The Fifth World Read Free

Tucson, Arizona, served himself another cup of coffee from the vending machine in the corridor without taking his eyes off Tess Mitchell. The young woman with the blond braids and frightened eyes couldn’t stop fidgeting in the uncomfortable metal chair.
    â€œYou sure you wouldn’t like something to drink, young lady?”
    She shook her head. Lincoln Lewis had just informed her that federal agents were going to take over the case of Jack Bennewitz’s death. Apparently, on his computer, they had found some interesting links between her physics mentor and various university professors in Central America, the Middle East, and Europe. One of them, Juan Martorell, from the University of Mexico, had been murdered not twenty-four hours earlier in Mexico City, his body thrown from the seventeenth floor of the Hotel Reforma. In the best interests of his investigation, thepolice chief withheld this last bit of information.
    â€œYou and Jack were close?” he asked.
    Tess nodded. They had known each other for four years. Together they had visited the most important telescopes in the United States, and had even made a few trips out of the country as well, to Arecibo, in Puerto Rico, and Mexico City, just a month earlier. Together they had gone to the pyramids at Teotihuacán, “the oldest astronomical observatory in the Americas,” as Bennewitz had admiringly called it.
    â€œDid they tell you how Jack died?”
    At this point, Tess had been in the police station for five hours, answering the same questions over and over again to a parade of different agents. It was clear that they had no leads. Just her. And she also knew, as the policeman she had seen on TV seemed to suggest, that they were prepared to put her through hell for as long as they could.
    The young woman shook her head in response.
    â€œA gunshot fired at him point-blank?” she guessed aloud.
    â€œI’m afraid not, Tess. They tore his heart out, in one fell swoop. They did it with some kind of very sharp object, a blade or a prod that they sank into him in a single motion, slicing directly through his arteries.”
    The young woman’s eyes widened with fright. Now she understood that dark stain on Professor Bennewitz’s shirt.
    â€œWe know it wasn’t you,” the police chief assured her. “You wouldn’t have the strength for something like that. Plus, Jack Bennewitz died at least two hours before you got to him. In all likelihood the murder did not even occur in that office. We found no traces of blood whatsoever there, except for the stains on his clothing. They must have brought him thereafter they did it, sat him down, and left him for someone else to find him.”
    â€œReally?”
    The police chief nodded.
    â€œTell me, where were you at two o’clock this afternoon?”
    Tess didn’t hesitate:
    â€œI had just left the Kitt Peak observatory,” she said, swallowing air as if muffling a sob. “I was there all morning, gathering information from the main telescope. When I found what I was looking for I went to Jack’s office to show him. From the observatory it takes about ninety minutes to get to Tucson, so I would have been on the road at around that time . . .”
    â€œRight. Now, since you weren’t on campus when the crime occurred, I wonder if you could tell me if you or any of your friends saw anything unusual on campus today, either this morning or later this afternoon. Anything at all that struck you as unusual?”
    Tess said nothing. She bowed her head, as if trying to extract a memory, any recollection at all that might offer the police some kind of clue to aid their investigation. The matter of the butterfly seemed irrelevant and anyway, she was too embarrassed to admit that she had taken something from a crime scene, so she just put it out of her mind. In a matter of seconds she replayed her arrival at the university, the ham and cheese sandwich