There was no way I could carry him out like this.Maybewith Neil’s help, but not in the sort of condition Calvin was in. He was dehydrated, overdosed, and in shock from the cold.
I don’t know how in hell Asquith managed to drag him inside. Unless she’d quite literally…dragged him. In which case, God only knew how many bumps, bruises, or possible breaks he may have had.
I got down beside Calvin again as I pulled out my cell phone to call Neil. The light on Calvin’s face shifted, as if someone had stepped past the windows from farther behind me. Jesus, Neil had been fast.
I lowered my phone. “Neil. I found him!”
“Mr. Sebastian!”
The shudder that rippled through my body was as if someone had just taken a step over my grave. Even Calvin cracked open an eye and turned his head toward the voice.
Asquith stepped out from the shadows along the brick wall. Had she been here the entire time? Hiding in perfect darkness and watching everything I’d done?
She leaned over, her hands on her knees. “I believe you have something for me.”
I didn’t take my eyes off her, instead reached behind me and blindly felt around until I’d touched Cope. I stuck my fingers into his eye sockets and held out the skull. “Here. Edward Drinker Cope’s skull. Game is played; mystery is solved.”
She whistled and quickly snatched the skull. “Wowie. This is pretty incredible. I have a collection he’s going into. Now, Iknowwhat you’re thinking, ‘You’re a medical examiner, of course you have some super creepy display of human body parts!’” She chuckled, snapped on a flashlight in her hand, and examined Cope. “I have a fragment of Lincoln’s skull—it was removed when doctors attempted to treat his wound. A brain section of Albert Einstein—”
“Those are in a museum,” I retorted.
“Yeah,” she chuckled. “And they’re missing one.”
Asquith raised the light directly at me. I winced and blocked the beam with my hand.
“I don’townit, sadly, but I did travel to St. Petersburg to see Rasputin’s penis. It’s pretty neat. Still has hair on the sac.”
She lowered the light. Spots danced in my line of vision, and I hastily blinked them away.
Asquith straightened her posture. “But Cope. I’ve wanted to meet him my entire life. He donated his brain and skull to science, as a bet.” She held Cope as if he were Yorick. “To prove even in death that he was superior to Marsh. He wanted their brains weighed and measured.” She looked at the two of us and explained, “He was super racist. A true congenital prick. Marsh never did take him up on that bet. So Cope was sitting on a shelf in UPenn for a hundred years. And then some selfishmotherfuckertook him so I never had the opportunity to visit him in medical school. I have been searching for Cope ever since.”
I got to my feet but froze when Asquith shifted the flashlight and skull to one hand and removed a small compact pistol from her coat pocket. I slowly raised my hands. “Please let me get Calvin out of here. He needs medical attention.”
Asquith grinned widely. “Did you like the puzzle?”
I heard Calvin slump to the floor behind me, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Asquith. “If you tracked down Dover on your own, you must have seen the skull in his apartment. It was sitting right out in the open.”
She nodded solemnly. “I did. I could have taken it then and there. But these museums, so chock-full of useless administrators and self-centered curators, were more concerned over passing the blame for who lost Cope instead offindinghim. They needed to reevaluate their priorities.”
“So you started with Frank.”
“Sure!” Asquith agreed. “I read about the visiting exhibit. That’s how I figured out UPenn wasfinallyin a frenzy over Cope. And Frank Newell should have gotten the puzzle immediately. The clues were so obvious, and he was a paleontologist, for Christ’s sake! He should haveknownthe story of Cope’s skull. If he’d actually cared at all, he’d have gone to visit UPenn like me, to find it not available in their artifacts catalog!”
Calvin was dragging himself along the floor. It pained me not to look, not to check on him.
Asquith didn’t seem concerned about his movements. “Frank was a loser. And that intern. He wanted a doctorate, right? He should haveknown.”
I swallowed hard. “He was a kid in love.”
“He should have been in love with learning,” Asquith chastised. She showed me those pearly whites in another huge unnerving grin. “Likeyou, Mr. Sebastian. Owner of the popular one-stop shop for Victorian gizmos and gadgets. Smart, sassy,sexy, if some people are to be believed.” She added the third comment as if it were a scandalous secret between us. “And after that Moving Image case—seeing the things you could do. The dangers you would face. Oh, I knew. Iknewyou cared.”
“I cared for Calvin.”
She shrugged and cocked the hammer on her gun. “Whatever. You still played. Do you feel smarter? Did your ego get sufficiently stroked?”
I opened my mouth. To say what, I didn’t know. I was trying to accept the fact that I was about to be shot again. And with a cheap, dangerous gun like that, I wouldn’t live.
But at least I’d seen Calvin one more—
