of the damage, I believe we’re looking for a pointed object with a diameter of about three centimeters that is probably between two and four feet long.”
“My brother was killed with a spear?”
The pathologist pointed to the plastic evidence bag on the counter between them.
“That isn’t even the really strange part.”
Jack looked more closely at the white sliver of material in the bag.
“This fragment was found lodged in a paraspinous muscle—the muscles surrounding the spine. From our spectrographic and chem analysis, we believe it’s a fragment of pure ivory. Which is why I thought maybe you could help us figure out where it came from.”
“Why me?”
“The chem analysis seems to indicate that this ivory is older than anything I’ve ever seen in my lab before. Too old for me to even date with anything available to me here. I’m going to send it out for analysis—but I was hoping you might have some idea where it came from.”
“You’re saying that my brother was killed by a spear made out of extremely old ivory.”
The use of ivory dated back to prehistoric times; nearly every ancient culture had utilized the tusks of elephants in art, religious artifacts, and in weaponry. But the idea that some sort of ivory weapon had been used to kill his brother—it was beyond conception.
Jack shook his head.
“My brother was a computer scientist. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to kill him—or where this ivory came from.”
The doctor thanked him for his time and offered his condolences. Jack was barely listening as the man retrieved the evidence bag and headed back across the lab. A mixture of emotions was rising inside of Jack. Sadness at the loss of a brother, guilt that he’d never had the chance to fix their relationship—and most powerful of all, anger that Jeremy had died in such a violent, terrible way.
There was nothing Jack could do about the first two emotions—but the anger was something he intended to use.
CHAPTER FIVE
Clambering two stories down a steel-framed emergency ladder in an elevator shaft on the MIT campus was a hell of a lot easier than rappelling down an aluminum thread in a nearly bottomless pit beneath a dig site in Turkey. For one thing, Jack didn’t have to worry about Andy Chen braying in his ear. Instead of a crash helmet, Jack was fogging up the transparent plastic face shield of a Level B hazmat suit. And Andy was safely camped out in the utility closet in the Infinite Corridor with the floppy-haired sophomore who’d led them to the ventilation access point to the shaft and loaned Jack the biohazard suit.
Even in the cramped quarters of the elevator shaft, the suit was surprisingly comfortable. The thick white material covered his entire body, sealed at the wrists, neck, and ankles beneath his boots. The oxygen tank on his back, hanging from an oversize black backpack, was only a quarter full, but Jack wasn’t worried about suffocating; he’d opened the valve on the suit’s respirator. It was one thing to stay in character, but there was no need to go overboard.
The kid with the floppy hair hadn’t had any trouble lifting the suit from the biology lab where he was working on a master’s that had something todo with a modified form of smallpox—though Jack didn’t really want to know anymore, since he was now breathing the guy’s recycled air. Jack didn’t love that they were relying on the help of a nineteen-year-old, no matter how smart he was, or how many proteins he’d named in just his second year at MIT. Like Andy, he was just a kid. But he’d also known about the utility closet that had shared a wall with the elevator shaft, and how to get through the ventilation panel that bypassed the elevator’s security desk, which had been taken over by a pair of officers from the Boston Police Department.
Jack took the last three rungs on the ladder, then dropped to the cement floor, directly across the shaft from the interior of the doors that
“My brother was killed with a spear?”
The pathologist pointed to the plastic evidence bag on the counter between them.
“That isn’t even the really strange part.”
Jack looked more closely at the white sliver of material in the bag.
“This fragment was found lodged in a paraspinous muscle—the muscles surrounding the spine. From our spectrographic and chem analysis, we believe it’s a fragment of pure ivory. Which is why I thought maybe you could help us figure out where it came from.”
“Why me?”
“The chem analysis seems to indicate that this ivory is older than anything I’ve ever seen in my lab before. Too old for me to even date with anything available to me here. I’m going to send it out for analysis—but I was hoping you might have some idea where it came from.”
“You’re saying that my brother was killed by a spear made out of extremely old ivory.”
The use of ivory dated back to prehistoric times; nearly every ancient culture had utilized the tusks of elephants in art, religious artifacts, and in weaponry. But the idea that some sort of ivory weapon had been used to kill his brother—it was beyond conception.
Jack shook his head.
“My brother was a computer scientist. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to kill him—or where this ivory came from.”
The doctor thanked him for his time and offered his condolences. Jack was barely listening as the man retrieved the evidence bag and headed back across the lab. A mixture of emotions was rising inside of Jack. Sadness at the loss of a brother, guilt that he’d never had the chance to fix their relationship—and most powerful of all, anger that Jeremy had died in such a violent, terrible way.
There was nothing Jack could do about the first two emotions—but the anger was something he intended to use.
CHAPTER FIVE
Clambering two stories down a steel-framed emergency ladder in an elevator shaft on the MIT campus was a hell of a lot easier than rappelling down an aluminum thread in a nearly bottomless pit beneath a dig site in Turkey. For one thing, Jack didn’t have to worry about Andy Chen braying in his ear. Instead of a crash helmet, Jack was fogging up the transparent plastic face shield of a Level B hazmat suit. And Andy was safely camped out in the utility closet in the Infinite Corridor with the floppy-haired sophomore who’d led them to the ventilation access point to the shaft and loaned Jack the biohazard suit.
Even in the cramped quarters of the elevator shaft, the suit was surprisingly comfortable. The thick white material covered his entire body, sealed at the wrists, neck, and ankles beneath his boots. The oxygen tank on his back, hanging from an oversize black backpack, was only a quarter full, but Jack wasn’t worried about suffocating; he’d opened the valve on the suit’s respirator. It was one thing to stay in character, but there was no need to go overboard.
The kid with the floppy hair hadn’t had any trouble lifting the suit from the biology lab where he was working on a master’s that had something todo with a modified form of smallpox—though Jack didn’t really want to know anymore, since he was now breathing the guy’s recycled air. Jack didn’t love that they were relying on the help of a nineteen-year-old, no matter how smart he was, or how many proteins he’d named in just his second year at MIT. Like Andy, he was just a kid. But he’d also known about the utility closet that had shared a wall with the elevator shaft, and how to get through the ventilation panel that bypassed the elevator’s security desk, which had been taken over by a pair of officers from the Boston Police Department.
Jack took the last three rungs on the ladder, then dropped to the cement floor, directly across the shaft from the interior of the doors that
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