14 (23 page)

Veek tipped her head back at her door. “I’ve got to get to work. Maybe I’ll see you on the roof tomorrow for Friday sunset.”

“Is that what we’re calling it now?”

“That’s what I’m calling it. G’night, Nate.”

“Night, Veek.”

Five minutes later, Nate was alone in his apartment. Not entirely alone. There were two big math equations on the wall. Equations he’d helped save from Oskar’s uncaring maintenance.

He looked at the numbers painted above his computer. He still had no idea what they meant. It was like staring at a wall of Arabic or Japanese. There was something there, something people had written down for a reason. He just needed to learn what that reason was.

He went to the kitchen and looked at the gleaming paragraphs over the sink. There was no doubt in his mind it was a message. Not necessarily for him personally, but someone like him. Someone who would unravel all the mysteries of this place.

It had been a long time since Nate felt excited by anything. His life had been such a dull, repetitive echo of life that he’d forgotten what it was like when things were bright and interesting and new. Stupid as it sounded, he felt alive.

Anne was making a pass at me,
he realized.

Nate stared at the glittering words in his kitchen for another moment. Four paragraphs of light, frozen on the bare plaster. Then he turned and reached for the switch.

And froze.

Just for a moment, on the far side of the apartment, he’d seen a flicker on the wall facing the kitchen. It was in the space next to his desk. On the wall that didn’t have any math on it.

Nate stepped out of the door, but the flickering shadow didn’t return. He glanced up at the bulb—the LONG LIFE WHITE bulb—to make sure it was still working. All the words in the kitchen were still there.

He looked at the far wall again, then drew a line back and forth with his eyes. The space where he’d seen the shadow was just too high. The bulb couldn’t shine on it. He looked around for a moment and his gaze dropped. His white shirt had acted as a reflector. A weak one, but enough for him to glimpse another secret.

Damn lucky,
he thought. The crowd in the kitchen earlier had blocked all the light. Whatever was on that wall would’ve been painted over and none of them ever would’ve known they missed a clue. He leaned back and tried to angle his stomach in a way that would bounce the ultraviolet rays across the apartment. The bare plaster shimmered. Not enough to read, but he could glimpse lines and patterns.

Nate looked around the kitchen for something reflective to shine the light across the apartment. He checked the living room. One of Xela’s foamcore sheets leaned against a bookshelf.

He carried it back to the kitchen and stood under the black light. He angled the white panel at the far wall. The plaster rippled as the ultraviolet rays washed over it and revealed a set of thick, messy lines. A moment later his mind turned the lines into words.

“It’s almost definitely blood,” said Tim. “You can tell by the color. It t
urns jet black under ultraviolet light.” He stepped back and looked at the full message they’d revealed with the foamcore bounce board.

The words were low to the ground. The highest line was chest height. The bottom one was only two feet above the floor.

Nate stood in the kitchen, staring at the letters while he held the foamcore steady. He’d woken Tim up and dragged the older man over to his apartment. “Someone wrote in blood on my wall?”

Tim nodded. “Looks like it.”

“Why?”

“On a guess,” said Tim, “whoever it was knew the message would stay even if they cleaned up most of it.”

“No, I mean why in blood?”

The older man pointed at the word
HURT
. “I think it was what they had to work with.”

A cold chill raced through Nate. He glanced back at the kitchen window to make sure it was still closed. “If it’s blood why can’t we see it?”

Tim waved his hand in front of the wall and his shadow erased the words for a moment. “Whoever cleaned it up wasn't quick enough. A lot of it sank into the plaster. Then it got painted ten or twenty times and vanished.”

“And it’s still there?”

He shrugged. “Like Xela said, it was pretty much shrink-wrapped in paint. Even if most of the moisture is gone, all the key chemicals are there to set off a reaction.”

Nate let the foamcore drop. The words vanished. “Son of a bitch.”

Tim glanced at him. “If it’s any consolation, I think we can say this was written over a hundred years ago. Probably around the same time as the rest of this stuff.” He gestured at the math on the other walls.

“You think someone got murdered here?”

“If they were murdered, I don’t think they would’ve had time to write anything.” He shrugged again. “Unless maybe they murdered the other person. That doesn’t fit with writing in blood, though.”

“You’re taking this really well,” said Nate.

“It’s not my apartment,” said Tim. “And I’m not wigged out by the thought of someone dying over a hundred years ago.”

Nate took a slow breath and nodded. “I should get Xela,” he said. “We need photos of this.”

Tim glanced at his watch. “It’s past midnight. You sure she’ll be up?”

He nodded. “She’s a night owl.”

“I’ll wait.”

Nate slipped down the hall to Xela’s apartment. He knocked lightly on the door twice. When he didn’t hear anything, he knocked again, harder. He paced back and forth while he waited.

A shadow flickered in the peephole lens. “Just a minute,” called Xela.

He paced some more and glanced out the hallway window. It looked out over the building’s front lawn and Kenmore. The street was still and silent. If the man across the street hadn’t moved, Nate wouldn’t have noticed him.

He looked down at the man leaning against the green Taurus. The private detective hired to watch Tim. The man stared back up at him with a dead expression.

Xela opened her door and Nate forgot the detective. “Please tell me you’re not checking up on me because of the whole Roger thing,” she said.

He shook his head and his eyes flitted up and down her body before he could help himself. Her hair was wet, making it an even darker shade of blue. She had on an oversized t-shirt that hung off one shoulder. It was soaked through in enough places that he could tell she wasn’t wearing anything else.

When his eyes got back to her face she was giving him a look. “I’ve got a meeting with my advisor in the morning, so what’s up?”

“I need you to take a few more pictures. It’s important.”

“Pictures of what?”

“There’s more in my apartment.”

“More words?”

“They’re written in blood.”

Her face went blank. “Let me grab some pants,” she said. She ducked back into her apartment and left the door open. She grabbed a pair of paint-splattered jeans and yanked them up over her legs. Nate turned away, but not before she hiked the t-shirt up to her waist and flashed her ass. A moment later the collapsed tripod was in her hand, the camera still mounted on it.

Tim had his cheek against the wall when they entered Nate’s apartment. He was looking along the wall where the letters were. There was no sign of them without the black light. “Definitely cleaned,” he said. “You can just see the marks where they scoured it. Sloppy job. I’d say it was just as much a rush as the message was.”

“Wow,” said Xela. “You’re a regular Sherlock, aren’t you?”

He smiled. “Too many forensics shows,” he said.

She glanced around the apartment. “Veek isn’t here?”

Nate shook his head. “She’s working on another side project.”

“And you didn’t tell her about this?”

“I figured I’d tell her tomorrow.”

Xela shook her head and her lips made a tight smile. “She’s going to be pissed.”

She set up the tripod while Nate got the foamcore in position to reflect the blacklight on the wall. The shadowy letters wavered and faded like smoke.

“Oh my God,” murmured Xela. The color drained out of her face. “That’s blood?”

“Yeah,” said Tim.

She looked at each of them. “What the hell’s going on here?”

The two men shook their heads.

“Who are ‘they’?”

Nate shrugged. “No clue.”

“‘
Protect Kavach, protect the world,’” she recited. Her gaze flitted between them. “Protect the
world
?”

He nodded. “Whoever Kavach was, somebody thought he was important.”

“Important enough to kill for,” said Tim. “Or die for.”

Xela took a deep breath and bent to her camera. She snapped two dozen photos before running back to download them to her computer. When she came back she gave Nate a thumbs-up. “Almost perfect,” she said. “The darker letters photograph better than the phosphorescent ones. I got three great shots. They’re even better than the glowing letters.” She jerked her thumb at the kitchen.

Nate nodded. “Okay then.”

She glanced at the other walls. “Are there any more?”

He shook his head. “I tried shining the light around the room. If there’s anything else I can’t find it.”

“Something else to share with everyone Saturday,” mused Tim.

They headed out and left Nate with a wall covered in dried blood.

Nate looked at the plaster. Without something reflecting the light, the words were hidden. He wondered about the person who had written them. He pictured someone in old-time clothes—a pinstripe vest and a bowler hat and wingtip shoes, maybe with a wide mustache—kneeling on the floor in front of the short bookshelf. In the mental hologram he created, the mystery man had a wounded arm, although the image flickered once or twice to a bleeding leg. The man dabbed his fingers on the wound and smeared blood on the wall. Were there footsteps in the hall? Was someone pounding on the door as he wrote his message?

Did he die writing it?

Who was Kavach? His boss? His friend?

Nate grabbed the bottom edge of his futon couch and flipped it flat. He spread the blanket across the mattress. Normally he set his pillow by the bookshelf, but tonight he tossed it at the other end.

His jeans and shirt landed on the desk chair. He folded the pillow in half, leaned back, and gazed at the wall. He closed his eyes and fell into a dreamless sleep.

He woke to someone knocking on his door. It was Oskar. And the painters.

When Nate got home from work, a heavy smell hung in the air of his apartment. The walls were smooth and unmarked again. All the words and numbers were gone, hidden under a thick coat of paint—maybe two coats—that probably had an innocent name like Antique White or Eggshell or Birchbark.

He looked at the blank walls and sighed. At least they’d gotten plenty of pictures. His bag landed on the futon and he spent a few minutes pulling open the windows. Competing scents of fresh air, sidewalk urine, and the bakery down at the corner all fought with the paint smell and overwhelmed it.