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“Hold on. Hold on,” he said.
I kept running. He stepped directly into my path and spread his arms wide.
“Hold on, Dr. Brockton. Wait just a minute.”
I tried to sidestep him, but he was too quick. He wrapped both arms around me.
“I can’t let you in there until I know it’s safe,” he said.
I struggled to break free of his grip. “I’ve got to check on Miranda,” I said. “I have to see about her.”
“Dr. Brockton, listen up now. You have got to calm down. You have got to stop struggling, or I will handcuff you, sir. Do you understand me?” He gave me a powerful squeeze. He was no taller than I was, but he was twenty years younger and probably outweighed me by forty pounds, all of it muscle. “Dr. Brockton, please don’t make me handcuff you. Do you understand me?”
I went limp. “Yes,” I said. “I understand. Tell me what’s going on. Is Miranda in there?”
“We do have someone in there,” he said. “I don’t know the status. If I can turn loose of you, I’ll radio and ask what’s going on and if it’s all right for you to come in.”
“Please,” I said.
“Have you got ahold of yourself?” he asked. “If I let you go, you’re not gonna go charging in there to be a hero, are you?”
“No,” I said. “If you turn me loose, I’ll step back so you can make the radio call.”
It wasn’t until he released me, and I was able to breathe again, that I realized how hard he’d been holding me.
He pressed the “transmit” button on his radio. “This is Markham,” he said. “I’ve got Dr. Brockton out here, just outside the basement door. Is it all right if he comes in there now?”
The answer came into his earpiece, so I couldn’t hear it, but he nodded and motioned me in. I broke into a run, but he quickly called, “Walk! Don’t run! We’ve got officers with weapons. You go running in, they’re liable to shoot you.”
I forced myself to slow to a walk. When I reached the metal door leading into the building, I heard Markham say, “He’s coming in the door right now.” A second officer was standing in the stairwell between the exterior door and the bone lab’s door. The metal door to the lab was propped open-a disconcerting sight, as we always kept it closed. The door was steel, fitted with a small window that was kept covered by a piece of paper so no one could look inside. The paper was gone. So was the glass. A smear of blood ran down the door, reaching halfway to the floor.
I stared around the bone lab, wild-eyed. Two uniformed officers stood to my left, by the desks and the tables where graduate students worked. To the right was the storage area that held row on row of boxed Native American skeletons-several thousand of them-stacked on shelves three feet deep.
An EMT backed out of the aisle between the rows of shelves, pulling a gurney with him. A motionless figure lay on the gurney; beneath a sheet I saw the contours of feet, legs, torso. I’d seen that body nearly every day for years now in various postures-sitting, standing, crawling on all fours, bending over to pluck a bone from the ground. I’d never seen it lying motionless, but I recognized it instantly as Miranda’s.
“Dear God,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”
“It’s about time you got here.” Miranda sat up partway, propping herself on her elbows.
“Jesus,” I breathed, “Miranda! Are you okay? You’re hurt? What happened?”
“Could you repeat the questions one at a time? On second thought, never mind. I’m okay-I think it’s just a sprained ankle-but there’s a guy out there I don’t want a second date with.”
“Who? Tell me. Tell me everything.”
“I was putting measurements into the data bank, over at that table by the windows, using the digitizing probe. I’d just gotten to that really huge skull, and I was halfway through the cranial measurements when I got a creepy feeling, like maybe somebody was watching me. I looked up, but all I could see was my own reflection.”
“Remind me to get some floodlights put in outside tomorrow,” I said. “Or a video camera. Or an electric fence.”
“I went back to measuring,” she said, “but a minute later I heard the outside door open and close. I was jumpy already, so I listened closely for the sound of someone going up the steps to the second floor. Nothing. I turned around to look and listen, and I saw a shadow fall across the piece of paper covering the little window in the door. I got a really bad feeling, and it got worse when the knob started to turn, very slowly-first one way, then the other-and the door started rattling and shaking as somebody pulled on the knob.
“I yelled, ‘We’re closed!’ and the door just started shaking harder. ‘I’m calling the police!’ I said, and it shook even harder. I picked up the phone and dialed 911, but right then the glass shattered and an arm reached through the window.
“That’s when I panicked. He was coming in the only door to the lab. I thought about trying to get out one of the front windows, but I figured he’d hear me and run back outside just as I got there. I decided I’d have a better chance if I turned out the light and hid in the shelves in the back.”
“Do you know who it was? Did you see the guy’s face?”
“No.” She frowned, almost as if she were angry at herself. “All I could see was a man’s hand. Long-sleeved denim shirt. Surgical gloves.”
“Excuse me?” It was one of the EMTs. Miranda and I both looked at him, startled. I’d been so caught up in the story I’d forgotten there were other people in the room. “How do you know it was a man’s hand, if it was gloved?”
Miranda looked exasperated. “I’ve only measured a zillion male and female hands over the past four years,” she said. A zillion was an exaggeration, but only a slight one. “I can tell the difference at fifty yards.” That, I felt sure, was not an exaggeration.
I pointed to the smear of blood on the door. “That’s not yours, is it?”
“No,” she said, with obvious satisfaction. “That’s his.”
“Good. The crime lab shouldn’t have any trouble getting DNA out of that.”
“I’ll claim credit for getting the sample,” she said.
I looked at her quizzically.
“When I jumped up to turn out the light, I grabbed a femur that was lying on the table. Just as he got the dead bolt open, I gave him a good whack on the arm. Must have forced his arm down onto the broken glass.” Her coolness astonished me. “If his humerus isn’t fractured, he’s at least got one hell of a bruise.”
“Probably two,” I corrected. “One where you whacked him and one where his arm hit the door.” She grinned, and I marveled at her bravery.
“But that didn’t scare him off?”
“I wish. By then he was yanking the door open. I flipped off the light switch and ran toward the back of the lab.”
My heart was pounding. “God,” I said, “I know it turns out okay, and I’m still scared to death.”
“If you’re not peeing your pants, you’re not as scared as I was,” she said. She pointed down at the blue sheet covering her, and I saw a damp stain at the center. “Last time I peed my pants was in first grade,” she said, “on the swings after school one day. My m
om was late picking me up, and I was too shy to go inside and ask Mrs. Downey if I could use the bathroom. I couldn’t think what to do, so I just sat there, swinging back and forth, dribbling arcs of pee on the bare dirt of the playground.”
The image of six-year-old Miranda peeing on the swing set broke the spell of fear, and I reached out and squeezed her shoulder. “So tell me the rest.”
