The Evolution of Thomas Hall by Keith Merrill

Author:Keith Merrill [Merrill, Kieth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christianity, Fiction
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 49

Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice-messaging system. Four one five, six seven three, nine nine seven two is not available. At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished recording, please hang up or press one for more options.” The default recording from AT&T was always obnoxious. In 5.1 surround sound it was almost unbearable.

The traffic light turned green and Thomas accelerated his Mercedes north past the Presidio golf course. The long, shrill tone ended, inviting Thomas to leave a message for Dr. Hamilton. He glanced at the number Chu had written on the back of her business card and checked it against the iPhone. He had dialed correctly.

“Hi, Doctor Hamilton, it’s Thomas Hall. Say, listen, I—uh . . .” There was no good way to explain in a voice message why he was calling. “If you get a minute, could you please give me a call?” He left his telephone number and ended the call. He took a deep breath and headed for the bridge. His thoughts were cluttered by the endless day of unexpected troubles. Of all my troubles great and small . . . Without sleep nothing worked right. Stay awake. Get home. Crash.

• • •

Sleep did not come easily. His legs twitched and his nerves felt raw. Exposed. He never imagined one could be too tired to fall asleep, but that was how it seemed. He had been up forty-four hours. His body was exhausted. His mind was aflame.

Hawker’s order to go after Hamilton had given him a jolt of adrenaline. He hadn’t left the museum immediately. He’d gone upstairs, curious to find out why Hawker had covered the mural.

He guessed Hawker’s plan to change everything made letting the press see anything a bad idea. The nearly completed vignette of Cro-Magnon hunters could work for both. Hawker’s ego was going to be a problem. Maybe it was an issue of his own ego.

He climbed the 170 steps of the grand staircase two at a time. The chairs and podium were gone. The lights were off. A shaft of natural light from the stained-glass skylights illuminated Darwin from above. His eyes were lost in the shadows of a thick bronze brow.

The visage gave Thomas pause. The faint echo of Hawker’s words seemed to hover in the air. As he thought of the press conference, he half expected Ada Kanster to smack him with a dead baby seal or attack with a Shenzhen fishing knife. Disjointed images fluttered through his mind. Adrenaline and second wind notwithstanding, he really needed to get some sleep.

He turned on the work lights and lifted the semi-opaque polyethylene. The light through the shroud of plastic illuminated the tunnel in a murky gray-green glow. He probed his way along the mural to where once upon a time a party of Cro-Magnon hunters had stolen the carcass of a mammoth calf from an outraged feline beast. They were gone. Only a vague sense of the artwork was visible. A

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