Bestiary Read online

  But that he did.

  Miranda, who’d been patiently waiting, said, “I wonder what that leaves me with.”

  “Pardon?” Carter said, who’d been lost for a moment in his own thoughts.

  “If Claude has a saber-tooth, and Rosalie has a bear, I wonder if I’ve got something different over here.” She gave Carter her most dazzling smile—he knew she had a crush on him, and wondered what he could do to discourage it—and looped a finger under her silver necklace, unwittingly leaving a smear of tar on her neck. “Maybe a lion?”

  Carter smiled and, stepping over Rosalie’s buckets, made his way to Miranda’s work spot. By now, his forearm was so crusted with muck it felt three times its normal weight.

  “You’ve got to wear more sunscreen,” he told her, gesturing at the pinkish skin of her neck and shoulders. She blushed even redder, and he said to himself he should have kept quiet. Anytime he noticed something about her, particularly something so intimate as her skin tone, it only gave her hope. “And get yourself some cheap T-shirts like mine,” he said, showing off today’s Old Navy logo. “The paleontologist’s best friend.”

  Miranda mumbled that she would, but hardly budged when Carter knelt down next to her. He’d expected her to make a little room, then kicked himself for thinking that. “So where’s your find exactly?” he asked.

  “In the center of the square,” she said, “kind of deep.”

  “If you glop from the side,” he advised, “it’s easier, and just as effective.”

  Then he leaned forward and reached down, one more time, into the pit. He could feel Miranda’s eyes on him, and when she volunteered to hold on to him—and grabbed the back of his belt—he had to tell her it was okay, he wasn’t in any danger of falling in. He could only imagine the look that Claude and Rosalie were exchanging from their respective corners.

  His own eyes flicked self-consciously to the upper observation deck—a small enclosure behind a Plexiglas shield—that allowed the general public to see paleontology in action. Today, they had but one spectator, but he was a regular—a Native American man in a buckskin jacket that he wore no matter what the temperature was.

  The tar at first seemed to be fighting him, even more than usual; it was especially thick and sludgy here. But then, as if he’d hit a pocket of gas and looser material, he felt his wrist descend into the mire. Still, he hadn’t encountered anything of any substance. He reached deeper; the farther down he went the warmer the tar became, and as the methane was released, mephitic bubbles speckled the surface and released little exhalations of gas. Miranda giggled and said, “What’d you have for lunch, Carter?”

  “Very funny.”

  And then he did feel it. Or, to be more accurate, it felt him. His breath caught in his throat, and his arm stopped moving. His own fingers were spread wide, and for all the world it felt as if another hand—someone else’s fingers—had just slipped into his own, the way a drowning man might grasp the hand of his savior. Carter could feel the individual bones, the metacarpus, the phalanges. And, though he could never have even imagined such a thing, it didn’t feel inert. It didn’t feel dead and lost, as if it were lying there, inanimate, and waiting to be lifted from oblivion. To Carter, it felt as if the hand—too large to be a woman’s—had found his own, had sought it out, in order to be raised, after a silent eternity in the earth, from the dead.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  GREER COULD HEAR the TV blasting in the living room—sounded like Conan O’Brien—as he gathered his stuff together for a last check. He had his flashlight, with brand-new batteries, his wallet with complete fake ID (just in case he got pulled over or got into any trouble), a large black Hefty Sak with drawstring top, a pair of surgical gloves, glass cutter, and, finally, his Beretta handgun, loaded.

  He was wearing black jeans and a black shirt, under a dark blue windbreaker with a lot of pockets for all his gear. He took one last glance in the mirror on the back of his bedroom door and thought, Jesus, with a mask I’d look like Zorro.

  He’d hoped his mother might be asleep when he came out, but she wasn’t. She was propped in her easy chair, with one hand on the cat in her lap and the other in a bag of Trader Joe’s soy chips; since the soy chips were low-cal, she thought that meant you could eat as many bags of them as you wanted. It sure didn’t look that way to Greer. She was getting fatter all the time.

  “You’re going out?” she said, without taking her eyes from the big-screen TV.

  “Yeah.”

  “Where?”

  Christ, he felt like he was sixteen again. “What do you care?”

  “Derek, why would you say that?” she said, doing a good imitation of sounding hurt.

  “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” He went to the apartment door, then said, dryly, “Don’t wait up.”

  It was a California-style building, with an open courtyard in the middle and open hallways that looked down into it. But the place had been on rent control for years, and everything now was falling apart at the seams. The concrete floors were stained with God knew what, the plants in the courtyard were mostly dead, and the elevator stalled if more than two people had the nerve to get in at the same time. He wondered if his mother could stall it on her own now.

  When he’d come back from Iraq, he’d moved into her back bedroom—where she normally kept her “collectibles”—with the full intention of staying just a few weeks, until he could get his act together and find a place of his own. But the weeks had gradually turned into months, and his disability payments sure lasted a lot longer when he only had to split the rent on a cheap apartment. His mother, who’d been a little put out at first, had also come to accept the idea—along with his cash. She lived on disability, too—for a bipolar disorder that made her no longer able to work for the Social Security Administration in Westwood—so between the two of them, they had things pretty much covered.

  But not completely.

  Greer had picked up some nasty habits—he liked to blame it on Iraq, but it wasn’t as if he’d been clean before going over there—and he could always use more money than he had. But a regular job would mess up his government money, so the way he looked at it, he was driven to this . . . sideline.

  He’d studied his Thomas Guide before leaving the house, just to make sure he had the route down (along with a couple of ways out, if things went wrong), and he’d even checked to see if there was going to be a full moon that night. There was. That wasn’t actually all that bad; you had to use something to see where you were going, and a flashlight beam wasn’t exactly subtle. Besides, he only worked in the best neighborhoods, where most of the houses were pretty well concealed from any neighbors, anyway.

  This place—Dr. Hugo’s, as Greer had learned when he told Sadowski he’d do it—was in the middle of a block with wide lots in Brentwood, just north of Sunset. The problem was always where to put the car; you couldn’t exactly leave it in the driveway, but you didn’t want it so far away that you had to run there dragging a Hefty bag full of stuff in your hand. In this case, Greer decided to park the Mustang across the street, a few doors down. He picked a spot under a shady tree and in front of a house under construction, making sure to angle the wheels away from the curb and to leave the doors unlocked.

  The street was perfectly quiet, and Dr. Hugo’s house was dark, except for some stair lights in front that nicely illuminated the little sign that said SILVER BEAR SECURITY—24-HOUR PATROL. Greer looked up and down the street, then casually strolled to the side of the house; he’d taken his painkillers and the leg wasn’t bothering him much at all right now. He put on the surgical gloves.

  There was a wooden gate, with a Beware of Dogs placard showing a barking German shepherd. Lots of people, he knew, just put out the signs for effect, and Sadowski had assured him there were no guard dogs on the premises—at least according to the file. Still, Greer was going to keep an eye out for any telltale sign like a water bowl, a leash hanging on the back of a door . . . or a pair of snarling j
aws.

  The side of the house sported an immense Weber gas grill, and in back, where the addition had been put on, it looked like a lap pool had been added, too. Some people had all the luck. The walls and window frames of the new room were still unpainted, and the whole place, even out here, still smelled of fresh wood and sawdust. The yard, Greer was pleased to see, was surrounded by trees and, in the rear, a high wall. This was going to be a piece of cake.

  Just for the hell of it, he gently rattled the doorknobs of the French doors—you never could tell, some people were really asking for it—but they were locked. Taking out the glass cutter, he neatly removed a pane of glass just above the knob (the putty was still damp), placed it on the lawn, then reached in and opened the door. This was the moment when he’d normally have to be worried about an alarm, but he was trusting Sadowski to be right—though how dumb was that, he thought.

  Inside, the wooden floor creaked as he made his way, in new black high-top sneakers, across it, and then into a kitchen, where rows of copper pots hung, gleaming in the moonlight, above a center island. There was a hallway off to the left, with a few rooms opening off it. He had his flashlight in one hand, and the Hefty bag, unfurled, in the other. One room was a den, the next a bathroom, and the third looked like a home office; there was a laptop computer, a printer, stuff like that. If he had time, and room in the bag, he’d check it out on the way back out. No reason to carry anything heavy up and down the stairs.

  The master bedroom was what he was looking for—90 percent of what you wanted was always in there. He mounted the stairs slowly—they made a turn on a wide, carpeted landing—and at the top he played the flashlight beam around. Again, there were several doors, but the master bedroom, he figured, would be in back, overlooking the pool and the yard. The walls had mounted, glass-covered photos on them, glamour shots of old movie stars—this Dr. Hugo guy had to be a fag—and at the end double doors stood open to what had to be the master suite.

  As Greer approached it, he could see a dresser, with what was unmistakably a digital camera sitting on top. He’d been wanting one of those! The bed, against the far wall, was one of those canopied jobs, with heaps of bolsters and pillows. He was already dropping the camera into the plastic bag when a dog barked.

  Not a loud bark—just a yip, really. But it was in the room, very close.

  It yipped again, and Greer turned the flashlight beam to the corner. A sleepy old cocker spaniel was sitting up on a dog bed.

  Not a problem, Greer thought with relief.

  “Brian?”

  He flicked off the light and froze in place. This could be a problem.

  “Bri?” It was a girl’s voice; she was in the bed. He heard the covers rustle. “You up?”

  Shit. He gauged the distance to the door.

  “What are you doing?”

  Greer didn’t answer. Was she looking at him, or just mumbling from her pillow?

  Could he manage to get out? he was wondering, when the bathroom door swung open and a white kid with his hair in dreads came out, in an open robe.

  “You say something?”

  Greer turned the flashlight on, and shone it right into the kid’s face. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  The kid didn’t answer, or move.

  “Who are you?” the girl asked. She was sitting up now, with a sheet in front of her.

  “Security,” Greer declared. “Silver Bear. Now, answer me!”

  “I’m Julia,” the girl said, terror in her voice. “The dog-sitter.”

  Greer wasn’t sure what to say next. “Nobody’s supposed to be here.”

  “Sometimes I stay over,” the girl said. “Dr. Hugo knows.”

  And then she turned on the bedside light. And Greer found himself standing there, wearing a pair of rubber gloves, with the Hefty bag in one hand, the flashlight in the other, between the two of them. There could be no mistaking what was really up.

  “You,” he said, waving at the kid—Brian—with the flashlight. “Get on the floor, on your stomach! Now!”

  The kid got down on the floor. “And you,” he said to Julia. “Lie down on the bed.”

  “Don’t hurt us,” she said, very softly. She was about eighteen, in a football jersey.

  The dog yipped again, but didn’t move from the corner.

  Greer was thinking fast. He dropped the sack, put one foot on the small of Brian’s back, and yanked the cotton belt free from the robe. Then he went over to the bed and told Julia to put her hands together, behind her.

  “Please don’t hurt us.”

  “Shut up.” God damn, he thought. What a fuck-up this was. God damn that Sadowski.

  He looped the belt around her hands, a couple of times, then, dropping the flashlight on the bed, knotted it.

  And that’s when Brian made his move; the kid was fast, up on his feet and running for the door.

  Greer lunged for him, but missed. He caught just the end of the flapping robe, which burned through his fingers.

  He grabbed the flashlight and raced after him, his bad leg juiced by all the adrenaline. The kid didn’t know the house any better than he did, and flew past the stairs, before having to whip around and tumble down them. Greer was just a couple of steps behind.

  The kid wheeled at the bottom and made not for the front door but the back, down the hall, through the kitchen, into the addition. At the French doors he had to stop and fumble with the knobs, and just as he got them open, Greer was able to grab him by the collar, spin him around, and club him in the face with the heavy-duty flashlight.

  The kid fell backward, into the yard, but he didn’t fall. There was blood all over his lips. He kept back-pedaling, toward the lap pool, and Greer smacked him again. The kid kept going.

  Christ, Greer thought, wasn’t he ever gonna stay down?

  The grass was slick, and the kid started to slip. Greer saw his chance and shoved him toward the pool. Just before he toppled over, Greer hit him again, hard, across the cheek.

  The kid went in, with a huge splash, and Greer, panting, stood by the side of the lighted pool, waiting. The kid floated, a cloud of blood seeping into the water. Greer waited. Was he dead? Was he faking? The blood began to disperse in the water.

  Christ almighty, was he going to have to get into the goddamned pool?

  The girl was screaming now; he could hear her even out here.

  Greer knelt down and snagged the kid by the collar of his robe, pulled him over to the side. With one huge tug, he had him levered onto the grass again . . . where he left him, sputtering but alive, before snapping off the rubber gloves in disgust, stashing them in his pocket, and heading back to his car.

  Sadowski was going to hear about this.

  And his leg, he just knew, was going to give him hell later that night.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BETH WAS SO deeply into her work, studying an ancient parchment page through a magnifying glass, that at first she didn’t even hear the phone ring. It didn’t help that she’d accidentally laid a sheaf of reports from the Getty conservation lab on top of it.

  When she unearthed it, on the fifth or sixth ring, she was happy to hear it was Carter—until he said, “What are you doing there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Shouldn’t you be at the press party?”

  She glanced up at the wall clock. He was right.

  “I was just going to leave a message for you,” he said.

  “Saying what?”

  “That I’m stuck on Wilshire, going nowhere. Start drinking without me.”

  “Okay, I will,” she said. “But you’re right—I’ve got to run.”

  “Run,” he said, and she could hear several car horns honking in the background before she hung up.

  She dropped the magnifying glass, replaced it with a hairbrush from her bottom drawer, and, using the mirror on the back of her office door, did a quick once-over. She pulled the clasp off her ponytail—it was easier to do close work with nothing hanging down in y
our eyes—and brushed her thick, dark hair out and onto her shoulders. Then she touched up her makeup, or what little of it she wore, grabbed the jacket that went with her skirt, slipped out of her flats and into her heels, and hurried out. Her boss, Berenice Cabot, would be livid if she was any later than she already was.

  Especially as the reception was in honor of an exhibition—“The Genius of the Cloister: Illuminated Manuscripts of the Eleventh Century”—that Beth had been the chief curator on.

  Tonight was the press reception, designed to introduce some of the local art critics, connoisseurs, and friends of the museum to the new exhibition, drawn from the voluminous holdings of the Getty Center. Beth had spent countless hours poring over the exquisite and rare manuscripts in the museum collections and culling the precise examples that would best illustrate her thesis and story. An exhibition couldn’t just be a random sampling of things, however related; it had to have a point of view, and a point. That was one of the first things they had taught her at the Courtauld Institute, where she’d done her graduate work after Barnard.

  Beth stepped out of the elevator, pushed through the ponderous glass doors of the research institute, and then scurried across the outdoor court toward the gardens, where the party was being held; it was going to be a balmy and beautiful summer night. And the Central Garden, as it was known, was going to provide the perfect setting for the kickoff event. Entered through a circular walkway, shaded by London plane trees and traversing a running stream, the garden contained hundreds of different plants and flowers, from lavender to heliotrope, crape myrtle to floribunda roses, all gradually descending to a plaza with bougainvillea-covered arbors and an ornamental pool; the water in the pool sparkled blue, under a floating veil of azaleas.