Last Breath (23 page)

Daria stood on unsteady legs and reached for her bag. She tried to locate her phone but her fingers felt numb.

“Use mine.” Connor took his phone from his pocket and slid it across the floor to her.

“Why do we need an ambulance?” Daria looked down at Vita, whose body was sprawled on the floor five feet away. “They're dead.”

“Korban didn't survive that shot to the head, but I think he only winged Vita. She's still alive,” he told her. “I want to make sure she stays that way. She has a lot to answer for.”

TWENTY-SIX

“H
ow is she?” Daria stood outside the museum, Sweet Thing's leash wrapped around her hand, and watched as Vita Landis was carried from the building on a stretcher. There was a lot of blood, but the older woman appeared to be alert.

“Looks like not much more than a flesh wound, for all the blood,” Chief Thorpe replied. “The more important question is, how are you?”

“I'm fine, really. I wasn't injured. Just scared.” Daria sat on one of the concrete benches in the courtyard.

“Think you'll feel up to answering some questions later?” he asked. “I'm going to be tied up for a while at the hospital, but I'd like to stop over later today to get your statement.”

“I'll be home. Whenever it's convenient for you will be fine with me, Chief.”

They watched the man they knew only as Tabib being placed in the back of a patrol car.

“What's going to happen to the boy in the hospital now?” Daria asked.

“If he comes out of the coma, he'll be tried as a juvenile. At least, any lawyer they get for him is going to push for that,” Thorpe told her, “since his brother says the kid is only seventeen. But crimes like these…they may want to try him as an adult. Tabib there says he'll give us a full confession if we let him visit the kid, so after he's booked, that's where we'll take him.”

“Ask him who his accomplice was for the Blume and Sevrenson murders,” Connor said as he joined them. “According to the information the Bureau found, the boy, Anatole, has only been in the States for the past month, so he could have only participated in the last two attacks. There had to have been two killers at the Blume home.”

“We'll see what he says about that, but I'll bet big money it was Korban.” Thorpe turned back to Daria. “I get the reason why these two targeted the owners of the artifacts they wanted to steal. But why you?”

“Apparently I asked the wrong questions when I was in Dr. Burnette's office. When I asked about the photographs, Vita said she'd found them and taken them right to Louise, but Louise said she'd found them under some papers on Vita's desk. There were photos in the envelopes of just about every artifact that Alistair found and brought back to Howe. Except for the ones that had been stolen.”

“So you figured that whoever had gone after the artifacts had taken the photographs so they'd know what to steal.” Thorpe nodded.

“I had figured out that the killers had access to the photos, and I'm pretty sure Vita gave the photos to Tabib so he'd know what he was looking for. But at the time, I didn't know that Vita was involved. I thought that if the photos were just sitting on Vita's desk, someone else could have found them. I didn't put it together, especially since both Louise and Sabina had seen the photos, too.”

“But Vita—being guilty—assumed that you figured out it was her,” Connor said.

Daria nodded. “I guess when she heard me ask Louise if the name Dragonis was familiar, she figured I knew more than I did.”

She looked up at Connor and asked, “How did you figure out what was going on?”

“When our guy at the Bureau told me that Dragonis had a daughter named Vedat, the name was just too similar. Then, when I couldn't find you and Louise didn't know where Vita was, I thought you had to be at the museum. When I got over there, the guard gave it away.”

“How?”

“You know, there was a reason Cross named this dog Sweet Thing.” Connor sat next to Daria on the bench and rubbed the dog behind the ears. “She's a very gentle, affectionate animal. But she totally snapped when she saw this guy at the museum door. She was snarling and growling, and it was pretty clear she wanted a piece of him.”

“You think she would have attacked the guy?”

“There's no question in my mind. So there had to be a reason, right?”

“She remembered him from Cross's.”

“That's what I was thinking. He wouldn't let the dog in the museum so I told her to sit while I went in. I left the door slightly ajar just in case she decided she needed to check up on things.”

“She's usually so obedient.” Daria frowned. “How did you know she'd follow?”

“I didn't tell her to
stay.
”

“You're such a clever doggie,” Daria said, and rubbed the dog's head.

“Hey, how about me?” Connor feigned indignation. “I'm a pretty clever guy.”

“Yes, you are. You're my hero,” she told him.

“Yeah, well, I did have a little help from Tabib. When he heard Stefano talking about how the whole thing had been a ruse to recover the artifacts so that he and Vita could sell them, he realized that he and his brother had been used. Of course, he didn't seem to have any scruples about killing in the name of the goddess, but killing for the sake of making someone else rich was apparently against his principles.”

“You have to understand, he believed that what he'd done was honorable,” Daria explained. “He'd been taught all his life that protecting his heritage—doing the bidding of the priestess—would be his life's work. He'd been brought up to believe he had a special role to play, just like his father, and his father's father. For him this was a privilege. A sacred duty.”

“Korban, having been brought up the same way, would have understood this completely,” Connor said, thinking it through. “So while he thought it was all bullshit, he knew exactly how to exploit it.”

Daria nodded. “For Tabib and his brother, knowing that Vita was a priestess would have sealed the deal. They'd have done anything for her.”

“He sure turned on her fast enough,” Thorpe noted.

“Once Tabib understood what she'd done, he was obliged to kill her, or Ereshkigal would send other
gallas
after him,” Daria told him. “She was a heretic. She'd committed a sacrilege.”

“Well, she's still alive, so I guess he failed in this sacred duty of his.” Thorpe seemed to think that over for a moment. “You think there are more of these
gallas
out there? Think they'll be coming for Tabib?”

“I find it hard to believe the entire Shandihar culture came down to just these four individuals after surviving for almost two thousand years, Chief,” Daria told him. “Surely there are others. Whether or not they'll go after Tabib is anyone's guess.”

“Swell,” Thorpe murmured. “So as long as the university has all their statues and things here, we're going to have to be looking over our shoulders, worrying about some deluded guys who think it's their duty to cut out people's tongues? Or women who think they're priestesses sending out these so-called guardians to cut off people's hands?”

“The university has housed these artifacts for almost one hundred years, Chief. Up until Harry Dragonis put this all in motion by stealing some of them, there were no incidents of violence, right?”

“None that I heard about,” he conceded, “and I'm guessing something like this, I would have known about it.”

“These people—call them
gallas
or guardians—are only interested in preserving and safeguarding their culture,” she told him. “I'm not concerned about more murders.”

“Even though you're going to be handling their sacred objects? And even though your great-grandfather was the one who stole their stuff away in the first place?” he asked.

“I think that as long as I show respect for the culture—and of course as long as I don't try to steal anything—I won't have anything to worry about. Besides,” she added, “only a priestess could give such an order.”

“How do you know Vita won't do exactly that?” Thorpe frowned. “Not that they're not welcome to Tabib.”

“I don't think Vita will be the one giving the orders,” Daria said simply. “I think the mantle's going to have to be passed.”

“Well, you change your mind, you let me know,” Thorpe said as he turned to walk away. “I'll have someone watching you day and night.”

“That's my job,” Connor told her.

“What about your real job?” she asked. “There isn't going to be a whole lot for the FBI to do around here, once this is all cleaned up.”

“I'm thinking I could take the occasional stateside job,” he told her. “This running all over the world, sleeping on rocky hillsides, is starting to lose its appeal.”

“It has been kind of nice to sleep in the same bed—a real bed, that is—for more than two or three nights in a row.” She smiled. “Throw in a real roof overhead, and I could get used to it.”

“Well, you'll be here for the next year or so, right?”

“That's the deal.”

“Maybe I could visit. A lot.”

“I could get used to having you around. A lot.”

She looked past him to the drive where the EMTs were getting ready to lift Vita's gurney and load it into the ambulance. He followed her stare.

They watched Vita hold up her hand, gesturing for the attendants to stop, just as Sabina Bokhari reached the gurney. She leaned over the wounded woman, who raised a hand and touched the young professor on the forehead. Sabina took Vita's hand for an instant, then stood and backed away. The EMTs continued transferring the patient to the ambulance, and closed the doors. As the vehicle pulled away, Sabina stepped back onto the grass, her arms folded across her chest.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Connor asked.

“Probably.” Daria nodded. “This should be interesting. I've never worked with a priestess before.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was planning to ask Louise if Sabina could work with me on the museum. There's just too much for one person to do, and there's no one else who knows as much about Shandihar as Sabina.”

“Apparently, she knows even more than you figured.”

“Which will work to our advantage. I was looking at the cylinders in the crates again the other night. It's going to be impossible for me to both translate them and design the displays. There just isn't enough time. Sabina would be perfect.”

“I don't know, Daria. Maybe the chief is right. Aren't you even a little nervous about working with her?”

“Not a bit. She's no threat to me. Besides, Sabina is not Vita.”

“Aren't you just a little bit concerned that someone is going to want to punish you for what Alistair did? After all, he was never properly punished.”

“I'm not so sure about that,” Daria told him. “There was something in one of Iliana's diaries that makes me wonder how he really died. I don't know if that story about a lung infection was true. That's something I'm going to have to investigate when I have the time.”

“You might start up talk of the curse again.”

“Someone's bound to bring it up sooner or later, anyway.” She shrugged. “If nothing else, it'll make good press.”

Connor's phone rang and he took the call. Daria stood and tugged on Sweet Thing's leash, and started walking back to McGowan House. In spite of everything, Howe had started to grow on her. She liked the campus, and wondered what it would look like in the fall, when all the trees turned color.

It had been many years since she'd experienced a true autumn. She thought back to the years when they lived in Princeton. Their house had been on a side street off Nassau, in a neighborhood of houses that all had yards and garages and front porches. The back of their property had been lined with maple and oak trees, and in October, the four McGowan kids fought over the family's two rakes, to see who would have the privilege of making the leaf piles. Jack had been the best raker, though Sam was older and stronger. He'd keep raking until the pile was chest high, and then they'd all jump in. When the boys had finished playing and gone on to other things, she and Iona would lie on their backs and look for angels in the clouds. The squirrels would race around the sides of the trees chattering at each other. Black squirrels, she recalled. She'd never seen them anywhere else but in Princeton.

She couldn't remember the last time she'd thought about that house and those years and the black squirrels.

“Penny for your thoughts.” Connor caught up to her on the path.

“I was just thinking about a house we used to live in.” She smiled as he fell in step with her. “It made me think about Jack.”

“What a coincidence. I was just talking to my friend in South America.” He took her hand.

“About Jack?”

“Yes. I told him that if your family approves, I'd send him copies of the investigators' reports.”

“Of course we'll approve. Then what?”

“Then we wait and see what he comes up with.”

“Do you really think there's hope? After all this time?”

“It's fifty-fifty, right? The odds are just as good that he's alive as not. So why not go for it? Why not hold on to that chance?”

“All right, yes. Let's do that.” She squeezed his hand.

“I'm going to be leaving sooner than I'd planned,” he told her as they walked back to the house. “I'll be meeting with Coliani later today to fill him in, and then I'll be meeting with Polly at the office early tomorrow. She's going to pretty much take over from here. You'll be hearing from her as soon as she can get her paperwork together. She identified a number of artifacts that are in institutions, and she's going to work with the university's lawyers to negotiate the return of as much as possible.”

“Finally, some good news. Louise will be thrilled.”

They reached the front steps of the house.

“Connor, how long do you have to be away?” she asked.

“I'm not sure.”

“Will you come back?”

He reached up and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I will always come back to you,” he said simply.

         

The moon was still full when Daria heard Connor slip out of bed.