Jayne Castle: After Glow

The tiny burner and the little bowl next to the body told the sad story. Professor Lawrence Maltby had finally managed to kill himself. Judging by the dark residue and the lingering scent of exotic spices, he had done himself in with a common street drug known as Chartreuse.

Lydia Smith left the doorway of the shabby bedroom that Maltby had converted into a study and crouched beside the professor's scrawny, crumpled form. She did not expect to find a pulse, and when she put her fingertips to the throat beneath the scraggly white beard, she proved herself right.

She shivered, rose quickly, stepped back, and reached into her shoulder bag for her personal phone. Her fingers trembled when she punched out the emergency number.

"Yes, that's right," she said to the overstressed operator. "Number Thirteen, Hidden Lane. First floor, apartment A. It's in the Old Quarter near the Wall."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but that street isn't coming up on my city grid," the operator said brusquely. "Are you sure about the address?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Hidden Lane isn't on most city maps." Lydia took another step from the body. "Probably why they named it Hidden Lane. Look, just tell the medics to take Dead City Way to South Wall Street and turn left at the tavern on the corner. Once they're in the neighborhood, anyone can give them directions."

"All right." There was a short silence before the woman came back on the line. "They're on the way. I'm also sending a police car since you say there's a body."

The operator sounded as if she wasn't at all certain that Lydia could tell the difference between a dead body and the other sort.

"There is definitely a dead man in this apartment. Trust me, I've seen one before."

"Do not under any circumstances leave the scene, ma'am. Since you're the one who found the body, there will be a few formalities."

Formalities . Lydia felt the hair on the nape of her neck stir much the same way it had a few minutes ago when she had walked into Maltby's gloom-filled apartment and realized that something was horribly wrong.

In her experience formalities was not a good word.

Just a few formalities was the phrase the pompous members of the Academic Council had used to describe the farce of a formal inquiry they had staged before they had fired her from her position at the university seven months ago.

We need to go through some formalities , was how the police detective in charge of the investigation into Chester Brady's murder last month had termed the grilling that Lydia had been obliged to endure.

It wasn't her fault that she had been the first person to stumble across Chester's body in that ancient alien sarcophagus, she thought. And there was no reason to hold her responsible for the fact that she had been the first one to find Maltby's body today.

It was just her bad luck that she had walked in on this mess, she told herself. It could have been anyone. The door of Maltby's apartment had been unlocked when she had arrived a few minutes ago, so naturally she had put her head inside to call his name. After all, he was the one who had asked her to stop by his place this morning.

Actually the message that he had left on her answering machine while she had been occupied with a museum tour group had been a demand, not a request.

"… This is Dr. Lawrence Maltby. I must see you immediately, Miss Smith. Please come to my apartment as soon as possible. I have extremely urgent news concerning the incident in the catacombs a few months ago that led to your dismissal from the university .…"

Although he had been let go from his own position at Old Frequency College more than a decade earlier, Maltby had evidently not lost his air of professorial authority. The tone of his voice on her answering machine had been that of a department head summoning a junior staff member to his office.

In spite of the rudeness, Lydia had wasted no time. The magic words urgent news concerning the incident in the catacombs a few months ago had gotten her full attention.

But the expensive cab ride to Hidden Lane had been for naught. She was too late.

She saw no reason to mention the reasons she happened to be standing over Maltby's dead body to the emergency operator, however.

"Look, this isn't a crime scene or anything," she said quickly. "Professor Maltby wasn't murdered. It looks like he OD'd on Chartreuse. There's no point in having me stick around to answer a lot of questions. I don't have any answers."

The operator was unmoved. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but rules are rules. Stay right where you are until the police and the medics arrive."

"Yeah, sure." Lydia ended the call abruptly. She glanced once more at the body and then quickly looked away.

She had not known Maltby personally, but she had heard the gossip along Ruin Row for years. His tragic end had been forecast for some time by all of the gallery owners who had dealt with him. In his heyday he had been a respected, tenured professor of para-archaeology. But his career had foundered after he had sunk into the dark netherworld of drug addiction.

After his dismissal from the staff at Old Frequency College, he had moved here to Cadence City where he had attempted to make a living as a private consultant to collectors and gallery owners along Ruin Row. But the drugs had made it impossible for him to function reliably. Eventually his deteriorating reputation had caused his consulting work to dry up.

In the end, Maltby had descended to the lowest rung in the antiquities trade. He had become a ruin rat, eking out a meager living by sneaking illegally in and out of the catacombs in hopes of turning up the occasional valuable relic.

Several of Lydia's acquaintances in the Old Quarter had told her that, during the brief spells when he was able to kick his habit long enough to go underground, Maltby sometimes showed up with some spectacular finds. No one knew where he did his secret excavating work down in the catacombs and, honoring the unspoken rules that governed the less legitimate side of the antiquities trade, no one asked.

She listened intently for a few seconds and heard no sirens. She had a few minutes before the medics and the police arrived. Surely there was no harm in looking around.

Trying not to look at the body, she moved to the desk and surveyed the cluttered surface. There were several aging copies of the Journal of Para-archaeology stacked randomly on one corner. Pens, papers, and a notebook were scattered about in a careless fashion.

She unfastened her shoulder bag, removed a tissue, and used it to open the notebook. The scribbling inside appeared to be a series of angry rebuttals to various papers that had appeared in recent editions of the Journal of Para-archaeology; letters to the editor that would never have been published.

She closed the notebook and surveyed the desk. Something about the arrangement of the items on it seemed off. All of the things that one might expect to see on an academic's desk were present, including a small pad of paper, heaps of reference books, a lamp, and a blotter. There was no computer but that was not a surprise. Maltby had probably sold it long ago to buy Chartreuse. Either that or it had been stolen. This was a rough neighborhood.

She took a closer look, trying to figure out what was bothering her. And then it struck her that the blotter was not positioned squarely in the center where it could be properly used. It had been dragged or pulled too far to the right so that one corner hung off the edge. The lamp was in the wrong place, too. The shade was cocked at an odd angle that would send the beam of light straight down, quite uselessly, to the floor.