“They have a full record of Hadley being in school during those years,” Gabriel said for him.
“Bingo, Prof, bingo.” Leonard looked pleased with himself. “The one mistake in the whole chain was the small high school who didn’t get the cover-up memo.”
“This couldn’t be another case of a changeling, you know, like Summer Place?” George asked, not looking too comfortable about the current subject at all. “Maybe he’s not really Dean Hadley.”
“Possible, I guess. But his blood type and his DNA were matched to that of Robert Hadley. This was done by the FBI after the attacks started just to cover all bases. Now they could also have been falsified, but I doubt it,” Sickles said as he opened another binder. “Now the fortune as it stands. I eased my way into the IRS database, which you’ll also hear about, I’m sure. Since the family fortune was placed in a blind trust, only the trustee has access to the data and money. That trustee is dead. Died two years ago, and then it went to the next man in line at the law firm involved.” Again, Leonard slid the paperwork down the table and Gabe picked it up.
“Barnes, Johnson, and Avery?”
“The law firm. The last name there ought to be cause for concern, one that every investigative pencil pusher in Washington missed.”
“Avery?” Kennedy asked as he tilted his head in thought. He quickly shuffled through his own pockets and came up with a sheet of paper that was given to him on the plane on the most recent attack before the one that had occurred the night before. He quickly found the name. “Is this accurate?”
“Already confirmed it. Herbert Avery was the son of the trustee and holder of the Hadley family fortune.”
“And now he’s dead,” Gabriel said more to himself than to anyone else.
“The president’s chief of staff?” Lonetree asked.
“The one and only.”
“Money is the motive?” Julie asked as her reporter’s hackles rose. “If it is, I don’t see how anything like this could be pulled off.”
“That’s why we’ll play those cards close to the vest for the time being.”
“It seems we need to know about his earlier years and why the need to cover up the fact of his military duties and high school location. Also, Julie and Jenny can maybe get some information from the White House staff if they ask nicely enough. They may be more forthcoming than they were with the FBI or the Secret Service about the goings-on in the White House. Particularly the behind-closed-doors kind.”
“That’s a big leap of faith to think there may have been hanky-panky going on in the Lincoln Bedroom,” George said.
“It’s no big secret that the president and the First Lady were not at all close. Every wagging tongue in that cesspool of a city knew that Hadley only married that woman for political gain—well, maybe her looks also, but mostly because it helped his career to be married and settled. And to suggest that there may have been a scandalous relationship between the president’s chief of staff and his wife? I say we’d better be careful with that one,” Jennifer said. John looked at her and smiled, as she seemed to be her old self again.
“As I said, we’ll send our two intrepid sleuths to find out,” Gabriel said. “In the meantime, stay clear of the First Lady; she may already suspect that we suspect. And to tell you the truth, that woman doesn’t sit right with me,” Kennedy said as he slapped Leonard on the back. “Now all you have to do is come up with the missing time from school to war and where our friend Dean Hadley was in those years.”
“On it, Professor Gabe.”
“Since—”
The large house shook on its foundation, enough so that Kennedy almost lost his footing. The gunfire erupted upstairs but only lasted as long as it took for Gabriel and the others to reach the sliding doors to the study.
They, along with a second team of FBI hostage rescue team members, bounded up the stairs. They were held back as they saw men trying in vain to open the bedroom door. John Lonetree, the largest man on the second floor, pushed past several stunned Secret Service men and threw his weight behind the effort. The door, as it had the night before, opened and then suddenly closed as it was pulled away. They could hear bumping, screaming, and one or two more gunshots. None of them had noticed that there was no power to the entire house. The sunlight illuminated the battle for the bedroom door.
“God, Gabe, Kelly’s in there!” shouted Jenny, who was twisting her shirt into a ball as she watched John and the others struggle with the door.
The hall lights came on, and the men at the door managed push it all the way open. Most of the men stood in shock at the scene. Gabriel angrily pushed by them and entered the room. His eyes went to Hadley, who lay in bed, peacefully sleeping. The lone doctor was nowhere to be seen. The two nurses were there. One was clearly dead, her neck twisted in a cruel and unforgiving angle. She lay at the foot of the bed. The four hostage rescue team men were there also. One was screaming in the corner as he grasped his shattered arm. The other three lay in disjointed positions on the floor. One of these men sat up and looked at his weapon, a smaller version of the Israeli assault weapon, the Uzi. It was twisted and bent to an extreme that a machine would have been hard put to produce. The other men lay dead beside him. The hostage rescue team man tossed the useless weapon aside as he rolled over. He was helped to his feet by Lonetree, who pushed him toward the open door of the bedroom. Gabriel was there looking for Kelly.
She was nowhere to be found. Kennedy looked through the broken panes of glass of the window. He saw the fourth member of the hostage rescue team on the grass far below. His neck was also twisted into a grotesquerie. Gabriel came back inside, and John held him. He shook him, and then his eyes went to the bed and the two small feet sticking out from under it. He saw the blood and felt his heart freeze. Others were trying to push their way inside the bedroom but were held back as John and Gabriel leaned down and, as gently as they could, pulled Kelly out from under the bed. Gabe felt his bile rise from his stomach. John had to look away. There was no need to check for a pulse. There would be none, they could clearly see. Gabriel placed his elbows on his knees as he took in Kelly Delaphoy. She lay faceup, and the teeth marks were plain to see. She was covered in hundreds of them—enough so that her sweater and blouse were punctured. Gabriel could see the small imprints.
Gabriel lowered his head. He had now lost the first member of his team since the original night inside Summer Place with the loss of Warren, his student who had been eaten by the summer retreat. He considered Kelly’s lifeless blue eyes, and then he stood up and pulled the blanket off a slumbering Dean, not caring about the man in the least. He put the blanket over Kelly and then turned for the door to allow the doctors inside. He grabbed the first one he could catch.
“I need the autopsy as soon as possible. I want measurements taken of those bite marks. I want the number of them and the size of the person or persons making them. Got that?” he said angrily as the doctor pried Gabriel’s hand off his white coat and collar.
“Come on, Gabe. Let them have this for now.”
As he pushed Kennedy through the door, he turned and looked at a peaceful Hadley as he lay on the bed with just a sheet covering him.
“Why not you, you son of a bitch?”
As John left the room, he knew deep down inside what he had to do, and he didn’t care for the thought one bit. It would mean he might have to get inside the head of the man in the bed, and that scared him to no end.
The Supernaturals, only a few hours after agreeing to help, had lost their first member to the unseen assault.
* * *
Four hours later, Gabriel stood before a door in the manor house and looked from person to person. His people were in shock at how suddenly events had turned. During their many excursions together after Summer Place, they had become complacent to the danger still prevalent with unknowns. In this case, they had become so emboldened by those many hoaxes they had uncovered, they—or at least Gabriel—had forgotten the consequences of a closed
mind. That point had now been driven home by the loss of Kelly.
“Before we head down there, I know how you’re feeling. Kelly’s loss is a rough pill to swallow; she was good at what she did. I am to blame for allowing the failures of our group to color my judgment. Kelly should not have been left in that room without one of us being with her.”
“I think you’re being a little hard on yourself.” John stepped up to Gabriel and faced the others. He looked from George to Leonard and then to Julie and Jennifer. Everyone had red and swollen eyes from shedding tears over Kelly. “We all became complacent. We began doubting the power these people were describing. This is no haunting. This is a possession. By what? We don’t know. But whatever it is, it directed its attack against Kelly. The attack was on all of us.”
“A warning?” Julie asked as she stood a little closer to Gabriel.
“Maybe not a warning, because I don’t think this thing has any natural fear of us or anyone. It’s playing with us. The writing on the wall, the scratches and cuts on the president. The music lyrics. It wants us to learn. It wants us to know why. Whatever that man up there did, this thing hates him for it. The deaths of Kelly and the others are just a way of informing us that nothing will be able to stop it.”
“Why would it want us to know? Just to get our attention?” George asked.
“It surely got mine,” Gabriel said as he finally turned around and opened the door. He stopped before stepping onto the steel stairs heading down in the cold confines of the manor house basement. He faced everyone one more time. “You don’t have to do this. Leonard, you most of all.”
“Kelly was a lot of things, at least at first, but she proved to be a good friend for the past seven years. I owe it to her to go.”
One by one, they nodded in agreement. They went down into the makeshift morgue that had become crowded after the last few days.
They were met at the bottom of the stairs by two plainclothes security men who checked the IDs around their necks. They passed through a curtained-off area and found themselves in a small room with a large window facing a cement floor that had three tables on it. They could see the bodies underneath the sheets. Several men and women were in scrubs but wore no masks. The taller of the five people turned and faced the glass.
“Professor Kennedy, stop me if something isn’t clear enough for you, and we’ll try another tack.”
Gabriel nodded as the pathologist and one female assistant pulled back the sheet on the first of the three bodies. It was the torn remains of one of the hostage rescue team men.
“We only have three to view since the others are so dismembered the explanation as to their trauma would be superficial at best.” The pathologist nodded at a far corner and the bodies there on tables.
The door hissed open behind them, and they were all shocked to see Catherine Hadley standing behind them. She had her female assistant beside her, and they stood and watched. The former First Lady nodded at Gabriel and then approached.
“Professor, I understand one of your own people was hurt this morning. I am—”
“Yeah, she was kind of hurt to death!” Leonard said, forgetting who he was talking to. The Secret Service agents outside started to open the door, but the woman waved them away through the clear glass.
“I understand that, Mr. Sickles, and I am truly sorry. Now you see how serious this is.” She turned to face Gabriel. “This is why you need to recommend an induced coma, for safety’s sake, or this will happen again. I have twenty professionals from all walks of psychology ready to declare Dean dangerous to not only himself but to others. I believe I’m quoting your own work, Professor, about the power of the mind when you said that the human brain is more than equipped to manifest everything that has happened here. Am I correct on this?” Her right brow rose in challenge.
“I believe I said that, yes, but your quote is from a much larger statement about how the research has to be carried out until all avenues have been exhausted. This research, I assure you, ma’am, has yet to even start. I lost a close friend here this morning, and we will find out why.” He leaned down a little closer to Catherine Hadley. “Trust me, we’ll learn all there is to know about your husband.”
The First Lady looked from the glass to her assistant, and then they left the room.
“I really don’t care for that woman,” Jenny said as she and Julie exchanged looks.
“She does have a particular charm about her,” Gabriel said in agreement.
The lead pathologist said, “As you can see, the spine was severed through blunt-force trauma at the sixth vertebra. The skin covering the neck was stretched to its elastic limit, and the separation of tissue occurred here. Whatever force was applied to this man was enough to completely remove the head from the torso.”
“Why doesn’t he just say his head was ripped from his body and save us all a lot of time?”
They all turned and looked at Leonard. Only George was agreeing by nodding. Gabriel turned away after a warning shake of his head at his young computer whiz. The pathologist allowed two of his assistants to roll the second body forward.
“The second victim, a white male of thirty-one, had the exact same damage as the first. The same with the nurse, Beth Sauer. The only difference being that Ms. Sauer’s head remained attached.” Finally, the third body was rolled forward. “This is the casualty I believe you are most interested in, as were we because of the unique trauma it sustained.”
“Her name was … is Kelly,” Julie said.
“I am sorry. Kelly.” He looked at a chart on the gurney and then looked up. “Ms. Delaphoy sustained massive blood loss. I am sorry to say that she has possibly suffered the most painful of all the deaths thus far.” The tall pathologist pulled the sheet back. Kelly was there without any clothing or covering. Gabriel closed his eyes, and Leonard turned and left the small viewing room. Jenny squeezed John’s arm until he flinched. Julie allowed herself to start crying again. George attempted to steady himself by leaning on a temporary wall that gave a little, but he didn’t care. They all should have listened to Gabe and not ventured down to the basement.
“How many bite marks?” Gabriel asked, stopping the pathologist as he was describing her general health before the attack.
“Over three hundred. We have taken impressions of the wounds.”
An assistant wheeled over a stainless steel table and removed a green surgical cloth.
“We called in a forensic maxillofacial surgeon, and these were the clearest sets of imprints and plates we could recover.”
There were four sets of teeth, uppers and lowers. To the untrained eye, they all looked too small. Gabriel leaned in closer to the glass.
“Are those children’s teeth?” he asked as loudly as he could through the separation of rooms.
“Yes, our surgeon suggests one is of a five-year-old, a six-year-old, and the other two in their teens, give or take a year on all. The others are not viable enough to get accurate age estimates.”
“How many different marks, regardless of age?” Kennedy asked.
“Best guess, and that is all that we have at this point, is seventeen different bite patterns.” The doctor placed rubber gloves on, and with the help of a female assistant, he turned Kelly’s body onto her side so that her back could be seen. “The most unique pattern here was done by those smaller plates. We have never seen anything like this before. President Hadley had been raked by something sharp, possibly fingernails; we still haven’t found out for sure. But these we know were made by teeth.”
As hard as the group tried, they could not see what the doctor was describing.
“The bite marks are so plentiful and overlapping that we almost missed it until we took a skin scan of the traumatized areas.” The doctor nodded, and to everyone’s relief, Kelly was once more covered with a blue sheet. He then took the large x-ray folder and opened it. It was a black-and-white scan that showed the bite marks close up. He then produced a second scan. “We were clearly shocked
when layer by layer we removed many of the superficial ones and then went with the deepest bite impressions. There was a section here that contained the older teeth marks, five differing sets.” He showed them the last scan. Julie gasped when she read the words that had been bitten deeply into Kelly’s backside all the way down the back of her leg.
“My God, what in the hell are we dealing with here?” George said as he stepped forward to make sure he was reading the message right.
Regards from the Crypt Kicker Five.
* * *
Julie and Jennifer spent several minutes in the bathroom next to the study as the others gathered to discuss the autopsy of their friend. It sickened them that Kelly had been used as merely a message board by something that found this amusing. They all watched as the two women came back inside and looked far fresher than they had going into the bathroom. They sat and all were silent as they absorbed what they had seen.
“What in the hell did that mean?” Julie asked as she tried to focus on the faces around the table.
Except for Leonard tapping away at a computer keyboard, no one said anything. It was George who walked to the small wet bar and poured himself a stiff shot of bourbon before he spoke.
“We all know where we heard that before, so everyone just admit it. It’s from that stupid song.”
“I must have missed that one,” Julie countered.
The others knew exactly what Cordero meant.
“‘Monster Mash,’ released in 1962,” Leonard said as he continued tapping away. “The only hit for a singer called Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett. The song premiered in time for Halloween in 1962 and was a huge hit with the bebop crowd.”
Understanding finally dawned on Julie’s face. “That silly Halloween song?” She stood and then paced to the window and the cloudy day outside. “Kelly once played that song for us when developing the Halloween special for Summer Place.”
“Everything related to us through whatever this thing is stems from the early sixties,” Gabriel said as he stood and went to the bar for a bottle of water. “Leonard, it’s imperative that we delve deeper into Hadley’s past. Why were his high school records forged? Why the blast-from-the-past music? And what could have turned this boy into a cold-blooded killer who has no remorse for the duty he performed? Most men of that ilk either commit suicide or—”
In the Still of the Night--The Supernaturals II Page 15