“Arnott wanted something your husband sent home?!” Alred sat forward, a gleam of anger in her eye.
Mrs. Ulman stopped moving. She looked at Porter. She turned her head to Alred.
“Just like the FBI,” the older woman continued. “Just like you, I assume. Wanted anything Chris sent me. Artifacts most of all, but also letters, notes, or journals he may have sent home. Papers. That’s what they asked for. Everything.”
“I don’t want those things, Mrs. Ulman,” Alred said. “And I’m not here for your husband’s notes. I just want to know what happened to him.”
Mrs. Ulman pulled away, falling against the well-cushioned back of the orange couch. She closed her eyes and shook her head without speaking.
Porter gazed at his companion, bewildered.
Alred ignored the movement, but focused on their unspeaking host.
When Mrs. Ulman stopped shaking her head, she stood, sighed, and said without feeling, “Can I get you a drink?”
The two students waved the offer away politely, while Mrs. Ulman went to a short bar, pulled out a nearly empty bottle of vodka, and poured herself a glass. She swallowed and dropped her head.
“Mrs. Ulman,” Porter said, “truth is, we need to find out what’s…going on. The only way I can figure of doing that is by studying your husband’s work.”
Alred knew Porter was playing along with her own words, probably supposing them to be a ruse. He had only one thing in mind, obviously. If Mrs. Ulman had more to contribute to Porter’s dissertation, he needed it. Alred had told him about Ulman’s purported disappearance, and even mentioned the message written on the front page of Albright’s essay. Porter simply shrugged it away and continued his single-minded work on his peculiar translation of the codex. How could he translate it anyway?!
Mrs. Ulman’s reply was barely audible. “Third time I’ve heard that.”
“Mrs. Ulman, your husband was my favorite professor,” Alred said. She slowed her speech and reset her tone to a calmer note. “I studied under him before he went to Guatemala, and he’s written me since then. I hoped to continue his work. And now we’ve been given an assignment to do just that.”
Porter said, “In my case, this assignment is the last chance I’ll get to succeed at this university. If I fail, Stratford kicks me out. If there’s anything you could do for us, something you know about his work…it would be priceless. I really could use your help, Mrs. Ulman.”
Alred stared at him as if examining his weakness behind a magnifying glass. He wasn’t being very diplomatic, she thought.
Mrs. Ulman nodded, bracing herself up against the counter. As she turned, her arm hit the vodka bottle, and the liquor splashed over her clothes and poured into the carpet before she could catch it. She sighed, but it was almost a groan.
Alred chewed on her lower lip and looked at Porter, who met her eyes.
“I think,” Mrs. Ulman said with a pause, “I need to be alone.”
Porter and Alred nodded, stood, and thanked her for her time.
She led them to the door while Porter scribbled on a pad. Tearing out the paper as the door opened, he said, “This is my-”
“Right,” Mrs. Ulman said. “Dial you if I learn anything. I’ll just have to call everyone who came before you first. Hope you don’t mind.” She smiled a bitter smile which disappeared quickly.
Porter didn’t reply.
Once outside, the door closed behind Porter and Alred.
Opening the door to the bark-colored Toyota, Porter shot Alred a glance. “How did the FBI know Ulman mailed something to his P.O. Box?”
“Intimidation, probably,” said Alred. “Scared her to death. When they asked about mail, she probably mentioned the box. They would have seen the mail box hanging by her front door as they entered and assumed the rest. A logical guess. A housewife with a mailbox at home wouldn’t check a separate post office box regularly. And as a professor, Ulman would get mail at the university.”
“Why would he have an extra post box?” said Porter.
Alred looked at him across the top of her car. “Side projects, most likely. People get post office boxes for different reasons. Maybe it was a money-making scheme only the Ulman’s knew about.”
“A scheme?” Porter said, tilting his head at her as he climbed into the passenger seat.
“Doesn’t have to be illegal. Just some project where you’d get mail, but didn’t want people to know your home address. Something like that.” Alred looked up and down the street, then to the fuchsia sky.
In a shallow voice, Alred said as she fell behind the steering wheel, “I want to know what Arnott thinks he’s doing. Creep!”
“D’you just call me a creep?”
“No. The professor here before us.” Alred shook her head. “He’s trying to figure it all out before we can.” She lightly bit the inside of her cheek. “I’m going home.”
Scratching his five o’clock shadow, Porter looked back at the Ulman home.
The curtain in the window fell closed.
“She’s hiding something,” he said, not turning away. “She wouldn’t look us in the eye.”
“Yep,” Alred said, shifting her gaze back to the house. “But why?”
10:59 p.m. PST
Dear Stan,
Don’t die on me!
I know, you’re shocked I’m writing. The worst reputation I bear has to be my irregular letter-writing pattern. Truth is, I’ve written you a number of letters! Most of those even went into envelopes. But by the time I got close to putting a stamp on them, they were at least a month or two outdated.
Yes, when we served as missionaries together in Japan you taught me to purchase a number of spare stamps to have on hand. Well, we all have our weaknesses.
But this letter, you have to get!
I’ll jump to the point. You’ve been a field agent with the FBI for at least eight years now, haven’t you? Ten, maybe? Anyway, I’ve got a question that needs a quick answer: I’m working on something right now that would fascinate you. But I’ve just learned the FBI may get in my way.
I really need this!
I figure there must be a file or something. Most likely it’s all out of your reach. But if you can tell me anything about a Dr. Christopher Ulman and his work, I’d appreciate it. Word has it Ulman has recently disappeared.
Ulman found something in Guatemala that’s going to cause an uproar in the intellectual community. See the irony? He’s a professor with a gold mine-and he’s vanished! Yes, my imagination might play games with me from time to time, but if I know archaeologists-which I do! — they wouldn’t throw away a discovery of this magnitude-the type of thing they hope for all their lives.
I know I haven’t really said anything about what he found, but I have to make sure this letter gets in the mail. I’ll tell you more later.
Kiss your wife and kids for me.
The Church is still true.
Your friend,
John D. Porter
(P.S.-The D stands for Dr. in Training of course)
(P.P. S-Write back quick! You guys at the FBI might want him for something illegal, which may soon tie to what I’m doing. Actually, I doubt you really want him at all-not your department, if I’m right. But what do I know. If the FBI confiscates my project, I’ll fail out of Stratford University in a big embarrassing way. I really have to hurry. Too much to do. Sayonara!)
CHAPTER TEN
April 16
5:23 p.m. PST
Porter’s heart beat like a race horse just in sight of the finish line, like a medieval bellows loaded with metal and coal growing hotter and a brighter red, like a baby taking its first breath of the new world.
He drew his fingers from right to left across the rough paper.
With his right hand, he scribbled English words into a spiral notebook of sheets that had been turned too quickly and smashed together.
“No,” he said like an exploding light bulb. His eraser hit the white page with faint blue lines, and he scribbled the correct word.