The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) (7 page)

It is raining, a steady, gentle rain, and a cold breeze is billowing through Paris. I am wearing a long, thick wool skirt over leggings and boots. A heavy coat, a hat, and warm gloves complete my cold-weather ensemble.

When I arrive, Jeff is already waiting for me at the glass pyramid that marks the entrance to the museum. He, too, is in a thick coat that falls to his calves. He flashes a grin, and I flush at the memory of the way he smiled at me the first time I saw him. And I wonder if I will ever be able to look at this man without imagining him in the nude.

We are walking through the Louvre’s Egyptian rooms when we meet the goddess Isis. We descend a staircase toward the sarcophagus of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses III, and there she is.

The pharaoh’s three-thousand-year-old sarcophagus is the central feature of the small room. The staircase is centered between the flanking walls, leading tourists entering the room directly to the foot of the sarcophagus.

Carved in exquisite detail into the wood at the feet of the deceased pharaoh is a single commanding figure. Her delicate arms reach out to both sides as if to embrace the mourners approaching the tomb she protects. Feathering down from her arms is a majestic span of wings, straight along the tops in parallel with her arms, then tapering down below her waist.

The symmetry of Isis aligns with that of the sarcophagus. Her body is as vertical as a staff, and the wingspan projecting outward calls to mind a symbol I have seen thousands of times over the course of my career. Isis is represented as a caduceus, the ancient symbol of medicine that has endured to this day.

“Would you look at that,” Jeff remarks.

“Incredible,” I say.

“The nardo document was originally written in Egyptian.”

Returning to the present, I realized that I was still holding the coin. The androgynous image of Queen Cleopatra seemed to laugh at me.

“You must understand,” Alyssa continued, “that very few people of the educated class even
spoke
Egyptian. But Cleopatra did. I believe this document is just one of a vast collection of her writings that were rumored to exist but are now lost. I think she deliberately hid them—”

“Why would she do that?” I interrupted with irritation. “If Cleopatra was as ambitious as you say, and she stumbled upon a treatment for a deadly disease, wouldn’t it dramatically
increase
her power to
expose
it? Why would she write a document like the medical text you uncovered only to hide it?”

Alyssa shook her head. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “That’s a big piece of the puzzle that doesn’t fit, but I’m trying to understand it. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that, throughout her life, Cleopatra was in the habit of hiding things.” She frowned and shook her head again, and I wondered how many times she had mentally dissected that same stubborn puzzle piece.

“I am sure you can understand why this find is so important to me,” she said. “If I have found what I think I have found, it will change history. Perhaps it will change medicine as well.”

I handed the coin to Alyssa, and she returned it to the case, locking the case before we stepped away.

“But the history and the medicine are by necessity intermingled in this project,” she said. “If I can demonstrate unequivocally that Cleopatra wrote this document, then I will have proven that much of what people believe about her is wrong. Moreover, I might be able to pinpoint when and where she was at the moment the event she described took place. If I can do that, Jeff believes he has a real shot at recreating the chemical reaction that produced the isotope in the nardos. And if he—or both of you—can do that, it will prove the authenticity of the document.

“I cannot solve this alone, nor can you. Chemistry, biology, and drug discovery are not my areas, and Egyptology is not yours. So the three of us need to cooperate—”

“I understand,” I said. “I know what you are saying. If we are not collaborative, then we are competitive—”

As the words fell from my lips, the obvious question crashed upon me. I whirled to face Alyssa. “Who else knows about this document?” I demanded, stabbing accusingly at the pages in my hand with my forefinger.

Alyssa’s response was the last I would have expected. Her eyes welled up with tears.

Alyssa looked down at the floor for a moment and blinked a few times. Then, as quickly as it had come, the emotion was gone, and she was professional once again.

“To be honest,” she said, “nobody should know about this except for Jeff, you, and me. The Piso Project is very broad, and the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii are even broader. While there are many people working under me, and an enormous number of people in the field, this particular document is one I have kept exclusively to myself since I first personally unrolled it and began translating the Egyptian. Prior to that moment, the document was mute for two thousand years.

“When I initiated the Piso Project—how do I put this?—strange things began happening to me every once in a while. I found the door to my house unlocked when I was sure I had locked it. I found some research notes misplaced, and I’m sure I did not move them.

“But after I found the nardo document, these occurrences intensified and became more frequent. And some of them—like when my brakes went out along the Amalfi coastline—have been more than just strange. They have endangered my life.

“Except for Jeff, you are the first person I have told about this document. To be honest, I was worried about including even you. But Jeff spoke so highly of you that I felt I knew you. And frankly, I’m desperate. So I let you in.”

She took a deep breath. “I feel like I’m losing my mind. I immerse myself daily in a world ruled by the supernatural. And I’m beginning to believe in it myself because I’m starting to think this project is cursed. As an educated, logical woman, it makes me crazy to hear myself say that out loud.”

Another deep breath. “Realistically,
someone
must know what I have stumbled onto. Someone must have obtained access to my research, or to Jeff’s. Someone must be seeking the same answers we are. I must find those answers first, and I must find them quickly. Because if I can expose them, I will have neutralized whoever is trying to beat me to the punch. And I think that’s my only option because it’s too late to just walk away.”

I found it interesting that her pronoun of choice had somehow changed from “we” to “I.”

“Why don’t you just go to the police?” I asked, even as the image of my dead husband’s body threatened to surface, and with it the exact same question from the lips of Larry Shuman.

Alyssa scoffed. “I did,” she said bitterly. “They told me to come back if I had anything concrete to report. I guess if at some point I am actually attacked, and survive to report it, then they might listen. They might. The Naples police department is less than helpful…”

Her voice trailed off as a phone inside my purse began to ring.

“Excuse me,” I said, and I stepped away from Alyssa. When I saw the caller ID on the screen of my iPhone, a wave of nausea came over me. I glanced at a large wall clock in the museum’s exhibit room. It was almost noon in Naples, which meant that in San Diego…

My stomach lurched again. The call coming to me from San Diego at 3:00 a.m. Pacific Time was from Larry Shuman, the mortician with whom I had entrusted my husband’s body two days earlier.

“Are you OK?”

I glanced up. Before me, Alyssa Iacovani’s face was a picture of concern. I realized that I had begun to sway on my feet. With the hand not holding my cell phone, I grabbed the display case in front of me and leaned against it.

The phone chimed, indicating that the phone call had gone to voicemail, and that the voicemail was now recorded.

“Yeah,” I said weakly. “It’s just that I didn’t get much sleep on the plane, and I’m also very hungry.”

“Would you like to go to lunch?” she asked, glancing at her watch. “Naples has fabulous seafood down in the Santa Lucia district. I’m hungry as well, and it is about lunchtime.”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but I haven’t even checked into a hotel yet; I came straight here from the airport. My bags are downstairs. I think I should get settled.”

“Of course,” she said. “You must be exhausted. Why don’t you get some rest tonight. We can catch up tomorrow. How long are you in town for?”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully, my mind reeling. I had not told anyone I was leaving. My colleagues, my employees, my family, my friends—and Jeff’s—would all begin to wonder about our disappearance very soon. With no answers, they would inquire. And if they inquired, there would be a police investigation. And if there was a police investigation, I would be finished.

I said a distracted goodbye to Alyssa and turned to leave the museum. When I was sure I was clear of her, I retrieved the message from Larry Shuman.

“Dr. Stone”—his urgent voice came through—“I must speak with you immediately. You have
not
been honest with me…”

The seed of the black poppy… is a pain-easer, a sleep-causer, and a digester, helping coughs and abdominal cavity afflictions. Taken as a drink too often it hurts (making men lethargic) and it kills.

-De Materia Medica

Dioscorides (ca. 40–90 CE)

Chapter Six

The background noises of the museum seemed to instantly grow louder, and more discordant. I stepped into a stairwell to replay the voicemail from the beginning. I was certain I must have misunderstood it the first time.

A gregarious group of teenagers burst in after me, each voice shouting over the other in Italian. I blocked my free ear with a finger, straining to hear the impossible words pouring from my phone.

“… toxicology panel… abnormally high levels of opiates in the system… only survivable following repeated exposure and increasing desensitization…”

The teenagers exited the stairwell on the floor beneath me, and their chatter was cut off by the slamming of the heavy door. In the silence, I learned that my ears were not deceiving me.

“Your husband”—the mortician’s voice was clearer now—“died from the two gunshot wounds that passed through several vital organs. However, Dr. Stone, at the time of his death, he also had levels of morphine in his system that should have been lethal. Yet, he showed no signs of morphine toxicity as a contributing factor to his death.

“Obviously, this finding concerned me—to the point that I have worked late into the night to confirm it. The data demonstrate unequivocally that your husband had built up a physical tolerance for the drug over some period of time, and you did not disclose this to me.

“Dr. Stone, I don’t know who you think you are dealing with, but drug-related crime is simply not something I am willing to involve myself in. I am completing my post-mortem work-up and reporting my findings in their entirety…”

It is impossible, and, yet, here I am.

Nausea overwhelmed me again, and I sat down on the dusty concrete stairs. I leaned over and dry heaved, once, hard. I tilted my head back against the wall and closed my eyes.

Jeff was a drug addict.

It all made sense. The secrecy. The total change in both behavior and thinking. The decision not to trust me with whatever he was running from. The decision to run toward a stranger, a beautiful woman. The paranoia. The obsession. It all made sense.

But it makes no sense.

There is no way.

Stinging tears welled to the surface, and I blinked them back violently.

There will be no two weeks. Shuman is completing his post-mortem work-up and then turning me in.

Jeff was a drug addict.

There is no way this is happening.

In an instant, her disguise fell away, and I saw a different version of Alyssa Iacovani. She was a thinly veiled undertaker, and her museum was a mausoleum, a shrine, a tribute to death. I felt its walls encase me like a burial chamber.

Take a breath, Katrina
, I told myself, but I could not. The air had grown thick and stale. I could taste the decay of the mummies lying two floors below me.

You’re losing it.

I fought to appear normal as I moved toward the exit, but I could feel myself hyperventilating, my consciousness quickly fading. In a fog, I found the museum’s coat check desk. I reclaimed my belongings and stumbled outside, seeking open air like a drowning woman kicking for the water’s surface.

There was a horn and a screeching of brakes. I felt the rush of wind upon my face as a metal blur obscured my vision. I leapt back and turned my head just as a speeding car rocketed away, its driver apparently oblivious. I wondered if I had accidentally stepped into the street, but a quick look down confirmed that I was still standing on the sidewalk. And then I was almost run over again.

This time, an entire family on a moped sped by within inches of my face. A man jerked the handlebars left and right as if boxing. Behind him sat a girl of three or four, not bothering to clutch his waist. A woman straddling the rear of the bike squeezed the girl into place while curling a bag of groceries in one arm and an infant in the other like two footballs.

They scooted deftly over the sidewalk to avoid a slow-moving car, not seeming to mind that they had almost collided with a pedestrian instead. The little girl smiled at me as they passed, perfectly comfortable in her element and apparently unaware that this mode of travel could be dangerous or considered the least bit odd by anyone.

After they were gone, I retreated into the shadows of the museum, away from the edge of the sidewalk, and watched the traffic zipping past me. I breathed deeply and, after a few moments, found that I could think again.

I stepped back to the sidewalk’s edge and hailed a taxi.

After loading my bags into the trunk, the driver climbed aboard and looked at me expectantly in his rearview mirror. I suddenly realized I had no idea where I wanted to go. “Uh, hello. Do you speak English?” I asked.

The driver held his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.
“Un po
,” he said, which I took to mean “a little.”

“I need a hotel.”

“Hotel?
Quale?
”

Shit. This isn’t going to work.

My stomach growled violently and my head swam. I thought back to my conversation with Alyssa. “Santa Lucia?” I finally said, hoping I had gotten the name of the seafood district correct.

“Ah, Santa Lucia!” We lurched forward. In contrast to the relaxing limo ride that had induced sleep earlier that morning, this one induced severe carsickness, exacerbated by an empty stomach.

… abnormally high levels of opiates in the system…

From within my purse, my phone chimed again, and I started. It had to be a text message this time because the phone did not ring. But instead of looking down to dig into my purse and find out, I had no choice but to watch the road. I hated that motion sickness could render me so incapacitated at such moments.

The taxi raced down a main street, weaving in and out of traffic that had no apparent legal regulation. There were very few road signs, and the traffic signals seemed only to flash yellow. I could not identify a correct side of the road or a speed limit. The sidewalk was open terrain for motor vehicles as well as for pedestrians. I quickly realized that renting a car was not going to be an option.

The streets doubled as supermarket aisles. Like islands in the center of a fast-moving river stood rows of vendors’ tents peddling food, jewelry, handbags, and countless other goods, while the heavy automobile traffic swirled around them. Hurried pedestrians zigzagged back and forth across the traffic like ants, jumping from sidewalk to vendor’s tent and then biblically parting on cue to accommodate a racing Smart car. Or a bus. Or a moped containing four passengers.

A siren screaming in the background seemed to follow us for the entire drive through the city center. I wondered if it was one siren or an overlapping of the sounds of several.

I began to doubt I would make it to my destination without vomiting, and I leaned forward to ask the driver to pull over. But then I saw the waterfront and knew that we must be close to our destination.

In sharp contrast to the city center, the waterfront district was relatively serene. The vendors’ tents had vanished, along with the vast majority of the motor and foot traffic. We zoomed along a well-paved street with clearly marked lanes and, shockingly, a well-defined sidewalk populated exclusively by pedestrians.

“
Questa regione é Santa Lucia
,” the driver said, motioning with both arms, to the detriment of his steering. I neither knew nor cared what he had said, but I could have cried with relief when he screeched to a halt in front of a large nice-looking hotel. “
L’Hotel Santa Lucia!
” my driver announced, and I realized that I had inadvertently requested it.

By this point, exiting the taxi was my only priority. I did not wait for him to open my door. I collected my bags and sent the driver on his way. I stood on the sidewalk for a moment, gulping at the fresh air to quell the motion sickness. Then I finally began rummaging through my purse to retrieve the message that had come in while I was in the taxi.

When I saw the text message, my nausea quickly returned. It was not from Larry Shuman as I had expected. It was from my daughter. It read:
Where r u?

And it was sent to Jeff’s phone, not mine.

Once inside my hotel room, I found my phone once again.

I called my daughter, but she did not answer. I hung up without leaving a message. Then I looked at the time signature on the phone’s screen and mentally back-calculated. It was now 4:17 a.m. in California.

I walked past the bed and into the bathroom, where I splashed some water on my face. Then I strode across the room and opened the curtains. Brilliant light poured in through a pair of narrow French doors.

I opened the doors and stepped out onto a small balcony. Before me was a large geometrically shaped castle. Surrounding it lay a surprisingly organized aquatic parking lot lined with hundreds of small private boats. Dozens more of its occupants were out for the day, sailing casually through the crystalline crescent-shaped Bay of Naples. Beyond the bay loomed Mount Vesuvius like a massive grim reaper, a fallen angel choosing the moment to rain down its black death from above.

“The castle beneath your balcony is
Castel dell’Ovo
,” the concierge informed me in heavily accented, but clear English. “Just to its left is the small Santa Lucia seafood district. You will need to cross the long bridge toward the castle and then follow the road that turns left off of the bridge just before the bridge enters the castle through the gates.”

I thanked the woman and stepped out of the hotel. After a quick walk along the frontage street, I turned onto the bridge she had referred to. Even from across the span of water, I could see the bridge leading directly through the front gates and into the castle. Tall, thick pillars flanked the bridge, and docked boats littered the water lapping its sides.

I had almost arrived at the arched entrance of the castle when the side street leading to the left off of the bridge came into view. I followed this street into a quiet neighborhood containing one restaurant after another. Potted plants and umbrellas decorated patios adjacent to charming old buildings. Beyond them lay the castle to one side, water to the other. I selected a quaint bistro with green and white checkered tablecloths and a view of the bridge. To my surprise, the restaurant was relatively empty, and I was seated immediately at a partially shaded table by the water.