The Genesis Code by John Case

Author:John Case [Case, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2010-08-31T07:31:59.028000+00:00

Her house was exuberantly and eclectically furnished, antique furniture effortlessly sharing the space with more modern pieces. Old Oriental rugs on the polished floors, art everywhere and of every era. Ropes of green erylosing their needles were draped over the mantel, spiraled up the columns in the living room, twisted around the banisters of the double staircases.

It was fairly messy, papers and magazines, books and cups and plates, hats and gloves, scattered around. A red hot water bottle reclined in an easy chair, a bag of potato chips rested on the piano stool. She apologized for the mess, stopping to kick off her heels, and padded ahead of him in stockinged feet toward the kitchen. “Cup of coffee?” Lassiter followed her into the kitchen, a huge old room with a row of French doors along one wall. He sat at an old farm table while she made coffee.

“You’ve been to see Honor, then?” Kara Baker said.

“She wasn’t helpful.”

“Poor Honny,” she said with a sigh. “She acts so hard-hearted, but actually she’s quite paralyzed with grief. I’m rather worried about her.”

Lassiter hesitated. “Could have fooled me.”

“Oh I know, she can be such a beast. But take it from me, Tils Matilda was the only person in the world she cared about. And Martin.” He tilted his head, as if he hadn’t heard her right. “That’s not what she told me.”

A timer went off. Kara was making coffee in a French press and she pushed down on the plunger, gradually and expertly. “Nonsense,” she said, rummaging around for some cups. “That’s what I mean about being worried about her. You saw her place, you saw how controlled she is, how compulsive. Wait I’ll show you a drawing of hers.” She set the coffee tray on the table two chipped mugs, an alabaster sugar bowl, and a carton of cream. Kara went to the far wall and returned with a large framed pen-and-ink sketch of Piccadilly Circus. She propped it on a chair and they both looked at it.

“You see,” she said. “Just about the most tight-assed drawing you’ll ever behold.” She flung her hands out toward it. “This this is what Honny is like.”

It was a wonderful big drawing, its composition brilliant, its painterly line engaging, its angled, aerial perspective intriguing. But it was so meticulous and detailed that it reminded Lassiter of the sort of thing that Third World children went blind completing. “I see what you mean.”

Kara stirred her coffee with her finger and then sucked it. “Honor she’s in what the shrinks call denial only this time she’s not denying the murders happened, or that Tils and Martin are deadshe’s denying she gives a fig. She doesn’t care and therefore the fact that they’re dead doesn’t matter.” She took a sip of coffee and moaned with pleasure.

The coffee was very, very good, and Kara Baker was very appealing. Lassiter felt oddly immune to that appeal and it bothered him because this was a woman he would ordinarily desire. As it was, his attraction to her was almost intellectual not physical.

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