“People talk, you know.” She again tapped the skull. “Take a look.”
I felt unduly cautious in that moment. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly caused the hairs on my neck to stand up. A lot of folks knew about my issue with lights. Whether or not they understood the particulars of achromatopsia or any of the symptoms beyond light sensitivity, many seemed to at least be aware that I was not like most people. I had limitations, with sometimes curious workarounds, but I wasn’t particularly anxious these days about people knowing. People staring. In fact, the more who understood achromatopsia, the better. Maybe that way there’d be a cure before I died an old man, having never experienced the fiery red of Calvin’s hair.
Asquith smiled, pointed at my eyes, then at the skull. “My bones are down here,” she teased.
I hesitantly gave the skull my undivided attention. Daniel looked like Cope. And with the exception of Cope’s discoloration due to age and storage, bones were bones were bones. Frankly, it had a way of humbling a man.
“I don’t see any sort of damage,” I said to Asquith. I put a finger in either socket and felt along the edges for where an untrained hand would have gouged into bone while severing an eyeball. But I couldn’t find any cuts or nicks. I stopped manhandling the skull and put it on the gurney. “Is this a trick question?”
Asquith laughed. “Yeah. There are zero cuts to the bone,” she said before giving Quinn a leveled look.
“What’s that mean, then?” Quinn asked quickly.
“It means, I suspect whoever did the cutting had a very sharp instrument and knew how to use it,” Asquith said.
I FELTlike I’d been kicked in the chest.
It was hard to breathe—impossible to speak.
All of my sleuthing, researching, interviewing… in the blink of an eye, none of it mattered anymore. Because I couldn’t argue with scientific evidence. It was like telling Neil the fingerprint he lifted wasn’t actually a fingerprint. It didn’t work that way.
Life in a modern, industrialized, urban environment didn’twork that way.
Dr. Asquith had shown me forensic proof that the hand responsible for removing Daniel’s eye and teeth had gone to medical school. She explained, while showing us original photographs taken by Neil, that even the severing of the neck was precise and professional.
“They knew exactly what they were doing,” she’d said.
Which would mean the same for all the other body parts strewn across New York City.
And that… Rossi was not our guy and Dr. Gould was not his assistant.
I was left with a long-lost skull, no way in which to deliver it to the Collector, no suspect to punch in the fucking face, and a fiancé who, because of me, wasn’t going to see the sun rise tomorrow. I felt absolutely dead and rotting inside.
Crouching, I grabbed the handle on the woven metal gate of the Emporium and lifted it up and over my head. I took out my keys, unlocked the front door, and leaned inside to tap in the security code. I turned and stared at Quinn, who was standing a step back from the storefront.
“I’ll call Wainwright,” she said. “Tell him how much time is left…. Have him expedite information from Telecom on that burner number.”
I nodded.
“I’ll try the courier angle one more time,” Quinn continued. “No one was ever able to describe the courier beyond it being a woman… there were no receipts… but there’s still shady, cheap companies operating like that. Collector probably sought them out specifically.”
Again, I nodded. Had I not stopped nodding after acknowledging her first comment?
“It’s not over yet, Sebastian,” she said.
Yes, it was.
“Sure,” I said thickly.
Quinn pointed at the shop. “Stay here. I’ll call you soon.” She walked back to her car, parked on the side of the road.
I stepped into the shop, gently closing the door behind me. My dark, silent cave was a microcosm of serenity among a world of chaos. Maybe if I never left, if I isolated myself from all of humanity inside this time capsule, I’d survive. Heartbroken, lonely, devastated, and a shell of the man I’d become… but I’d survive.
I trudged through the congested aisles toward the counter.
But what sort of life was that?
What was the sense of existence without…existing?
