Vigil by Robert Masello Read Free Book Online Page B

give a lecture? Beth will be ecstatic. She’s always looking for an excuse to go to Italy.”
    “No. No lecture. I do that myself.”
    “Okay, I can take no for an answer.” But then why was he calling, and so persistently?
    “Did you not get my package?” Russo asked. “The material I mailed to you with the Federal Express?”
    “No, I haven’t.”
    “I send it to your department office, last week.”
    Shit. “I haven’t picked up my mail for days.”
    The line crackled, but under it Carter could hear Russo cluck.
    “You must get it,” Russo said, “and read it. Soon. It is very important.”
    “I’ll pick it up the minute I leave the lab. What’s in it?”
    Either there was a time delay on the line, or Russo was pondering how to respond. “We have found something here,” he finally said. “Actually, to be true, it was two Americans who found it first—and it is a very . . . interesting find. We will need your help, I think.”
    Russo—a man who’d helped Carter unearth the remains of some of Europe’s earliest inhabitants from the “Well of the Bones” in Sicily—was not a man to make empty pronouncements. And Carter knew that if he claimed something was a “very interesting find,” it meant that something very big might be in the offing. Carter felt a tingle of anticipation in the back of his neck.
    “What do you want me to do? Look over what’s in the package and call you tomorrow?”
    “Yes! My number is on the package. Call me at six in the evening, Rome time. You will want to, my friend,” he said, with a chuckle. “You will not want to wait.”
    Carter could hardly wait right now—and he silently swore to himself that he would never again let his departmental mail back up. As soon as he’d hung up, he put the donated fossils away—force of habit made him do it by the book—then grabbed his jacket and headed for the door.
    Mitchell was just coming in, holding a bag from Burger King. “Whoa, Bones, what’s the rush?”
    “Forgot to pick up something at the office,” Carter said as he squeezed past him.
    “Good luck,” Mitchell said, “they’re probably closed up for the weekend.”
    That was just what Carter dreaded. “You were right, by the way, about the jaw fragment,” he shouted over his shoulder as he turned the corner of the hall. “It is a Smilodon. ”
     
The departmental office was indeed closed up by the time Carter, all but out of breath, managed to get there. Through the glass door, he could actually see his mailbox, the top slot in the wooden cabinet, jammed to bursting—and he could even make out one of those distinctive FedEx envelopes, with its big block lettering, sitting on top of the stack. He rattled the door handle, hoping against hope, but it was locked.
    That’s when he heard the janitor, Hank, plunging his mop into a bucket down the hall.
    “Hank, that you?” he called out, rounding the corner.
    Hank looked up, the mop still in the metal bucket. “What’s up, Professor?”
    “Could you do me a huge favor? Could you unlock the departmental office for me?”
    “You know I’m not supposed to do that.”
    “Yeah, I do, Hank, and I wouldn’t ask you to, but there’s something in there that I absolutely have to have tonight.”
    Hank blew out a gust of air, ran one hand over his bald head, and then rolled the bucket and mop against the wall. “I never did this for you, okay?”
    “Never.”
    Hank trudged to the office door, unlocked it, and waited while Carter grabbed the FedEx envelope, which was thick and heavy, from his mailbox; he checked the return address to make sure it was the right one, and sure enough, it had come from Russo in Rome. “This is what I needed,” Carter said, showing it to Hank. “You’ve saved my life.”
    Hank nodded, locking up the office again. “That’s what I do.”
    All Carter wanted to do next was rip open the envelope and read its contents right there, but it was now close to seven, and he knew he was