Altar of Bones (24 page)

But what had shocked Miles even more than seeing the hate in his son’s eyes was the realization inside his own heart that he just didn’t give a fuck anymore. Had he ever loved the boy at all, or had he just been going through the motions?

He’d taken out his money clip that night, peeled off a twenty. “Here. Take it and go stick a needle in your arm. And leave me the hell alone.”

It was the last time he saw his son alive.

H
E MUST HAVE
dozed off, because Miles was suddenly startled awake by the feel of cold lips against his cheek. He opened his eyes. Yasmine Poole’s white face floated in front of him, flames from the fire dancing in the sheen of her dark eyes.

He blinked and croaked something, and she straightened and took a step back. She had on tight black pants with stiletto-heeled boots, and a short, fuzzy white jacket that looked sexy as hell, and his guts did that funny crimping thing that happened when he looked at her.

“You got snow in your hair,” he said.

“It’s pretty out there tonight. The flakes are big and fat and soft.”

The room fell into a silence that was electric, not soft, and the air around her seemed to vibrate, sucking him in.

“So?” Miles said, when he could bear it no longer. “Katya Orlova—you found her?”

Her red mouth broke into a smile. “Ding-dong, the bitch is dead,” she sang. “The wicked bitch is dead.”

“Will you quit playing games and tell me what’s going on?”

“Katya Orlova is dead, Miles. As in deader-than-a-doornail dead. Deader than roadkill. Deader than hell in a preacher’s backyard. That kind of dead.”

Miles felt a flash of relief so strong it made him dizzy. “And the film? What about the film?”

“Yeah, well, see, that’s where the bad news comes in.”

“Dammit, this shit isn’t funny, Yaz.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. As you know, the high-powered private investigator’s agency we hired was never able to pick up diddlysquat on the old woman herself, but they found her family easily enough. A widowed daughter and a granddaughter living in San Francisco.”

She was prowling the room now, running her hands along a row of leatherbound books, giving the big globe in the corner a spin.
The killing crazies are on her
, Miles thought.
She’s smelling blood, tasting it
.

“So for the last eighteen months, the PIs have been keeping tabs on both the daughter and granddaughter,” Yasmine was saying. “Just in case she ever showed up, you know? When lo and behold she did show
up—as an old homeless woman who was stabbed in the chest in Golden Gate Park last night.”

Miles grunted, feeling suddenly ill. “God
damn
it. I don’t believe in coincidences. Whoever killed the bitch now has the film. Nikolai Popov—it’s got to be him.”

“Well, not him personally. Because he’d be way too old to be running around stabbing people.”

“And here’s another thing,” Miles went on. “If she’s stayed away from her family all these years, why does she suddenly turn up there now, right after Mike O’Malley kicks the bucket?”

“It wasn’t
right
after, Miles. It’s been a year and a half. Besides, the PI firm got a look at the autopsy report. She was dying of cancer. She probably wanted to tell them good-bye.”

Miles grunted. “Okay. I’ll buy that part. But her getting murdered—that’s got to be Popov’s doing. I might not have known that she’s had the film ever since the big kill, but you can bet that Popov sure as hell did. He’s probably had men watching her family for decades, waiting for her to show up.”

“Maybe,” Yasmine said. “The ME’s report did say she was stabbed with a Siberian knife.”

She’d circled the room and was behind him now, and not for the first time Miles was a little scared of her. Of what she might do to
him
one day, when one of the blood frenzies seized her.

“The thing is, Miles, this guy who killed the old lady? He probably was one of Popov’s men, but I don’t think he got the film. Because the granddaughter suddenly dropped everything and caught a plane for Paris tonight, and what do you want to bet it wasn’t to climb the Eiffel Tower?”

“You need to go after her.” Miles tried to crane his head around to look at Yasmine, to see what she was doing, but the back of his chair was too high.

“I’ve already booked a flight to Orly. With the time difference, I might even get to Paris a few minutes ahead of her.”

In the meantime, Miles thought, maybe he should give the Russian a call, poke at him the way you do a rattlesnake to see what trouble you can stir up. It had been such a long time since they’d last talked. Years.

Nikolai Popov had fallen far since his glory days with the KGB. He was nothing but a gangster now, pimping girls and selling drugs and running numbers. Well, supposedly he had a son who did all the dirty work, but Miles had no doubt Nikolai wielded all the power behind the scenes.

And, yeah, his face was on the film, too, but who was left alive to recognize him after all these years? And why would he give a shit anyway if the whole world found out what he’d done? Hell, it would probably give him the Russian equivalent of street cred. You couldn’t be brought down when you were already as low as you could go.

Miles heard, or maybe just felt, a movement behind him, then Yasmine’s hands reached around the back of his chair and began to knead his shoulders. Her fingers were strong, almost too strong, bringing him to the edge of pain.

Her voice was soft in his ear. “I’ve still got an hour before I need to leave for the airport.”

He clasped her wrists in his two hands and drew her around in front of him. She knelt at his feet, and her face was beautiful and so white, except for the bloodred lips. He had a sudden, profane thought that he wanted to marry her. He wanted to live happily ever after with her, maybe have a child with her. Another son.

“This is all going to be over,” he said. “Soon.”

“I know. I know.”

He reached out and rubbed his thumb across her full bottom lip. “The granddaughter …”

“Zoe Dmitroff.”

“Whether she can get her hands on the film or not, she could already know what’s on it.”

“We can’t take that chance.”

“No. But talk to her first. Show her a photograph of Nikolai Popov. I want to know if he’s ever approached her, and if he did, what was said.”

“And then?”

“Then you will do what you do best.”

Her eyes darkened, and her mouth parted open. He felt her hot breath on his hand.

“With pleasure,” she said. “As always.”

Paris, France

L
ook to the Lady
, her grandmother had written. Well, Zoe had looked, and looked and looked and looked. She’d studied every square inch of these wretched tapestries until they felt imprinted on her eyeballs, and she’d come up with nothing. So what had she missed? What was here that she couldn’t see? Surely her grandmother had put the postcard in the envelope to bring her to this place, but what good did it do if she couldn’t figure out what it all meant?

Look to the lady
.

She circled the round, dimly lit room yet again to gaze up at the sixteenth-century wall hangings, vibrant as a spill of jewels. The Lady,
her
Lady, starred in all of them, with her unicorn and a lion, but no griffin.

The tapestries were supposed to depict the world of the senses. In
Taste
the Lady was taking candy from a dish held by a maidservant. In
Smell
she was making a wreath of flowers. In
Touch
she was stroking the unicorn’s horn, and in
Hearing
she was playing an organ. In
Sight
she held up a mirror and the unicorn knelt on the ground beside her with his front legs in her lap while he stared at his reflection.

Zoe stopped to look up at the final tapestry, the one on her grandmother’s postcard.
À mon seul désir
, to my sole desire. Here, the Lady stood in front of a tent with her maidservant beside her, holding an open casket. The Lady was putting the necklace she’d been wearing in the other tapestries into the casket.

But there was no altar of bones here, no altar of any kind. So what did it mean? Damn it, what was she supposed to see?

The women of our line have been Keepers to the altar of bones for so long, the beginning has been lost in the mists of time. The sacred duty of each Keeper is to guard from the world the knowledge of the secret pathway, for beyond the pathway is the altar, and within the altar is the fountain of life
.

A ridiculous riddle, her grandmother had called it. Okay, it might be ridiculous, but it was also obtuse, even more obtuse than that other riddle written on the back of the postcard. Or rather she was obtuse, because if the answer had been woven into the tapestry, it was beyond her—

A guard poked his head in the doorway, startling her. He tapped his wristwatch and said,
“Madame. Nous fermons en cinq minutes.”

Zoe started to nod at the man, when suddenly her eyes filled with tears. She wasn’t ready to go, she wasn’t done here. Until yesterday her grandmother had meant little more to her than a smiling face in an old photograph. Maybe it was only those shared mitochondrials, but in this place, standing before the tapestry in the postcard, Zoe felt connected to Katya Orlova on some deeper level. Connected, too, to those women named in the letter going back through the generations to the first Keeper. Her grandmother had said they were bound by blood, and Zoe was screwing up, she was letting those women down.

Look to the Lady, for her heart cherishes the secret, and the pathway to the secret is infinite
.

The women of our line have been Keepers to the altar of bones for so long, the beginning has been lost in the mists of time
.

So the altar of bones must be your legacy
.

Only she was so stupid, she couldn’t even figure out what the damned thing was, let alone how she would “keep” it.

Zoe looked one last time at
À mon seul désir
, at the Lady putting her necklace into the casket.

The museum guide said this meant the Lady had renounced the passions aroused by the other senses. After four hours of staring at the Lady’s face, though, Zoe wasn’t so sure. Passion was life, and this was the face of a woman embracing life, not renouncing it. And if you began your journey through the senses with this tapestry, then the Lady could be taking the necklace out of the casket, not putting it in.

Maybe, Zoe thought, feeling punch-drunk with jet lag and museum
torpor, she should write an article on this insightful discovery and submit it to some art magazine. She could call it “The Lady Is a Hedonist,” and to support her thesis she could point to the expression on the unicorn’s face, a smug smile if ever there was one, as if he’d just been fed an especially yummy bucket of oats. And then there was the lion—a strange-looking beast, but not a griffin, his mouth open wide in a big roar. Or maybe it was a belly laugh.

“All right, give it up, you guys,” Zoe said, out loud because she was the only one left in the room. “What is this altar-of-bones thing, and where is it when it’s at home?”