The Vesuvius Isotope.

by Kristen Elise, Ph.D.

Acknowledgements.

I thank two brilliant ladies who dedicated countless hours to making this work possible: My editor, Cyndie Duncan, for her encyclopedic knowledge of em dashes and ellipses, and for stopping me from creating a world in which the dead have mood swings and pianos are portable; and my alpha, beta, epsilon, kappa, gamma, mu and zeta reader, Sara McBride, for reading every single chapter just one more time, and never being afraid to tell me when I have "pulled a total wanker."

I thank my mom, Glenna Fraser, for not letting me watch The Dukes of Hazzard because they used bad grammar, for instead teaching me Scrabble and Teakettle, and for convincing me that I could do anything I wanted with this life (sorry to have taken that advice so literally...) And for putting the manuscript back on the right track when it wandered off into Never-Never Land.

I thank the pharmaceutical company that laid me off so that I could finally finish the manuscript.

I thank good friends and family who have encouraged this endeavor and convinced me it would be worth the effort-the Lissner/Swann/Boddie family, my brothers, Lindsay, Amy and Bryan, Jenn, Ashley, Gray, Laurie...

I thank Damonza's Awesome Book Covers for the awesome book cover.

I thank my chicho, Senior Antonio; my beautiful stepdaughters, Nataly and Christina; and my little love, Harmoni, for their friendship and keeping it real; and my kids, Rambo, Haley, and Pilgrim, for always listening to Mommy reading aloud.

Most importantly, I thank my wonderfully loving and encouraging husband, Sonny, for working twice as hard as the rest of us put together, for date nights and family days, for sending me off to Egypt well-prepared, for being a marketing genius, and for thinking it was a great idea for me to publish a book instead of pursuing another "real" job. You are my Jeffrey Wilson, except that you don't die in the first paragraph.

San Diego, CA.

Ashes were already falling, not as yet very thickly. I looked round: a dense black cloud was coming up behind us, spreading over the earth like a flood. "Let us leave the road while we can still see," I said, "or we shall be knocked down and trampled underfoot in the dark by the crowd behind." We had scarcely sat down to rest when darkness fell, not the dark of a moonless or cloudy night, but as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room.

-Letters of Pliny the Younger (ca. 61112 CE).

Prologue.

Thousands perished in the ashes the day the darkness fell as if the lamp had been put out in a closed room. So, too, was buried a medical breakthrough that today, nearly two millennia later, could save thousands. Six weeks ago, it emerged.

The person who rediscovered the ancient isotope did not at first realize the magnitude of the find. Except for the curious property of restoring life, it is inert. It is harmless to humans-indeed, to all living things. It survives for only moments. Yet, despite its transient nature, it appears to bring death as well as life; a trail of cadavers has followed the isotope through the centuries.

Is it magic, as believed by the ancients? As a scientist in 2023, I have a more logical hypothesis. But when it comes to murder of the strictly mortal variety, I must admit, empirically I know for certain of only one. My husband, Jeff.

When I find it, or recreate it in a lab as the case may be, I will name the isotope Vesuvium. I think Jeff would appreciate that. Like the erupting volcano, in fact, like Jeff himself, it is as majestic as its lifespan is fleeting.

He was my world. I loved him more than anything. I hope he would forgive me for all that I have done.

Part I: The Ancient Remedy.

You could hear the shrieks of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men; some were calling their parents, others their children or their wives, trying to recognize them by their voices. People bewailed their own fate or that of their relatives, and there were some who prayed for death in their terror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imagined there were no gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness for evermore.

-Letters of Pliny the Younger (ca. 61112 CE).

Chapter One.

There is a crash. I feel wetness, and pain. I see a thousand memories.

My husband was naked the first time we met. The image of him at that moment has not faded from my mind in our five short years together. Now, as I feel myself slipping beneath the surface, there is another image as well-of the last time I saw my husband. He was lying dead from two gunshot wounds. Again, he was naked.

The first time I saw Jeff, I was sprinting along Black's Beach in La Jolla, California. The secluded strip of coastline is world-renowned as a runner's paradise, with its intense four-mile loop of steep mountain switchbacks and deep sand. Black's has long been my favorite place to jog, despite the fact that it is a clothing-optional beach.

That morning, as I rounded the corner into a nook beside a jutting shoreline cliff, I almost crashed into him before managing to change course. My first impression was beach bum, not nudist as I later liked to teasingly call him. At five o'clock in the morning, the beach appeared totally abandoned. I assume he thought he was alone and, therefore, felt comfortable stripping out of his wetsuit to dress after his morning surf session. Black's was, after all, a nude beach.

He was no more than five feet away from me, so nothing escaped my attention. Seawater was running down his lean surfer's body as he tossed a dripping wetsuit onto a boulder beside him and then reached for a towel lying next to a pile of clothing.

He glanced up. As he did, a lock of sandy hair fell over his forehead. His eyes met mine, and then he flashed a mischievous grin of straight white teeth.

"Whoops, that's embarrassing!" The handsome nude man with the smoky blue eyes chuckled while belatedly bringing the towel up to shield himself.

"Morning," I said casually, continuing past him with a smirk.

Less than a month later, it was my turn to be caught off guard. I was at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases delivering a lecture about biological terrorism. The conference was held in Paris that year, and attendance was at an all-time high. I was at the podium in the main lecture hall speaking to an audience of approximately five thousand. In the midst of my speech, I glanced up from the microphone, and one audience member sitting front row center of the auditorium caught my eye.

My voice faltered when I saw him. The handsome, well-dressed man with the smoky blue eyes looked familiar, but I couldn't place him. Then he flashed that mischievous grin, and our brief moment on Black's Beach returned to me.

I completely lost my train of thought.

My presentation trailed off mid-sentence. A few people in the audience cleared their throats. I felt my face flush. I took a few well-rehearsed steps to recover my composure-three deep breaths, a sip of water from my glass on the podium, another deep breath.

"Whoops, that's embarrassing!" I said into the microphone. I could feel myself smiling.

Later, as I sat sipping coffee and reviewing my notes between sessions, he approached me. This time, with the advantage of seeing him coming toward me, I was prepared.

"Dr. Stone," he said with a professional nod.

"Naked surfer," I said and nodded back.

A pair of women at an adjacent table glanced toward us. He acknowledged them with a smile before returning his attention to me.

"I'm surprised you recognized me," he said.

"I was looking at your face, for the most part."

It was then that I noticed his conference-issued name badge. Jeffrey Wilson had been granted the Nobel Prize in Chemistry a few years prior for the creation of a new chemical element, one of the very few so-called superheavy elements in existence at the time. He had received the Nobel both for creating the new element and for the ground-breaking method by which it was created.

I remembered the media circus that surrounded his winning the Nobel. The majority of press attention was concentrated at The Scripps Research Institute where Jeff was a principal investigator. That facility is less than a mile from Black's Beach.

Jeff must have known immediately that he would die.

The shot to his back passed all the way through his body. The bullet had to have come from within our bedroom.

He was still standing. The waist-high wrought iron railing enclosing our bedroom terrace stopped him from falling forward. As he stood naked, leaning against the railing, with a bullet hole through his middle, a steady red river gushed from the exit wound. The blood gathered along the edge of the railing and then trickled down, tracing the intricate ironwork like lava flowing through a vertical maze. A small crimson pool formed on the edge of the terrace's natural stone floor, but the majority spilled over. Down it poured, past the second and first floor windows of our house and onto the forward deck of my yacht.

Jeff's right hand went first to the exit wound in his bare stomach and then to the terrace railing, where it left a bloody handprint. It must have been at that moment that he turned to look at the shooter behind him.

The second bullet hit him in the upper chest, sending my husband-the most handsome, brilliant, kind, charming, Nobel laureate chemist in the history of the prize-plunging backward over the terrace railing to his death.

The yacht was a gift from Jeff for our first wedding anniversary, but I always teased him that Teresa was as much his gift as mine. While the small yacht was easily maneuvered by one person, Jeff and I almost always took her out together.

I was standing on our bedroom terrace enjoying the panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean when I first saw her. I was wearing a backless evening gown of shimmering royal blue, a color Jeff loved on me for the way it accentuated my blue eyes and long auburn waves. The dress was floor length and fitted to my slender, petite frame. A single alluring slit in the gown exposed my left leg to the thigh.

Jeff stepped out of our bedroom and joined me on the terrace. His standard attire of jeans, T-shirt, and tennis shoes had been transformed, and Jeff was dashing in a black jacket and tie. The thick sandy brown hair that almost always fell over his forehead was now smoothly slicked back. In each of Jeff's hands was a glass of champagne. He handed one to me and appreciatively ran his eyes over my dress before pulling me close for a kiss.

"Happy anniversary," he said. "You look gorgeous."

I set my champagne down on the terrace railing to embrace my husband with both arms. "Where are we going for dinner?" I whispered between kisses.

Instead of answering, Jeff stepped away from me and leaned casually against the railing. He glanced down at the water below, and his face lit up with the same mischievous grin I had first seen three years earlier on Black's Beach.

"You know what has always bugged me?" he said.

"What's that, love?"

"That we had a boat dock but no boat."

Instead of thinking to look down, I looked at Jeff. He dipped his eyes downward once more. This time mine followed, and I saw her for the first time.

The yacht was directly beneath us, moored unassumingly in the formerly empty space as if she had always been there. On Teresa's forward deck was an elegantly set table for two. Standing next to the table was a man in a chef's hat who announced, as if on cue, that dinner was served.

It was upon that very same spot on Teresa's deck that Jeff's body landed after falling from our bedroom terrace three years later.

The front door was unlocked, so I was certain my husband would be there. "Jeff," I called as I entered the house, "I'm home." I was not surprised there was no answer. If he was still in the shower, he would not have heard me. Or maybe he was out on our private terrace lost in his own thoughts. Or perhaps he had simply ignored me.

I dropped my purse and my laptop on the living room sofa and began climbing the stairs.

It had been a chilly three days between us. We had barely spoken since the biggest fight of our marriage, and I now wondered if our relationship could ever return to the way it had been. A part of me wanted so badly to just forget the events of three days prior and to surprise him on the terrace in the nude, as I had done so many times before.

I opened the bedroom door, and I was stopped in my tracks. On the floor near my nightstand was a small metal object. The back of my neck came alive with chills.

I recognized the gun immediately. It was mine.

I stepped timidly toward it as a light breeze ruffled the curtains framing the French doors to our terrace. A sudden gust of wind brought the curtains billowing into the bedroom. One of them kissed the pistol lying on the floor before shrinking back again.

I glanced up. The glass doors were standing wide open, as if beckoning me out between them. Slowly I moved toward the terrace.

There I saw it. The blood on the metal railing, framed theatrically by the ruffling curtains. It had already begun to congeal. The pools along the top of the railing and upon the stone floor beneath it were a brighter red than the thinner traces down the vertical metal. The handprint smeared along the top rail was a sickening blotchy swirl of multiple hues. It appeared to be the exact size of my husband's hand.

My mind was not my own as I stepped forward and crossed the terrace.

Naked and vulnerable, Jeff's body was displayed in the center of Teresa's forward deck. All four of his limbs were jutting out unnaturally from his torso. Also radiating out from the center of his body were two overlapping ovals of varying shades of red, one from his chest and the other from his abdomen.

The expression on Jeff's face was one of horror, and there was something else there as well. I think it was sorrow.

I could make no sound. I could only stare. I have no idea how long I stood there.

A flash of light roused me. Another gust of wind had just blown past, and the boat was now rocking gently. A single ray from the setting sun danced mockingly into my eyes, drawing them to the small object from which the light was ricocheting. Until that moment, I had not noticed the pistol silencer lying beside Jeff's body. It was nearly concealed within the pool of blood that had flowed from my husband's heart.

The message to me was clear: Be quiet.

It was perversely fortunate that Jeff's body had landed on the yacht. Our dock was built on a private, narrow canal that led directly out into the Pacific Ocean. It would be surprisingly easy, albeit very expensive, to hide his body. And I knew I had to hide his body.

So I bribed a mortician.

I pulled Larry Shuman's information from a hasty Internet search on one lone criterion: his business was still open that late in the evening.

Shuman greeted me with a professional handshake, but his eyes were sympathetic as he offered condolences for my loss. He then ran a pudgy hand through the sparse hair on his head and motioned for me to sit across from him as he sat behind his desk. He looked at me questioningly, as if wondering what I had not said on the phone.

The easiest way to explain what I wanted from Shuman was to show him. I opened my purse and pulled out my iPhone, where I had stored a collection of photos. Shuman examined them academically for quite some time before speaking. "Why, may I ask," he said finally, "did you call my funeral home instead of the police?"

I took a deep breath before answering. "Because I need this to remain unreported for a short period of time. You can still do the necessary post-mortem work-up, but I'm asking, please, do not report this. Not yet."

Shuman stood up from his desk so abruptly that his chair tipped over backward behind him. He pulled the receiver of his desk phone off its cradle and began to dial.

"I have heard quite enough, Dr. Stone."

I lunged forward.

Shuman jerked back in an effort to escape my clutching hand, but I was quicker than he was. My hand closed around his, and we began to struggle for the telephone receiver. As we did, the unclasped purse dangling from my arm banged across Shuman's desk with sufficient force to spill its contents. Several thick wads of rubber banded cash fell out onto the desk.

My strength was no match for his, but Shuman replaced the receiver of the phone, his eyes dropping once or twice to the cash on the desk and then returning to meet my own. Finally, he reached backward and righted his chair to sit down again.

"Dr. Stone, I know who you are. I have read about you and your husband several times over the past few years. Your biotechnology company, founded on the very science that earned Dr. Wilson the Nobel Prize, is among the most successful in the history of the industry-"

"And today," I interrupted, "I became its sole surviving founder, and one of the wealthiest individuals in California.

"Mr. Shuman, the murder weapon is my own gun. The only prints on it are certain to be mine. The murderer walked into our home through an unlocked front door. And if the police are called, they will quickly discover the same thing that I myself have recently discovered..."

My voice cracked, and I paused and looked down at my lap for a moment before continuing. "I have reason to believe that Jeff might have been having an affair.

"I don't know with whom, but I believe that if I can find that person I might be able to identify Jeff's killer. I'm not asking you to cover this up indefinitely, only to allow me a brief sliver of time to come to terms with the loss of my husband. And to find some answers."

"Absolutely not," Shuman said, reaching again for the telephone on his desk. "At best, I would be interfering with a criminal investigation. At worst, I would be aiding and abetting a murderer." He began dialing.