The Presence (26 page)

Would they believe her?

Pushing the doors open, she stepped into the lobby. To her vast relief, the two guards were not waiting for her. One of them, the one who had been there before the van’s arrival, was seated behind the desk again, thumbing through a magazine. As she entered the lobby, he looked up.

“Dr. Sundquist. I thought you’d left.”

Was there suspicion in his voice? “Just finishing up a few things,” she replied. Then, when she was halfway across the lobby, she suddenly knew exactly what to say to put any suspicions to rest. “What was that van that came in a few minutes ago?” she asked, turning back to face the guard. “Isn’t it awfully late for deliveries?”

The guard smiled. “One of our trucks,” he said. “The driver just stopped to find out where we wanted him to park it.”

“Well, it’s nice to know we’re not the only ones working late,” Katharine said, returning the guard’s smile. “But how come that doesn’t make me feel any less tired?”

The guard chuckled. “Doesn’t ever make me feel less tired, either.”

With a final good night, Katharine left the building and hurried toward her car.

The guard had lied.

Obviously, something was going on she wasn’t supposed to know about. But what was it?

And how could she find out?

Was the corpse that had been delivered tonight—if it truly was a corpse—somehow connected to the alarming video and the skeleton in Rob’s laboratory? That was ridiculous. There was no reason to make such a connection.

But the images of the anomalous skull from the Philippines and the film of the slaughtered creature were also still fresh in her mind. An image and a film that were stored in files locked away behind a password, just as whatever had arrived in the van was now hidden away in a lower level she hadn’t known existed until tonight.

Every instinct she possessed told Katharine that somehow all these things were related.

The body—if that’s what it was—that had been delivered just now.

The mutant—if that’s what it was—that had been killed in the Philippines.

And the skeleton she herself had excavated right here on Maui.

But how was she going to find out what the connection was? As she drove through the darkness toward the gates of the estate, she wondered how she might gain access not only to the files hidden away in the computer, but to the lower level of the north wing as well. Slowing to let the gates open, she came to a disturbing realization: security here was far tighter than Rob Silver had told her.

Just as she’d remembered, there were no lights illuminating the gates, yet she was positive that as her car passed through them, the guard in the lobby was watching her as clearly as if it were high noon. The thought sent a shiver
down her spine, and though she kept telling herself that she was being silly, she couldn’t rid herself of the eerie feeling that she was being watched until she emerged from the narrow road from the estate onto the Hana Highway. Even then it didn’t quite leave her, and as she sped toward Makawao, she continued to glance in the rearview mirror, searching for some sign that someone was following her.

Though she saw nothing, the creepy feeling stayed with her.

Though the television was droning as Katharine entered the house, Michael was not watching it. Sprawled out on the sofa, he was fast asleep, and when she bent down to kiss his forehead, he barely stirred. Dropping her leather bag on the floor next to her sleeping son, Katharine used the remote control to turn off the television, then went into the kitchen to find something to eat. The remains of a pizza—not quite half of it—sat on the kitchen counter, cold in its grease-stained box. Transferring two pieces to a plate and slipping them into the microwave, Katharine poured herself a glass of wine while the pizza heated. Taking the pizza back to the living room, she set it down on the coffee table, but then, before settling down onto the floor to have her meal, she moved though the house, locking the doors and windows.

And pulling the curtains.

Before she pulled the last one, she stared out into the night, nearly shivering with the strange sensation that someone was watching her.

But that’s ridiculous, she told herself. There’s no one out there. No one’s watching you!

Repeating those words to herself, though, did nothing
to dispel the paranoia that had come over her as she’d left the research pavilion that night. She closed the curtain before going back to the coffee table to eat the pizza Michael had left for her.

She was just finishing the first piece when Michael stirred on the sofa and the rhythm of his breathing changed, taking on a labored quality. Within seconds his feet began kicking and his arms thrashed in the air. Katharine tensed, terrified that the awful scene of last night, when he’d fled into the darkness and not come back until hours later, was about to be replayed. Getting up from the floor, she went around the coffee table, crouched down, and laid a gentle hand on him. “Michael? Michael, wake up! You’re having a bad dream.”

He moaned and tried to turn away from her, but she put her hand firmly on his shoulder and shook him. “Michael! Wake up!”

Abruptly, Michael’s whole body convulsed, and then he was sitting up, instantly awake. Startled, he stared at her.

“What was it?” Katharine asked. “What were you dreaming about?”

“The night di—” Michael began, but instantly cut himself off.

“The what?” Katharine asked. Her eyes fixed on him as she tried to figure out what the word was that he’d cut off.

Michael, reddening, knew by the way his mother was looking at him that there was no point in trying to lie about it. “I went on a night dive,” he finally said.

“A night dive?” Katharine echoed uncertainly. Then, as the meaning of his words sank in, her eyes widened. “You mean you went scuba diving at
night?”

Michael hesitated, then nodded unhappily. “With Josh Malani, and some other guys.”

“What other guys?” Katharine asked.

Michael hesitated. “Jeff Kina and Kioki Santoya. And Rick Pieper.”

The first two names rang a faint bell in Katharine’s memory. They sounded familiar, but where had she heard them? Before she could even ask the question, Michael answered it.

“Kioki’s the guy whose mom found him in the cane field yesterday morning.”

Katharine remembered the radio report they’d heard that morning. “It was the night before that, wasn’t it?” she asked. “The night you came home late.”

Michael nodded.

“And that’s what you dreamed about last night? And tonight?” Again Michael nodded.

Katharine’s eyes fixed on Michael. “Did something happen?” she asked. “On the dive?”

Michael thought quickly, but he’d hesitated just long enough to let her know that the forbidden dive had not been uneventful. “It wasn’t anything serious,” he said. “The tanks weren’t quite full, so we had to quit early, that’s all. No big deal.”

“But it’s given you nightmares,” Katharine told him. “And after what happened to—”

Michael groaned. “Aw, come on, Mom. They don’t even know what happened to Kioki!”

Katharine studied her son. Not only had he lied to her, but what he’d done had been both stupid and irresponsible. She should ground him, she thought, take away all his privileges, do whatever it took to make certain he’d never
do anything like it again. But right now, after having been up almost all last night, she was too tired to cope with it. Besides, he was alive, and at home, and nothing terrible had happened to him. And maybe the fact he hadn’t told her what he was planning was partly her own fault—after all, she’d been overprotecting him for years. If it hadn’t been for Rob Silver, she wouldn’t have let him go scuba diving at all.

The exhaustion that had been crawling through her body all day finally caught up with her, and she decided that this, at least, could wait until another time. “Go to bed,” she told him. “Go to bed, and get some sleep.” Then an idea came to her. “And Michael? You’re the one who screwed up, so
you
decide how you should be punished. I’m just too tired and too angry to deal with it. So you figure it out. Okay?”

Michael looked at her for a long time, and she could see by the expression on his face that she’d come up with the right answer: she was certain that whatever punishment he finally decided to mete out to himself would be far worse than anything she could have come up with.

“Okay,” he said at last. “I guess that’s only fair.” He got up and had almost reached his room when he came back, bent down, and kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done it, and I should have told you.” He straightened up. “G’night,” he said softly as he started once more toward his room.

“Michael?”

He turned to face her.

“Try not to be too hard on yourself. A year’s grounding will be way too much.”

By the time she collapsed into bed a few minutes later, Katharine’s exhaustion had reached the point where she
was too tired even to sleep. Finally, feeling the house grow stuffier, she got up and opened all the windows. Not that it helped much; a kona wind had begun carrying a faintly acrid, smoglike miasma in from the erupting volcano on the Big Island.

Before she went back to bed, Katharine paused to listen at Michael’s door. Though she herself was wide-awake, her son was sleeping peacefully.

Takeo Yoshihara awoke, as he always did, as the first glow of dawn was lighting the eastern sky. As fully awake now as he’d been deeply asleep the moment before, he rose immediately from his bed and, dressing in the aloha shirt, white pants, and sandals that were his standard uniform on Maui, he went to the small dining pavilion. His breakfast of miso soup, fish, and tea was waiting for him, just as always when he was in residence at the estate.

As he ate he reviewed the conditions of the financial markets and scanned the stack of reports that had come in from all over the world during the night.

It appeared that he was thirty million dollars richer than when he’d gone to bed last night.

Finishing the reports as he drained the last drop of tea from his cup, Yoshihara left the dining pavilion to make his way through the gardens to the research center, stopping only once to remove a wilting orchid bloom that the Filipino gardeners had overlooked.

Entering the research pavilion through the main doors, he nodded to the guard as he passed the desk, pushed open the double doors leading to the south corridor, and strode quickly down the long passageway to the elevator at its far end. Pulling his wallet from his pocket, he
passed it over a nondescript gray plate above the call button, and the red light at the top of the plate immediately blinked green. A moment later the door slid open. Yoshihara stepped into the car, and the door closed behind him.

Less than a minute later he was in the laboratory to which the large wooden crate had been delivered late last night. The crate, though, had long since been taken away, as had the remnants of dry ice in which the contents had been packed, and the plastic sheeting in which it had been wrapped.

Only the body itself remained, and it was all but unrecognizable.

Stephen Jameson looked up as the laboratory door opened. Surprised to see his employer coming into the room, he glanced at the clock.

Nearly six-thirty.

Suddenly feeling the fatigue of the long night of dissection, Jameson took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and stretched.

Nodding a greeting to the doctor, Yoshihara stepped closer to the table and looked down at what was left of the body that he’d had removed from its grave and shipped to Maui. If the sight of the carnage caused Yoshihara any discomfort, he gave no outward sign.

The corpse had been laid open from the crotch to the neck, and what few organs still remained in the thoracic area lay in confused disorder, like the pieces of a quickly disassembled jigsaw puzzle. The rib cage had been split and spread wide to allow easy access to the lungs and heart—both of which were missing entirely—so all that now remained was a great yawning cavity that, since it was entirely free of blood, gave the body the odd appearance of never having been alive at all. Rather, the remains
of the cadaver had an artificial and strangely impersonal look to them, as though what lay on the table had been sculpted of wax rather than flesh and blood.

Yet Yoshihara knew that such was not the case, for he himself had seen pictures of the boy taken only a few weeks ago. A white male, seventeen years old, he’d stood a little over six feet tall, with the broad shoulders and narrow hips of an athlete. In one of the photographs Yoshihara had seen, the boy was smiling broadly, showing perfect white teeth, deep dimples, and a slightly cleft chin. In combination with his blue eyes and blond hair, he’d been the perfect example of the California surfer.

Oddly, the boy’s good looks remained.

His blond hair, neatly combed and sprayed for his funeral, had been slightly mussed by the packaging, and before Yoshihara realized quite what he was doing, he found himself reaching out to smooth the stray locks back into place.

The pallor of death had been expertly covered with makeup, and the boy’s cheeks showed a rosy glow, as if he might wake up at any moment.

The cleft in his chin was as clear as it had been in the photo, though in the solemn expression of death, he showed no signs of his dimples.

Yoshihara turned his attention back to Jameson, who now held a manila folder in his hands. “Have you determined the exact cause of death?”

Jameson opened the folder, scanning its contents. He’d had a team of laboratory assistants working all night, analyzing the tissues that Jameson himself had taken from each organ as he’d performed his dissection of the body.

As Jameson had expected, most of the boy’s organs
proved to be as healthy as they’d appeared. The lab tests showed no signs of disease or toxic substances.

Or at least there were no signs of any substances that one might have expected would kill a seventeen-year-old boy.

No strychnine, or cyanide, or any other poisons.

No drugs, either. No heroin, no cocaine, no uppers or downers.