Copper Beach

40

THE HOUSE GRADY HASTINGS HAD LEASED WAS A RUN-DOWN bungalow in West Seattle. The rental looked as sad and depressed as Hastings had looked sitting in the locked ward at the psychiatric hospital, Sam thought. The place was in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. The small lawn was patchy and studded with weeds. Yellowed shades were pulled down to cover the grimy windows.

Sam went up the concrete steps and set down the stack of packing boxes he had picked up at a container store. He checked the lock. Grady was right. It was standard-issue and probably original to the house. It took less than thirty seconds to open it.

“Doesn’t look like Grady’s landlord has put much money into upkeep,” he said. He twisted the old-fashioned knob and opened the door.

“No.” Abby followed him up the steps. She had a large roll of Bubble Wrap tucked under one arm. “Why bother? I doubt if Grady was a demanding tenant. All he cares about is his work with crystals.”

“True. As long as he had his lab, he was probably content.”

Abby smiled a secret smile.

He eyed her with suspicion. “What?”

“Nothing. It just occurred to me that Grady isn’t the only person around who is content so long as he has his lab.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not the one sitting in a psychiatric hospital.”

“There is something to be said for that.” Abby followed him into the house, put down the roll of Bubble Wrap and closed the door. When she turned around and saw the nearly empty space, she froze. Outrage heated the atmosphere around her.

“There’s hardly any furniture left,” she yelped. “Someone stole Grady’s stuff.”

“It’s possible,” Sam said. “Empty houses are magnets for thieves. But I think it’s more likely the landlord jumped the gun and started clearing out Grady’s things.”

“Bastard. I hope he wasn’t able to get into the shed in back. Grady will be crushed if his lab stuff is gone.”

Sam walked through the kitchen and opened the back door. The shed sitting in the yard looked like a ramshackle wooden fortress. The one window was boarded up. The gleaming new metal door was closed.

He walked across the weed-infested yard and examined the lock on the door. Abby followed him.

“Doesn’t look like anyone has gotten inside yet,” he said. “But it’s probably a good thing we’re here. Got a hunch the landlord will be taking a blowtorch to this door when he figures out that a regular locksmith can’t open it.”

He raised his ring to the dull, gray crystal embedded in the metal on the wall next to the door. Cautiously, he focused a little energy through the Phoenix stone. He sensed the familiar tingling current of power. The lock crystal began to heat with violet-hued ultralight.

There was a sharp click as the lock disengaged. Sam opened the door.

“The kid’s good,” he said. “Very, very good.”

“And certainly not as crazy as everyone, including me, believed,” Abby said.

“Maybe not.”

He found a switch on the wall. The lights came on, revealing a battered metal workbench and a number of old metal cabinets. The concrete floor was bare.

He examined the lab with professional interest. The small space did not gleam with steel and polished equipment like the Coppersmith labs. There were no state–of–­the-art computers. The chemistry equipment on the workbench looked as if it had been assembled from various do–it–yourself science kits and then seriously modified. An old burner designed for heating the contents of test tubes sat on one corner. A cumbersome, obviously hand-built laser occupied the far end of the bench.

“You know,” Abby said, gazing around the crowded room. “If anyone else, members of the media, say, or the shrinks at the psychiatric hospital, saw this place, the first words that would spring to mind would be mad scientist.”

“I was just thinking that this lab looks a lot like mine,” Sam said.

Abby cleared her throat. “­Mmm-hmm.”

He went to the bench to examine the laser. “Not as high-end, but most of the basics are here.”

“­Mmm-hmm.”

He glanced back and saw that her eyes were sparkling with amusement. He sighed. “Go get the boxes and the Bubble Wrap. I want to take a look around before we pack this equipment.”

“Okay.” Abby turned and hurried back up the steps.

When she was gone, he went slowly, methodically, through the shed, opening cabinets and drawers. He discovered a number of stones and crystals, most of which would have been overlooked by the average rock hound. But with his senses mildly jacked, he could tell that several of the stones were hot.

He was holding one half of a split geode, studying the glittering crystals inside, when Abby reappeared.

“Find something interesting?” she asked.

“Nothing yet that would explain the voices that Grady heard.” He put the geode down and took another look around. “He said the voice came from a crystal.”

“A green crystal.”

“I found several varieties of green quartz, a small piece of green tourmaline and some green andradite, but none of it was giving off enough energy to explain the voices he was hearing.”

“Shall I start wrapping up the equipment while you look around?”

“All right. But I’d better dismantle the laser for you.”

She smiled. “It looks like he found it in a scrap yard.”

“He probably bought the various parts online and assembled them himself.”

Sam started back to the workbench. A faint hiss of energy made him pause in mid-stride. To his slightly heightened senses, it sounded as if a small insect was buzzing somewhere nearby. He turned on his heel, searching for the source, and caught a flash of green out of the corner of his eye. When he tried to take a closer look, he discovered he could not focus clearly on the object that was giving off the energy.

“What is it?” Abby asked.

“I’m not sure yet.” He stopped trying to see the object with his normal vision and raised his talent to the max. The dull gray of the concrete floor and the faded paint on the walls were abruptly transformed. The basement was now lit with ultralight. The rocks and crystals in Grady’s collection glowed, bathing the space in a paranormal rainbow.

The buzzing-insect sound grew louder but not more distinct.

“Got it,” Sam said.

“What?” Abby asked. “Where? I don’t see anything except the rocks and equipment that you’ve already checked.”

“Go hot. You’ll hear it, too.”

Energy warmed the atmosphere as she went into the zone.

“Good grief,” she said. “You’re right. It sounds like a scratchy old audio recording of some kind.”

“That’s exactly what it is.” Sam went to the filing cabinet and examined the array of precision-cut objects on top. “A recording. It’s emanating from one of these.”

“Those aren’t crystals or rocks. They look like modernistic glass sculptures.”

“They’re prisms,” he said. “Very special prisms. Grady probably used them to focus energy as well as light.”

“There’s a recording inside one of those prisms?”

“That’s the only explanation that fits,” he said. “It must have been laid down with psychic energy, and probably tuned to Grady’s wavelengths. That’s why we can only detect a faint buzz but not distinct words.”

He picked up a heavy green glass prism. The shiver of energy got a bit louder but not much. “It’s very weak to our senses, but it was probably a lot louder, stronger and clearer to Grady.”

Abby moved closer. “I’ve never seen a prism like that one.”

“It’s called a retroreflector, a trihedral prism. It’s designed to reflect energy or a beam of light back to its source, regardless of direction. Standard equipment in labs. But this particular prism focuses paranormal energy, not the normal kind. If it was tuned to Grady’s aura, it would focus on him whenever he was in the vicinity.”

“Once it acquired the fix, it activated the recording?”

“I think so, yes. The prism detected our presence and triggered the psychic message when we entered the room, but since it isn’t tuned to either of us, we can barely sense the recording. Grady was never able to tell where the voice was coming from, because every time he tried to look at the prism, it reflected his own psychic wavelengths right back at him, blinding him while simultaneously playing the message.”

“Sheesh. Over time, that would have driven anyone nuts.”

“I think it would be more accurate to say that it had a hypnotic effect on Grady. Let me have some of that Bubble Wrap.”

Abby picked up the scissors she had brought and cut off a length of the wrap. “I’ve never heard of a psi-recording. I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”

“The technology is in the experimental stage. This prism came out of a very sophisticated, cutting-edge R–and–D lab.”

She handed him the Bubble Wrap and glanced around the room. “What about the gun? Where do you think Grady got that?”

“Whoever recorded the hypnotic message in this thing probably made sure the gun was conveniently at hand when Grady went to Vaughn’s house that day.”

“Poor Grady. That thing looks valuable.”

“It’s worth a fortune to certain people.”

Abby frowned. “Think it came from your competitor’s labs?”

“No.” Sam peeled off a strip of packing tape and secured the Bubble Wrap around the prism. “This didn’t come from the Helicon Stone labs.”

“You’re sure?”

“Trust me.”

“So who else is running a hotshot R–and–D lab that could turn out something like that prism?”

Sam looked at her. “Take a wild guess.”

“Oh, yeah, right. Coppersmith Inc.”

“Yes.”

“Oh, geez. This is not good.”

“No,” Sam said. “It’s not good.”

“You said the prism was valuable. Wonder why the guy who gave it to Grady didn’t come back for it?”

Sam picked up the bundled prism. “Maybe because he couldn’t get through the crystal lock on the door of this shed.”

Sam stowed the last taped and sealed box in the cargo bay of the SUV.

“Where are we going to store all of this stuff ?” Abby asked.

“We’ll take it back to the Copper Beach house for safekeeping until we figure out how to spring Grady from the hospital.”

Abby looked at him. “We are going to get him out, aren’t we?”

“Yes. But right now he’s safer where he is.”

“What do you mean?”

Sam closed the cargo door. “As long as everyone assumes he’s crazy, he’s not a threat to whoever set him up.”

“Oh,” Abby said. “I see what you mean.”

Sam started toward the shed. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

“I want to see if I can remove the crystal from the lock that Grady used to secure his lab door. It’s a nice piece of engineering. I’d rather not leave it behind.”

“Good thought.”

She followed him back around the house and checked her email while he studied the lock. He would have to dismantle the whole mechanism, he concluded, which meant using a screwdriver and some other tools.

He was in the process of removing the lock when he heard Abby’s sharp exclamation.

“Sam, we got it.”

He eased the lock out of the door. “Got what?”

“The lab book.”

“But the auction was set for two days from now.”

“Not any longer,” she said. “Our preemptive bid has been accepted.”

He gripped the lock in one hand and looked around the edge of the door. “Are you sure?”

“Not until I actually see it.” Abby was aglow with triumph and excitement. “But I just got a message from Milton, who claims that he wants to unload the lab book as quickly as possible and he’s giving my client first crack. Actually, we’re getting first and last crack. He wants to know if we’re still interested.”

“Why did we get lucky?”

“In a word, me. I told you, my reputation is good. The bottom line here is that Milton is running scared and wants to unload the lab book as quickly and safely as possible.”

“He figures I’m the safe bet, because you wouldn’t be working for me if you thought I might be untrustworthy.”

“That’s pretty much what it comes down to,” she said. “He’s decided to trust you because he trusts me. But he wants to move fast. I get the impression that he is very nervous. Believe me when I tell you that it takes a lot to make someone like Milton nervous.”

Sam pulled the lock mechanism out of the wall. “Get the details. Tell him the money will be wired into whatever account he wants as soon as we have verified the authenticity of the journal.”

She sent the message. A moment later, she looked up from the screen.

“Done. Milton just sent the code for the pickup location and his bank-account information.”

Sam headed for the door. “Where is the pickup point?”

“A place where no one ever thinks twice about someone collecting a package.”