The Back of the Turtle Read Online Free

wrote on all the walls?”
    “We think it’s a list,” said Winter.
    “A list of what?”
    “We’re not sure,” said Winter.
    “Chernobyl. Idaho Falls. Chalk River.” Dorian read the names on the screen. “Pine Ridge, South Dakota?”
    “It’s an Indian reservation,” said Winter. “It was used as a bombing range during World War II.”
    “Rokkasho and Lanyu?”
    “Nuclear and biological waste dumps.”
    “Renaissance Island.” Dorian’s face softened, as though he had run into an old friend. “The Russian anthrax facility.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Has Security seen these photographs yet?”
    “Security took the photographs.”
    Dorian tapped the screen with his finger. “This is disturbing.”
    “Yes, sir,” said Winter. “It is.”
    The image on Dorian’s monitor showed a four-burner electric stove and a green refrigerator. On the wall above the sink, Gabriel had written “Bhopal” and “Grassy Narrows.”
    “Do we know what any of this means?”
    Winter’s eyes remained passive. “The Board was hoping that you might have some ideas.”
    The fatigue had returned. Dorian rubbed his neck and dug his thumbs into the muscles at the base of his skull. Perhaps a little pain would chase the weariness away.
    “If you scroll to the end of the photographs, there’s one that you should see.”
    “I’m supposing that this isn’t going to be good news either.”
    “No, sir,” said Winter. “I don’t believe it is.”
    Dorian worked the mouse. Each new photograph was of another wall on which Dr. Quinn had written. Except for the final photograph. That photograph wasn’t of a wall at all.
    “That’s the front door,” said Winter.
    Dorian sat up in his chair. Suddenly the fatigue was gone.
    “The front door?”
    “So far as we can tell,” said Winter, “this is the last thing that Dr. Quinn wrote before he disappeared.”
    Dorian stared at the monitor. “Who’s Quinn’s number two in Biological Oversight?”
    “Dr. Warren Thicke.”
    “All right,” said Dorian. “I want Thicke in my office at ten tomorrow. I want to know where Quinn went on his vacation. And I would like us to find him as quietly and as quickly as possible.”
    FOR the rest of the morning, Dorian worked his way through the papers on his desk. Yet try as he might, he couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for the jobs at hand. He had had days like this before, days when even the optimism of science and business couldn’t carry him past the suspicion that the world had somehow slipped through his hands. Such concerns would pass, of course.
    They always had.
    Maybe it was time to do something about the empty aquarium in the lobby. There had been talk about fish. He had even ordered an illustrated catalogue, had been tempted by the colour plates of the salt-water species. But, each time Dorian tried to imagine schools of blueface angelfish, cinnamon clowns, green chromises, flame hawkfish, and black tangs all swooping and darting about, the thought of all that motion and flash left him feeling disquieted and anxious.
    The turtle had been trouble enough.
    He never understood what Gabriel had seen in the turtle.
    The animal had spent its life bump-bump-bumping against the glass, as though it expected to find a way to escape.
    Then somehow, unexpectedly, it had.
    And it was only after it had vanished that Dorian realized just how much he appreciated the simplicity and silence of empty water.

3
    SONNY STANDS BY THE POOL, THE TOOL POUCH HANGING ON his hip, and looks out over the beach. On a clear day, you can see all the way to eternity. That’s what Dad says. From here to eternity. Right now Sonny isn’t trying to find eternity. He’s watching the old guy lying on the beach.
    Pretending to be dead.
    Again.
    The first time the old guy pretended to die on the beach, Sonny had raced down to collect the salvage.
    Pants.
    Shirt.
    Shoes.
    The jacket with the feathers and the tipis stitched across the back.
    But then the dead rose up