Vigil by Robert Masello Read Free Book Online Page A

America?”
    “Continue with my work.”
    That again. “And what is that, exactly?”
    “Research.”
    “And you can do that research here? You don’t need to go back to Israel, or someplace?”
    “No.”
    Kimberly’s heart sank. This kid—the exact same age as her brother Wayne, though Wayne could cream him with a single punch—might be planning to hang around the house indefinitely. And that was going to put more than a crimp in her style; if she wasn’t careful, it was going to put a major dent.
    “Oh, wow,” she said, “that’s some news.”
    Ezra gave her a wry smile, and said, “I bet it is.”

FIVE
    This afternoon, the atmosphere in the lab was more to Carter’s liking. No Bill Mitchell, no Eminem on the boombox, no one else hogging the electron microscope. Carter was seldom happier than when he had something new to study, to analyze and classify and figure out what it was. Even when he was a kid, he’d been that way. The day he knew his calling in life was the day his parents built a family room onto the back of the house, and the bulldozer, which had just dug a deep trench as part of the foundation, scooped up a rusty spoon and some bone shards from the earth. You’d have thought it had come up with rubies and pearls. Carter, ten years old at the time, raced to school the next morning to show the specimens to the science teacher, who had been singularly unimpressed. But his classmates had shared in his enthusiasm—especially when he suggested to them that the bones were old enough to be a dinosaur’s (never mind where the spoon came from)—and from that day forward, he’d had the nickname “Bones.” That’s what his friends had started to call him, and he’d actually kind of liked it; even now he knew that his students sometimes referred to him among themselves as Professor Bones.
    The specimens that had been sent to him for identification were a hodgepodge—no wonder the university wanted some help—and whoever had donated the collection must have assembled them in a variety of ways. One was indeed a fossilized fragment of jawbone from a Smilodon —the aptly named saber-toothed cat of the Ice Age—and most of the others were fragments of saurian tibia and tarsal. Not badly preserved as fossils go, but also nothing to write home about. Another hour or two and Carter could finish the job, complete his report, and move on to more challenging work.
    As long as the phone stopped ringing.
    It had rung earlier, and kept ringing, but Carter hadn’t stopped working to answer it. The only person who knew he was there was the department secretary, and she’d just take a message for him and leave it in his in-box—along with the mail that he just remembered he hadn’t picked up for three days.
    Now it was ringing again, and although he wanted to let it go—it was probably just Bill Mitchell, checking to see if anyone else was in the lab, moving ahead of him on the tenure track—he knew it would only ring again, ten minutes later, and break his concentration all over again. He got up from the stool, stretched, and walked across the room to the wall phone. He got it on the fifth or sixth ring.
    “Lab, Carter speaking.”
    “Carter Cox?” The connection wasn’t great, but he could already guess who was speaking. Dr. Giuseppe—Joe, to his American friends—Russo.
    “Russo? Joe Russo?”
    “Yes! The secretary, she told me you would be there. I have been calling.”
    “Where are you calling me from? The line is bad—can I call you back?”
    “No, no, my friend. Now that I’ve got you, I do not want to let you go.”
    “It must be important for you to pay for the call.”
    Russo laughed—it had been a running gag on the dig site in Sicily, where they’d met, that Russo had no money in his budget for anything, even food and water.
    “I have the job now, at the University of Rome.”
    “Congratulations! That’s great.”
    “That is why I am calling.”
    “You want me to come and