The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (22 page)

“
Sorry. Wish I had. Saw
your name on the sign-in sheet at the little checkroom out
front.”

“
Checkroom?”

“
Well, the... never mind.
Number eight, huh? That’s stupendous, especially for a medical
book.” I paused as a thought struck me. Belatedly. “Would you, by
any chance, be here to see Dr. Wintersong?”

“
Yes. Doctor William
Wintersong here,”—she waved one hand out to her left side in a
puzzling way—“and his fascinating work will be the most important
chapter in my new book. It’s called IFAI—the Mystery and the
Dilemma.”

“
That’s hot. I can see it
moving up the Best-Seller lists. Has it got a subtitle?”

“
I just told you, ‘the
Mystery and the Dilemma.’ The title will be ‘IFAI,’ only the one
word, in big red letters.”

“
Got it. In big red-that’s
even hotter. I can really see it moving up—”

“
But after talking to Dr.
Wintersong here—“she moved her hand out to the left in that
puzzling way again—“I may change the subtitle to ‘the Mystery and
Possible Solution.’”

She went on, saying
something about being vastly encouraged, but I comprehended it not.
Because, after her second puzzling little hand movement, it
occurred to me that she did it each time she mentioned Wintersong’s
name and “here” both at once. So, since her left was my right, I
cranked my head around to my right. Yep. There he was.

Had to be him. Standing
not more than six feet away. How could I have missed him for all
this time, if he’d been standing there eyeballing me all this
time?

It was, however, true. Dr.
William Wintersong stood there, arms folded over his chest,
unmoving, his unmoving eyes fixed on me. And he gazed upon me, I
swear this is true, exactly as that first long-lost Arctic
explorer, dug out of an iceberg by his rescuers, gazed upon them,
and their flying saucer, an instant after he thawed.

“
Ah, be right with you,
doctor,” I said.

Then I cranked my head
around toward lovely Dane Smith—becoming peripherally aware at last
that I was in a large white-walled room, and beyond the immobile
doctor were long tables, lab equipment, cages against the walls,
three other people out there, puttering, and farther left more
tables, cages, curious equipment.

“
Quick,” I said to Dane,
almost whispering, “where may I pick you up? And how’s six
p.m.?”

“
I’m staying at the Halcyon
Hotel. And six will be fine, Mr. Scott.”

“
Shell. Halcyon? Boy, maybe
I should write a book.”

I wasn’t thrilled by the
look she gave me when I said that. But, no matter, she was
gorgeous.

So I continued, “What a
coincidence! That’s where we’re having dinner. Unless you’d
prefer...?”

I heard this curious icy
rumbling, like a frozen explorer running over a distant glacier, as
Wintersong cleared his throat.

“
That would be splendid,
Shell. I’ve been looking forward to dining in the Gourmet Room for
months, but I only arrived in Los Angeles this morning. So this
will be a first for me. I’ll meet you in the Sybaris Lounge, all
right? Till six, then.”

Whereupon she turned,
approached Dr. Wintersong, and by extending her right hand actually
got him to move. As they shook hands she said, “Thank you again,
Doctor. You’ve been very helpful. Very.”

“
It was my great pleasure,
Ms. Smith. I repeat, I am most impressed with your knowledge of
serology, bacteriology, and virology, and your rare understanding
of the fact that science must gamble, take risks—that the true
scientist’s reach must often exceed his grasp—to ensure that the
needs of all mankind may best be served.”

“
I expect to make that
clear in my Doctor William Wintersong Chapter, Doctor
Wintersong.”

Either she was still
hanging onto his damned hand, or else he wouldn’t let go of hers.
Worse, he was gazing upon Dane’s lovely face like a pornographic
microscopist peeking at tiny naked people performing exercises from
the Kama Sutra. Another thing wrong with him, he was the first guy
I’d heard who could pronounce “Ms.” Without making it sound like an
insect landing on a hot light bulb.

But perhaps I was being
unfair. His voice was much lower and more mellifluous than I’d
expected, and he wasn’t an ogre or gnome or cloddish Igor.
Actually, he was a rather pleasant looking man, even
“distinguished.” He was about five-ten or eleven and maybe forty
pounds overweight, with the smooth plump face and expression of
self-satisfied pseudo-benevolence apparently bestowed upon many
physicians along with their medical degrees.

I knew he was forty-nine
years old, surprisingly young for a man of his reported
achievements in medicine and especially in medical research,
recipient of numerous honors and much praise from his peers. I was
almost ready to admit that I was being unjustly negative about the
man when we hadn’t really met, hadn’t exchanged a single word here.
But then Dane wrestled her hand free—or at least got it out of
Wintersong’s—walked to the door, giving me a small wave as she
undulated out. And, deliberately, Dr. William Wintersong shifted
his gaze from her to me.

Well, unless you have seen
a butterfly squeeze back into its cocoon, you would not believe how
remarkably Wintersong’s appearance changed in that moment. He
looked at me for a long second, gave me a quick one-inch nod, then
turned and walked briskly toward what I assumed was his
office.

There was no way,
absolutely no way, for me to understand whether that inch of nod
had been a reluctant invitation or peremptory dismissal. But I
hadn’t come out here just to turn around and go without even saying
hello. So I followed the receding and ample, indeed quite fleshy,
figure of Dr. William Wintersong.

But with my usual bubbling
optimism not noticeably bubbling.

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

I followed Wintersong,
glancing around, getting my first good look at this room behind the
“Director” door since I’d come so speedily into it.

On my right, three people
wearing loose white neck-to-ankle coats worked at two long counters
or workbenches extending toward the far wall. One appeared to be
heating something in a glass retort shaped like a kitchen bowl but
covered by a transparent lid with a spiraling tube rising six feet
into the air, looping over what looked like one-inch plastic pipe
extending from one wall to the other, then spiraling back down to
drip thick amber fluid into an enclosed beaker. The other two
people were washing something in stainless-steel sinks set into the
workbenches. None of them were paying any attention to me now,
though they’d probably noticed my entrance.

On my left a man and
woman, both also wearing those loose white coats, placed food and
drink into two of a dozen or more cages in a solid row against the
wall there. I’d noticed similar cages lining the opposite wall as
well as most of the wall which was the “Director” entrance. They
were sturdy cages of clean and shiny steel, each with grillwork
like a web of thick wires in its hinged door. Behind some of the
grillwork I could see indistinct furry movement like the shifting
of shadow.

Yeah, the cages—and
animals, experimental animals. For a slightly sickening moment I
wondered if this was the room in which Jock-Jock had been battered
and bloodied, battered to death. But I quickly pushed that picture
out of my mind, knowing it shouldn’t be in my thoughts when, or if,
I spent my few scheduled minutes with Wintersong.

He’d gone into a room ten
feet ahead of me, apparently his office, leaving the door partly
open. Two similar solid-wood doors were visible on my left, perhaps
other offices. But there were no offices on the right, just the
gray-painted door—solid steel, Hank had told me—with, as reported,
a slashed red circle painted over the gray and the words:
DANGER—LETHAL RADIATION—DO NOT ENTER. Made me wonder if there could
be a sputtering little nuclear reactor in there.

Then I was stepping past
the partly-open door, which I noted had affixed to it large
stainless-steel letters spelling “DIRECTOR” with below that in
smaller but equally shiny letters the name, “William Wintersong,
M.D.” It was a nice enough little office. Small but appearing
comfortable, even bright. Thick dark-brown carpeting covering the
floor, large abstract paintings on the walls, their garish swirling
oils surprising after all the ark wood and stainless steel I’d
become accustomed to here. In the wall to my right was what
appeared to be a door except that it had no knob or lock or even
one of those punch-code gadgets I’d noticed outside.

And there he sat, the
Director, behind a black desk that was not merely uncluttered but
completely bare except for two black plastic in-and-out baskets, a
square of green stone or maybe even jade holding erect a gold
pen-and-pencil set, and a modernistic-looking clock. To be honest,
I’d liked Hank’s desk better, with its photos and clippings and
papers and ogres.

A single angular
uncomfortable-looking chair was before the black desk. Hoping we
might still get off to a reasonably congenial start here, I seated
myself in the angular chair—which was just as uncomfortable as it
looked—and said pleasantly, “We haven’t exactly met, Dr.
Wintersong, but I’m Shell Scott, and I appreciate your seeing me on
such short notice. Also, sorry I was a bit late.”

Wintersong opened his
mouth, and for a long second or two appeared to be wagging some
kind of small internal battle with himself. Then he closed his
mouth and bestowed upon me a thin smile. Any thinner and it would
have involved only one lip.

But his voice was
reasonably pleasant as he said, “Yes, unquestionably you were late,
Mr. Scott, a fault I normally find inexcusable, not merely
reprehensible. However, it was evident that you were not
dawdling.”

I laughed, thinking maybe
this guy wasn’t so rigidly unyielding as I’d supposed. But it was
evident that Wintersong shared little—more accurately, none—of my
amusement.

“
You are the private
investigator employed by Doctor Hernandez.” I nodded and started to
say yes, but that hadn’t been a question. This egg clearly wasted
no time on pleasantries.

Oddly, at that moment the
clock on Wintersong’s desk caught my attention again. It was small,
square-the only real curves I’d seen in this place had been on Dane
Smith—with a black face and white numbers. What struck me as
interesting was that the clock had been turned so that, while
Wintersong would be unable to see its face, I or anybody else
sitting here couldn’t miss it. Thus I was unable not to notice that
the time was 2:36 p.m. And it had a sweeping second hand counting
down the seconds. Which meant, almost surely, that I had only four
minutes left, no more.

I said quickly, “Doctor
Hernandez asked me to talk with the Vungers but I can’t locate
them. They aren’t at their home—haven’t been for several days—and I
really don’t know where else to look for them. Since they worked
here for you, until they got canned, I thought you might be able to
give me a lead. Names of associates, friends, people they worked
with here, maybe relatives listed in your files. Former address,
almost anything might help.”

“
There is no such
information available here, no names of friends or relatives,
nothing that would be of assistance to you.”

“
You’re
kidding.”

He didn’t speak, but
continued to gaze at me with eyes like glass. No, he wasn’t
kidding; maybe lying, but not kidding. And that steady gaze of his
gave me a slightly uncomfortable feeling. Usually I’m aware of
eyes, their appearance, or “expression” if there is such a thing,
in men and women, particularly women. Dane, for example. Those very
large eyes of hers were soft, bright, the liquidly luminous green
that mermaids must swim through at the bottom of emerald seas. I’d
never known any man’s eyes to be more glowing and fiery than
Hank’s, especially when he became exercised or was feverishly
determined to make a point I could actually grasp and hang onto.
And Grinner: the image of those tiny snakes coiling and squirming
had risen in imagination automatically. But from William
Wintersong, M.D., nothing.

I was looking straight
into his slate-gray eyes, and it was as though there was nothing in
them other than that visible grayness, nothing else, no fire or
fury or even ice. It was a little crazy, of course, but I got the
momentary impression of eyes behind which nothing at all, as if the
man’s brain had been removed from his skull leaving only emptiness
there, emptiness behind that slate-gray stillness of eyes like
glass.

But then Wintersong raised
a brow and said, “Immediately following your telephone call, I had
the records of Mr. and Mrs. Vunger brought to me, in preparation
for your two-thirty p.m. appointment.” He reached into the upper
right drawer of his desk and took out a thick sheaf of papers,
glanced over the first page and two or three others. “I have them
here. And there is in them no information that would assist you in
finding the Vungers.”

“
May I look at those
records, Doctor?”

He shook his head. “The
information is confidential. Nearly everything done here is at
least confidential, much of the research work classified, top
secret. I assume you know we here at Omega do important, and
necessarily secret, work for a number of government agencies, the
National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, Department of Defense, others.”