Iris Johansen - Stalemate

"How is he?"

"Why don't you go and see for yourself?"

"So that we could argue? No thanks. I'm having enough trouble concentrating."

"I wonder why. I don't imagine it's every day you have a black mamba popping out of one of your reconstructions."

And he didn't even know about Diaz's threat to Jane, she remembered. "No, it's not a common occurrence."

"Have you had breakfast? I thought I'd grab a bite before I took a tray up to Quinn."

"Miguel brought a tray to my room." She smiled faintly. "He said that it seemed the only way he was sure I'd eat something."

Galen gazed at her appraisingly. "You do look a little finedrawn. Are you sleeping enough?"

She'd gotten three hours last night. She'd been on edge and excited and her mind wouldn't stop functioning. "Enough. I can sleep later." She started down the hall toward the library. "She won't let me sleep right now. I'm getting too close."

"'She'?"

"The work. The reconstruction."

"It sounded much more intimate."

"I feel intimate when I'm working on a skull. It's a human being, for God's sake."

"How close are you?"

"I should start the finish work either tonight or tomorrow." She stopped at the door of the library. "Can you keep Joe from making a move until then?"

"I'll try. No promises."

"It's only one more day."

"But you never can tell when you're going to run into another pesky reptile. That could cause a delay."

"Montalvo says that there won't be any more problems. He promised that he'd find out which one of his men took a bribe to bring the snake to the library."

"I'm sure he's doing everything he can. Miguel said Montalvo was going to work all night going over the personnel records and trying to discern the weak links. Everything will be fine if he can isolate the snake he took to his bosom." He smiled. "Did you ever realize how many phrases there are that pertain to snakes? Our culture seems to be obsessed with them."

And she wasn't sure she'd ever hear one of those phrases without remembering that moment when the mamba had lunged toward her. "I'd just as soon ignore them from now on."

"I can understand that." Galen turned and headed for the breakfast room. "But Montalvo won't be ignoring what happened and neither will Quinn if he finds out."

She didn't want Montalvo to ignore the incident, she thought as she opened the door. She wanted protection from interruption during this critical stage in the reconstruction and it was his job to give it to her. But she hoped to God that Joe wasn't told about what had happened. Joe was the-

She stopped.

Montalvo was sitting in the desk chair, staring at the reconstruction. "Good morning, Eve." He didn't take his gaze from the skull. "It's exceptionally gruesome, isn't it?"

"Not really. But I suppose it appears that way to most people."

His lips twisted. "But I'm not most people, am I? I loved her. I've spent years trying to avenge her. Yet I look at… this and I can't muster any tenderness. It looks like the cover of a horror DVD."

"If she were alive and horribly scarred, would you feel like that?"

"No."

"It's the same. She's not with us any longer but your memory of her is here. A reconstruction isn't pretty during the initial stages. That's why I didn't want you to see it until the end. I didn't have a drop cloth or I would have covered it last night."

"I told Miguel not to give you another one."

"Why would you-" Then she understood. "The snake. You thought that every time I took it off her that I'd remember the snake."

"A natural reaction. You didn't need the drop cloth. I did. So I thought I'd come in and meet her face-to-face again."

"You're not meeting her. You don't understand her. This isn't who she is." She sat down on the edge of the desk and stared at Nalia. "Let me explain her to you. Those little sticks that make her look like a voodoo doll are tissue-depth markers. There are more than twenty points on the skull for which there are known tissue depths. There are anthropological charts that give a specific measurement for each point of a Caucasian woman of average weight. After I have the tissue depths right, I take strips of plasticine and apply them between the markers, then build up to all the tissue-depth points." She delicately touched the nasal cavity. "The nose is always very difficult. I have to make sure the measurements are precise on the nasal spine and the opening. They dictate everything, the length, the angle of the nose. But it's all there if you work hard enough. The bones tell us what we need to know if we listen. She's telling us, Montalvo. There's nothing horrible about her. She's the woman you loved. We just have to strip away the veil."

"And then what happens after you finish measuring?"

Her gaze shifted to see that his intent stare was no longer on the skull but on her own face.

"Then I start the final phase, the actual sculpting. That's when instinct takes over from intellect."

He was silent a moment. "I'd like to be here when you reach that point. If you don't mind."

"I don't mind. I probably wouldn't know if you were in the room. But don't expect me to let you know. Sometimes it doesn't work that way."

"You just go with the flow?"

"That sounds very pleasant and lazy. This particular flow is more like a lava flow after a volcano eruption."

He stood up. "I'll let you get to work." He smiled. "I'll check in on you periodically and gauge your lava output." He headed for the door. "Thank you, Eve."

"For a lecture on forensic sculpting?"

"No, for trying to make what she's become easier for me."

"And did I do it?"

"Yes. I'm not big on spirituality. I've always lived in the physical world and I had to come to terms with this." He said quietly, "You're a very special woman, Eve."

"Damn right." She got up to stand before the reconstruction and checked the mid-therum marker. "But you're better at snake demolition."

"It's amazing she's able to continue working," Miguel said as he met Montalvo in the hall. "Nerves of steel."

"No. She's frightened but she has a purpose," Montalvo said. "And that will keep her going no matter what happens." He strode down the hall. "But I'm not going to have her contend with anything more than finishing that reconstruction. That snake incident shouldn't have happened."

"I'm sorry. I'll make no excuses."

"For God's sake, I'm not blaming you. You're not responsible for everything that goes wrong in the compound."

"What a relief. Not even the stopped-up toilet in the armory?"

"Miguel."

He smiled. "A little humor."

"Very little. Have you gathered the names of any of the possibles who might have been bought by Diaz?"

"Fascquelo, Ramierez, Gomez, and Destando. All of them are comparatively new men with you. They seemed all right when we took them on and I've no proof they're not." He paused. "I'm leaning toward Destando. He plays a lot of poker in the barracks and he owes money. He's never talked against you but he's surly."

"I can't shoot him for that. Find me proof."

"I'll work very hard on doing that." He looked back at the closed door of the library. "I, too, believe in the power of purpose, Colonel."

"Sendak's mamba didn't kill her," Nekmon said. "She still managed to work last night. Our man in his camp says she may be getting close."

"If he managed to get close enough to plant the serpent, then he should be close enough to kill the bitch. I paid him enough."

"You didn't pay him enough to stop him from being frightened."

"He wasn't too frightened to slip the snake into the library." Diaz added sarcastically, "You wouldn't even look in the cage when Sendak had it here."

"I don't like snakes," Nekmon said. "And taking overt action is different. Montalvo has her guarded every moment of the day. No one is going to be able to walk up and shoot her."