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Lauren paced in the narrow cell. Her brain was throbbing in her skull and her body ached. She couldn’t get comfortable sitting or lying, and she was too agitated to do either, so she walked the floor, hoping her headache would abate.
She chewed her thumbnail down to the quick and was no closer to figuring out her plight than she was hours before. A rattle of metal-on-metal grated on her raw nerves. It drew her from her thoughts. She turned on her heel. The detective stood at the door. “Detective Kovač?”
“I just got the lab report back,” he said, signaling the guard to unlock the door. “There was no blood on your shoes, or your clothes.”
“No surprise here.” Lauren forced a smile. “I swear. I’m sure there’s been some kind of mistake.”
“We checked the video camera at the café where you said you were abducted.”
“And?”
“The video shows you sitting down with a cup of tea, but the film appeared to glitch and when it was restored you were gone.”
Of course it did. “If you need proof of where I was, I need my purse.”
“Your purse?”
“I took a tour at a cathedral before I stopped for tea. My ticket is in my purse. I think it had a time and date stamp. It’ll prove I’m not lying. I did not go back to the museum, and I didn’t do whatever it is you think I did.”
“Come with me, Dr. Pierce,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
The door groaned as it swung open. Lauren had to fight the urge to bolt from the cell. She followed him calmly. Lauren was disappointed when he led her back to the room where she’d been questioned earlier.
“Please, be seated.” She wanted to stand but complied with his request. He made a request, rather than a demand. If he was going to offer her any courtesy, she was committed to reciprocate. He took the tablet out from under his arm. “I have seen your work, Dr. Pierce. I suspect you are not easily upset by disturbing images?”
Lauren was a bit taken aback when he set a tablet in front her and cued up a video with a tap. She muttered, “No. Not usually.”
The images came from the security camera system in the museum, and she realized where the earlier screen grabs had come from. She recognized the backdrop at once. The images were relatively clear, considering the source.
The video showed her walking into the museum, shaking out her umbrella. She set it aside as she continued through the front hall into the main gallery. It showed her stop at the painting, then her encounter with the volunteer in the lobby. A second camera view caught her in the hallway headed to the ladies room, and even her spell of sickness. She didn’t remember that part. She certainly didn’t remember being carried by the security guard into the director’s office. It also showed her leaving the museum after she was denied access to the document she’d been summoned to see.
Lauren turned her gaze up to him as he stood watching over her shoulder. “Keep watching.” He nodded as he stood watching her response. A third camera view caught her as she entered the antiquities examination room. The door remained ajar and only part of the room’s interior was visible. A moment later something moved as shadows passed across the doorway inside. Suddenly there was a gush of blood that sprayed across the room with an unreal force. The lights flickered, and even the camera seemed to suffer the same type of failure as the image blinked with interference of some sort.
Everything seemed to go dark. The lights came back on, and it appeared that she walked from the room with a wooden box under her arm. The spectral version of herself even looked at the camera with a wry grin as she stopped at a mirror and ran a thumb across her face, smearing what appeared to be blood across her cheek. Then the camera flickered, and the image froze.
Dots danced in her eyes. She blinked back the euphoria. Her brain knew that it wasn’t her, but she saw it just as clear as anyone else. She knew now why she’d been arrested. “It wasn’t me,” she managed, just before she bolted from the chair and collapsed over the trash can, heaving.
* * *
Detective Kovač made her a cup of hot tea and got her a cool cloth. She sat up from where she lay on a cot in the detective’s lounge. She moved slowly to keep the room from spinning, taking the cup. He sat down in a chair beside her and pressed the cloth to the back of her neck. “I’m very sorry if I upset you,” he said.
“The only thing that upset me was seeing someone who looked like me ... do something like that.” Lauren blew on the hot liquid to cool it, welcoming the warmth that seeped through the Styrofoam to her ice-cold hands. “I don’t know who that woman was. Someone ...someone is trying to make it look like I did ... something I didn’t do.”
“You don’t happen to have a twin sister, do you?” Kovač moved the cloth to the exposed skin on her back. The cool cloth felt good even as she chilled.
“I have brothers,” Lauren said. “But no. No sisters.” Her brother had asked her to treat Kitty Donovan as a sister, and Lauren had, but she was currently assigned to DC to work with the UN on the Great Peace Accord. No one would ever confuse Kitty Donovan for Lauren Pierce.
“Are you sure?” Kovač asked, bringing her out of her thoughts. He tried to laugh, but even Lauren could sense it was an empty joke.
“Yeah, I think I’d know if I had sisters.” She took the cloth from his hand and pressed it to her face, holding her head a moment.
“Better?” he asked when she lowered the cloth and turned her attention back to the tea.
“Yes, thank you.” She took a sip; the tea scalded her tongue. Still, it was comforting.
“Tell me more about these men you said took you from the café? What did they look like?” he asked, looking dubious.
“They didn’t look like cops,” Lauren said. “I have a friend in the FBI. They didn’t look like Feds either, that’s for sure.”
“Describe them,” he said as he stood and walked over to a table nearby. He sat down and took out his note pad and his pen and waited for her to start.
“One was tall, with pale blond hair, pale skin, blue eyes. One was shorter, stockier. Balding. The other was older but slender. He looked more like a teacher or a salesman.”
“How about their clothing?” He jotted notes.
“Pretty nondescript. Dark pants, black shirts ... black jackets.”
“Were their clothes all the same?”
Lauren paused for a moment thinking. “Pretty much.”
“Like a uniform?”
“Perhaps.” She shook her head skeptically. “But not like any uniform I’ve ever seen.”
“How did they speak?”
Lauren shrugged.
“An accent?”
“Maybe, yeah,” Lauren said. Her gift of the ancient All-Language — an ability that helped her understand all human language — made everyone’s speech sound familiar, so she had to really think about accents and vocal mannerisms. “At least one stood out, but I couldn’t place it. But how they spoke was ...very formal now that you mention it. Not Czech ... maybe German or Swiss. Highly educated, at least the one that was the ringleader.”
“Did they say what they wanted?” Kovač was a patient inquisitor.
Lauren told him everything she’d told them to the best of her recollection. She didn’t know why they were interested in her, or how they knew her, or why they wanted to talk to her. She also didn’t know how she’d gotten back to her hotel.
“I think they may have drugged me,” she said. “I was barely awake when you showed up and arrested me.”
“You mentioned that,” he said. “Did you eat or drink anything while you were ...”
“No,” she said. “Not that I remember.”
“Let me see.” He reached for her sleeve and pushed it up her arm, inspecting her skin, looking for signs of a puncture. Lauren rolled up the sleeves of her shirt to aid in the search. “I don’t see anything.”
“Other than a bad case of cottonmouth and a brain-splitting headache, I feel okay.”
“Aside from the morning sickness,” he said, eyeing her as he shook his head sympathetically. “I’m going to have the lab tech come up and draw blood for a tox-screen, just in case; for your safety ... and that of your child.”
Lauren didn’t protest. She realized she hadn’t allowed herself to be concerned for the safety of her child. The fact that whatever they did to her might hurt her baby was more than she could bear to handle at the moment. Thinking on it now left her with a lump in her throat and butterflies in her gut.
“Tell me more about this document, this doctor ...” He paused to look at his notes. “Dr. Masa who brought you here.”
“I’m going to tell you something I didn’t tell those thugs.” Lauren wasn’t sure why, but she felt like she could trust him, even though he seemed to doubt her every word. He was kind enough, even refilling her tea while she talked. “The document was alleged to be a lost page from a book known as the Devil’s Bible.”
The detective looked up from his notebook. The features of his face went perfectly placid. His lip twitched and she noticed he had dark circles under his eyes and his five o’clock shadow seemed to darken with his mood. “The Codex Gigas?”
“So, you’ve heard of it?”
He swallowed hard. “Few here have not.”
“Then you know the legend?”
He nodded and laid his pen down. The detective sat back and crossed his arms, tucking them under his armpits. Taking a deep breath, he said, “And Dr. Masa told you the museum had a missing page?”
Lauren nodded. Clearly his gears were turning. She gave him time to process it.
“Did they have the page?”
“The Director said it was locked up in storage and she’d have to have the archivist bring it up,” Lauren said. “She said it’d take twenty-four hours or so to get it.” Lauren stood and paced a moment. “I was supposed to come back another time. She was going to call.”
Kovač’s brow twitched. “Wonder if they really had it?”
“I don’t have any reason to think they didn’t,” Lauren said.
The detective eyed her for a long moment. “Dr. Pierce, please allow me to apologize for having to bring you in like this. Clearly, we have reason to believe you are involved, but I had to eliminate you as a suspect. While the video is damning, the evidence contradicts everything I’ve seen.” He nodded to the tablet. “Video can be manipulated. I recognize that fact. Completely eliminating DNA evidence from the bottom of a pair of sneakers isn’t that easy, especially for a neophyte. I hope you can understand why we had to arrest you.”
Lauren had done DNA collection and certainly was no neophyte in its preservation, but not so much in the destruction of such evidence. “I do,” Lauren said. She suspected this was a bluff to gain her trust, to get her to share a tidbit of information she wasn’t willing to give up. She wouldn’t fall for it. “So, may I go? I have children at home I need to get back to.”
He reached out and caught her hand, and the look on his face made her sink back to the cot. “Unfortunately, someone wanted us to think you were involved, and if you’re not a suspect ... you could be a target. Clearly, they have no qualms about killing to get what they want, and I can’t leave you in harm’s way. I’m afraid I have no choice but to keep you in protective custody until we are certain that you are not in danger.”
Oh, so he was going to play it that way?