The helicopter descended upon the crowd, propellor whacking, lights flashing. Raphael drew in fumes of spent jet fuel. “Disburse, disburse.”

  Raphael shielded his eyes from the light. “You know when he’s supposed to return?”

  The guard shook his head. “Exactly what those protestors been asking. I’m pretty sure, he’s going to keep low when he gets here.”

  A selfie with a dead swan. A selfie with slaughtered apes. A selfie with a mutilated dog. Two of the three warned were dead. He recalled his question to Mirsky and Mirsky’s response. “Cruelty. Hurt a child or an animal, and your name went down in Klaes’s black book.”

  The photo of the dead baboons made him sick, but he should warn Royer before Klaes fulfilled his threat.

  “You know where Royer lives?”

  Albert grinned. “You don’t know?”

  Raphael shrugged.

  “I can’t reveal that, but let me say, take Paul Simon’s advice. Well, likely you don’t even know who Paul Simon is, not to mention Garfunkel.” The guard got back into his vehicle and glided off, laughing under his breath.

  Raphael glanced up at a passing police drone, back-lit by the midnight moon. As with most seniors, Albert referenced the music of his youth to make vague yet tantalizing points. Raphael’s mother had been a fan of Paul Simon and would play the artist’s music. Advice? What was his song about a bridge? He shrugged and then gazed at the moon.

  Or was it about the myriad ways to break a relationship?

  Their songs had a lot of wise counsel, if only there was one about breaking out of a phobia.

  He would leave a message on Royer’s phone, if it was taking messages.

  CHAPTER

  SIXTEEN

  With his heel, Raphael rolled the skateboard back and forth under the desk. The wheels ticked against the hardwood floor: nicks in the polyurethane. It was a hard, durable material, still, in time the accumulated nicks became a gash. The board slowed and wobbled. A bad ride.

  He pushed up from the chair, scanned the floor for Dreemont, and went to Matt’s cubicle. As Raphael entered, Matt slammed his top drawer shut and spun toward him.

  “Jesus,” said Matt, face coloring. “I thought you were Dreemont. What’s up, man? You get your gross insubordination straightened out? Back on the Klaes train?”

  “Maglio’s entombed Klaes for good.”

  “Wow. You must have screwed up, roly-poly.”

  “It’s royally. How did you—ah, never mind. I didn’t screw up. There’s something wrong that I can’t get my head around. It’s like those word problems in algebra two. At first they seem clear, but when you try to solve them, they get all murky and stop making sense.”

  Matt yawned.

  Raphael grabbed the chair and yanked Matt toward him. “Pay attention, huh?”

  Matt tilted back his head. “A wheel fall off your skateboard or something?” He scratched his chin with blackened fingertips.

  “What’s with your fingers?” asked Raphael.

  Matt glanced at his hand. “Oh, my club.”

  “Fortnite Anonymous?”

  Matt rubbed his fingertips together. “No, not that. I joined the Musketeers Club.”

  “Which is?”

  “Fans of Elon Musk’s unfinished projects. We explore all the tunnels Musk started under the city. I’ll bet you didn’t know there’s one straight down, runs past the Salt Lake Oil field.” Matt pointed a blackened finger toward the floor, where his unicorn emblazoned sneakers too showed signs of the underground. “Next month, it’s Hyperloop crawling. Hey, what were you saying about algebra two?”

  “Did you ever have time to check those entombed possums? The Carson Fullers case. You know, the possum who got killed in Argentina? Did you find a reassignment alert for him?”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s a problem. How about the morbidity projection? Any other likely dead possums?”

  “They’re all dead,” replied Matt.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Matt shrugged. “Maybe not all dead.”

  “Are you messing with me?” asked Raphael.

  “Some are dead,” said Matt.

  “How many?”

  “Three.”

  “Three? Three is not all.”

  “All I could do a workaround on. I couldn’t penetrate entombment, even with all my wizardly devices.”

  “Three counting Fullers?” asked Raphael.

  “Three plus Fullers. Four.”

  Raphael closed his eyes and plucked at his forehead as if to pull out a thought. “We’re given leads on people who might or might not be dead. We find some are truly dead and others are faking it, hiding out in Argentina or something. But—”

  Matt nibbled on his lower lip. “The living possums are now dead?”

  Right, or at least four were. What were the odds the three chosen out of a hat of hundreds were dead? The original puzzle had been inverted. From not enough dead to too many dead. “How did they die?”

  “Violently,” replied Matt.

  Mussorgsky played on Raphael’s phone. He glanced at the screen. Jan Olmstead. The Children’s Love Fund.

  “I’ve got to take this,” said Raphael. “We’ll talk about this later, okay?”

  “No problem,” said Matt, opening the drawer and rooting through his candy dump.

  Raphael dashed to his cubicle and accepted the call.

  “Hello,” he said, sitting.

  “This is Jan Olmstead with the Children’s Love Fund. Is this Raphael? You called about a donation?”

  Keeping an eye on the cubicle entrance as he whispered, “No, sorry. I’m calling about”—a wisp of a whisper—“Jason Klaes.”

  “Oh,” she said, followed by silence.

  “Then you’ve heard.”

  “I’m not sure I—do you work for Dr. Klaes?”

  It should have been did. “I’m sorry to tell you this but Jason Klaes has passed away.”

  Silence. “Who are you? Are you a reporter?”

  “No, I’m just …” An End Man? “I’m a friend. I know Dr. Klaes contributed to your fund.”

  “Jason’s dead?” asked Jan in a quavering voice.

  “Yes. He died on January 10.”

  “January—how?”

  Raphael hesitated, uncertain he believed the words he had to say. “He took his own life.”

  “My God. How terrible. They’ve been trying to contact him.”

  “They? Who are you—”

  “About his godchild. Angie Murie.”

  The names of the dead and the living appeared in his head like stars coming out at night. Among the countless lights which one was Angie Murie? One grew brighter. He squeezed his phone. “She was the little girl in the cryonic chamber, wasn’t she?”

  “I’m not sure I should be …” The phone was silent for a few seconds. “Someone has taken her.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “From her chamber. It’s so horrible. Unthinkable. I don’t know how Jason will—but Jason Klaes is dead. Jesus.”

  Raphael pressed his thumb into his temple. “It’s true. Dr. Klaes has passed. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Sometimes there’s nothing,” said Jan, her voice thin and distant.

  “When did it happen? I mean when was Angie taken?” asked Raphael. He waited for a response.

  “Angie was …”

  The phone went silent. “Hello, are you still there?”

  “Sorry, yes. They discovered it last night. They’re not sure when the theft took place.”

  “How the hell—sorry. It seems impossible.”

  “They hadn’t prepared for such a thing.”

  He closed his eyes. “Listen, Jan.” He lowered his voice. “There are questions about Jason’s death. Maybe these things could be connected.” He glanced behind him, then continued, “It may not be relevant, but please call me if you learn anything else?”

  Jan sighed. “Bad news all around.”

  He closed out the call with Jan. Angie was dead. No one was bringing her back to life. At least not in this century or the next. Maybe five hundred years down the road, when the cryonics company would be long out of business and its clients discarded.

  Everyday thousands of people die, another dozen in the time taken to consider the number’s importance. Why then did the theft of her corpse make him feel ill? He had never known her. She was nothing to him. Except, somehow, she was. He saw her innocence as if it were a face before him. Angie had fallen into that cold sleep believing she would one day wake up. Now even that hope would be taken from her, though she would never feel its loss. But the parents, they would.

  In addition to Klaes, would he now be searching for a dead child? He glanced at the recent phone calls and swiped the screen until Mirsky’s appeared. He needed to speak with the physicist, run this horror past him—and maybe press Mirsky for more information on this so-called Quantum Looking Glass. Calling, he expected an answering machine.

  The phone rang six times and then a whispered, “Hello?”

  The voice decidedly wasn’t Mirsky’s.

  “Yes, I’m trying to reach Professor Jonathan Mirsky,” said Raphael.

  The person on the line took a little breath.

  “Is this Jonathan Mirksy’s phone?” asked Raphael.

  “I’m Jon’s sister, Eileen.”

  “Oh. I see. Is he there?”

  “My brother died.”

  “You’re kidding?” Raphael said.

  “Do you think I’d fucking joke?” said Eileen in a quavering voice.

  Raphael’s heart pounded. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t—I saw him the other day.”

  “Are, are you a friend?”

  “I only met him once. I just …”

  “He was hit by a car,” said Eileen.

  “Jesus, how awful.”

  She sobbed again and then collected herself. “I-I really have to go. The arrangements are being made with Donato’s of Glendale if you want more information.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Last Saturday. Midtown. John was crossing Wilshire.”

  Raphael envisioned the advancing wall of ice. Building higher and wider, denser and bluer, throwing off shock waves of frigid air.

  “I should have—” But the line went dead.

  Dreemont poked his head through Raphael’s doorway. “You’ve got your work cut out for you. Big D. The Toobyville Dam.”

  The PA system screeched, “Stage Three Event. Repeat. Stage Three Event …”

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTEEN

  The Cumulative Clock’s digits flashed as the total changed to nine thousand for the first time that year. Seven-hundred and thirty-three dead souls in the dam disaster alone, after the concrete had crumbled and 120,000 acre feet of water burst into the techy town of Toobyville. The second greatest loss of life in California history, topped only by the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 in which three thousand died.

  Raphael thought the news of Angie Murie’s theft, followed by Mirsky’s death, would be the low point of his day, but the Big D was a deep hole, as if stepping into his Fairfax Canyon, plummeting, plummeting, never hitting bottom.

  “Is this Mr. Chang … Oh, Mr. Chang, I want to offer my deepest sympathy …”

  “Of course you need time, Mrs. Chavez. We just want you to know …”

  With his toe, he tapped a wheel on his skateboard and made the polyurethane spin.

  The disaster had pushed Klaes out of his head for the first time in days, and maybe that was where he should leave it. Formally off the case and going in circles on his own, he could find no answers, other than concluding some internet-savvy prankster was messing with his brain.

  A large trashcan on a dolly, wheeled by a lanky figure dressed in khaki, neared the doorway.

  “Burning the midnight oil, huh, Mr. Lennon? You want me to come back?” asked Mr. Lean with a grin and a wink.

  “No, no, you’re fine,” said Raphael, returning to the monitor. He gazed at the day’s data. A heavy breath drew his eyes to Lean, who hadn’t moved and appeared to be waiting for orders.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Lean, you aren’t disturbing me.”

  Lean nodded and walked through the cubicle to its trash basket. “Don’t know how you fellows do it. Dealing with all those poor dead,” said Lean, holding the basket waist high. “I’d go mad.”

  “It’s difficult,” he admitted.

  Lean nodded and seemed to study the trash. “Dead little boys and girls, someone’s son, daughter, wife.” The custodian lifted his eyes. “They say God doesn’t give people more than they can handle, but he heaps it on sometimes. And right across your desk it comes. Day after day. Hour after hour. No, Raphael, I don’t know how you do it.”

  “Well, Mr. Lean, you’ve got to deal with ghosts on your nightly rounds,” Raphael said, recalling his recent conversation with the custodian. “Can’t be pleasant.”

  Lean sniffed. “Turns me cold, them spirits do.”

  Raphael glanced at the wall screens. Mindfulness videos—fingers peeling a tangerine, a woman in a sweat suit running an ice cube across her forehead, a child swinging a large leaf—had replaced the Toobyville Dam bulletins. His gaze rose to the bank of CCTV cameras, LED lights darkened. Down once again.

  “Have you ever seen any ghosts on the necrology floor?” Raphael asked.

  Crossing the cubicle, Lean emptied the small trashcan into the larger. “Nope, never a one. It’s down in the basement and up on the third floor I see—and hear—the ghosts.”

  “Scary.”

  “The ones in the basement, subtle, they are. A splash or two way down below, a bit of gurgling. Tar ghosts, them. Quiet fellows.” Lean’s eyes rose to the ceiling. “Third Floor’s the worst. Right there in the spooky hallway where the lights never get fixed. Comes out of the Research Department. I’ll bet those poor ghosts are complaining. Must be filthy in there.”

  “Filthy?”

  “Won’t let me inside to clean. Hush, hush. Off limits. They leave the trash cans outside the door. Stacks and stacks of pizza boxes and leftover Sushi stuff. Smells of low tide, it does.”

  “What do they look like, these ghosts?” asked Raphael.

  “Heat waves, the kind you see on desert roads.”

  “Can you touch them? Feel them?”

  “You think I stick around to shake hands? Ha!” said Lean with a laugh. He considered the trash basket as if a little ghost might lurk within.

  “No, I suppose not.” Raphael stared at the monitor and the day’s victims, new candidates for ghostdom. Behind him came loud scratching. He swiveled to see Mr. Lean drag his nails through the gray bristles of two-day’s growth of beard.

  Mr. Lean clawed, then stopped. “Most of your kind don’t take these things seriously.”

  “My kind?” asked Raphael.

  “Brainy types,” said Mr. Lean.

  “I’m an IT guy.”

  “Oh, I know what you think of janitors.”

  “Custodians,” corrected Raphael.

  “You’ll be calling me a broom engineer next.”

  Raphael stifled a laugh. Except for Maglio, he liked people who had spent a few years on the earth, set in their ways and words. He found them comforting somehow. He pictured Mirsky shoving money at the stripper, and his lips quivered. The more he thought about the guy, the more he liked him, one of those oddball characters you meet along the way. Raphael’s eyes blurred. He wanted to give Mirsky a hug, give someone a hug.

  Perhaps reading Raphael’s mind, Mr. Lean stepped back, moved his hand to his head and looked away, while running his fingers through thinning white hair.

  “Sometimes I have a thought or two,” said Mr. Lean. “Maybe some ghosts might be those dead folks you End Men won’t leave in peace.” He shook his head. “I’m a crazy old man, right?”

  Jesus, more guilt. “No, not at all. It’s … Well, what sounds do they make? The ghosts, I mean.”

  Mr. Lean dug his nails into a deep furrow on his cheek. Raphael sensed the man’s eyes penetrating him, seeking sincerity. Mr. Lean blurted, “Sentences don’t make no sense and angry baby sounds. Sometimes only names, as if someone’s taking roll call. Makes me shiver.”

  “What names?”

  “Oh, nothing’s clear, all garbled and muddy.” He inverted the trash container, shook it once more and tapped its bottom. “Confused, maybe.” Setting the basket to its spot, he gazed at it for a moment, and then made a minor change. “Right?”

  “Perfect, Mr. Lean.”

  The custodian made a final change to the position of the trashcan, then stepped back to view his work with a nod of approval. “Well, I’m finished for this floor.” He crossed the cubicle, slipped behind the trashcan, grabbed the dolly’s handle, and pushed down with a grunt.

  “Night, Mr. Lean.”

  “Goodnight, Mr. Lennon.” He glanced at a youthful man’s photo on Raphael’s monitor. “Poor bastards. Before their time, my Ruth too, rest her soul. The Lord’s plan, I guess.”

  The dolly squealed for a moment. A rush of air swooshed past Raphael’s desk as the office door opened, followed by three squeals more and then silence.

  Nearby, a drawer closed as if kicked.

  Raphael and Dreemont were the last employees on the necrology floor. The supervisor was closing shop, banging stuff around. Dreemont wanted his big corner office to be as he found it in the morning, which was as it had begun the previous morning. If something had changed, he put things in order noisily, wanting others to notice the efforts, like people who dropped dumbbells and grunted.

  Raphael leaned to his right in the chair, opened his eyes, and gazed again at the Cumulative.

  The dead came in steadily night and day.

  Klaes. Simply thinking his name brought back all the puzzling pieces of the case. The oddball stuff that he couldn’t directly link to Klaes, but had to be tied in. The four possums put to rest a second time by violent means—at least according to Matt—seemed relevant. Not just relevant but part of a set that included Klaes, a possum who had murdered among possums who were murdered.

  He nudged a second skateboard wheel, sent it spinning to whirr with the first. A moment later, he pushed up from the chair and went to Dreemont’s office, where the supervisor was cleaning the monitor.