Day of the Predator

CHAPTER 6

1906, San Francisco

Maddy strode down Minna Street towards the bank. ‘Come on.’

Liam was struggling to keep up with her. ‘So, who put them in this bank? And when did they do it?’

She reached the front step of the Union Commercial Savings Company and stopped. ‘OK, Liam, just a second…’ She pulled her glasses and a scrap of paper covered with scribbled notes in her handwriting out of her handbag.

‘Oh Jay-zus… you brought notes back with you? Isn’t that not allowed? You know? Contamination of time an’ all?’

Maddy looked around the quiet street guiltily. ‘I know, I know… but there was way too much to remember. I was worried I’d forget something.’

‘Foster would throw a fit if he knew you’d brought notes back here,’ said Liam.

‘Well, he won’t, will he?’ she muttered impatiently. ‘Because he bailed out and left us to cope on our own.’

Liam shrugged at that.

She put her glasses on. ‘OK, so, my name is Miss Emily Lassiter. You’re my brother.’

‘Do I get a name too?’

She sighed. ‘Yes… uhh… here it is, Leonard Lassiter. All right?’

He nodded.

She scanned the notes further, digesting the information for a few moments before tucking them back in her bag and removing her glasses. ‘All right, I think I’ve got it all.’ She looked at him. ‘You don’t have to say anything, OK? Just go along with whatever I say.’

‘Will do.’

She took a deep breath, then pushed the double door to the bank inwards. They stepped on to a tiled floor that echoed their footsteps around a hall, dark with oak panels. Ahead of them were half a dozen ornate mahogany desks, each with softly glowing green ceramic desk lamps. Behind each one sat a bank teller, all but one busy dealing in hushed, respectful tones with customers.

Maddy led the way towards the unoccupied teller, a young man with hair slicked down in a rigid centre parting and a carefully clipped and waxed moustache.

‘Uhh… ’scuse me?’ she said.

The young man looked up at her and smiled charmingly. ‘Good morning, ma’am. How can I help you?

‘I’d like to speak with a Mr… uh… Mr Leighton. He works here, I think.’

‘Oh, I’m certain he works here, ma’am,’ said the young man. He tapped a wooden name-holder on the desk. ‘I’m Harold Leighton, you see? Please, will you take a seat?’

Maddy smiled and slumped down in the seat a little too casually then did her best to quickly recover her lady-like demeanour. ‘Much… uh… much obliged,’ she said as demurely as she could manage.

‘Now, ma’am, how could I assist you?’

She took a breath, hoping she was going to get this right and not sound half as nervous as she felt. ‘My family has a safe deposit box with your bank and I wish to make a withdrawal.’

‘Certainly, ma’am. The account is in the name of?’

‘Joshua Waldstein Lassiter.’

Harold Leighton’s eyebrows raised.

Her heart skipped. ‘Oh… is there a problem?’

‘Not a problem as such, ma’am. It’s just… I still have the paperwork here on my desk.’

Maddy shook her head. ‘Paperwork?’

‘The paperwork setting up the safe deposit account. Joshua Waldstein Lassiter, I presume he is your…?’

‘Uh?… My uh… yes, that’s right, my father.’

‘Well, your father was here not more than an hour ago. Actually, I dealt with him myself. He brought a very nice jewellery box with him and we carried it down to the safe room and put it in a deposit box together… as I say, not more than an hour ago.’

‘Oh,’ was all she managed to say after a few moments. ‘Yes, well, that’s quite right.’

‘And you wish to withdraw something from the safe deposit box already?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Well… that is highly irregular.’

‘We’re a funny old family, us Lassiters,’ said Maddy, looking back over the chair. ‘Aren’t we, Liam?’

Liam stepped forward. ‘Oh yes, that we are, dear sister.’ He grinned at the teller. ‘She sometimes calls me Liam, although my name is in fact Leonard,’ he said, nudging the small of her back.

Maddy mentally kicked herself for being such a dumb-nuts.

‘You are brother and sister?’ Harold Leighton looked up at Liam. ‘And it seems you, sir, are Irish?’

‘Yes.’

‘But,’ he said, looking at Maddy, ‘it seems, ma’am, you’re not?’

‘I… uh…’ Maddy’s mouth flapped uselessly. ‘Oh…’

‘I was brought up in Cork,’ cut in Liam. ‘My dear sister in California. Father likes to keep a home either side of the Atlantic, so he does.’

The young teller cocked an eyebrow. ‘So it seems.’ He sighed and spread the bank account details out in front of him. ‘Well, it appears your father did specify his children as fellow signatories on the account, so… you, ma’am, I presume are Emily Lassiter?’

‘That’s correct,’ she replied.

‘For security reasons I have to ask you for the code word your father has put down here on this form to assure us you are in fact who you say you are.’

‘Of course.’ She nodded. ‘It’s… it’s…’ She realized all of a sudden her mind had gone blank and cursed.

The teller’s jaw dropped open at her unladylike language. ‘Madam!’

Liam grinned sheepishly. ‘She’s spent time at sea. Picked up all sorts of dreadful language from the sailors, so she did. Father so hates her talking that way.’

‘Just a sec,’ said Maddy, fumbling in her handbag for her note. She quickly scanned her scribbled writing. ‘Ahh! Here it is!’

She leaned forward over the desk. ‘The code word, Mr Leighton, is Hemlock.’

Leighton stared at her long and hard, suspicion clouding his young teller’s eyes. Finally a cautious smile spread across his lips. ‘Yes, it is, Miss Lassiter. If you’ll just sign here, I can take you down to the safe room.’?

The teller spun a large brass wheel and slowly pulled open the cast-iron door leading on to a small room lined with numbered deposit boxes on three walls. ‘Your safe deposit box is number three-nine-seven,’ he said, leading them to a locker with the number on its door. He inserted the key and twisted it once.

‘It is company policy, madam, sir, that I remain in the safe room while you inspect the contents of your deposit box. However, I shall remain over there by the door and I shall turn my back to allow you a little privacy.’

Maddy nodded and smiled politely. ‘OK.’

She waited until Mr Leighton had crossed the room and was standing by the cast-iron door, casually jangling the keys in one hand and examining his fingernails on the other.

‘Liam,’ she uttered softly.

‘Yes?’

‘I think it’s best if you go talk to him, distract him. I don’t want him seeing anything he shouldn’t.’

He nodded. ‘Aye, you’re right.’ He wandered over and easily struck up a conversation with the young man while Maddy attended to their business.

She pulled the deposit box’s door open. The faint glow from the safe room’s overhead light showed her little of what was inside. Maddy pushed her hand into the darkness and almost immediately felt the side of a wooden box. She found a small handle and pulled it out. It was quite heavy, and as she hefted it out of the locker towards an inspection bench in the middle of the room, the young man called out.

‘Let me give you a hand with that, madam.’

‘I’m fine… I’m fine,’ she grunted.

‘Strong as an ox, so she is,’ Liam assured him. ‘She’ll be all right.’ He resumed chatting to Leighton, something about steam ships, from what she could hear.

She studied the box. It certainly looked like a jewellery box, about the size of a small travel trunk, made of dark wood with silver buckles and ornate swirls along each side. She turned the box so that the upright lid would hide what was inside from any prying eyes, and then slowly, carefully opened it.

‘Another box,’ she whispered. But this one was smooth, featureless, metal and cold to the touch.

Refrigerated. There had to be some kind of small power unit or battery inside.

Her gloved fingers found a catch on the side and gently slid it back. Something inside the box clicked and the lid slowly raised with a barely audible hiss. A shallow fog of nitrogen wafted out of the box revealing a row of eight glass tubes, each six inches long and a couple of inches wide. She eased one of the glass tubes out of its holder and, still shielded by the lid of the jewellery box, inspected it closely. Through the glass she could see the murky pink growth solution and the faint pale outline of a curled-up human foetus.

‘Hello there, little baby Bobs!’ she cooed softly, waggling her fingers down at the frozen embryo. ‘Auntie Maddy’s here.’

The conversation in the corner was getting quite animated. Clearly Leighton had a passion for new-fangled things like steam ships and automobiles. And Liam was playing along nicely.

Well done, Liam.

She placed the glass tube back and closed the lid of the refrigerated case, lifting it out of the jewellery box and into her bag. She was about to close the lid of the jewellery box when she spotted a scrap of paper at the bottom. What she saw on it made her heart lurch.

Her name.

A note for me?

She reached in and picked it up. Just a folded scrap of paper, a few words scrawled hurriedly on it.

Maddy, look out for ‘Pandora’, we’re running out of time. Be safe and tell no one.

‘How’re you doin’, my dear sister?’ called out Liam.

‘I’m good,’ she replied, grabbing the scrap of paper, balling it up and tucking it into one of her gloves. She closed the box and lifted it back into the locker, much lighter now. She closed the door. ‘I’m all done here, Mr Leighton!’

‘Ah, splendid!’ He came over with his jangling keys and locked the deposit box for her.

‘Everything all right?’

She glanced at Liam making a silly face at her over Leighton’s shoulder.

‘Yes… yes, just fine, thank you.’

A minute later they were exiting the bank on to Minna Street once more, Liam holding the bag for her.

‘Nice enough chap,’ he said.

She turned to look at him. ‘A dozen hours from now he’ll be dead.’

‘Dead?’

‘Yes, dead. That’s why the instructions said to ask for him specifically.’ She’d figured that out on the way back up the stairs. Because if anything happened, if the young man had caught a glimpse of anything inside the box, or heard either of them say anything suspicious… well, he’d hardly have time to do anything with that knowledge, would he? The agency once again cleverly covering its tracks.

‘Jaayyzz. That seems not right to me,’ uttered Liam. ‘Not to warn him somehow.’

Maddy didn’t like it either. ‘It’s how it is, Liam. It’s how it is.’

As they walked up Minna Street towards the main thoroughfare, Liam attempted to lift the mood. ‘You got our little babies?’

She nodded. ‘All in there. Baby Popsicles.’

‘Baby what?’