Effigy (8 page)

Thief In The Night

The Utah Museum of Natural History slept near the empty, looping lanes of President’s Circle. As enticing as it was, he didn’t bother parking there.
Modern Archaeology
 
had subtly hinted against it, stating the effigy wouldn’t be on display until further study was complete. Therefore, the only likely place holding his prize was the William Stewart Building of Anthropology, and a simple campus directory had sufficiently led him there.

Cautious of the light in a first floor window, he decided to wait. There was no sense breaking in only to be caught by a janitor.

He drummed his fingers upon the hollow black box sitting on the seat next to him. It was a heavy wooden vessel, and grotesquely beautiful with its charcoal jaguar images carved along each plane. Although he’d purchased the box with a single purpose in mind, he found it convenient for accomplishing the task ahead of him tonight. A task his patience could no longer hold out for.

He decided to scope out his point of entry.

Leaving his car in the parking lot, he approached the dark building with the jaguar box beneath his arm, hoping to find a forgotten window left unlocked. Perhaps the glass in the doors would be easy to break, though that was taking a chance there were no security systems in place. But just as he reached the vine-latticed brick wall, luck literally opened the door for him.

He retreated to the dark shadows around the corner as the would-be watchdog janitor whistled his way out of the building, hefting a bulging garbage bag over his shoulder. As the janitor followed the sidewalk into the night, the self-locking doors eased shut behind him, but not before a shadow slipped through and quietly entered the dark interior of the hallway.

The building’s directory hung on the wall, the white plastic letters lightly illuminated by the dim street lights glowing through the glass doors.

The shadow spotted his destination: ARCHAEOLOGY CENTER RM 113.

He started quietly down the hall toward a dim speck of light escaping the door window of room 113. Convenient, he thought. How careless of the janitor to have left it on.

He proceeded cautiously, first peering through the narrow window. A table lamp shed light in an otherwise darkened room, and there was nobody around. He listened for sounds of the janitor returning. There was only silence, so he crept inside.

Stealing past rows of empty lab tables, he noticed a second light glowing along a counter lined with microscopes, but that too had been abandoned and he disregarded it. What did hold his attention was the closet door standing ajar at the end of the room. He reached a hand into the dark maw of the closet and flipped the light switch just inside the door. The blinding florescent lights flickered, revealing not a closet, but another room filled with rows upon rows of overburdened storage shelving. If he was going to find the effigy, surely he would find it here.

He grabbed the first cardboard box lacking a coat of dust and rummaged inside.

Nothing.

He found another. Then a casing of arrowheads. Another box of potsherds. Stone tools. The next row of shelves produced more of the same.

Still nothing.

Frustrated, he threw a tattered Navajo blanket aside. It collapsed upon another shelf, spilling a container of glass beads which scattered across the tile floor with alarming commotion. He hesitated. Listened.

But there was nothing.

He tugged at another box whose weight unsettled a buffalo skull which crashed at his feet. There were boxes of decaying leather and other pieces of junk he couldn’t identify. He found a badly rusted revolver, a few Civil War relics and boxes of various animal bones.

He’d completely uprooted an entire row of artifacts when it occurred to him that the effigy wouldn’t be stored with worthless, dusty trinkets openly available to students. There could only be one logical place holding the effigy—the one place the magazine intentionally diverted from public attention—the museum.

He cursed his stupidity as he stormed toward the storage room door, his feet crunching over beads and buffalo teeth. He kicked a casting of a Neanderthal skull out of his way.

And then he saw it: a shiny, black, aluminum storage container. This was no ordinary box. It was special, intended to protect something special.

He lifted the lid and peered inside.

* * * *

“I’ll help you close up the lab,” Dr. Peet said as he lifted his jacket from the hook behind his office door.

“So you’ll talk to Dr. Snead about excavating The Trader?” Lori asked, rising from her chair. A glimmer of hope slipped through her veins. Maybe between the two of them they could convince the dean of the necessity to continue their dig.

Dr. Peet shrugged into his jacket and retrieved his keys from the pocket. “I’ll do my best, but I can’t guarantee he’ll go for it. He’s too afraid of the publicity.”

He ushered her into the hallway. “Besides,” he said. “Sounds like Snead’s satisfied with the conclusions already made about the effigy.”

“But you’re not, are you?”

He flashed her a wink as he locked his office door. “I believe we need to find the story behind the find.”

Dr. Peet grinned as he so often did when he coached his students, and Lori liked his smile. He looked years younger and when Dr. Peet grinned he was no longer the instructor leading the way, but a partner aiding in research.

As they started down the hall, the renewed possibility of excavating The Trader had Lori’s thoughts flowing as lively as the hem of her lab coat flailing about her legs. They rounded the corner where the hallway stretched toward the darkened front entrance. About midway down the corridor the dim light slipping from the laboratory shifted with the opening of the door.

Lori froze in her tracks. Judging by Dr. Peet’s similar reaction, he’d seen the movement too. Then, a shadow crept into the hallway and proceeded away toward the entrance, apparently unaware of them standing there in the darkness.

“Were you working with someone?” Dr. Peet asked in a low voice.

Lori’s heart skipped a beat. “No.”

They watched in stunned silence as the shadow slipped out of the building. The sound of the glass doors clicking shut echoed through the hall.

“Now, I know I locked those doors when we came in,” Dr. Peet said.

“Oh, God!”

Lori sprinted to the lab with Dr. Peet close behind. They burst into the room, now glowing from the light spilling out of storage. There came a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as they raced for the open door.

Lori stopped against the doorframe. “Oh my God!” she gasped.

Stunned, Dr. Peet shuffled into a slew of artifacts that had been flung from the shelves. He surveyed the destruction in utter speechlessness. Lori’s attention swept to the shelf where she’d left the effigy. The black aluminum container lay askew, the lid hanging wide open.

“The effigy!”

She spun around and raced out of the lab with Dr. Peet calling after her. His voice echoed behind her as she flew down the empty hall and burst through the glass entrance doors.

She skidded to a stop in the cool night air. The rims of street lights angled a soft glow around the trees lining
University Drive
. Heavy gray shadows fell across the campus grounds.

Then she heard them—footsteps shuffling through the lawn. She rounded the building and saw the shadow of the thief, all but dissolved into the darkness, continuing to a lone car parked in the lot nearby.

“Hey!” she shouted.

The shadow turned, the street lights glinting off his belt buckle, a bulky black container tucked under his arm. He spotted her and bolted for the car.

“Shit!”

Lori raced across the grass and caught herself as she nearly flew off the curb. The thief struggled a moment with the handle on the car door, giving her precious seconds to catch up. He managed to jerk the creaky door open and slip inside just as Lori reached the car. As he ripped the door from her grasp she noticed the black box fly from his other hand, landing atop
Modern Archaeology
’s slick cover photo of the effigy. She pulled on the door handle as it slammed shut. The door was locked.

“You can’t take the effigy!” she cried, pounding on the window.

The driver fired up the engine and a cloud of exhaust plumed the air. Lori pounded harder.

“Wait a minute!”

The car lurched backward and to Lori’s surprise, she staggered with it. To her horror she found the length of her lab coat caught in the car door. In a panic, she pounded on the window.

“Stop! Please!”

The car screeched to a halt and the driver looked at her through a black mask that hooded his menacing eyes.

Lori pulled on the lab coat but it wouldn’t come free.

“Open the door!” she demanded.

The engine revved.

“
Please!
Open the door!”

The driver’s lips peeled into an amused smile. Without bothering to turn away he jammed the gear selector into drive.

* * * *

Peet heard the growling engine as he burst out of the anthropology building. When he rounded the corner he found a battered Ford Taurus backing away from the concrete curb, taking Lori with it.

At first he thought Lori was simply hanging on to the car but upon a closer look, he noticed that it wasn’t the door handle she was tugging on. She was caught by her own lab coat and by the sound of the revving engine; the situation was quickly getting serious.

“Let me go! Please!” she begged as the car hesitated to change gears.

The driver was just a shadow in the dark windshield with no apparent regard to Lori’s peril. A heavy sense of dread sank into Peet’s chest as he stood helplessly on the cushy lawn, watching the tires squeal over the pavement.

“Get out of the coat!” he yelled. “Lori!
Get out…of…the…coat!
”

The spinning tires found their traction and the car lurched forward. Lori screamed as she was jerked off her feet. She clung desperately to the coat, her legs flailing beside the car.

“Dear Lord!” Peet gasped as he ran, angling toward the car as it sped across the paved lot. “Lori! Get out of the coat!”

Lori screamed again, twisting alongside the car with the back wheel threatening to roll over her feet. Peet heard the lab coat tear. This wasn’t going to end well if it gave out now.

Peet flew into the vehicle’s path. The car avoided him and turned onto President’s Circle, flinging Lori to the outside. A final rip and she was free, flying over the curb and landing onto the central grassy berm. She rolled to a motionless stop beneath the limbs of a young cottonwood tree.

Stunned, Peet rushed over just as the driver rounded the loop. He reached her within the glare from the headlights of the oncoming car. The engine was growling ever louder. With a metallic crunch of undercarriage the Ford jumped the curb, the reckless tires chewing a scar through the sod. Peet grabbed Lori and pulled her behind the cottonwood just as the car roared past.

His heart hammered against his chest. Panting, but otherwise unscathed, he watched the Ford’s taillights merge and finally dissolve into traffic. Straining to catch his breath, Peet pulled Lori close. They were safe.

Just as his muscles relaxed to the anticlimactic silence that followed, the automatic lawn sprinklers erupted with an icy assault of their own.