Bestiary (25 page)
Authors: Robert Masello
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers
Beth checked his diaper—no problem there—and kissed him on his forehead. His eyes, crystal clear and pale blue, remained fixed on her, and she had the odd sense, as she often did, that he was about to say something to her. That he
could
say something to her, if he wanted to, but that he just hadn’t decided to do so yet. She knew it wasn’t really true, but even as she drew back, she felt it.
could
say something to her, if he wanted to, but that he just hadn’t decided to do so yet. She knew it wasn’t really true, but even as she drew back, she felt it.
“Someday,” she whispered, “you’re going to tell me what that’s all about. Okay?”
He wiggled his feet in reply.
As she left, she could hear Champ turning around and around in a tight circle as he settled back down at the foot of the crib.
Downstairs, the house was dark. Had Carter actually gone out somewhere, at this hour? And after what had happened with the coyotes the last time? She glanced at the digital clock on the microwave; it was almost one in the morning. Going to the kitchen window, she looked out into the tiny yard, and she could see him sitting there in a lawn chair, facing out over the canyon. He had a beer in one hand.
Opening the double doors to the yard, she said, “Drinking alone again?”
He turned his head toward her. “Couldn’t sleep.”
She gathered her robe around her, walked barefoot across the short, mostly brown grass, and sat down in the chair next to him. “Was it the arm?”
After the attack in the tar pit, Carter had been taken to USC University Hospital, where they’d sewed up his forearm with a half dozen stitches. Now he had a narrow white bandage running down his forearm.
“No, that’s okay.” He was wearing a California Science Center T-shirt and a pair of Jams.
Beth sat back on the plastic strips of her chair, its aluminum frame creaking. The moon was full, etching the trees and brush below in a cold silver light.
She knew what it was; she knew Carter well enough by now to know what he would be thinking after such a terrible day.
“You know,” she said, gently, “it’s not your fault.”
He didn’t answer.
“The man was crazy.”
“I know that,” he conceded. “But now he’s dead.”
“Through no fault of yours. He attacked you, with a knife, and all you did was defend yourself.”
He shrugged, as if to say, I know you’re right . . . but it doesn’t matter.
And it occurred to Beth that she had had this conversation before . . . back in New York. After the lab assistant had misused the laser, and set off the fatal explosion, Carter had blamed himself for everything. How strange, she thought, that even here in L.A.—where they’d gone to start over—such awful accidents were haunting them again.
“So, how come you’re up?” Carter asked, as if to change the subject.
“I don’t know. Just woke up, to an empty bed.”
But Carter could read her as well as she could read him. He could see the concern in her eyes. It was one reason he’d gotten up and come outside; he didn’t want her to be disturbed by all his tossing and turning. He’d tried to sleep—God knows, it had been a long enough day—but every time he closed his eyes, all he could see was the terrified face of Geronimo as he sank, slowly, to the bottom of the pit. He kept thinking that there was something else he could have done, some way he could have saved him.
And he wondered what the man’s real name was.
No one knew—and there was a good chance no one ever would. Even if his body was recovered from the tar one day, there was no guarantee he’d have identification—that was still legible—on him. He’d become just another anonymous victim of the pit.
“At least it’s not so hot out anymore,” Beth said.
“Yeah, that’s a relief,” Carter agreed.
Another silence fell.
Carter finished the bottle of beer. “How’s your work coming? On that bestiary.”
“Good,” Beth said, sounding as chipper as the late hour would allow. “The book is spectacular—the most beautiful I’ve ever seen—and I can’t wait for the script analysis to come back. Trying to read it right now is an ordeal.”
“How come? You were always pretty good with Latin.”
“This text is so archaic, and the handwriting so peculiar, it would take me months to translate it on my own. Not to mention the fact that in some places it’s very faded, and in others it’s so intricately woven into the illustrations that it’s hard to separate out.”
“But apart from that,” Carter said, with a laugh, “it’s a piece of cake.”
Beth smiled. “At least on my job I don’t have to worry about getting attacked with a knife.”
“But you do have to worry about the mysterious Mr. al-Kalli.” A breeze blew through the canyon below, rustling the dry leaves. “Is he breathing down your neck?”
“Oh yeah,” Beth said with a laugh. “He acts as if he’s waiting for a doctor’s report to come back from the lab.”
Carter nodded companionably.
Beth levered herself out of the lawn chair. “I guess I’ll try to get some sleep.”
Carter reached out, took her hand, and drew her down onto his lap. Beth’s robe fell open. “Hey, what’ll the neighbors think?” Beth said.
“That’s the great thing about this place,” Carter said, gesturing out over the wide, dark canyon. “There aren’t any.”
He bent his head and kissed her. And for the first time in a long while, Beth felt herself . . . go with it. Maybe it was just the shock she’d had, hearing how close Carter had come to being killed in the pit, and maybe it was something else entirely, but right now she wasn’t thinking about anything but her husband—not the baby, not her work—and the way his lips felt on hers. His hand moved up onto her breast, and she felt the nipple, usually so sore, stiffen under his fingertips. She let out an inadvertent moan, and his tongue went into her mouth.
Together, they slipped out of the chair and onto the parched grass. Carter pulled the robe off her shoulders as she shoved his Jams down. He pressed himself on top of her, and she opened her eyes, gazing up at the moon and stars—in L.A., you could actually see the stars at night—then closed them again. She didn’t want to be distracted, even by something so beautiful; she didn’t want to miss a moment of what was happening.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE GOLF CART rolled to a stop at the far end of the facility. Overhead, a bird swooped and cawed, making lazy circles around the perimeter of the high, slanting roof.
Al-Kalli waited as Jakob pulled Rafik out, then said, “You know what to do.”
Indeed, Jakob did—it wasn’t the first time. Holding Rafik by the collar of the orange jumpsuit, he dragged him to the gate of the last pen and shoved him inside. He slammed shut the outer gate, leaving the prisoner boxed as if in a shark cage. Until the inside gate was released, Rafik still had some small measure of protection.
There was no sign of the pen’s occupant, and that was a good thing. There was information that al-Kalli still needed to glean from his prisoner, and if he was already out of his mind with fear, it might prove difficult.
Al-Kalli drew a gold cigarette case from the pocket of his trousers, tamped a cigarette on the lid, then lighted it. Normally he would never allow such a thing in here, but on these special occasions, it seemed the right thing to do. Weren’t the condemned always given one last cigarette?
He held it out to Rafik, who shrank back as far as the cage, roughly the size of a phone booth, would permit, and regarded him warily.
“It’s a Marlboro,” he said, the most popular brand in Iraq before the war. To prove it was safe, al-Kalli took a draw on it himself, then exhaled the fragrant smoke. He held it out again, and this time, Rafik extended a shaky hand through the bars and took it.
Al-Kalli let him savor the moment—and perhaps hear the denizens of the facility as they stirred themselves awake. The overhead lights were blazing, uncharacteristically at this late hour, and some of the creatures were so sensitive that they might have already detected the smell of the cigarette. They would know something was afoot, and they would be curious. A yelp came from one of the nearby cages.
Rafik’s eyes did dart in that direction, as he no doubt wondered what animal had made the sound. A hyena? A jackal? A coyote? Al-Kalli gave him time to run through the possibilities, knowing that he would never arrive at the right one.
“Now,” al-Kalli said, calmly and in Arabic, “we still have some things to clear up.”
Rafik, pinching the cigarette hard and holding it to his cracked lips, said nothing.
“There were four of you, to the best of my recollection.”
Rafik had been through all this before.
“And three of you I have now come to know.”
Rafik knew what that meant. His life had been nothing but torture and imprisonment since he’d been kidnapped in Beirut.
“But I want to know you all.”
“You want,” Rafik said, lowering the cigarette, “to kill us all.”
“Not necessarily,” al-Kalli said. “I am not without mercy.” The same mercy, he thought, that had been extended to his own murdered family.
“Do you have a wife? Children?”
Rafik, he could see, was debating how to answer.
“Just tell me the truth,” al-Kalli said, in reasonable tones.
Rafik finally nodded; yes, he had a wife and children.
“Then I’m sure you would like to see them again.”
Rafik was sure that he never would. But the tiniest flicker of hope nonetheless stirred in his breast.
“I can send you back to them, or I can bring them here. To this country.”
Al-Kalli was surprised that the beast, no doubt sleeping in his cave at the rear of the enclosure, had not yet made an appearance. He began to worry that it might be even more gravely unwell than he thought.
“What,” Rafik ventured, “do I have to do?”
Ah, that pleased al-Kalli. He hadn’t been sure that at this stage of the game he would be able to ignite any hope at all in the prisoner—surely the man would know his fate was sealed. But the human spirit was a strange and wondrous thing—even in the face of the obvious, it could harbor all kinds of illusions.
“Very little,” al-Kalli said. “I know that it was Saddam himself who ordered the executions.”
Rafik had never actually said so—what was the hold that Saddam, now a toothless lion who would never again walk free, held over these men?—but he hadn’t bothered to deny it, either. In his dreams, al-Kalli imagined what he would have done if Saddam himself had ever fallen into his hands.
“But I wish to know how he chose you, and your comrades, for such a delicate task. Were you part of an elite squad? Were you handpicked?”
Al-Kalli had no real interest in the answers to these questions. He simply wanted to get Rafik talking. To give him time to think about his predicament—locked in some wild animal’s cage—and to let him think that there might possibly be some way out.
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