Campanelli: Siege of the Nighthunter

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Campanelli: Siege of the Nighthunter Page 4

by Frederick H. Crook


  Though drained physically, Campanelli could not relax his mind. Gherling’s reenactment of the Werner murder was ludicrously hideous and unbelievable. It took a special kind of maniac to tear a body apart like that, remove organs, and leave bite marks. Further, without a formal registration on the vehicle, it could not be determined that the car was driven by the victim, the murderer, or even a witness until Rothgery and his team swept the wreck for DNA. There was plenty of that, given the amount of blood in the car, but waiting to find out was tortuous.

  Frank wanted sleep, but the visions of Herman Werner’s gutted body and that of the twisted wreck of a car that should have yielded no survivors persisted, and had he any excess energy whatsoever, it would have been enough to keep him awake, attempting to solve the puzzle.

  With the cool night air slipping in through the windows, Frank drifted into a tumultuous sleep.

  ***

  Tamara awoke the next morning to the bed moving. Frank was awake and had risen for the day. She listened to the water in the shower running and the gurgling of the coffee maker while she drifted in and out. When the holovision had been turned on and the apartment was permeated with the inviting aroma of coffee, she dragged herself out of bed and put on her robe.

  “Good morning,” Frank called from the couch where he sat watching the news.

  “Mornin’,” she mumbled as she shuffled to the coffee maker. She had been up very late, curled up on the couch, reading one of Frank’s many books from his impressive library. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was quite entertaining. She had blazed through The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles in less than a week and she had begun an earlier work, The Sign of the Four, the previous night.

  “How late were you up?” Frank asked when he joined him on the couch.

  “Not sure. Three, I think.”

  “I take it you’re enjoying the books.” He looked over at her and smiled.

  “A little too much, maybe,” she said and sipped her coffee.

  “Nah,” Frank answered with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I think you’re enjoying those books just the right amount. I wish I could read more.”

  Tamara placed a hand on his knee. “You know, I never thought about that.”

  “Hmm? Oh, not having enough juice left over to stay up and read?” He tapped his temple, indicating his implant.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, yesterday was an exceptional day. I get some time for a book now and then, but I wish it was more.”

  “I guess I take my vision for granted,” Tam said and yawned.

  “Everyone takes their senses for granted,” Frank said and sipped some coffee. “No one expects them to be lost in some accident or illness.”

  Tam decided to change the subject. “Any updates on the biter?”

  “No. Just a repeat of the same thing,” Frank answered and stood up with his cup in his hand. “I should get going. I need to find out what Rothgery’s found. He’s been too quiet for too long.”

  Frank kissed her on the forehead and, after a few more minutes of preparation, he donned his hat and coat and bid her a good day before closing the door behind him.

  The morning was cool and sunny. Campanelli decided to walk to the forensics lab, which was on the far side of the building. However, he figured that today was a fact finding day. This murder, though not directly his case, was still a priority, and to bring it to a quick close would be beneficial to the city.

  Frank picked a cigarette out of the pack in his overcoat’s inner pocket and lit it before entering his code to open the gate, something his cruiser would normally do automatically. Overhead, the seven o’clock train passed along the elevated tracks. With less than seven hundred thousand people in the city, with few of them having daily business out of town, there were only four trains running in the morning, and four in the evening.

  Campanelli puffed on his cigarette and looked both ways before stepping into the street. Traffic, as always, was light. He found an opportunity and took it, stepping leisurely across the roadway.

  Frank accessed the CPD server and checked his messages. To his relief, there was one from H. Lincoln Rothgery, asking for Campanelli and McLain’s presence in his lab at their earliest convenience. McLain had replied and indicated that he would be there at eight a.m., not quite an hour from then.

  Frank spent much of that hour in his office, dealing with more reports and paperwork until it became close to the appointed time, when he stepped out front of the station and smoked another cigarette. After a time of reflection, he stomped it out and re-entered. He wound his way through the hallways until he reached the forensics lab. When he approached the door, he found it partially open. He pushed it out of his way and went in.

  Rothgery’s lab was one cavernous room featuring a garage door that opened onto a short driveway on one end. The wrecked sedan from the previous day had been deposited within the lab. Under the light, the gaping and twisted front end of the vehicle beheld indelible ugliness, like a gargoyle statue from a haunted mansion. Workbenches, storage cabinets, and loaded shelving units lined the garage area and were sporadically placed throughout the rest of the lab. Not one shelf went unused. The cabinets were bulging with tools, artifacts and equipment. The room was as versatile and multifaceted as Rothgery’s skillset and job responsibilities. The unused portions of the room were as yet unlit that morning as Lincoln sat at his main desks in the center of the rectangular room, near the door.

  “Campanelli,” the forensic genius called from his seat. “Come on in.” He remained seated, staring at a brightly lit monitor a bit closely. Not equipped with bio-electronics by choice, Rothgery’s glasses should have been enough to see whatever it was on the screen, but appeared not to be adequate considering his hardened expression and concentration.

  “Good morning, Lincoln,” Frank said with emphasis. H. Lincoln only gave such greetings when he was not busy or was in a good mood, which was almost never.

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see about that,” Rothgery answered. “You’d better have a look.”

  Frank removed his fedora and stepped around the connected network of desks to get behind his friend and co-worker. As he did, Kirby McLain entered.

  “Gentlemen,” McLain greeted.

  “Close the door,” H. Lincoln directed. His eyes never left the center monitor.

  “Yes, sir,” Kirby replied and did so as he smiled crookedly at Campanelli, who shrugged it off.

  “Okay, so I’ve gone over the body with Gherling’s help and we’ve found some interesting things.”

  Frank scowled when he found the picture on Lincoln’s monitor. It was a close up of Werner’s sliced throat. McLain moved next to the Sentinel detective and stared upon the unpleasantness over the forensic scientist’s left shoulder. He raised his eyebrows as he studied the screen, causing the deeply carved forehead ripples to appear again.

  Rothgery looked around to verify that he had their attention and continued. “The killer cut this man’s throat deep, scraping the blade against the esophagus. This left microscopic traces of the blade behind. It’s carbon fiber, very long and most likely military grade. The fibers are high quality and very durable.”

  “Did you find any pieces large enough for a serial number?” asked McLain.

  “Strangely, no. Considering the strips we were able to extract from the body, they should have yielded at least one string. But we’ve found nothing.”

  “What does that mean, Lincoln?” Frank inquired next. He knew that commercially made knives had been mandated to include a multitude of serial numbers woven into the blades on a microscopic level. No matter what it was made of, when a blade was used, there was a good chance that pieces would be left behind. That would render the weapon traceable to its owner, who was obligated to register the weapon. Manufacturers of carbon fiber, carbon nanotube, and metal blades turned to including their brand stamps and batch numbers at such a scale.

  “It might mean a
few things, Frank,” Lincoln said as he turned to look into his face. “The quality indicates that it’s a newer more refined carbon fiber, let’s say under forty years old, but the lack of any stamping tells me it’s older, before serial numbers were mandated by law. Kind of a conundrum, unless it’s something made for the special forces. Those serial numbers aren’t found in the blade material.”

  “Most likely, it’s a stolen weapon, anyway,” Kirby commented.

  “That’s a good bet,” Rothgery agreed. “The throat was sliced open in one long stroke. I’d say the blade is eight to ten inches. Also, if you look at how wide the flesh was spread apart, we’re looking at a triangular blade.”

  “What do you mean? Like a bayonet?” Frank asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “A carbon fiber military-style bayonet without serial numbers,” McLain restated. If he was surprised, he hid it well.

  “Everything I see is pointing to that, yes,” H. Lincoln affirmed.

  “Okay, well, what about Gherling’s idea that Werner was thrown through the air?” Campanelli pushed on.

  “I agree with him.”

  “You’re kidding,” McLain inserted. The smile was long gone. Even though he could not figure out another alternative, he had expected it to be disproved by something he had not considered.

  “Not at all,” Lincoln said as he turned his chair to face them both. “The way his bones are broken, he was either thrown through the air and left to fall onto the curb, or someone smacked him over the head and shoulders with a solid piece of concrete. What’s more likely?”

  “Amazing.” Frank ran his hand over his short gray hair and over his face. The strength of whoever killed Herman Werner was staggering. A dedicated weightlifter with nothing to do but train would be easy to find, however. As he gazed upon the gargoyle parked inside the room, he rethought. There was no way, in his judgment, that a bodybuilder capable of throwing a man into the air would have escaped the collapsed vehicle. Unless there’s a third party involved.

  Lincoln caught Frank’s gaze. “We found two different types of blood, two sets of DNA in the car.”

  “Go on,” McLain prompted.

  “Herman Werner’s and the killer’s. No ID’s been matched to his,” Rothgery stated and stood from his chair. He stepped between the two detectives and moved casually toward the sedan. “The killer’s DNA has been engineered, as has the blood, but there’s no identification to be found in the cells. He is a he and appears to be of military origin, but it goes beyond anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “So, you’re telling me that the killer is a soldier. American?” Frank asked as he stopped next to Lincoln and stared at the driver’s seat of the ruined car.

  “I can’t even determine that without a serial number in the DNA sequence, Frank.”

  “Soldier or not, Mr. Rothgery…how the hell did he get outta that?” McLain asked from Lincoln’s other side. The big man waved his hand over the wreckage as he spoke. “That should’ve been fatal…engineered genes or not.”

  “I agree.” Rothgery slid his glasses from his Roman nose and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. “Gherling is still researching the DNA and the blood while Teri is carrying out more tests.”

  “You said Werner’s blood was in the car,” Frank stated.

  “Yeah,” Lincoln said, then nodded. “Not much of it, though. A lot of the DNA we found in it was from hairs in the carpets and seats. My opinion is that he had used the car for some time. Months, perhaps close to a year.”

  “So, Werner was cut out of the seatbelt…then thrown through the air.” Kirby stepped up to the side of the car and studied the sliced seatbelt. In the bright light, the precision cut was much more impressive.

  “Definitely,” H. Lincoln affirmed as he replaced his eyeglasses. “And…before I forget…there are teeth marks on the body.”

  “We saw those,” Frank said. He leaned back on the workbench behind him and crossed his arms. “The bites on the shoulders.”

  “I’m not talking about those, Frank.”

  This took Kirby’s attention from the wreck to the forensic genius. “What are you trying to say, Mr. Rothgery?”

  “I’m saying he had a little nibble on some muscle tissue while he cut out the heart and liver. It’s also confirmed that the heart and liver were eaten.” Lincoln met McLain’s eyes then looked to Campanelli.

  “God,” Kirby uttered and stepped away from the sedan as if it exuded heat.

  “How do you come to that, Lincoln?” Frank asked.

  “Pieces of both organs were left behind in the car. Nothing more than shreds, really. Seems he had to pick them out of his teeth as he drove.”

  Frank lifted his right hand to his chin and rested it, keeping the left arm tucked. “You’re telling me that we have a soldier of unknown origin turned cannibal, running around the streets of Chicago.”

  “From everything we’ve gathered so far, Frank, that’s about the size of it.”

  “Have you tried plugging the DNA into the modeler?” Kirby asked.

  “I was just about to address that, Detective McLain.” Rothgery stepped away from the workbench and faced both veteran policemen. “We’ve verified the sequence a couple dozen times or so. Taken from samples of the blood in the car and from saliva found from Werner’s chest cavity…”

  “Christ,” Kirby groaned.

  “…the modeler can’t read it and spits out a general synopsis instead.”

  A DNA modeler was a holographic generator that could read an entire strand of DNA and display it in a three dimensional image. It resembled a holovision, but was connected to a specialized computer. Rothgery’s was almost a half-century old, but kept in great condition by the scientist himself.

  “Malfunction?” Frank asked.

  “Not really,” H. Lincoln answered. “It would have trouble with any military encoding of DNA. We would have a hard time analyzing your partner’s strand, since he was a Navy SEAL, but we’d still end up with a partial image as least as good as a pencil sketch.”

  Campanelli grunted in understanding. He had not known that about the machine, but the fact did not surprise him. The unit was, after all, old technology. There had been plenty of time for the military to work out ways to defeat such a device.

  “The reports from the modeler also vary after each run, so it’s ever the more perplexing after every attempt,” Lincoln provided. “That’s not unheard of, if we made it run with only a partial strand it’s prone to speculate. I had Teri run what we had through the FBI’s database and came up with nothing.”

  The three of them stood for several long moments, regarding the wrecked car in utter, contemplative silence.

  “Gentleman,” H. Lincoln Rothgery finally said, “I believe there’s a monster loose in Chicago.”

  “Maybe he was just passin’ through,” Kirby McLain said as he looked over to Campanelli for his opinion.

  “All we can do now is wait,” the Captain of Detectives croaked through a dry mouth. Staring into the twisted mouth that was the entrance to the driver’s seat of the antique automobile, it seemed to mock him. Bent and broken as it was, the machine had seen something that they could not. The murderous monster that had victimized Werner so disgustingly efficiently, sat in that seat, touched that steering yoke, caused that damage, and had survived it, all without fear of being identified.

  “We can’t just sit back and do nothing, Frank,” McLain stated flatly.

  “What are you going to put in the bulletin, Kirby?” Frank asked without much life in his voice. He understood the frustrations that McLain was feeling and sympathized, but the horrifying nature of the case subdued the fire in his demeanor. Campanelli felt that he was in some sort of fog, kept at bay and helpless in the face of the killer’s will.

  McLain stewed quietly for a moment. He stepped from the counter he had been leaning on and stared hotly into Frank’s face, then looked to Rothgery’s. The expressions of both men were not challenging. In fact, the Sent
inel detective and the forensic scientist were plainly baffled. Kirby McLain knew that Frank was right, for the most part.

  “Aw, hell,” Kirby exuded and turned to face the ruined automobile once again. “All I can do is…spread the word to the patrol units and my detectives. I’ll have ‘em look for anyone unusually large, probably wounded. We may get lucky.”

  Frank nodded with his arms still folded across his chest. Lincoln simply regarded the homicide detective with kind, regretful eyes peering over his glasses.

  With that, McLain bid them both a “Good morning,” and left. As his footfalls faded down the hallway, Frank ran his hand over his short gray hairs. While his eyes could not seem to leave the old sedan, his scalp itched.

  A question from Lincoln snapped him out of his trance. “What are you thinking, Frank?”

  “I’m thinking it’s time for me to go visit my partner,” he answered as he moved to leave.

  “I meant about the case, Frank.”

  “I did, too,” Campanelli answered as he scooped up his fedora. He gave Rothgery a two-fingered salute and left, closing the lab’s door behind him.

  ***

  Frank walked back home for his car and went to Cook County Hospital. From the driver’s seat, he stared unfocused through the windshield with all the facts Rothgery had fed him bouncing around in his mind. Despite his natural and trained logic, he did not want to believe that some military-grade monster was loose in the city. In all his years in the NYPD and CPD, he had never heard of such a thing, and had always assumed veterans like his partner, Marcus Williams, represented the avant-garde of the military. Like most citizens who wished their child to be considered for the elite forces, Marcus’s parents had him tested while still in utero. From that moment on, a candidate fetus would receive genetic modification and allowed to have a natural birth. As the baby grew, he or she would be tested and adjusted physically and behaviorally every two years until adulthood, where the subject would be inducted into whatever branch of service they preferred, if available. Psychosis of this magnitude should not have been possible.

  Marcus Williams had been among the last to have the distinction and proud honor of being a Navy SEAL, a section that no longer existed. Outside of some Green Beret units and paratroopers of the army, the only other force that could be considered elite were the Marines, and they had been scaled way back in numbers.

 

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