Raphael stopped the video and swiveled away from the monitor. He wanted to find a wall and punch it. With other undeclareds, uncovering whether they were alive or dead was closure. If they were dead, there were no other questions. If the undeclared proved to be a possum, Raphael would have already known all he needed to. With Klaes, he had questions only a living Klaes could answer, or at least said he could answer. There was something else too. Something undefined that gnawed at him.

  An appointment reminder flashed on his computer. Pushing up from the desk, he tugged down his shirt and finger combed his hair. Time to leave the dead behind.

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  In the museum’s plaza, on an elevated stage, a string quartet performed a Strauss waltz. Beneath the stage, coupled dancers, cordoned by a red rope, orbited a fountain, their circle the width of a small carousel.

  One woman danced with her eyes closed while another peered from drooping eyelids. A third gazed dully. Only the fourth seemed interested in her companion. The women’s hair was cut short in the manner of 1920s flappers. The men wore their hair slicked straight.

  One-thirty having passed, Raphael scanned the plaza again for Addy. Should have asked her to lunch—sure would have been fun. No, she’d have politely declined that request. Too much of a date. And then he’d gone and told her he was busy. True, but not so busy.

  Not finding her and feeling the creep of depression, he concentrated on the mesmerizing movements of the dancers.

  Round and round to the triple-meter music: strong, weak, weak, strong, weak, weak. Raphael imagined Addy tight in his embrace as they joined the waltz. In this dream scenario, his cheek would lean into hers, and he’d inhale the sweet scent of her perfume. If only he could keep his anxiety at bay long enough to ask, it could all come true. She might even say yes.

  The song ended, the dancers froze, and the audience applauded.

  At a nearby table, someone said, “Robert Motherwell.” Raphael grew alert at the name, spoken frequently by his mother: the artist who allowed the dark places to paint themselves.

  “Asthmatic as a child, you know. Delicate. The boy’s family wasn’t sure …”

  “It shows. Big black blotches …”

  His mother used to describe the mortality in Motherwell’s work until Raphael felt like his own was tied to the painting.

  “Ah, the shame of it,” said a man seated at another table, drawing his finger down his cell phone. “Poor bastards.”

  “What?” asked his tablemate.

  “Some scumbag’s looted the County’s Pauper’s Fund. Where’s that leave the unclaimed dead?”

  “Unclaimed, huh?”

  “County buries two thousand unclaimed bodies every three years. Not this year.”

  Raphael sighed. Was there no getting away from it? What had Gilly Stull said? “Dead, dead everywhere and not a drop to—”

  “Raphael!” Addy crossed the plaza.

  His knees grew weak, and his head swam. She approached so swiftly, she blurred, and he almost screamed for her to slow to regain her clarity.

  “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry.” Her breath came in brief gasps and her face was bright from exertion. A threadlike blue vein pulsed at her temple. “I tried to get here on time, but, oh, something always happens.” She shook her head.

  “No, no. I got here late myself,” Raphael lied.

  Her breathing slowed, normalized. “Oh, well then, I don’t feel so guilty. Don’t you have to get to work?”

  I’d ditch work to stay with you, was on his lips, but she might think him as coming on too strong. When you’re weird, you can’t chance anything garnishing your weirdness. “I have a few more minutes.”

  Raphael swung the computer case. Addy reached out to tap the handle. “The laptop?”

  “Oh, yes. This is it.”

  “It’s so sweet of you. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.”

  “I installed more memory. It’s a little old, but it should function and the one broken—”

  “Smashed,” said Addy. “Evil, evil people. Blanks, ugh.”

  “Most aren’t that violent,” said Raphael. “They preach evasion and persuasion.” Most.

  “What, I can’t upload a song to my grandmother? Can’t thumbs-up a friend’s promotion? Can’t search for the definition of erstwhile?” For an instant, her eyes brightened with outrage, then the light softened. She drew a breath and glanced at the brilliant sky.

  It was a crisp January day, and the neighborhood’s orange and lemon trees in false blossom released a scent as strong as the acrid smell of the tar pits. Raphael breathed deeply of the pleasant scent. Addy had closed her eyes and sang softly to the music of the string quartet. He tried to pick out a word, found none. It was meaningless syllables, maybe better than words.

  For a moment, he floated on her voice. When she stopped singing and opened her eyes, he fell back to earth. He picked himself up, dusted off, and said, “Well, here it is.” He held out the case to her, but she didn’t take it.

  “What’s going on over there?” Addy gestured at the band and dancers.

  “It’s a performance for the exhibit,” explained Raphael. “The dancers represent the characters in a painting.”

  “Very cool.”

  Or lukewarm? “If you’re not interested, I can—”

  Addy’s eyes went big. “I absolutely love this kind of stuff. Don’t go second guessing me. More, please!”

  He grinned. “Dance in Baden-Baden by Max Beckmann, 1923,” explained Raphael, glad for the opportunity to show his knowledge went beyond necrology and kick-flips. He pointed to a banner draped above the entrance to an exhibit hall. On the banner was a reproduction of the painting, out of which the dancers could have emerged. The white on black letters read The New Objectivity. “A translation of the German term Neue Sachlichkeit, which means new facts or perhaps new sobriety. See the picture?”

  “Oh, yes, yes.” She shifted her gaze from the banner to the dancers. “They’re the same, aren’t they?”

  “It’s a clever promotion,” said Raphael, gazing at the performance with admiration.

  At the front of the audience on the other side of the dancers stood a man wearing a hat and silver rim glasses. Raphael’s breath left him, and his heart quickened. Was he being tailed? Was it a beardless Klaes? With a smile directed at Raphael, the man melted into the crowd.

  “Addy, can you wait …” He stepped away from Addy and started toward the crowd.

  “What is it?” Addy called out.

  He could no longer pick out the man, nor his hat. Klaes? But Klaes had boasted Raphael would never find him. He wouldn’t put himself in plain sight, would he? No beard, but the beard could have been to cover up the wine stain birthmark. He had yet to come across a photo of Klaes without it. But this guy looked younger than Klaes. He shook his head.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Addy.

  Raphael turned and smiled. “No. Nothing. I thought I saw someone I knew.” He returned to her side, and they strolled across the plaza, their arms occasionally touching. Her perfume was faint, one crushed honeysuckle.

  “Hey, how are you so knowledgeable about art?” asked Addy.

  “My mother was associate curator of modern art here. I grew up on the museum grounds and in her office. I knew every space, some the public never gets to see.”

  “Pretty cool. I’m envious.”

  Warming up to her enthusiasm, he pointed at the plaza floor. “Right below us is an enormous space that even most museum personnel can’t access. They store all the art they won’t allow the public to see. Damaged pieces and forbidden art. Paintings and sculpture too controversial to bring up to the light.”

  Addy’s eyes went wide. “Never?”

  Raphael shrugged. “Maybe someday.” Had his mother really shown him all that? So long ago, it seemed like a dream. A memory surfaced of the subbasement, as the space was called. At its western limit stood a long, concrete wall with a gigantic, metal door. Behind the door was Dig Three, an immense tarpit that was closed off when the art museum was constructed. On one of their visits to the subbasement, he’d asked his mother if she could open the door and let him see the old dig, but she refused, describing the almost vertical staircase to the base, the old scaffolding and uncertain soil. There were even the rusted remains of old oil derricks. All this didn’t deter Raphael’s interest, but when she told him one more thing about the underground chamber, he had backed away from the door and his request. Just recalling the door, he shivered. He described the sealed dig to Addy, leaving out the detail that had frightened him.

  Addy’s eyes narrowed. “Derricks?”

  “The Salt Lake Oil Field is straight down.” Raphael spread his arms. “It’s under the whole neighborhood. The oil seeps up through the ground to create the tar pits. Pumps on the museum grounds used to draw up millions of gallons.”

  Addy glanced around. “Drained the lake, I guess.”

  Raphael smiled. “No, there’s still plenty of oil. The petroleum companies just tore down the derricks and plugged up the shafts.”

  “Environmental concerns?”

  “Clashed with modern art.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Yeah.” He grinned. “Anyway, by the time I was four, she’d taught me to pick out the Picassos from the Klees and Kandinskys, the sculpture of Giacometti from Henry Moore and the art of Joan Miró and de Kooning.”

  “Really? At four?”

  “It’s a vague memory, but it’s what my mother told me when I was older.” Should he mention his own work? Did he really want to get into that? You see, Addy, I’m an artist too. I paint my life on my ceiling. He scanned again for the man.

  “Does your mom still work here?”

  He lifted his hand to the beanie and tugged on the cuff as if to draw it down. “No. She died eight years ago.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She regarded Raphael.

  Raphael struggled to get the words out. “Yeah, before her time as they say.”

  “I can hardly imagine … Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  Raphael shook his head. Many times his mother wished he had siblings and even talked of adoption. Someone to be with him when … but the when was never specified.

  “Your father?”

  “I never knew him.”

  “Oh, that’s so sad. Do you think about him anyway?”

  Raphael nodded. “Yeah, a lot actually. Not that there’s much to think about.”

  “Did your mother talk about him?”

  “Nope. It was taboo.”

  “Yeah, that way, huh? I was lucky. My mother and father have always been there. I love them. Really sweet people.” Addy closed her eyes, found the sun. “I’ll bet your father’s nice.” Opening her eyes, she gazed at him. “I wish you had time for lunch. It would be my treat.”

  “Yeah, that would have been great.”

  “Well, another time then. Maybe even dinner? I know a restaurant right on the ocean. Right out the window, waves crash. And it’s not all that expensive. You won’t believe it.”

  “Sure, sounds good.” And impossible. Might she be the one who would understand? Addy’s eyes focused sharply on him as if in expectation, then her gaze darted off.

  “How is the necrology business?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  She looked at him again. “I’m sure it would be fascinating.” She came closer to him. “Raphael, do you have a girlfriend? Or”—she grinned and glanced at his bare ring finger—“even a wife?”

  Raphael chuckled. “No wife, no girlfriend. I don’t date much.”

  “What’s much?”

  “Once every five years.”

  She laughed. Did she believe him? Probably not. “And you?”

  “No wife. No girlfriend either. There was a guy …”

  A little blade penetrated his heart. “Oh.”

  “A writer.”

  A cloud burst, raining books on his head. “Makes sense,” he muttered.

  “Writer’s never stop—I mean, writing. Twenty-four seven. Tap, tap, tap.”

  “Painters go flick, flick, flick.”

  “Twenty-four seven?”

  “Yes, I—they paint in their sleep. It’s messy.”

  “He wrote himself out of my life.”

  “Oh, too bad.” Fucking great!

  “No. He was better to read than to be with.” She nodded as if convincing herself, or was it to convince him? “But you have to go.”

  “Yeah, right.” He handed her the computer case. “Thursday at Karaoke then?”

  “Sure. Great.”

  He expected her to dash off, but she lingered, as if to say, I enjoyed this—us—and an icy fear struck him that such a moment might never happen again.

  “You shivered,” said Addy. “Did a ghost pass through you?”

  His scary and depressing thought vanished at her voice. Happily, he peered over his shoulder as if to catch sight of a passing spirit. His eyes wide and foolishly grinning, he held the face, and she laughed. He could play the clown and be himself with her. So far. So far. “Thursday, then.”

  She smiled and turned toward the exit.

  “Oh, Addy?” he cried out.

  She halted. “Yes?”

  “Have you read much of Sherlock Holmes?”

  Her eyes widened. “From A Study in Scarlet to The Hound of the Baskervilles.”

  “What’s Dr. Watson’s one word?”

  Her lips tightened and then she said, “He wrote all the words, if you don’t count Doyle. Is it a riddle?”

  Raphael nodded. “I guess.”

  “Have you Googled?”

  “Yeah. Nothing.” Which was more and more the case in all but the most mundane of searches, as if the elegant algorithms couldn’t separate the accumulated mess of information or prevent advertisements from hijacking the search.

  “I’ll think about it,” said Addy.

  She offered a parting smile and then walked into the crowd. The universe receded at a much faster rate than the astrophysicists surmised.

  CHAPTER

  TWELVE

  In the office, Raphael replayed his thirty minutes with Addy, regretting all the dumb things he’d said, but deciding overall it had come off all right. Despite the frustrating questions about Klaes, Raphael’s unyielding boundaries, and Pink’s spooky predictions, perhaps things were looking up.

  His heart lighter and his head clear, he skimmed through the early files on Klaes. The physicist had a professional website, but Raphael’s initial check of the site revealed only a bare bones home page with few links, which didn’t mean the server hosting Klaes’s site didn’t have other files that Raphael could hack for clues. With every other undeclared he’d hunted, a motive would eventually surface if the undeclared had gone possum.

  He took a breath and opened Klaes’s site. Instead of being taken to the homepage, the page opened to a vendor selling domain names. The site had been taken down, or at least public access to it. It was still probable Klaes’s files remained on the server, available through a backdoor break-in. He set his foot on the skateboard and rolled it back and forth as if pacing a room. His neck tingled. He entered Klaes’s email account again and scrolled through hundreds of saved emails. One was a confirmation of a domain renewal order and advised the user could login to the client area at their hosting service to manage the domain, Klaes’s host server for sure.

  Ten minutes later, he had reached the login page. The user’s name likely adhered to a couple of standards, but the password was a different story.

  From experience, he would bet Klaes had copied down the password somewhere, maybe in an email to himself, accessible from anywhere. In the search, Raphael entered Klaes’s email address. Thousands of emails addressed to Klaes appeared. He typed the address again in search, twinning Klaes. A much less formidable list appeared. These were the ones Klaes had sent to himself and saved.

  Raphael scanned the list of several hundred. A handful of the emails had no subject. He opened up the oldest one. As with its subject, the message was blank, which was odd. Something should have been there. He opened the next oldest: blank. Next: blank. Four, five and six—blank.

  He leaned back in the chair and gazed at the blank message. Why bother to send yourself nothing? May as well mail yourself a blank sheet of paper. Nothing … or invisible. He wouldn’t, would he? Come on, possum hunter. Tracks, scat, and a bent twig. He leaned forward and maneuvered the cursor over the blank message, highlighting the entire thing until the characters appeared in gray. Klaes had changed the automatic letter color from black to white so the email appeared blank like contemporary invisible ink. Raphael changed the characters to black, revealing a row of what appeared to be passwords.

  Now came the guesswork. Twenty minutes of craft, patience, and luck pulled up the magic words: TLS connection established. He was in.

  The remote site folders and files popped up. He transferred the entire folder to his desktop. He spent an hour checking files and subfolder files. They contained math way over his head, lecture notes, slideshows, and abstracts. Nothing set off alarms, until he found two files in a subfolder of a subfolder, one with the odd name “Personality Plus.tmhxxml” and another called “Winstrum.tmhxxml.”

  Winstrum, as in the pharmaceutical firm? Right. The fourth postmortem message from Klaes had been to the firm’s CEO: a warning to reduce the cost of the company’s drugs for children.

  He tried a dozen programs, yet the files wouldn’t open. A workaround proved no more successful. Locked. He’d have to get Dreemont, who had the skills of an old-fashioned lock-picker.

  As he prepared to buzz Dreemont, the supervisor appeared at the cubicle entrance. “What’s up, Raphael?”

  “Hey, Mike, you got any ideas about this?” He pointed to the monitor. “I don’t recognize the variant.”

  Dreemont bent closer to the screen. Inches from Raphael’s face, Dreemont’s lips formed the file names and then tightened. “Where did you find this?”