“There have been strangers in the building the last couple days,” she told him.
“I know,” he said. Some of them may even have been here to visit you. Glad of the weight of the gun in his jacket pocket. Trust wasn’t something Finch gave up lightly. But he was willing to give it up.
“Why do you think they’re here?”
“No idea.” Not entirely true.
The water had receded for the moment. Leaving odd marks on the floor and walls beyond the main room that gave evidence of tides and eddies. Remains of minerals. Remains of books that hadn’t survived. A broom leaning against the wall, used to sweep away water. The stacks and stacks of books. That odd darkness of a tunnel leading … where? And where did she sleep?
Rathven took two books from an old sofa chair. Put them on the table. An old oil lamp flickered across the books, which were tattered and stained. Mold and worms had been at them. A thick mustiness made Finch sneeze. The gray caps’ ridiculous list lay sprawled beneath the table.
She asked him to sit. He didn’t like that the chair was so comfortable. Felt like he could fall asleep in it. Wanted to ask, in a conversational way, “So, did a man named Bosun visit you? Maybe a man named Stark?” But didn’t. That conversation could wait. As for warning her, she had plenty of reasons to be careful already.
She pulled up an old wooden chair. Turned it around, leaning her arms against the back. Looking tense. Unsettled. The straight, unflinching stare she gave him undermined by quick glances toward the tunnel. Was she expecting someone to appear?
“Do you need tea or coffee?” she asked. He only liked tea now for some reason, but wanted neither at the moment.
“I’m tired, Rath. I’m not in the mood. What did you find out?”
Rathven winced. “Just the information, right?”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, feeling he’d insulted her. “Something’s wrong.”
She stared at him with those large hazel eyes. “You’re not going to like what I found out.”
Finch laughed. Until the tears came. Doubled over in the grip of the chair. “I’m not going to like what you found out? I’m not going to like it?”
Glanced over, wiping at his face with his sleeve. Saw her confusion.
“Rath, I haven’t learned anything I liked since Monday. There’s nothing about this case that I’ve found likable. Nothing. This morning I went out to interrogate a suspect and came back without my socks, my shoes, or my gun.”
That brought a curling half smile, but her eyes were still wary. As if the idea was both funny and horrible to her. “Your socks? Walking around in your bare feet? In Ambergris?”
He nodded. Sobered. “So, what did you find out?”
A deep breath from Rathven. She looked like a creature used to being in motion stopped in midstride. Asked a fundamental question about its own existence.
“Yesterday, I read all of the names on your list. That took a long time. Then I made a much shorter list of any names I recognized.”
“Like?”
“People with any historical significance. I didn’t recognize anyone I knew personally. But there were a few names from the past. A minor novelist. A sculptor. A woman who was a noted engineer. I thought I’d look them up in various histories. See if they had connections to anyone in the present.”
“A long shot.” But he admired her for having a process.
“Yes. At the same time, I also started checking names from the past thirty years with what city records still exist. But I didn’t get far.”
“Why?”
Rathven leaned forward, balancing on two chair legs. “Because I came across information about one of the names on the list. Someone who lived in that apartment a long time ago.”
“Who?”
Rathven said the name. It meant nothing to him, but rang in his head like a gunshot.
“Duncan Shriek,” he repeated. “Who was he?”
“Good question. It took some research, but I thought I’d heard the name before. Not sure where. I had to borrow a couple of books to find out.”
“And?”
She seemed reluctant to answer, which made Finch reluctant, too. As if he needed her to go slow to protect himself. From a feeling that had begun to creep up from his stomach.
Tightening his chest.
She sucked in her breath, continued: “And I did—I found out a lot about him. Shriek was a fringe historian. He had some radical ideas about the Silence. About the gray caps. They wouldn’t seem radical to us now. They’d seem mostly right. But by the time anyone would’ve been able to see that, he was gone. Disappeared. Over a hundred years ago.”
Suddenly, Finch felt disappointed in her.
“What’s the connection to the here and now? How does this help me?”
Rathven leaned back again. “Take a look at the two books on the table.”
The feeling in his stomach got worse. Finch looked at her. Looked at the table. Back at her. Straightened in the sofa chair. Picked up the books gently. Felt the dust on his hands.
Turned to the title page of the first. Shriek: An Afterword, written by Janice Shriek with Duncan Shriek.
“Janice? His wife?” A strange emotion was rising now, unconnected to the feeling of dread. A formless sadness. A watchfulness.
“No,” Rathven said in a flat tone. “No. His sister.”
“Is it fiction? Nonfiction?”
“A kind of memoir by Janice with comments by Duncan. She was an art gallery owner. A major sponsor of many artists back then. She went missing, and so did her brother. Both around the same time. But it’s the other one you really need to look at.”
Finch put down Shriek: An Afterword, picked up the other book. “Cinsorium & Other Historical Fables,” he read. “By Duncan Shriek.” Felt a twinge of irritation or resentment. Couldn’t she get to the point?
“Look at the inside back cover. Of the dust jacket,” Rathven said.
Turned to the back. Found the author’s photo staring out at him. A confusion overtook him that snuffed out rational thought.
The man could’ve been forty-five or fifty, with dark brown hair, dark eyebrows, and a beard that appeared to be made from tendrils of fungus.
“Fuck.”
The man laughed again. Blindingly, unbelievably bright, a light like the sun shot through the window. The night sky torn apart by it.
The photo was ancient. Stained. Falling apart. But it didn’t lie. The face in the back of the book matched the face of the dead man in the apartment.
Light-headed. Cold. He sat back in the chair, the books in his lap. Cinsorium closed so he didn’t have to look at the photo. Never lost.
“When did he live there? Show me the entry.”
Rathven reached down to get the list. “It’s already folded right to it.” Handed it to him.
SHRIEK, DUNCAN, OCCUPANCY 17 MONTHS, 5 DAYS, 15 HOURS, 4 MINUTES, 56 SECONDS—WRITER AND HISTORIAN; LEFT SUDDENLY, DISAPPEARED AND PRESUMED DEAD.
“That’s impossible,” Finch said, letting the list slither out of his hands to the floor. “That’s impossible.”
Felt exposed. Vulnerable like never before. The semiautomatic at his side was no protection at all. Stark, lips drawn back in a leer. Bosun and his psychotic carvings. Bliss as a young F&L agent staggering across the Kalif’s desert. A dead man talking to him, flanked by a cat and a lizard.