off into the funereal gloom. The files were packed with yellow clippings so brittle that they broke to the touch like ancient butterfly wings.
The morgue had its own Phantom of the Opera. It was presided over by J.T. Dunleavy, a dyspeptic attendant of indeterminate age. His famed attribute was his photographic memory, which, while it did not pretend to reproduce perfectly the contents of hundreds of thousands of files, had penetrated to the inner logic of the system so that he, and he alone, could comprehend it — he could say which oyster was likely to contain the pearl.
The only problem with Dunleavy was that to get good service, you had to get on his good side. Luckily, for some reason he had always liked Jude — maybe because Jude was one of the few reporters his age who had respect for the past. Dunleavy himself went beyond respect, into reverence — he was a Boswell who was compelled to record even the most trivial of human transactions.
He was sorting through a bin of odd clippings, placing them in piles. His bony fingers moved as fast as a Vegas dealer.
"What is it this time?" he demanded, but not in an unfriendly way, scarcely looking up from the counter.
"I need everything you've got on cults — in the 1960s."
"That's an armful. It was, you know, an interesting time."
Jude reflected. "What would you suggest?"
Dunleavy asked a few questions, nothing that probed deeply but enough to get an idea of what Jude was after. He padded off down the central corridor, the cone of light from a green lamp reflecting off the dome of his bald pate. Four minutes later, he returned with a folder marked CULTS SCIENTIFIC, and underneath that a further subdivision — WESTERN STATES. He poured the folder onto the counter; out fell three bundles, each tied with a thin cord that was lashed to a circular fastening stuck on a cardboard backing.
Immediately, Dunleavy frowned. "Something wrong here," he said portentously.
One of the bundles was labeled ARIZONA, and it was skimpy. It held only four articles, which Jude quickly ascertained were of no interest.
"But see here where the cord is bent," said Dunleavy. "That's what I mean when I say something's wrong. The file used to be much thicker. Here, look over the names of those who checked it out — maybe that will tell you something."
He handed Jude a sheet of paper from inside the folder that had names and dates scribbled upon it. Most were from the early 1970s; only one was recent. The handwriting was hard to make out, and Jude tried to read it out loud.
"Looks like Jay Montgomery, Jay Mortimery, something like that."
Dunleavy grabbed the list, looked at it, and cackled low.
"Aha. I knew something was funny. The name doesn't matter. But see that little mark beside the name, the black dot? I made that. I always added a telltale sign when the person requesting the file was a non-Mirror representative."
"You mean, somebody outside the paper using the morgue?"
"Precisely."
"So who was this?"
"We don't know who he was, but we know where he came from."
"Where?"
"Blue for the police. Red for the CIA. Green for NSA. And black for—"
"— the FBI."
"Precisely. And so we deduce that someone from the FBI took this file out — let's see — four months ago, and kept it. A most unorthodox behavior, I might add, and given the fact that there is a Xerox machine not more than twenty paces away, something that was most decidedly not done merely to keep a record of it."
"It was done to deny the file to someone else."
"Or perhaps to deny it to anyone else."
Jude felt he was at another dead end.
"Isn't there any way to track the clips down?"
Dunleavy began unwrapping the other two bundles. The only hope, he said, was that an article or two had been replaced erroneously in the wrong pile — which happened more often that you would think, he added.
He was soon proved right and held up a small piece of yellow paper, four paragraphs from an article that had been accidentally ripped in two. The story had appeared on November 8, 1967, and it concerned a group called "the Institute for Research into Human Longevity," which had fielded a list of candidates to run for local offices, all of whom had been soundly defeated. A spokesman for the group, who the article said refused to provide his name, issued an ungracious statement, saying that the organization was "turning away from politics forever and would pursue its goals through research alone." He said the group had "changed its name to W."
"W." What the hell does that mean? wondered Jude.
The bottom of the story was missing, but that was not essential. Now that the date was known, Jude could retrieve it from the microfilm files. And, besides, the top of the story carried what was the single most important piece of information, the dateline. It was Jerome, Arizona, and as soon as Jude read it, he knew it was right, for it had struck a long-buried chord in his memory.
"Hello. Doctors' office."
The voice on the telephone sounded efficient, with more than a touch of that nasal New York brusqueness that tells the caller to get down to business right away.
"Is Dr. Givens in?" Jude asked. Not that there's a chance in hell that he would come to the phone.
"No, I'm sorry."
Funny, she didn't sound sorry.
"He's out all week."
Jude was glad — he was calling on the off chance that Dr. Givens, his assigned doctor in the HMO United Comprehensive Care, was not there. He wanted any doctor but him. Finally, he thought, something is breaking right for me.