Lasher by Anne Rice Page A

two days.
    “God, am I glad you finally got here,” said Mitch. “I was about to go out of my mind. Two weeks ago you dump this on me, with no explanation except that Rowan Mayfair sent it to you…and that I have to find out everything that I can.”
    “So did you?” asked Lark. He started to unbutton his raincoat, then thought better of it. He eased his briefcase to the floor. There was a tape recorder inside but he didn’t want to use it. It would inhibit him and possibly scare Mitchell to death.
    “What do you expect in two weeks? It’s going to take fifteen years to map the human genome, or haven’t you heard?”
    “What can you tell me? This isn’t an interview with the science editor of the
New York Times
. Give me a picture. What are we dealing with here?”
    “You want that sort of speculation?” Mitch gestured to the computer. “You want to see something three-dimensional and in living color?”
    “Talk first. I distrust computer simulations.”
    “Look, before I say anything, I want more specimens. I want more blood, tissue, everything I can get. I’ve had my secretary calling your office every day about this. Why didn’t you call me back?”
    “Impossible to get anything more. What you’ve seen is what you get.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You’ve got the only samples to which I have access. You have the only data which came to me. There is something else in New York…but we’ll get to that later. The point is, I can’t give you any more blood, tissue, amniotic fluid or anything else. You have everything Rowan Mayfair sent to me.”
    “Then I have to talk to Rowan Mayfair.”
    “Impossible.”
    “Why?”
    “Can you turn off that blinking fluorescent light up there? It’s driving me crazy. Do you have an incandescent lamp in this fancy room?”
    Mitchell looked startled. He sat back as though he’d been pushed. For a moment, he seemed not to understand the words, and then he said, “Oh yes.” He touched a panel under the lip of his desk. The overhead light went out suddenly and finally, and a pair of small lamps on the desk were quickly illuminated, soft, yellow, pleasant. They made the deep green of the desk blotter come to life.
    Lark hadn’t noticed the perfect, markless blotter, or its leather corners. Or the still, odd-shaped black phone hunkering there with its numerous and mysterious buttons like a symbolic Chinese toad.
    “That’s better. I hate that kind of light,” said Lark. “And tell me exactly what you know.”
    “First tell me why I can’t talk to Rowan Mayfair, why I can’t get more data. Why didn’t she send you photographs of this thing? I have to talk to her—”
    “Nobody can find her. I’ve been trying for weeks. Her family has been trying since Christmas Day. That’s when she disappeared.I’m on an eight-thirty plane tonight to see her family in New Orleans. I’m the last one to have heard from Rowan. Her phone call to me two weeks ago is the only current evidence that Rowan is even alive. One phone call, then the specimens. When I contacted her family for funds, which is what she asked me to do, they told me about her disappearance. She has been spotted once since Christmas Day…maybe…in a town in Scotland called Donnelaith.”
    “What about the courier service which delivered the specimens? Where was the pickup? Trace it.”
    “Done. Dead end. The service picked them up from a hotel concierge in Geneva, to which they were given by a female guest as she was checking out. The woman does fit Rowan’s description, somewhat, but there’s no proof that Rowan was ever a guest in this hotel, at least not under her own name.
    “The whole thing was surreptitious. She’d given the concierge info as to the destination of the package several days before. Look, the family has investigated all this, believe me. They’re more eager to find Rowan than anybody else. When I called to tell them about all this, they went nuts. That’s why I’m going