He never would, because he was not like them.
‘I’ll let you alert security,’ I said. ‘The media’s already in the parking lot.’
‘You got to be kidding. This, early?’
‘Channel Eight was waiting for me when I pulled in.’ I handed him the key to my car. ‘Give them a few minutes, and then let them go.’
‘What do you mean, let them go?’ He frowned, staring at the remote control key in his hand.
‘They’re in my parking place.’ I headed toward the elevator.
‘They’re what?’
‘You’ll see.’ I boarded. ‘If they so much as touch my car, I’ll charge them with trespassing and malicious property damage. Then I’m going to have the A.G.’s office call their station’s general manager. I might sue.’ I smiled at him through shutting doors.
My office was on the second floor of the Consolidated Lab Building, which had been constructed in the seventies and was soon to be abandoned by us and the scientists upstairs. At last, we were to get spacious quarters in the city’s new Biotech Park just off Broad Street, not far from the Marriott and the Coliseum.
Construction was already under way, and I spent far too much time arguing over details, blueprints and budgets. What had been home to me for years was now in disarray, stacks of boxes lining hallways, and clerks not wanting to file, since everything would have to be packed anyway. Averting my gaze from more boxes, I followed the hallway to my office, where my desk was in its usual state of avalanche.
I checked my e-mail again, almost expecting another anonymous file like the last, but only the same messages were there, and I scanned through them, sending brief replies. The address deadoc quietly waited in my mailbox, and I could not resist opening it and the file with the photograph. I was concentrating so hard, I did not hear Rose walk in.
‘I think Noah had better build another ark,’ she said.
Startled, I looked up to see her in the doorway adjoining my office and hers. She was taking off her raincoat, and looked worried.
‘I didn’t mean to scare you,’ she said.
Hesitating, she stepped inside, scrutinizing me.
‘I knew you’d be here, despite all advice,’ she said. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘What are you doing here so early?’ I asked.
‘I had a feeling you’d have your hands full.’ She took off her coat. ‘You saw the paper this morning?’
‘Not yet.’
She opened her pocketbook and got out her glasses. ‘All this Butcher business. You can imagine the uproar. While I was driving, I heard on the news that since these cases started, more handguns are being sold than you can shake a stick at. I sometimes wonder if the gun shops aren’t behind things like this. Frighten us out of our wits so we all make a mad dash for the nearest .38 or semiautomatic pistol.’
Rose had hair the color of steel that she always wore up, her face patrician and keen. There was nothing she had not seen, and she was not afraid of anyone. I lived in the uneasy shadow of her retirement, for I knew her age. She did not have to work for me. She stayed only because she cared and had no one left at home.
‘Take a look,’ I said, pushing back my chair.
She came around to my side of the desk and stood so close I could smell White Musk, the fragrance of everything she had concocted at the Body Shop, where they were against testing with animals. Rose had recently adopted her fifth retired greyhound. She bred Siamese cats, kept several aquariums and was one step short of being dangerous to anyone who wore fur. She stared into my computer screen, and did not seem to know what she was looking at. Then her demeanor stiffened.
‘My God,’ she muttered, looking at me over the top of her bifocals. ‘Is this what’s downstairs?’
‘I think an earlier version of it,’ I said. ‘Sent to me on AOL.’
She did not speak.
‘Needless to say,’ I went on, ‘I will trust you to keep an eagle eye on this place while I’m downstairs. If anybody comes into the lobby we don’t know or aren’t expecting, I want security to intercept them. Don’t you even think about going out to see what they want.’ I looked pointedly at her, knowing what she was like.