Free The Methuselah Gene by Jonathan Lowe Page A

hired a P.I.”
    â€œP.I.?”
    â€œPrivate investigator, detective, gumshoe.   I’m from Florida, see.   Naples, Florida.   Name is Charlie.”
    He nodded, one hand to his chin, the other holding his elbow.   The brown eyes fluttered slightly, then his head bobbed once.   He took the hand I offered, and gripped it like I imagined a casting agent might.   “Okay, then,” he said.   “Deal.   And you can call me George.”
    I followed him, wiping my hand across the side of my shirt.   His palm had been damp.   We went into the back, past the televised orgy, toward a second room that was a storage area.   To my chagrin, I saw there was no separate bathroom, and no bed visible amid the stacks of boxes and store stock.
    Then I felt my own face slacken, and my mouth dropped open involuntarily at the sight of a large maple wood box supported on a heavy four legged utility table.   Its lid was open, and the thing was large enough even for a big man like George.
    In shock, I turned to see George standing in the doorway behind me.   One of his hands now rested on the door frame, blocking my escape.   I eyed the steel back door, which was bolted against the night.   At that, George followed my gaze and then stepped closer to me as if daring me to try for it.
    â€œYou’re not a pharmacist, are you?” I said, a detectable waver in my voice.
    George laughed.   It was a short, quick laugh with a smile that lingered.   He nodded toward the open casket behind me.   “No,” he confessed, “actually, I’ve always wanted to be an undertaker.”

7
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    The only pay phone in Zion hung on a post outside the town hall that also doubled as town church.   The light bulb inside the phone’s opaque cracked plastic covering was dead.   The phone directory, which hung inside the black casing on a flexible metal cord, was warped and desecrated with doodling.   Squinting in the dim light from the adjacent marquee, I thumbed past the Des Moines yellow pages to the Adair county white pages, and located the two ragged sheets devoted to Zion.   A rip across the lower part of the second page had taken out Wally’s Shell station in a cratered half moon.   But the Deputy Sheriff, Zion’s only law enforcement, was spared.   I stared at the address in surprise, then looked up to trace the numbers to a frontage between Zion Hardware and the tiny Zion Bank of America branch.   The white emblem on the door across the street over there, which I’d imagined indicated some kind of utilities or government services office, might actually be a badge, I realized.   Did police sleep, though?   Apparently they did in tiny towns with little or no crime.   So maybe there was no paranoid posse after me, after all.   Maybe Earl and Wally and Clyde and whoever else I’d imagined them recruiting were at home watching Hee Haw on the nostalgia channel.   No State Police cars would be converging on Zion from Omaha to join in the search for some stranger with an alias who’d skipped on his dinner tab.   After all, they had my car.   They had my camera and my binoculars.   So they were covered.   Right?
    I dropped a quarter into the phone, and started to dial Darryl, but chickened out, afraid of discovering that my suspicions were true.   I thought about who I might call instead.   David Thorne, my former research assistant?   No, the man was like a lab rat now, busily networking in the hallways, obsessed with one day becoming the Big Cheese.   Meticulous and professional, Dave couldn’t be trusted to keep a secret when loyalty to the company figured into it.   Frank Fisher, maybe?   Again, no.   Frank, as head of Tactar’s security, was probably obligated to reveal any confidence told him, and directly to Jeffers and Winsdon , despite the fact that his agency was