Campanelli: Siege of the Nighthunter

by Frederick H. Crook

  He accessed his implant, fed his approximate location into it, and plotted a route into the depths of Chicago. He felt out the brake and accelerator pedals with his large bare feet and placed the transmission into drive.

  With tires screeching into the night, the stolen sedan stormed across the aged Ashland Avenue Bridge at a reckless, frame-rattling speed.

  ***

  The mechanical ringer of the wired antique telephone ripped Frank from a deep sleep marred by a fleeting, none-too-pleasant dreamscape. As he opened his eyelids, blackness gave way to nothing but more blackness. He was not surprised by this, however, as his implant had deactivated when he had gone to sleep, shutting down his full service ocular lenses. His ears told him that he had forgotten to bring the old phone into the bedroom for the night yet again.

  “I’ll get it,” Tamara mumbled. She was no more awake than he, but she could see in the night with her natural vision.

  Campanelli sat up, put his bare feet to the cold wooden floor, and thought the command for his CAPS-Link device to initiate.

  “Time,” he called as he stood.

  “Four-oh-three, A.M.,” the voice-clock answered.

  “Shit.” A phone call at this time was never anything good and always work-related. However, since being moved from the Violent Crimes Division’s Homicide Squad and into Sentinel, these calls had become rare. Of course, it had only been less than a month.

  Frank’s optics came online just as he felt his way out of the bedroom. It remained dark, but not for long. His lenses adjusted.

  “He’s right here,” Tam said into the receiver and covered the microphone. “Detective McLain, Frank.”

  “McLain? He’s homicide,” he grumbled. He took the phone from her and patted her shoulder. It was not her fault his old underling had called the wrong number.

  “Campanelli,” Frank said into the phone. He placed his right fist on his hip and waited for what he assumed would be a short, “beg your pardon”, out of the mouth of Kirby McLain.

  “Frank? Kirby here.”

  “Yeeesss?”

  “Pardon the early call, Cap’n,” McLain started. He was one of the few that called Campanelli by his honorary rank, a leftover from Frank’s NYPD days. “We’ve got somethin’ I think you really need to see.”

  “What is it, Kirby?” Frank dropped his annoyance. From the background noise, he could tell that McLain was outside and from his manner of speech, whatever it was had ventured way out of the ordinary. A big man like Kirby McLain, a career police detective, should have seen everything by now.

  “Frank…we have a body. Sort of,” McLain explained in his deep, gravelly voice.

  “Go on,” Campanelli said with patience. At six-foot-four and three years his senior, Frank cut the man some slack. He remembered while listening to Kirby’s frequent pauses, that he had lost a good part of a lung to cancer the previous year. As a result, his speech was partitioned by pauses every few words.

  “It’s been torn apart and, apparently, somethin’ got to the body and ate it. Parts of ‘im, anyway.”

  Frank grunted in disgust. “Okay, Kirby, who is he? Why are you calling me?”

  “We’ve checked his ID and he’s…not even supposed to be here.”

  “He’s on Sentinel’s list?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Okay, where?”

  Kirby McLain told him.

  “Got it,” Frank replied. “Give me a half hour. No one touches anything.”

  “I’ve already ordered that done,” Kirby confirmed.

  “Good. On the way.” He hung up the telephone and strode into the bathroom. He ran the water and prepared for a speedy shower.

  Tam had gone back to bed and he did not blame her. In months prior, she would have simply stayed up, as she would get ready for work and leave around five. Since her diner had been burned to the ground by DeSilva’s thugs during her kidnapping, there was no reason for such an early rise. Besides that, she was still recuperating from her facial injuries. The bruising around her left eye was yellow and fading fast. Soon, she would be fully recovered.

  With his shower completed, he dressed. In his haste, he deferred on the tie, leaving the top button of his shirt free. He donned his fedora, shoulder holster and overcoat. Quickly, he stepped into the bedroom, gave the sleeping Tamara a kiss on the temple, and grabbed his folded RadarCane from his nightstand.

  Frank flew down the stairs and out of the apartment building, reaching his waiting car. Its engine was already running and so was the heater. As he approached, it opened the door or him and closed it once he was inside.

  Campanelli had fed the cruiser’s computer with its destination via his implant, so it wasted no time buckling him in and backing out of the parking spot. At four-forty in the morning, even if it was a Monday, traffic would be nearly non-existent. Even so, as it turned onto Eighteenth Avenue and headed west, the detective set the car to Condition Two, bathing the night in blue and white flashing lights. The siren squawked and chirped only when the car detected other vehicles and intersections. The crime scene was little more than two miles from his place.

  In less than five minutes, Campanelli arrived at the northern end of the Ashland Avenue Bridge. His police lights alone were enough for the uniformed officers there to wave him through. Frank took manual control of the automobile as it rolled onto the bridge from the pavement. The tires sang along the odd pavement and thudded on every iron grate.

  He parked behind a marked CPD cruiser and shut the car down. He stepped out into the cool early morning air and cinched his overcoat tightly against the breeze. Frank looked about the old bridge, already searching for anything unusual as he strode to the crime scene ahead of him, lit by multiple headlights of marked and unmarked cruisers and their spotlights. Blue strobes gave the scene that familiar haunting eeriness.

  What Campanelli saw lying near the curb was so horrifying, he took a misstep on a risen bit of the bridge’s surface. He stepped to Kirby McLain’s side and could form no words.

  “Good morning, Frank,” McLain offered in a hushed voice. The look on his face mirrored the Sentinel Squad’s second-in-command, although due to the size of the man, it was augmented. His lips were drawn downward at the edges, his eyebrows were pinned halfway up his generous forehead, and the lines that ensued there were deep and wide. Considering that Frank could barely comprehend the level of horror he was witnessing, he sympathized.

  “Good morning, Kirby. You said that you had ID’d him,” he said, almost as a question.

  “Yeah,” McLain uttered reverently out of the side of his mouth. “Name’s Werner. Herman Werner.”

  Frank searched McLain’s chiseled features for a few seconds, mostly to give himself something else to look at. Kirby’s head was tilted downward as his naturally colored blue eyes studied the body with what appeared to be heartfelt grief. Campanelli knew this to be genuine of the man. McLain had suffered many personal losses in the choice to remain on Earth instead of heading off to Alethea. He had lost a wife and son, just like Frank had, only McLain’s losses were stretched out over months of cancer treatments. In the end, none of the care had mattered. Both wife and son passed in the same year. Then, adding insult to injury in the form of further injury, the cancer in his lungs was found. Despite it all, Kirby McLain persevered, fought the cancer through the available old medical technology and returned to the job. He even got his hair back, though it was a bit thinner and more of it gray.

  As much as Frank wanted a cigarette at that moment, he refrained out of respect for the man.

  In moments, the CPD computer’s information was relayed back to Campanelli, who read it from his projected display.

  “File says he’s been missing for over a year. Suspected of leaving the planet with his wife. He was wanted for armed robbery and grand theft auto,” Frank read off.

  “Yeah.” McLain nodded. “I bet he wished they had taken that ship.”

  Campanelli sidestepped around the towering McLai
n and moved closer to see the deceased’s face. It bore little resemblance to the photo in the computer. “How did you ID him, Kirby?”

  “Expired driver’s license in his wallet.” He hesitated to take a breath. “It was soaked in blood. Dennis fished it out,” he finished with a gesture to the coroner, Dennis Gherling, who was taking some close looks of the remains, and certainly committing some stills to his implant’s memory.

  “Dennis,” Frank greeted as he stepped closer.

  “Hi, Detective Campanelli,” the younger man replied as he leaned even closer to the body’s gaping opening at the throat.

  “What can you tell me?”

  “Well, it’s perplexing, really. The medical scanner shows a nasty skull fracture at the back, his right shoulder and collar bone are shattered. Ribs are, obviously, torn open and pried out of the way until they broke.” The coroner rose and joined Frank on his right side. “Heart and liver were cut out and are missing. It was done in a hurry, too. There’s plenty of scoring to the bones and esophagus. I can’t tell, but the same blade that slit his throat may have been what was used to remove the organs.”

  “So, the breaks tell me he was assaulted with something heavy first,” Frank surmised.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Gherling replied and showed Campanelli the recording on his medical scanner’s screen. “If it were a pipe or solid piece of metal used for a club, there would be multiple strikes to the body. These breaks are consistent with a single impact.”

  “I see. So, Dennis, what impacted him?” Frank asked as he adjusted his fedora and leaned closer to the small screen.

  “I found concrete dust deeply embedded in his scalp, neck and shoulders.”

  “The ground came up and hit him, Dennis?” Campanelli laid on him sarcastically.

  Gherling gave a mild and brief smile. “Oh, no. Take a look at these punctures and tears in his arms, buttocks and legs.” He bent down to the body and pointed them out with gloved fingers. “These are from claws or talons or something. The attacker…well…grabbed him and launched Werner into the air, where he came down on his upper body on the curb here.”

  “Get outta here,” Frank scoffed.

  “No, I mean it,” the coroner insisted. “Look, the punctures line up with a pretty large hand. The attacker grabbed Werner here and here.” Gherling demonstrated by assuming a crouched posture with both his arms stretched out in front of him. He bent his knees and made as if he were dragging something. “It grabbed his right wrist and left leg and pulled, manhandled him, dug these claws into the flesh, turned him and with one…incredible move, took Werner by the ass and threw him skyward.”

  “Gherling,” Frank mused and gave him a crooked grin of doubt.

  “And it could not have been an animal, Detective Campanelli, because of the presence of thumbs. The fifth digit’s claw enters the flesh at different angles from the other fingers, like a thumb would, sir.” He demonstrated with his own hands, curling the fingers and thumb menacingly.

  Frank glanced to McLain who returned it expressionlessly.

  Gherling pushed on. “There are tire tracks in that lane there,” he pointed and walked briskly to the two black streaks in the light gray pavement. “The killer tore out of here in a real hurry.”

  Campanelli stared at the tracks for a time and nodded in thought. McLain joined him. “I don’t know. This is all very hinky.”

  “I know how crazy it sounds, Detective Campanelli,” Gherling conceded.

  “’Crazy’ is not the word for it, Mr. Gherling!” Frank spouted. He turned back to the victim and waved over the body with his right arm. “What you are describing is far from plausible. This man weighed, from the looks of what’s left, about two hundred pounds. Now, what has claws and is powerful enough to throw such a man high or hard enough to bust him up like that?”

  “Frank,” McLain tried to interject.

  “And then, after that, slices the man up and steals a couple organs?” Frank continued.

  “Frank,” Kirby tried again.

  “What is it, Detective?” Frank said and took a breath.

  “There are also bite marks on the body,” Kirby explained. “Chunks of his left shoulder and neck were bitten into.”

  “That’s right, sir,” Gherling affirmed.

  “Oh, now I’ve heard everything.” Frank threw his arms into the air and let them drop to slap his thighs.

  “There was also a gun,” McLain said, halting Frank’s further objections. “It was found a few feet from the tire tracks. An antique revolver in thirty-eight caliber.”

  “Now we’re talkin’. Was it fired?” Frank asked, turning his back on the young coroner.

  “No. Scratch marks in the frame and chips in the wooden grip indicate that it was dropped,” Kirby finished.

  “Do you buy this scenario, Kirby?” the Captain of Detectives nearly whispered.

  “I don’t know, Frank,” McLain admitted as he looked down on his shorter colleague. “I’ve never seen anything like this. If it weren’t for the presence of concrete embedded in the skin, I’d have thought a truck hit ‘im.”

  Frank nodded. “Well, things may become clearer when the sun comes up. Was there an owner found on the revolver?”

  “Stolen from an owner in Georgia more than thirty years ago,” Kirby said.

  “All right. Forward that and the body in for autopsy. I’m going to call Rothgery in on this.”

  Dennis Gherling remained silent, though the expression on his face was one of protest.

  “No offense to you, Dennis,” Frank supplied quickly, “but I think you’ve been up too late for too many nights in a row watching horror vids.”

  “I understand the level of crazy involved in this, Detective Campanelli,” Dennis replied flatly. “I’m not offended. I simply have to follow what the clues tell me.”

  Kirby McLain received a relayed message across his implant as Gherling spoke. Frank noticed the expression of interest upon his colleague’s face and waited.

  “Frank, check the blotter…madman in a car,” McLain explained and let Campanelli search for himself.

  Frank linked with the CPD server and found the report labeled, “Madman in a Car” on the list of calls. A sedan of unknown manufacture had been seen driving northeast at high speed across the park of Benito Juarez High School, just north of their crime scene, narrowly missing an early morning jogger. The car had continued accelerating upon exiting the park’s widened path and onto Blue Island Avenue, a street which began at that location and maintained a northeasterly direction. The caller was convinced that the vehicle had reached a speed of perhaps eighty miles per hour and was showing no signs of slowing down.

  Blue Island Avenue terminated at Roosevelt Road one mile further.

  “Forty-three minutes ago,” Campanelli noted with a frown.

  “There’s one after that, Frank,” McLain added. “Vehicle crash at Desplaines and Harrison.”

  “Not much there,” Campanelli said as he read the newer report. “The driver dumped the car in a foundation on the corner.”

  McLain glanced at the two long black streaks on the pavement where they stood. “Our guy?”

  “It’s a possibility.” Frank nodded. “Why don’t you have the area cordoned off and we’ll have a closer look at the car.”

  “Right,” Kirby agreed. He composed the order and submitted it to the CPD server. The police on scene would be alerted to the update and touch nothing.

  “I’ll meet you over there,” Frank said and turned to Dennis Gherling. “Get everything over to Rothgery’s lab.”

  “Sure thing,” Gherling replied.

  Once he was back in his cruiser, Frank made a tight U-turn and headed north on Ashland. Soon, he passed the abandoned Benito Juarez High School. It was here that the car left Ashland and drove onto the park’s walkway. Frank continued on to Roosevelt Road before hanging a right. Setting the car on Condition One, his lights flashed, but the siren was kept quiet. He arrived on the scene of t
he crash in a few minutes. He had seen Kirby’s cruiser in the rearview mirror the entire ride.

  As ordered, the two responding units had taped off the area and the four uniformed officers milled about, waiting. Frank parked near them, got out of the car and approached the gathering. The oldest of them, a Sergeant Mueller, stepped forward and met him.

  “Morning, sir,” Mueller said.

  “It is for some,” Campanelli replied, not unkindly. “Morning Sergeant,” he amended, then turned to the other three. “Gents.” They returned his greeting.

  “What’s the Sentinel Squad doin’ answering to a car wreck, Detective?” Mueller asked with a smile. His breath steamed up in the cool early morning air as he adjusted his cap.

  “We’ll see if there’s a reason for me to be here,” Frank answered honestly. “I’d rather be at home in bed.”

  In a moment, McLain joined Frank and the sergeant, who led them to the edge of the concrete crater left behind from the deconstruction of a building.

  “The car was movin’ at quite a clip when it blew a tire,” the sergeant explained and pointed behind them. “The wheel cut a nice path, here. It went to the right, up the curb,” he spoke as he gestured to the markings on the pavement, “and still had enough momentum to carry it down there.” He pointed with a flashlight to the wreckage some dozen feet below them. It would be a while before the sun would shine upon it.

  “Has anyone been down there?” McLain asked.

  “I have,” Mueller admitted. “Got a rope ladder attached over there. Car’s empty. The driver left some blood. I honestly can’t believe it, but it seems he walked off. He was hurt, that’s for sure.”

  Campanelli adjusted his vision for night and looked about the deep, wide concrete canyon. There were hundreds of such remnants throughout the city. Over the two decades prior to the outlawing of the migration to Alethea in 2109, the largest, oldest structures of every major city became targets for reclamation of steel and other metals. As a result, nothing taller than forty floors could be found anywhere in Chicago. Many railroad tracks and iron bridges had been consumed as well, making the Ashland Avenue Bridge a true rarity.