J. C. inspected the gun. “Never been fired, though. Hmm . . . There’s a chance someone gave this to him. Perhaps he went to a friend, asked them how to protect himself? A true soldier knows each weapon he owns through repeated firing. No gun fires perfectly straight. Each has a personality. ”
“He’s a scholar,” Tobias said, kneeling beside the rows of books. “Historian. ”
“You sound surprised,” I said. “He does have a Ph. D. I’d expect him to be smart. ”
“He has a Ph. D. in theoretical physics, Stephen,” Tobias said. “But these are some very obscure historical and theological books. Deep reading. It’s difficult to be a widely read scholar in more than one area. No wonder he leads a solitary life. ”
“Rosaries,” Ivy said; she picked one up from the top of a stack of books, inspecting it. “Worn, frequently counted. Open one of those books. ”
I picked a book up off the floor.
“No, that one. The God Delusion. ”
“Richard Dawkins?” I said, flipping through it.
“A leading atheist,” Ivy said, looking over my shoulder. “Annotated with counterarguments. ”
“A devout Catholic among a sea of secular scientists,” Tobias said. “Yes . . . many of these works are religious or have religious connotations. Thomas Aquinas, Daniel W. Hardy, Francis Schaeffer, Pietro Alagona . . . ”
“There’s his badge from work,” Ivy said, nodding to something hanging on the wall. It proclaimed, in large letters, Azari Laboratories, Inc. Monica’s company.
“Call for Monica,” Ivy said. “Repeat what I tell you. ”
“Oh Monica,” I said.
“Am I allowed in now?”
“Depends,” I said, repeating the words Ivy whispered to me. “Are you going to tell me the truth?”
“About what?”
“About Razon having invented the camera on his own, bringing Azari in only after he had a working prototype. ”
Monica narrowed her eyes at me.
“Badge is too new,” I said. “Not worn or scratched at all from being used or in his pocket. The picture on it can’t be more than two months old, judging by the beard he’s growing in the badge photo but not in the picture of him at Mount Vernon on his mantle.
“Furthermore, this is not the apartment of a high-paid engineer. With a broken elevator? In the northeast quarter of town? Not only is this a rough
area, it’s too far from your offices. He didn’t steal your camera, Monica—though I’m tempted to guess that you’re trying to steal it from him. Is that why he ran?”
“He didn’t come to us with a prototype,” Monica said. “Not a working one, at least. He had one photo—the one of Washington—and a lot of promises. He needed money to get a stable machine working; apparently, the one he’d built had worked for a few days, then stopped.
“We funded him for eighteen months on a limited access pass to the labs. He received an official badge when he finally got the damn camera working. And he did steal it from us. The contract he signed required all equipment to remain at our laboratories. He used us as a convenient source of cash, then jumped with the prize—wiping all of his data and destroying all other prototypes—as soon as he could get away with it. ”
“Truth?” I asked Ivy.
“Can’t tell,” she said. “Sorry. If I could hear a heartbeat . . . maybe you could put your ear to her chest. ”
“I’m sure she’d love that,” I said.
J. C. smiled. “I’m pretty sure I’d love that. ”
“Oh please,” Ivy said. “You’d only do it to peek inside her jacket and find out what kind of gun she’s carrying. ”
“Beretta M9,” J. C. said. “Already peeked. ”
Ivy gave me a glare.
“What?” I said, trying to act innocent. “He’s the one who said it. ”
“Skinny,” J. C. put in, “the M9 is boring, but effective. The way she carries herself says she knows her way around a gun. That puffing she did when climbing the steps? An act. She’s far more fit than that. She’s trying to pretend she’s some kind of manager or paper-pusher at the labs, but she’s obviously security of some sort. ”
“Thanks,” I told him.
“You,” Monica said, “are a very strange man. ”
I focused on her. She’d heard only my parts of the exchange, of course. “I thought you read my interviews. ”
“I did. They don’t do you justice. I imagined you as a brilliant mode-shifter, slipping in and out of personalities. ”
“That’s dissociative identity disorder,” I said. “It’s different. ”
“Very good!” Ivy piped in. She’d been schooling me on psychological disorders.
“Regardless,” Monica said. “I guess I’m just surprised to find out what you really are. ”
“Which is?” I asked.
“A middle manager,” she said, looking troubled. “Anyway, the question remains. Where is Razon?”
“Depends,” I said. “Does he need to be any place specific to use the camera? Meaning, did he have to go to Mount Vernon to take a picture of the past in that location, or can he somehow set the camera to take pictures there?”
“He has to go to the location,” Monica said. “The camera looks back through time at the exact place you are. ”