The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (2 page)

I opened the bedroom door, and I was stopped in my tracks. On the floor near my nightstand was a small metal object. The back of my neck came alive with chills.

I recognized the gun immediately. It was mine.

I stepped timidly toward it as a light breeze ruffled the curtains framing the French doors to our terrace. A sudden gust of wind brought the curtains billowing into the bedroom. One of them kissed the pistol lying on the floor before shrinking back again.

I glanced up. The glass doors were standing wide open, as if beckoning me out between them. Slowly I moved toward the terrace.

There I saw it. The blood on the metal railing, framed theatrically by the ruffling curtains. It had already begun to congeal. The pools along the top of the railing and upon the stone floor beneath it were a brighter red than the thinner traces down the vertical metal. The handprint smeared along the top rail was a sickening blotchy swirl of multiple hues. It appeared to be the exact size of my husband’s hand.

My mind was not my own as I stepped forward and crossed the terrace.

Naked and vulnerable, Jeff’s body was displayed in the center of
Teresa
’s forward deck. All four of his limbs were jutting out unnaturally from his torso. Also radiating out from the center of his body were two overlapping ovals of varying shades of red, one from his chest and the other from his abdomen.

The expression on Jeff’s face was one of horror, and there was something else there as well. I think it was sorrow.

I could make no sound. I could only stare. I have no idea how long I stood there.

A flash of light roused me. Another gust of wind had just blown past, and the boat was now rocking gently. A single ray from the setting sun danced mockingly into my eyes, drawing them to the small object from which the light was ricocheting. Until that moment, I had not noticed the pistol silencer lying beside Jeff’s body. It was nearly concealed within the pool of blood that had flowed from my husband’s heart.

The message to me was clear: Be quiet.

It was perversely fortunate that Jeff’s body had landed on the yacht. Our dock was built on a private, narrow canal that led directly out into the Pacific Ocean. It would be surprisingly easy, albeit very expensive, to hide his body. And I knew I had to hide his body.

So I bribed a mortician.

I pulled Larry Shuman’s information from a hasty Internet search on one lone criterion: his business was still open that late in the evening.

Shuman greeted me with a professional handshake, but his eyes were sympathetic as he offered condolences for my loss. He then ran a pudgy hand through the sparse hair on his head and motioned for me to sit across from him as he sat behind his desk. He looked at me questioningly, as if wondering what I had not said on the phone.

The easiest way to explain what I wanted from Shuman was to show him. I opened my purse and pulled out my iPhone, where I had stored a collection of photos. Shuman examined them academically for quite some time before speaking. “Why, may I ask,” he said finally, “did you call my funeral home instead of the police?”

I took a deep breath before answering. “Because I need this to remain unreported for a short period of time. You can still do the necessary post-mortem work-up, but I’m asking, please, do not report this. Not yet.”

Shuman stood up from his desk so abruptly that his chair tipped over backward behind him. He pulled the receiver of his desk phone off its cradle and began to dial.

“I have heard quite enough, Dr. Stone.”

I lunged forward.

Shuman jerked back in an effort to escape my clutching hand, but I was quicker than he was. My hand closed around his, and we began to struggle for the telephone receiver. As we did, the unclasped purse dangling from my arm banged across Shuman’s desk with sufficient force to spill its contents. Several thick wads of rubber banded cash fell out onto the desk.

My strength was no match for his, but Shuman replaced the receiver of the phone, his eyes dropping once or twice to the cash on the desk and then returning to meet my own. Finally, he reached backward and righted his chair to sit down again.

“Dr. Stone, I know who you are. I have read about you and your husband several times over the past few years. Your biotechnology company, founded on the very science that earned Dr. Wilson the Nobel Prize, is among the most successful in the history of the industry—”

“And today,” I interrupted, “I became its sole surviving founder, and one of the wealthiest individuals in California.

“Mr. Shuman, the murder weapon is my own gun. The only prints on it are certain to be mine. The murderer walked into our home through an unlocked front door. And if the police are called, they will quickly discover the same thing that I myself have recently discovered…”

My voice cracked, and I paused and looked down at my lap for a moment before continuing. “I have reason to believe that Jeff might have been having an affair.

“I don’t know with whom, but I believe that if I can find that person I might be able to identify Jeff’s killer. I’m not asking you to cover this up indefinitely, only to allow me a brief sliver of time to come to terms with the loss of my husband. And to find some answers.”

“Absolutely not,” Shuman said, reaching again for the telephone on his desk. “At best, I would be interfering with a criminal investigation. At worst, I would be aiding and abetting a murderer.” He began dialing.

“One million!” I shouted. Shuman hesitated and looked up. I reiterated, this time calmly, “One million dollars. With proper preservation of the body and no cause for suspicion after your examination, that sliver of time will make no difference to you whatsoever. Except, of course, that you’ll be a million dollars richer.”

Shuman replaced the receiver once again. He glanced around the dingy office as if regarding it for the first time. He looked back down at the money lying on his desk, and then he met my gaze again.

“And what if I personally doubt your innocence, especially given that you are now attempting to bribe an undertaker?”

“You say you know who I am. If you should doubt me for even a moment, then, by all means, turn me in.”

Shuman shook his head. He looked weary and sad. “Dr. Stone, I don’t believe you are behaving rationally, which is completely understandable under the circumstances. I may know who you are, but you don’t know anything about me. You have no idea what I might do. Why would you deliberately put yourself at this kind of risk? Your reputation? Your career? Your very freedom?” He rubbed his face with his hands and sighed. “Please, just follow the rules. Report your husband’s murder.”

“Mr. Shuman, if you know my history as you claim to, then you should already understand why that is something I cannot do.”

I next saw Larry Shuman at two o’clock in the morning. We met that very night on Fiesta Island, a small stretch of barren coastline within San Diego’s Mission Bay. I pulled
Teresa
as close to the shore as I could, and Shuman collected my husband’s body.

I had covered Jeff with a blanket, and I was grateful that I did not have to view him again in that condition. I turned away as the chubby middle-aged man grunted while hoisting Jeff’s body onto a gurney. He then heaved the gurney through knee-high waves and onto the shore.

“You have two weeks,” he said, and, not waiting for my response, he returned to his hearse.

Without looking back, I turned
Teresa
and sailed out beyond the edge of the bay, where I cast the silencer overboard.

I will not remain quiet.

It was seven days ago that I placed my trust and my husband’s corpse, only weakly insured by a million dollar bribe, in the hands of a total stranger. Now, as I feel myself slipping beneath the surface, my two weeks have been cut short. I am out of time to find Jeff’s killer because the authorities have just found his body.

Caesar married Calpurnia, the daughter of Piso, and got Piso made consul for the year following.

-Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

Plutarch (ca. 46–120 CE)

He had seen him favoured by the woman whom he imagined he loved, and whose possession he had been promised by the secret science of the Egyptians, whose power to unveil the mysteries of the future he firmly believed.

-Cleopatra

Georg Ebers (1837–1898)

Chapter Two

There are hundreds of them, thousands. Agonized, nameless faces and ransacked bodies writhing in desperation on white mattresses. An IV drips into one arm of each.

The beds are clean, the facilities immaculate. The glaring lights upon the brilliant white beds only accent the appalling conditions of the patients. They are crammed together, side by side and end to end. Thousands of adjacent hospital beds.

A phone is ringing. I ignore it and walk like a zombie down the rows of beds; my eyes cast from one face to the next. Beside me, a feeble plea comes forth from a teenaged voice.

“Please…”

I jerked awake. The familiar dream began to fade. I could feel a rocking motion beneath me, and I rolled over onto my back. Directly above me was the underside of our bedroom terrace. I slowly became aware that I was on my own yacht, lying in the center of the pool of dried blood that was now all that remained of Jeff. I could not remember how I got there.

My left hand hurt, and I realized my fist was tightly clenched. As I opened it, four tiny trickles of blood seeped from indentations in my palm as my husband’s wedding ring fell from my hand. The boat rocked again, and a subtle rattling broke the early morning silence as the small gold circle rolled across the smooth wood of the yacht’s deck.

I sobbed endlessly as I scrubbed Jeff’s blood from our terrace floor and the wrought iron railing. While sopping up the blood on
Teresa
’s deck, twice I had to pause to vomit into the bucket I was using to clean. When I had finished erasing the evidence of my husband’s death, I began clawing through our home in search of clues to his life.

I rifled through the pockets of Jeff’s work attire in our walk-in closet. I yanked his weekend clothes from our dresser drawers and shoved the upper mattress from our bed to examine the space beneath it.

I began ransacking the entire house, pulling out every drawer, climbing shelves in every closet to access the highest nooks, shoving items haphazardly to the ground. I bored through dusty boxes in our garage and clambered over old furniture in our attic, using a flashlight to peer into every dark corner.

I scoured Jeff’s side of the ocean view office we shared. I had never looked anywhere in Jeff’s desk except the front center drawer where he kept a checkbook and some house money. This time, I frantically tore through his desk, his file cabinets, and his bookshelves. Nothing.

I began looking through the files on his computer desktop, and then I realized that his iPhone had been sitting on the desk the entire time. How stupid! Here was the true record of his most recent, most personal activities. My hands were shaking as I picked up the phone.

I had never previously suspected that Jeff was cheating. His behavior had never been that of a cheater. In recent weeks, he seemed distracted, but that was not unusual for a man so dedicated to his work that he retained his academic position even while leading a successful biotechnology company.

But even in those recent weeks, Jeff did not exhibit the sudden, complete detachment of someone who is straying, the obvious physical revulsion in the presence of a woman he used to love. I never would have considered my husband capable of infidelity. Until three days before his murder.

Three days before his murder, I was clearing our dinner dishes from the table when the phone rang. Jeff had just retired to the living room with a stack of paperwork, and I could hear the sounds of a football game coming from our large-screen TV. I put the plates I was holding into the sink and reached across the kitchen island for the telephone receiver.

“Well, hello, my lady,” said a familiar voice. “And how are
you
doing this evening?”

“Hi, John. I’m great!” I said to my husband’s best friend. “You?”

“I’m fine… except… well… I have a lot of patients these days asking about the latest advancements in superheavy-isotope-based therapeutics. Especially the people that—you know—have, uh, failed other therapies and don’t have many options left. So I was really looking forward to Jeff’s presentation at the conference in Seattle last week.

“When Jeff didn’t speak, and then when I couldn’t find him anywhere, I went to the conference organizers to ask if his time slot had changed. They said he had not checked in…”

The cheers coming from the living room TV grew to a roar as a touchdown was scored. Two commentators began shouting over each other.

I, too, wanted to scream. The familiar background noises of our home, normally so comforting, had just become unrelenting cacophony.

I slid off the barstool at the kitchen island where I had sat down in a daze while listening to John. I felt sick to my stomach. I took a few deep breaths, but they did little to quiet my nerves.

I stepped out of the kitchen.

Jeff was in sweatpants, a T-shirt, and socks, reclining beneath a blanket on the living room sofa. In his lap was a stack of papers. His eyes moved up and down between his work and the football game on the TV mounted on the wall.

I took another deep breath. “That was John,” I said.

Jeff’s face paled, and he looked up from his papers. “What did he need?”

“He was calling about the conference in Seattle. He was wondering why you missed your lecture.”

Jeff’s eyes dropped back down to the pages in his lap, and he continued to shuffle through them. His complexion was now changing quickly from white to red. “I’ll be sure to call him back.”

I stood motionless.

“GO!” Jeff shouted suddenly at the TV, and the audience in the football stands began to cheer wildly. The redness on Jeff’s face deepened.

“So why
did
you miss your lecture?” I pressed, and he paused before answering.

“I decided my presentation wasn’t ready for prime time yet.”

“Since when are you unprepared to deliver a lecture, especially one scheduled months in advance to be given to several thousand people?”

Jeff tossed the papers onto the coffee table and sat up. “What is this, Katrina, the third degree?”

“Of course not. But why didn’t you tell me? I thought you were really looking forward to presenting. You love presenting! And it’s not like you to flake out without even extending the courtesy of canceling.”

“I’ve had a lot on my mind,” Jeff said with a shrug. “I guess I just forgot.”

“You just forgot?”

“Yes.”

“You just forgot that you skipped the entire conference?”

Jeff’s eyes flashed. “What the… this is unbelievable! You checked up on me?”

“I didn’t check up on you,” I found myself explaining. “John blurted it out. He said he started looking around for you when you didn’t speak and ultimately found out that you had never checked in at the registration desk. He obviously didn’t think you would have lied to me about your whereabouts. He was just worried about you. And now, so am I. Frankly, I’m also worried about the future of our relationship! What were you doing in Seattle all that time? Did you even go to Seattle? Did you even
intend
to go to Seattle?”

Jeff stood up from the sofa and switched off the TV. “Of course I intended to go to Seattle!”

It was the first time I had ever heard my husband shout in anger.

“I registered for the conference, Katrina. Do you want to see my receipt? Is that how it’s going to be now? I had every intention of going… it’s just that I… I…”

“Are you cheating on me?”

“No!” he shouted. “Absolutely not! Of course not!” His voice softened. “Honey, listen. Don’t you remember those nights? Don’t you remember talking to me every night like we always do when one of us is away? Sometimes we talked late, late into the night. Long conversations. Remember?”

I did. I also remembered that he had looked tired.

Jeff and I used video calls to keep in touch when one of us was away on business. At that moment, I distinctly remembered that when Jeff was allegedly in Seattle he looked exceptionally tired.

I remembered lying in bed one night, my bare breasts covered with our comforter, and watching him through my phone’s video screen. I remembered Jeff leaning his own iPhone against something so that he could speak to me while also rubbing his eyes, his shoulders, his temples. And behind him, I remembered that I could see the nightstand of his hotel room with a Marriott welcome package upon it.

I remembered him smiling, shaking his upper body as if shaking off a rough day, and asking me what was beneath the blanket…