Читать книгу The Last Christmas On Earth - Andrea Lepri - Страница 3

"Stay in the office and squeeze your brains out, as soon as they tell us something new you will check on the spot," she said.

"As ordered," James replied, standing up, and in that precise moment, Cindy knocked on the office door.

"Come in," said Helen. Cindy looked out timidly at the door. "I am sorry, but the intercom was off ..."

"Oh, how distracted I am! What's going on?"

"The guy from the workshop called ..."

"Damn, I completely forgot about him. Tell him that James will be there as soon as possible."

"He said to go ahead calmly because now he doesn't have the car anymore," Cindy informed her.

"What does it mean?"

"What I just told you. Bob told me that when he went into the workshop this morning he didn't find the car, "the receptionist explained with a shrug.

"It's not possible!" Helen said, banging her fist on the table. At that precise moment, she realized she was in front of an enemy too shrewd and powerful and she had the clear impression that the strange chain of negative events would not stop before having overwhelmed them. "You hear that? And to think that you were afraid of getting bored ..." she said discouraged to James.

Episode III

In the Dead Sea

Abdul had an olive complexion, and on his wrinkled face there were a sharp nose and two small dark eyes, and under the bulky woolen robe that protected him from the heat, he must have been incredibly thin. Abdul was a bedouin and lived as a guide for tourists in search of strong emotions; he got paid so handsomely that soon he could buy camels and become a breeder, in that way he would climb to the top of the social ladder of his clan. But meanwhile, he was seated on an inflatable mattress under the shade of the cross-legged tent, intent on scrutinizing the water vapor rising from the immense surface of the Dead Sea. Apparently he was dozing, in reality, his trained senses were ready to perceive and process tiny signals in an infinitesimal time. With the wind blowing in the right direction, he would have been able to distinguish the smell of a camel almost a hundred yards away, and that was the secret to survive in such an inhospitable place, where you have to fight hunger and thirst, to watch out for the heat of the day as for the cold of the night, for friends as for enemies, for snakes and for scorpions.

Although he was extremely attached to that kind of life, with his customs and traditions, he appreciated so much modernity and technology that he never left any assignment without his inseparable sat phone and a set of spare batteries. The phone vibrated in the folds of his robe and he quickly ran his eyes along the gravelly bank of the great salt lake to make sure that Bryan had not yet emerged, then began to rummage calmly in the meanders of that wool labyrinth.

"Yes," he replied in Arabic, "like every day. I gave the animals a drink, I took up the gun and I started looking at the water ... no, he didn't want to tell me what he was looking for, he talked about a treasure ... of course, he is crazy as most of the crazy people are Westerners. He travels unarmed and has not taken the slightest precaution ... Yes, you are right, usually, those like him are too stupid or too clever, but he seems really naive to me. However, he has already scoured more than half of the lake and now it should be a matter of a few days unless the scuba tanks run out and we have to go back to As Samik once more time to let them recharge. In that case going, coming back and finishing the job, it would be a matter of staying here for about two more weeks and I wouldn't mind that much because he pays well and above all pays in advance. It is true that it is a boring job, but before now nobody had ever paid me to stay almost all day sitting without doing anything. At least, if he finds nothing and we can't steal his treasure, I will still have made good money. You know how much it costs to keep all those wives ... women are no longer as they used to be, now they watch television and want to be modern, so much for the Qur'an.

And they now realize that many hands make light work... just listen to me, my friend, we have to watch out for women!" At that moment an alarm bell sonde in his head, an unspecified sensation of danger quickly made its way. "Now I have to turn it off, I'm busy. Get ready, because depending on what comes out of that lake we will make a good joke about it!" He concluded, then he hid the phone in his robe and left the tent holding up his Kalashnikov. He made a little reconnaissance to understand what had been to make him worry; at first, he had thought he smell the exhaust of a car, but he judged impossible that someone had been so unconscious to venture up there with a motor vehicle. He climbed the highest dune and looked around, smelling in the air and listening to the wind. After a few minutes, he decided to return to the camp to prepare dinner thinking it was just a false alarm. He had just lit a fire to bake shrak bread and warm up the Mansaf when Bryan splashed out of the water with the sprint of a flying fish, spit out his snorkel and began to call him insistently. He took off his fins and threw them on the ground, then started running along the gravelly shore and immediately after to hop, because due to excitement he had even forgotten to put on his shoes and the temperature of the ground at that hour was almost fifty degrees. He went back and slipped his sneakers he had left on the shore like a slipper, then started running again towards the tent. Abdel intercepted him halfway.

"Maybe I found it," Bryan informed him enthusiastically, hopping from foot to foot in an attempt to avoid the burning ground, but he knew that surely that evening he would still have some nice blisters under his feet.

"Sahib, are you sure of it?" Abdel asked him, smoothing his thick dark beard.

"Almost sure. Prepare the ropes for the harness and bring a couple of camels to the shore, I want to finish the job before it gets dark ... soon the prayer time will start for you, isn't it?"

"Certainly Sahib, Allah doesn't care about money and treasures."

"Well, then let's get a move," Bryan urged him as he ran back to the boiling pebble beach. Although he had installed a lightning buoy he feared that if he waited too long he would risk losing the exact spot. He put on mask and fins, put the respirator in his mouth and dived. The Bedouin took the opportunity to recall his accomplices. "Get ready to intervene and don't forget to bring a few pitchers of Arak, we'll need them to celebrate!" He whispered at the phone.

Entering the workshop James stepped on an oil stain and slipped and nearly broke his head against the vertical support of the workshop's movable bridge.

"Clean and tidy as always, eh?" He shouted to the mechanic, but he didn't hear it because he had plunged into the engine compartment of a flaming red Ford Mustang. To reach him, James made a slalom of tools, cables, car parts and machinery scattered on the ground.

"Good morning!" Said the mechanic, looking at him sideways from under the hood lid.

"Hi Bob, sorry I'm late ... how are you?"

"Honestly, it could be better," he answered as he carefully lowered the rod and closed the engine compartment. Then he spat a bit of chewing tobacco on the ground, and without even wiping his dirty hands, he caught more from a golden box and put it in his mouth.

"When are you going to finish it, this train? Since I met you a long time ago, you are working on it!" James teased him, caressing the Mustang's hood.

"You know, the shoemaker always wears the worst shoes ... how about you, instead, you keep going around with the usual grinder?" He replied, and James nodded with a smile. Bob was in his sixties, he was portly and had a beard so white and thick that if it hadn't always been dirty with grease it could have been the envy of "Santa Claus". And above all, he had two huge hands, so big that even then James wondered how a man with such stubby fingers could work as a mechanic.

"So what happened last night?" Straight to the point. Bob's lips tightened in anger because he was still a long way from having bitten the bullet. "How the hell did you get your car fooled?" James insisted, rubbing salt into his wound.

"Don't make me think about it," Bob said, slamming a wrench on a workbench; he did it with such violence that a big cylinder just bored jumped and fell to the ground, and he swore because now it would be his turn to polish it again. "Among alarms and chains, pitfalls and padlocks, the only one who in theory could have managed to set foot here tonight without causing hell were me! And instead they screwed me a whole car, can you believe it? A car that didn't even get in motion, what the hell did they do to take it away? But now I'll get organized, even if this means sleeping here for the rest of my life! If only they try again, I get all the tools up their ass, from the smallest to the largest. One by one! »He concluded, banging the wrench on the counter again.

At that moment a boy with a pale and sleepy appearance shuffled in, he was so tall and thin that he looked curved and had long straight bleached hair.

" Morning Bob," he mumbled in a faint voice.

"You were late last night too, eh?" Bob scolded him. "You have to stick in your thick head that rock and roll won't give you food! Arrive late one more time and I'll send you home forever, understood?"

"Sorry boss, you're right ..."

"And don't call me "boss"," I've told you a thousand times. Come on, get to work. The overhaul of that Chevrolet has to be finished, in half an hour they'll come to pick it up and now I am busy with James, "said Bob, entering his little office. He turned on the machine to heat the coffee and James stared at it, admiring the office walls. They were plastered with calendars depicting half-naked girls posing in sexy poses and he thought with some regret that he probably would never find anything like this hidden in his son's books of Egyptology.

"How much sugar?"

"... What?"

"Come back to us, I asked you how much sugar you want."

"Two teaspoons, thanks," said James as he sat down.

The mechanic spilled the sugar in the cafes using a dispenser, then mixed his own with a screwdriver and then handed it to James.

"I'm sorry, but I used the last spoon to do a job on a Freelander," he justified himself, then wiped his mouth full of tobacco with his fingers.

"Don't worry, it's fine ... I hope that at least now the car works," James said with a shrug.

"Damn if it works ..." the mechanic replied, then took a sip of coffee.

"We'll talk about the theft later, now I want you to tell me about the Cadillac. What was so special about the car that made you call us last night so we could see it?"

Bob came to the door to check that the boy was quite distant and busy that he couldn't hear. He saw him sitting in front of the computer analyzing the smoke discharge and found him strangely still. The Chevrolet had been on for some time and was booming, the workshop was filling up with smoke and he had to run to activate the vacuum cleaner.

"Fred, you wretch!" He yelled with all his breath. The boy jumped on the chair and looked around alienated, then hurriedly turned off the car.

"It's unbelievable, he fell asleep another time! If it were not that he is the son of a dear friend of mine ... "Bob explained to James, showing him a clenched fist, then leaned over the table to get as close as possible and looked him straight in his eyes. "That car didn't belong to ordinary people, I think those two deaths were secret agents or something," he whispered.

"What makes you think so?"

"I had set to work to find the fault, I had sworn I would have found it at the cost of removing bolt after bolt. I started with the engine, it was perfect but it showed no signs of life. I put it on the bridge and started looking at it from beneath, looking for an idea, and finally, I realized what was wrong with it. That car had two mufflers but instead, that production model has only one.

I took them apart and discovered, as I had suspected, that one of the two was fake ... it was a hidden storage compartment."

"Are you serious?"

Bob nodded.

"And what did it contain?"

"What did it contain?" Bob echoed emphatically. "When I opened it, I found everything in it: fake licenses and documents headed to those two who have died, license plates, bundles of banknotes for a few thousand dollars, some very strange devices, three Glocks and even a laser rifle."

"... a rifle what?"

"A laser rifle."

"Have you ever seen a laser rifle before?"

"Of course not, where do you want me to have seen it?"

"So how do you know it was really a laser rifle?" James asked him, showing him all his perplexity. In response, the other pointed to the outline of a perfectly cut wrench in a sheet of steel of one inch thick. James made such an absurd expression that Bob had to try hard not to laugh in his face.

"At least did you take some pictures?" James asked, but knowing him, he hadn't hoped so much for that.

"No, honestly I didn't really think about it. And then who was expecting that in a few hours they would have taken everything away from me?" Replied the other one.

"So you don't have anything left of all the stuff you listed before ..."

"I had put everything in the safe, when I went into the office this morning and found it open, I almost fell off my feet. Luckily they only took their things without touching my money, otherwise, it would have been trouble. However, this means that they were people who knew exactly what they were looking for, as professionals. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to get in here so easily."

"You're probably right ..." agreed James.

"Of course I'm right! Surely someone is doing a nice clean-up to cancel the evidence of some kind of inexplicable event, I wouldn't be surprised if those two corpses have even disappeared," hypothesized Bob. James shuddered, because as Helen had dared to say it was not excluded that Harry had somehow been involved in that strange story.

"Maybe your theory isn't completely wrong, but now you're exaggerating!" Whether they are professionals or not, it seems impossible to me that they could even take away two bodies from inside a police station! "He replied.

"On television, you can hear so many stories..."

"Anyway, didn't you notice anything strange yesterday?"

"Nothing, all those who passed by the workshop yesterday were people I know well. Ah, damn it, I was about to forget it!" He added, rummaging in a pocket of his suit.

He pulled out a metal object as big as a matchbox, placed it on the table and pushed it towards him. "There is only this one left, I took it home last night to show it to my son," he explained.

James grabbed him by two opposing edges and examine it: it seemed hermetically closed on all sides, but no welds; it looked like a printed block and, weighing it, he found it very light.

"What is it?" He asked his friend after trying in vain to open it, the other shook his head.

"I have no idea," he replied.

James studied the metal box for a few moments curiously, waved it and then took it near to his ear to hear if by chance it made some noise, finally put it in a transparent nylon bag and put it in his pocket.

"What else can you tell me about the car and what you have found out? Even something that to you may seem silly and meaningless but to us could be fundamental."

"I'm sorry, but I can't think of anything else," the mechanic declared, and James sighed because the mystery was thickening. He opened his folder and took a form to report the fact. "Well, now tell me about the theft."

"Forget it," said Bob, "would it be useful to file a complaint? After all, as you can see, nothing has been stolen ..."

"I don't want to contradict you, but they cheated you of one of the main findings of our case," James pointed out.

When at last by pulling and pulling the "treasure" emerged laboriously from the water, Abdul stood motionless and watched it for several seconds, unable to determine whether the damned Westerner had teased him since day one or if he was simply fucking crazy. The camels lay on the ground exhausted and the Bedouin was certain that they would not get up for a while, they were offended for having been treated like mules and solicited to do their work with the sound of straps and sticks. Bryan continued to turn excitedly around his jewel-like a child and Abdul said he must have missed some detail. What he had before could not really be the fortune so much sought by that man; the treasure could not only be an insignificant hollow wooden trunk eaten by salt. Probably inside it hid a secret compartment from which a treasure chest overflowing with gold coins or diamonds would have come out, or at least a map bearing the indications to reach the real treasure. No, it couldn't be otherwise! He looked puzzled as Bryan stopped to remove the oxygen tank and his scuba suit.

"What?" He asked, smiling at the Bedouin who kept staring at him in astonishment.

"Sahib ... but this is ...?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I was looking for."

"A ... a piece of wood?"

"A piece of wood is what you see, in reality, this object represents much, much more," Bryan answered. At that point Abdel doubted that infidel was brazenly making fun of him and struggled to keep the temptation to draw the scimitar; he would have loved to cut him in slices and leave him agonizing on the spot. Then he told himself that Bryan might have become suspicious and had therefore decided to leave the treasure there and return to take it secretly at a later date; maybe that tree trunk was just a distraction.

"Forgive me, Sahib, but I don't understand," he said, pretending to be more humble than he could to try to hide instead his anger. "If it's not just a piece of wood, then what is it?"

"You know who Jesus Christ was, don't you?"

"Of course Sahib, the Qur'an speaks of him as a prophet ... but I still don't understand!"

"Do you know what the priest says at the most important moment of the Christian Eucharist when he gives the sacramental bread to the faithful?" Asked Bryan. He shook his head more and more confused.

"The Body of Christ".

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said! Some time ago, during an expedition near this place, I found the true Gospel of Judas Iscariot in a cave and I managed to translate it! It looked like reading a science fiction novel, but I believed it and did researches after researches. And if I am not wrong, what we have in front of us is the body of Jesus Christ, or rather, the body with which he fell on Earth aboard his spaceship. The body he then abandoned in order to look like a human being."

Abdul haven't even the time to process that information, because, just a moment after the ranting revelations of that man, he saw many heads appearing from behind the dunes in the distance. After only a moment, he became aware that he had bothered the entire merciless tribe of marauders of Sinai. In order to get them involved in his plan, he had told them about a great treasure and now that he found out the treasure did not exist he was in trouble. A deadly mess, to be precise.

"Those up there are your friends, aren't they?" Bryan read in his thoughts.

"No Sahib, I swear to you ..." the Bedouin tried to deny, but the way Bryan looked at him took away his desire to finish the sentence.

"I think now they'll really want to pull that greedy heart out of your chest," said Bryan indifferently. Knowing he made that mess, the Bedouin looked around desperately, but knowing they were the ones looking for them, then the desert was not a place large enough to hide. Seeing that the sunset was approaching, he hastened to unroll the mat and knelt down, then began to pray towards Mecca and the marauders standing on the surrounding dunes descended from their camels and did the same thing. Bryan pressed a button on his watch and communicated with his partner.

"It's been ten minutes since I sent you the radio signal, where the hell are you? As soon as they will finish praying I will have them all on and I can guarantee you they are really ugly and bad!"

"Quiet Indy, all this sand caused me a problem with the carburetor, but I solved it. You'll see me coming sooner than you think," a distorted voice answered.

"I really hope you're telling the truth ..."

When their prayers were over, the marauders carefully rolled their carpets and began to descend unhurriedly from the dunes, "the prey" was alone and unarmed and with no way out, so there was no reason to pick up the pace. But after a few moments, a deafening noise made them turn in unison as in choreography. Right after they all were with their faces sunk in the hot sand and with their hands covering their heads, in order to protect it. The Dune Buggy, suddenly sprung up behind them, climbed skidding to the top of the dune and from there jumped like from a trampoline, flew over them a few inches above their backs and fell a few meters ahead, skipping a couple of times and risking to overturn, but the pilot regained control and accelerated. The marauders stood up and began to descend the dune in leaps, spitting and crying out like crazy, they wanted to run but could not, because their legs were sunk in the sand almost to their knees.

"It's unbelievable, you really did it! Harrison Ford would die of envy," the Dune Buggy driver commented, stopping in front of Bryan.

"It's not the time for congrats, in case you haven't notice yet those guys you almost ran over, they just braced their Kalashnikovs," he said nervously.

"Then it's better to load up and leave quickly," said the pilot, jumping down from the vehicle to help him lift the trunk. The bullets began to whistle a few meters from them. At first, the raiders simply wanted to force them to stop, because according to their code of honor when you kill a man you have to be close enough to look him in the eye. The two hoisted the trunk and began to secure it to the roll bar with a rope. The marauders had realized that they would never reach them in time and began to shoot them closer and more intensely, aiming at the tires of the vehicle. Bryan and the pilot jumped aboard, finished fixing the trunk and were ready to flee.

"Please, Sahib, don't leave me in their hands ... I have four wives and seven children, what will happen to them?" Abdul pleaded, kneeling. A real hail of bullets whistled a few centimeters far from them, one of which hit the oil lamp in the tent and fire broke out everywhere. A great black smoke momentarily hid the fugitives from the sight of the marauders, who for the anger began to shoot blindly as they quickly and dangerously got closer and closer. Bryan glanced at the pilot.

"It is your choice, but it is still a guide and could be useful to us" proposed him.

"The scimitar and the mobile phone leave them here though," Bryan pointed out, nodding to him to jump aboard.

At that moment there was a metallic bump and one of the diving tanks exploded in a thunderous roar. The shockwave caused the Dune Buggy to leap up in the air.

"Come on, jump on!" Ordered the pilot to Abdul, but now he was lying on the ground with his eyes fixed on the sky and he was gasping.

"They hit him! Come on, we can't do anything for him anymore," Bryan shouted at the pilot, patting him on his shoulder.

Following the procedure Dr. Parker had recommended to her by phone, Helen carefully washed her finger with a block of antibacterial soap and placed it in front of the fan to dry it, avoiding painful rubbing. After some hesitation, she finally found the courage to spray the disinfectant on the sore and immediately swore repeatedly hopping on her toes because the burning was tremendous; she waited a few moments and brushed the last two phalanges with an herbal calendula ointment from the refreshing effect, which gave her immediate relief. Stevenson entered as she applied the plaster to fix the linen bandage with which she had wrapped it. "Still struggling with that finger?" He asked her, almost thoughtfully.

"That's right."

"How are you?"

"Not very well, apparently," she replied, grinding her teeth due to an unexpected and painful stab like a knife one, forcing herself up, she told herself that maybe it hurt so much because the miraculous ointment had already begun to take effect. "But didn't you say you'd come tomorrow?" She asked the Coroner, thinking back to their last conversation.

"It's true, but I annoyed so much those who work to the analysis lab that they gave me the report earlier than expected. They owed me a favor, so I sat down there last night and they worked until late night because they knew they had no alternative, if they wanted me to get off my feet," he explained, throwing the report on the table. Helen looked hopefully at it, but Stevenson shook his head.

"... nothing?" Asked Helen. "Nothing of nothing of a damned thing," Stevenson confirmed, then sat down in a disheveled pose and folded his hands on his stomach.

"So to date, we are unable to establish the causes of their deaths?"

"Absolutely not!"

"And what will I tell their relatives when they'll come here?"

"I don't know, if I were in your place I'd burn the car with the corpses in it and come up with a different version of the story to feed the journalists."

"You're kidding, aren't you?"

"Such a case can only lead to trouble," he insisted disenchanted.

"I don't understand how you can be so cynical," Helen murmured.

"Believe it or not I'm saying it for your own good. Those are gone now and at this point how it happened doesn't matter. What really matters is that fighting windmills often end up getting us in trouble up to our necks. Knowing the cause of death would not help you bring them back to life, nor to find any responsible ... listen to me, try to get rid of this case as soon as possible, in one way or another. There are too many off-key notes in this story."

Helen looked thoughtful and began to fiddle with the paperweight because in her heart she knew that Stevenson had said something true: that story couldn't have lead to other than trouble.

"Don't you read the report?" He urged, interrupting her thoughts.

"And what for? There will certainly be written" negative ... negative ... negative ... "Helen replied, and he nodded. "At this point, I don't even understand why you are here, a phone call would have been enough."

"I want to see your mummies."

"For what purpose?"

"Simple professional curiosity, something like this has never happened to me in so many years. I also brought the camera and the equipment necessary to take new samples," Stevenson explained, rekindling a faint hope in her. "New samples? Then you have some ideas!" She exclaimed confidently.

"No idea, but if what you told me is true, maybe some scholars of different alternative disciplines could help us out. Those not approved, so to speak. Maybe we could even make some sensational discovery ... are we going?" He proposed without putting the usual bit of sarcasm in his voice.

"If it pleases you ..." she replied, shrugging.

It was a long time since Luke Mc January's met the man who had hired him. He had never phoned him and as far as he knew he could even have died due to some typical old age ailment, like a heart attack or pneumonia. But for all that time someone had worked hard to ensure that his Visa wouldn't be blocked and this comforted him. Luke turned on the direction indicator to enter a gas station and the attendant took his eyes off the book to look him annoyed, for the last half hour it was the fourth time he began to read the third last page of the novel and it was the fourth time someone interrupted him ... and three times out of four they had only asked for information. He thought angrily that even on that day he would not be able to finish reading his book, so he closed it and threw it on the table with a blatant gesture, then took a sip of lemonade and walked with a listless step towards the car.

"Fill it up, please," Luke said, handing him the key of his Dodge Nitro's tank, then got out to stretch his legs a little.

"Fine," replied the attendant, opening the flap of the tank in a brisk manner.

"Is there a restroom I may use?" Luke asked him. The other pointed to a door next to the entrance to the store with a nod of his head and watched him walk away as he pumped diesel into the car. Tall and thin, dressed in a pair of tight black leather trousers and a raincoat also in very fine black leather, Luke reminded the attendant of the protagonist of the novel he was vainly trying to finish reading. But the fact that man went around dressed like that, made him think that maybe he was a little tossed in the head. "This is the classic type that will never wear gym clothes," he said to himself. When Luke returned to the car the attendant was cleaning his windshield, a supply of a hundred dollars could always soften him up a bit.

"You've traveled a lot, huh?"

"What made you understand that ?"

"You've made a beautiful massacre of gnats."

"Indeed."

"Are you here for the Lobster's Festival?"

"Lobster's Festival?" Luke said curiously.

"Yes, it is an event that takes place every year at the marina and on the main streets of Rockland, it's a gigantic festival of the lobster. It doesn't have anything exceptional, but if you aren't busy yet I suggest you not to miss it, at least it is very original."

"It smells good, it seems more a summer festival ..." Luke considered.

"In fact, the event usually takes place in the first days of August, but this year the Hurricane Sandra has put the sticks in the wheel to the organizers and so the festival will begin in a few days."

"Actually, I'm traveling for pleasure, so if you tell me it's really worth it, I might even decide to stay until then. After all, this place seems quiet and welcoming to me," Mc January explained to him, handing him a one-hundred-dollar bill, then he sat down in the driver's seat.

"I wouldn't call it very quiet lately," replied the attendant looking out the window to hand the rest over.

"... What do you mean?"

"Just in the last two days so many things have happened ..." he said, cursing himself immediately afterward. That sentence could have opened another conversation and he had no desire to chat, he just wanted to sit back and finish reading those last three damn pages. "Anyway, if you decide to stay, you'll see it for yourself, I don't want to ruin it," he said shortly. He had been sufficiently polite, had enough conversation and now was anxious to send him away to return to his book.

He turned to go and lower the windshield wipers so that he could leave, but for a long moment, he stared bewildered at the picture of the woman hanging from the lowered sun visor. Luke noticed it and hastened to pull it up, then the two peered at each other for an infinite moment.

It was the typical dead moment when one would like to ask a question, but at the same time he fears a question from the other, so neither of them makes the first move to not open things up.

"Can you recommend a good Motel?" Luke asked to break the awkward silence.

"Go ahead for five or six miles and you'll see the Spring sign. It's clean and well equipped, the food is good and its prices are honest."

"Well, thanks for everything. See you soon," Luke greeted him, shifting the gear. The attendant answered with an awkward hand gesture.

"... I know that I am a pain in the ass, a cynic and that I have a bad temper and I recognize that if you have organized all this to make me a joke I probably deserved it" the Coroner mumbled, "but I guarantee you that it is not funny at all. To get the reports and come here as soon as possible I had to raise hell, I antagonized the staff of the whole laboratory of analysis," he added, while Helen stared in shock at the empty beds she had taken from the cold room.

On the metal floors, there were only a few hairs and a few shreds of skin left, and she wasn't even sure that they had belonged to the bodies of those two or even to those who had occupied those beds before them.

"Come on, where did you hide the bodies?" Stevenson asked, pulling out all the compartments from the cold room one after the other, but he found them all empty. "Have you already sent them to their relatives?" He went on, rummaging through the desk drawers, looking for documents attesting to the transfer. Helen gave him an expressionless look, then put her hands to her face, bowing her head and then Stevenson calmed down.

"Do you realize that two bodies have disappeared here?" He asked good-naturedly. "What are you going to do?" He insisted after a few moments, but Helen remained barricaded behind a wall of silence. Then the Coroner sat down at his desk and pulled his packaged sandwich out of his leather briefcase, always keeping one of it for every eventuality because he became even more ravenous when he was nervous. He began to unwrap it and the noise of the tin foil attracted the attention of Helen, who finally uncovered her eyes and surprised him with his hands fixed on the sandwich and his open mouth ready to bite it. He froze.

"I ... I ... oh, dam nit!" he exclaimed. He threw the sandwich angrily into the garbage can, picked up his belongings and walked down the corridor to leave. At the front door, he met James, who was returning from his visit to Bob.

"Hey Stevie, where are you going so fast?" he greeted him.

"Go to hell!" Replied the Coroner pulling straight on his way.

It took Luke Mc January less than a minute to realize that the chirping lady who ran the Spring, a beautiful woman in her fifties named Sally, was the gas station attendant's wife. He booked the room until the end of the Lobster's Festival and exchanged a few chats with the lady, studied the map of the area hanging in the small hall to put the focal points well in his mind and finally went inside of the room. He found it small but welcoming, the door was half armored and the windows had double glazing; furthermore, he was satisfied that the furniture included the two things he needed the most, a desk and a bar fridge. He opened it to check the contents and found that in the freezer compartment there were even ready-made ice cubes, then he took from the travel bag his inseparable shaker and the ingredients necessary to prepare his habitual drink, the devastating and horrible mixture he had named "L.M.J.". Between a sip and the other, he unpacked the few bags he had with him and arranged them with meticulous care in the wardrobe and in the chest of drawers. Once the unpacking operations were completed, he put his precious briefcase under the bed and sat at the desk to update his logbook. When he finished he closed the notebook and looked at the phone, because like every time he arrived in a new place he was tempted to make a few calls, but like every time he told himself too much time had passed since he showed up, and give up the idea. He lay down on the bed to finish his L.M.J. and thought back pleased about the reaction the gas attendant had when he saw the photograph hanging from the sun visor: that was the umpteenth confirmation to his theory that the old trick of arousing curiosity in the interlocutor always works and that, moreover, it is much healthier than going around asking direct questions. He had learned it at his own experience that time when, by asking too much, he had hit someone's susceptibility and received very annoying answers. Instead, he had just thrown his bait and now he knew that sooner or later some fish would take it, it was just a matter of time. Luke then judged the fact that the attendant had sent him to his wife's Motel had been another stroke of luck, because if you know how to take them the right way, women can be very talkative. He told himself that he had to walk on eggshells because he had been already disappointed several times, but the attendant gave him the impression he knew the person depicted in the picture very well. It could also be only a resemblance, but contrary to his initial expectations there were instead good chances this time he had definitely hit the mark. Or at least that he went very close. He smiled and narrowed his eyes to rest a little; later he would have gone for a pizza and a beer in the village pub, because often in those places it is enough to know how to listen to rumor to be able to capture important information.

For the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon, Helen and James had fruitlessly stuck looking for an idea, a logical thread, a clue.

"Just yesterday, Stevenson had told me jokingly, but it seems to me to be right in the middle of an episode of X Files ..." Helen murmured suddenly demoralized.

"The only thing I'm sure of is that fortunately, you weren't here last night, everything else counts very little for me..." James answered seriously, and she nodded gravely. He sensed how deeply she was suffering and felt the impulse to embrace her, but after the incident of the night before he was not sure she wanted that too. And then, shortly afterward all the agents would have returned, if someone had caught them in an equivocal attitude they would have added complications to the problems.

"What can we do?" Helen asked in a faint voice.

"I swear I wish I knew," he replied, disheartened.

"Perhaps it would really be appropriate to call the Bureau, what do you think?" She then proposed judging that they had already run out of gas. James looked out the window and found himself frustrated.

If they haven't had all those problems it would have been a wonderful sunny day, one of those that at the end of the shift you take your family and load them in the car driving straight to the sea to take a nice bath, so much for December. And then to eat a sumptuous pizza. He snorted indecisively.

"I believe it would not be good. Obviously, something happened beyond our understanding, there are very powerful forces at play that we do not know and that act in the shadows. Stevenson is probably right, maybe the best thing would be to simply pretend that nothing ever happened ..." he suggested.

"You know it's not possible. Surely sooner or later this story will come up and then someone will come and ask us to give an explanation of what happened," Helen objected.

"On the contrary, it seems to me that whoever is behind all this is working to eliminate all evidence of what happened. Indeed, if we were to tell this story, that someone would do anything to make us ridicule or, worse, to put us in silence. Except for this mysterious box, which until proven otherwise could only be an empty box, we have nothing in hand. And, furthermore, by making this story known, we would be investigated for letting us swindle all the evidence in such a manner," James explained.

"And Harry? What if he saw something? If he speaks he could at least help us to clarify some things, after all on his bike and on the fishing rod there was the same dust."

James thought about his son's strange behavior and frowned.

"In this story, he must not get involved, whatever happened to him I want you to forget as soon as possible," he said.

"But there must be a connection! And then, honestly, I can't understand how he could not have suffered the deadly effects of contact with that stuff."

"Listen," he countered, changing his expression, "if there was a connection I don't know and I don't want to know.

I'm glad that despite behaving a little strangely, Harry is fine, and I just want him to quickly forget that experience. And then, even if we involve him and someone decides to set up an inquiry, the sheriff's son with Down syndrome would certainly not be a reliable witness. I repeat, I think the best thing is to pretend that nothing has ever happened."

"And what do we do with the people of the country?"

"Apparently no one saw or heard anything, so nobody knows exactly what happened. Soon the Festival will begin and everyone will think only and only about that, they are all waiting for the hordes of tourists that will arrive to make up for the economic damages produced by the hurricane Sandra. We will all forget this much sooner than you think."

"Yes, but there are always a few meddlings around."

"We will release a version, it will be enough to say that the case was not ours and that we passed it to another jurisdiction along with all the evidence."

"And old Bob?"

"Proud as he is, he will certainly not go around telling what happened to him, he doesn't want to look like a fool."

"What about the guys?"

"If they don't want to lose their jobs, they'll do better to don't say a word, if feds get here, the whole county police force would be wiped out and replaced within five minutes."

Helen wondered for a long time, tormenting the finger that in the meantime had removed the bandage, to make the skin breathe a little and allow the blood to circulate better. She gave a little more scratching and a small piece of the last fingertip, now completely lifeless, broke away and fell to the ground without causing her any pain. James heard the faint noise produced by the little piece that touched the floor and looked at her with his eyes wide open, on the other hand, she spoke again as if she was completely indifferent to that fact as if losing pieces was the most normal thing in the world.