Ted Kosmatka - Prophet of Bones

“His name was Charles. A coworker of mine.”

“How did it happen?”

“Badly.”

“How bad?”

“Bad enough you wouldn’t want to hear about it.”

Outside the window, the landscape was changing from urban to rural. Like a line had been drawn. Paul watched the brown cattails flash by, a small wetland hugging the tracks. On the other side of the wetlands, woods spread away in the distance.

“You said you tested the bone,” Paul said.

“Yeah,” Lilli said.

“What did you find?”

“They had a ten percent fish diet. Twenty percent small rodents. Thirty percent large mammal.”

“They were hunters?”

“Hunter-gatherers. Same profile you see everywhere. Their remaining percentages were plants. Nothing out of the ordinary for ancient bones. Just the typical human pattern.”

“Just like us,” Paul whispered. He rested his face against the cool glass.

They got off the train in Ogden Dunes. The station was a narrow parking lot that looked out across the road at a long white picket fence bordering a newer upscale housing development. A short walk to a nearby Marathon gas station produced the phone number for a local cab company. The cab dropped them at the nearest hotel, a Days Inn, where Paul paid in cash.

They showered together, and Paul picked glass from her hair. Afterward they made love on the sheets, and for a while Paul could lose himself in that. He could pretend none of the rest of it was happening.

Paul got dressed and scouted the neighborhood. He bought chicken dinners from the local Denny’s and brought them back to the hotel. A strange déjà vu overcame him as he returned. It was the second time he’d been holed up, hiding. Waiting out the worst of it. The last time hadn’t ended so well. There was nothing like running for your life to put things in perspective.

Lying in bed the next morning, coming out of an anxiety dream, he ran through their choices in his mind.

She must have guessed his thoughts, because she said, “We should go to the police.”

“What?” He hadn’t known she was awake yet.

“The cops. We could go to the cops and tell them what we know.”

“What do we know?”

“Your coworker is dead. We know that. And we know we’re being hunted.”

He nodded. He wondered if Charles’s body had been found yet. He wondered about the computer guy, if he was still alive. Most of all, he wondered how Axiom planned to cover up what had happened. They weren’t stupid. Some plan must be in place. But the plan, whatever it was, had included Paul being dead. So maybe there was a chance.

“And then what?” Paul asked. “After we go to the police.”

“And then what, what?” Lilli responded.

“We go down, we make our report at a police station. And then what? We go home while they investigate? We live our regular lives?”

“Why not?”

“Because they’ll kill us.”

“Then there’s witness protection.”

“Something tells me it wouldn’t be as simple as that.”

“What other choice do we have?”

The complete and utter hopelessness of the situation came crashing down on him.

At that moment, his phone rang, the sound coming from his pants on the floor. It startled him; he’d completely forgotten about it. He slipped out of bed and fished it from his pocket. He looked at the display: a number he didn’t recognize. He considered answering but let it go to voice mail. Twenty seconds later, the phone chirped, letting him know a message had been saved to his box.

He logged into voice mail.

“You have one new message. First message.”

The voice that spoke next was familiar. Deep and gravelly, with a faint Australian accent.

“We need to talk, Paul. I know what’s happening to you, and I can help. You can trust me. I’m here in the U.S.; we need to meet, alone.”

Paul listened to the message three times.

He switched the phone off and flipped it onto the other bed. He pulled his shirt on and told Lilli he was going to go snag them breakfast. It was only a short walk, so he kept walking, going where his feet took him, exploring the local restaurant scene. Scouting locations again. He gave himself a few minutes to think. By eight o’clock, he’d given up on that. He knew he’d meet Gavin. What else could he do?

He’d trusted Gavin once. Maybe he could trust him still.

Paul walked back to the motel, a bag of doughnuts in hand.

He dialed the number.

“Hello.” It was Gavin’s voice.

“There’s a town outside Chicago called Portage,” Paul said. “Can you be here by tomorrow?”

“Consider me on the next flight.”

“Write this down.”

There was a pause. Then: “Go ahead.”

“A restaurant called the Lure, not far from the South Shore train line in Portage, Indiana.”

“All right.”

“Tomorrow night around six?”

“I’ll be there. Paul—”

Paul hit End and turned his phone off.

The Lure was busy with the Wednesday dinner rush. Waitresses glided past, arms full of drinks. Paul knew this kind of place. During the day, it would tend toward business lunches. In the evening, it would be more of a mixed crowd—part bring-a-date-to-dinner, part college hangout, part family diner. Usually, Paul liked restaurants like this one for their burger specials. Tonight he liked it for this: it was crowded, which meant it provided a lot of witnesses.

He got a table in the corner. A booth of dark brown wood under a moose head. It felt good to be back in a real restaurant with a real menu you could hold in your hand, instead of picking combo meals from an overhead display. He hadn’t been at a sit-down restaurant since before Flores. It felt like it had happened in a different life.

The waitress came by and Paul ordered a Corona. A beer would help calm his nerves. She returned with his drink a few minutes later.

“You ready to order?”

Paul tried to imagine eating, but his stomach was tied in knots. “Cheeseburger,” he said out of force of habit.

“We’ll fix you right up,” she said.

Paul sipped his drink and eyed the front door. A few minutes later, at six on the nose, Gavin walked in.

He stood near the entrance, scanning the room. For a moment, Paul sat perfectly still, hidden among the crowd. Gavin looked thinner. Older somehow, as if the intervening months had aged him as many years. Paul waved his arm.

Gavin caught the motion and crossed the room.

“Paul,” Gavin said. He extended his hand. Paul shook it.

Gavin sat.

The older man was silent for a moment, as if gathering his thoughts for what he was about to say.

Paul sipped his drink.

“I work for the people who are looking for you,” Gavin said. “I want to be clear about that right from the beginning.”

Paul nodded, accepting this. It had always been a possibility. The fact that Gavin had told him was a good sign.

“How bad is it?” Paul asked. He wasn’t even sure what he meant by that. It just felt like a true question.

“This?” Gavin asked, spreading his hands as if to encompass the entire situation that hung between them. “It’s the end of the world.”

Paul nodded again. Because of course it was. “Well, you don’t sugarcoat things, do you,” he said.

“All out of sugar,” Gavin continued. “This is going to go badly.”

“For me?”

“For both of us.”

“Did they send you here to talk to me?” The important question.

“Yes.”

“You should know that I don’t have the DNA or bone samples on me. They’re someplace safe. If something happens to me, you’ll never find them.”