“Poor you,” she says, but it’s a bad attempt at their usual amiable raillery.
“I have a bad feeling about this, Ba. I think I’m going to come home.”
“Jerome, no!”
“Jerome yes. I’ll see what I can get for a flight. If she turns up before I get on a plane, call me or shoot me a text.”
“What about your glitzy weekend in Montauk? You might get a chance to meet Spielberg!”
“I didn’t like his last two movies, anyway. She seemed fine when I talked to her yesterday, but…” He trails off, but goes on before she can speak: “It might be the case. The Dahl woman left me a message, too. She sounded really worried. Hols could have run across the wrong person investigating Bonnie’s disappearance. And the others. Now there’s this guy Castro from nine or ten years ago, add him to the list.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.” All Barbara knows for sure is that Holly would never have parked that way. It’s sloppy, and sloppy is one thing Holly isn’t.
“Have you tried calling the office?”
“Yes. On the way over. Voicemail.”
“Maybe you should go there. Make sure she isn’t… I don’t know.”
But Barbara knows. Make sure she isn’t dead.
“We’re probably jumping at shadows, J. There might be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this, and you’ll be flying home for nothing.”
“Check the office. Just, if you find her before I get on a plane, let me know.”
She leaves and hurries back down the stairs.
As Barbara is talking to her brother in Holly’s empty apartment, Rodney Harris is on his porch, planning the letter he will write to Gut, an important journal dedicated to gastroenterology and hepatology. In the latest issue, Roddy has read a perfectly absurd paper by George Hawkins, about the relationship he claims to have discovered between the pylorus and Crohn’s disease. Hawkins—a PhD, no less!—has totally misrepresented papers written by Myron DeLong and… and that other fellow, whose name Roddy can’t recall at the moment. Hawkins’s conclusions are thus completely wrong.
Roddy munches from his supply of deep-fried Elf Balls, relishing the crunch as he bites down. My response will destroy him, he thinks contentedly.
He recalls that they have a prisoner in the basement. He can’t remember her name, but he does remember the look of horror on her face when Em told her how they had managed to keep the worst depredations of old age at bay. The idea of knocking down her foolish prejudices one by one pleases him almost as much as writing the letter to Gut that will knock down Professor George Hawkins’s flimsy house of cards. He has forgotten Emily’s command to stay out of the basement. Even if he had recalled it, he would have dismissed it as foolish. The woman is in a cage, for God’s sake!
He gets up and goes into the house, tossing another Elf Ball into his mouth as he does. They have a wonderfully clarifying effect.
Holly creaks to her feet as Harris descends to the basement. She’s wondering if this is it, how it ends. He comes to the foot of the stairs and just stands there for a moment. Off in his own universe. He’s still wearing his robe and pajamas. He takes something brown and round from the pocket of his robe and tosses it into his mouth. Holly doesn’t want to believe it’s a piece of Penny Dahl’s daughter, but suspects it is. Her left hand is a fist, squeezing and releasing in time with the pulsing ache in her head, short nails digging into her palm.
“Is that what I think it is?”
He gives her a conspiratorial smile but says nothing.
“Are they good for pain? Because I hurt all over.”
“Yes, they have an analgesic effect,” he says, and pops another. “Quite amazing. Several popes knew of the beneficial effects. The Vatican keeps it quiet, but there are records!”
“Could I… could you give me one?” The idea of eating a piece of Penny Dahl’s daughter makes her feel almost nauseated enough to throw up, but she tries to look both pleading and hopeful.
He smiles, pulls one of the little brown balls from the pocket of his robe, and starts toward her. Then he stops and shakes a finger at her like an indulgent parent who has caught his three-year-old drawing crayon pictures on the wallpaper. “Aah-aah-aah,” he says. “Perhaps not, Miss… what was your name?”
“Holly. Holly Gibney.”
Roddy glances at the broom they use to push food and water through the flap, then shakes his head. He starts to put the brown ball back into his pocket, then changes his mind and tosses it into his mouth.
“If you don’t want to help me, what did you come down for, Mr. Harris?”
“Professor Harris.”
“I’m sorry. Professor. Did you want to talk?”
He just stands there, looking off into space. Holly would like to wring his scrawny neck, but he’s still at the foot of the stairs, twenty or twenty-five feet away. She wishes her arms were that long.
He turns to go back up, then remembers why he came down and turns to her again. “Let’s talk liver. The human liver that has been awakened. Shall we?”
“All right.” She doesn’t know how she can entice him to come closer, but as long as he doesn’t go upstairs—or if his wife, whose brains appear to be in better working order, doesn’t come down—something may occur to her. “How do you wake up a liver, Professor?”
“By eating another liver, of course.” He gives her a look that asks how she can be so stupid. “Calves’ liver is best, but I suspect pigs’ liver would be almost as good. We’ve never tried it. Because of the prions. Also, if it’s not broke—”
“Don’t fix it,” Holly finishes. Her head is pounding so fiercely it makes her feel like her eyeballs are pulsing, and her thirst is enormous, but she gives him her best I’m eager to learn smile. Her hand squeezes and releases, squeezes and releases.
“Correct! Absolutely correct! What’s not broken need not be fixed. It’s axiomatic! I suspect human liver would be best of all, but to feed a person fresh human liver from another person, the problem would be… obviously… would be…” He frowns into space.
“That you’d need two prisoners,” Holly says.
“Yes! Yes! Obvious! Axiomatic! But the liver… what was I saying?”
“Awakened,” Holly says. “Possibly… made ready?”
“Exactly. The liver is the grail. The true holy grail. A sacrament. Did you know the human liver contains all nine essential amino acids? That it’s especially high in lysine?”
“Which prevents cold sores,” says Holly, who is prone to them.
“That’s the least of its attributes!” Harris’s voice is rising in pitch. Soon it will reach the ranting near scream that disturbed some students so much that they dropped his classes. “Lysine cures anxiety! Lysine heals wounds! The liver is a lysine treasure chest! It also revitalizes the thymus gland, which creates T-cells! And Covid? Covid?” He laughs, and even that is a near scream. “Those who are fortunate enough to eat of the human liver, most particularly the awakened human liver, those fortunate ones laugh at Covid, as I and my wife do! Oh, and iron! Human liver is richer in iron than the livers of calves… sheep… pigs… deer… woodchucks… you name it. There is more iron in a human liver than in the liver of a blue whale, and a blue whale weighs one hundred and sixty-five tons! Iron wards off fatigue and improves circulation, especially in the BRAAIIIN!” Roddy taps his temple, where a node of small veins is pulsing.