Chimera

by David Wellington

  “Want their shoe sizes? I can get those,” Angel joked.

  “I somehow doubt that,” Chapel told her.

  “Seriously? Do you know how many people buy their shoes online these days? People are lazy. They’ll do anything they can online because then they don’t have to get off the couch. Look at me—I’m saving the world and I can do it from my bathtub, if I feel like it.”

  Chapel fought down the urge to ask if she was in the bath right at that moment. He had work to do. Focus, he thought. “Okay. Okay. The real thing I want to know is why they’re on that list. You have any idea about that, Angel?”

  “I didn’t get any details you haven’t already heard,” she told him. “Looking at this list, I don’t see any immediate connections. Maybe something’ll come up as I get more facts on them. Let’s start with the first name on your list—the one in Brighton Beach. Name, Bryant, Dr. Helen. Lives on Neptune Avenue. Sounds like a fun place. Occupation: Genetic Counselor.”

  “What’s a genetic counselor?” Chapel asked.

  “Let me Google her . . . ooh, she’s got a website! I love it when they have websites. Nice-looking lady, if your taste runs to older women. Looks like she’s an ob-gyn. She sees pregnant women and helps them find out if their babies are healthy, and what they can do if it turns out the babies have genetic problems. Oh my God, that must be the saddest job in the world sometimes. Can you imagine?”

  “I’ve never had kids. Never got the chance,” Chapel said.

  “A man of your age should have a wife, Chapel. A wife and lots of happy little healthy babies. I’m finding all kinds of stuff about Dr. Bryant here. Looks like she’s pretty famous in certain circles—she’s won all kinds of awards, gotten commendations from numerous institutes, worked for the National Institutes of Health for a long time . . . did fieldwork in Africa during the early part of the AIDS crisis. Weird, looks like there’s a police bulletin about her too. Let me just take a peek . . .”

  Chapel imagined Angel crouched forward looking at her computer screen, scanning through dozens of web pages at once. When she didn’t come back on the line after a few seconds, he began to wonder what she’d found. “Angel? Is everything okay?”

  “No, sweetie. It’s not. At least, not for Dr. Bryant.”

  IN TRANSIT: APRIL 12, T+8:02

  “Goddamn it, no!” Chapel shouted, and he punched the instrument panel of the helicopter with his good fist. The pilot started to protest, but the look on Chapel’s face must have warned him off. “She can’t be dead. I can’t be too late.”

  “The police are already on the scene,” Angel told him.

  “Damn it,” Chapel said, but more muted this time. He’d known how tight the time frame was, known that people had already died at the hands of the detainees. But this was the first civilian—the others had been military personnel. That didn’t make their deaths much easier to bear. But they’d known what they were getting into, or at least known they were dealing with dangerous people. Nobody had even told Dr. Bryant she was in danger.

  “Do you still want to go to Brooklyn?” Angel asked. “I can change your flight plan and take you to the next address instead.”

  “No,” Chapel said. “No. I need to see the crime scene. There might be some evidence there that can help me track this bastard. And we know he was in the area recently—maybe I can catch him now before he moves on to the next target.”

  “All right, Chapel. You’ll be on the ground in a few minutes.”

  The chopper curved in over New York Harbor and then made a straight line across Brooklyn, an endless sea of two- and three-story buildings, rows of brownstones and warehouses and churches punctuated in only a few places by taller structures. The pilot shed altitude as they came in over a rectangular slice of greenery by the ocean. It looked like a salt marsh. On the far side Chapel saw the heliport, a commercial pad with a few civilian choppers sitting dormant. Chapel slapped the pilot’s shoulder in thanks, and the kid gave him a thumbs-up. Before the skids had even touched asphalt, Chapel jumped out of the side hatch. It felt good to have his feet on solid ground again, though he knew it would take a while before his head stopped thrumming with the sound of the rotor blades.

  The chopper lifted off again as soon as he was clear. It would head for the nearest air base where it could refuel, in case he needed it again in a hurry. In a few seconds it was gone from view and Chapel could hear nothing but ocean waves and distant car traffic. The silence was a dramatic change.

  “Did you get me that car?” Chapel asked, and when Angel didn’t answer, it took him a second to realize he’d left his headphones in the chopper. He reached for his BlackBerry, wondering how he would make contact with her—she hadn’t exactly given him her phone number.

  Before he had a chance to call the DIA and ask to be connected to the sexiest-sounding woman working there, someone called his name and he looked up.

  A courier in a FedEx uniform came jogging up and handed Chapel a package. He signed for it, and the courier left before Chapel could figure out who was sending him a parcel at a heliport he’d never heard of an hour ago.

  He tore open the package and found a cell phone inside, still in its box. There was a plastic blister package in the parcel as well, holding a tiny in-ear attachment for the phone.

  He managed to get all the packaging undone without too much trouble. The new phone was a touch-screen model that was all screen and no buttons. He’d always wanted one of those, frankly—the tiny keys on his BlackBerry were hard to use with his less sensitive artificial fingers. He put the earpiece in his ear and powered on the phone. It looked like its batteries had a decent charge.

  “Let me guess,” he said, as the screen lit up. “Is that you, Angel?”

  “Hi, sweetie,” she said. “I figured it was time for an upgrade.”

  “You know, it’s DoD policy that we only use BlackBerrys,” he told her. “This brand is a no-no.”

  “It’s got sixteen times the memory and twice the screen resolution. I’m a high-definition kind of girl. It works with the 4G network and Wi-Fi and the best hands-free transceiver on the market. Namely the one in your ear right now. Keep it there—and keep the phone in your pocket—and we never have to be apart. Sound good?”

  “I’m receiving you loud and clear.”

  “Good. And, sweetie, you don’t have to shout. Just talk normally and I’ll hear you. In fact, I’ll hear everything you do, so I can give you advice on the fly. Your car is waiting at the entrance to the heliport. We’ll get you to Dr. Bryant’s place right away. In the meantime, I’ll walk you through the process of migrating all your data from your old phone. I can do most of that for you from here.”

  What was it Top had told him about living in George Jetson land?

  “Okay,” Chapel said, as he jogged out of the chain-link gate of the heliport. A black car—a Crown Victoria, just like the one Laughing Boy drove—was waiting for him. He had an appointment with a dead woman.

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+8:12

  Neptune Avenue was lined with modest houses and convenience stores, pizza parlors and medical clinics. The air smelled of the ocean and pasta sauce and was filled with the noise of cars and thumping radios. Dr. Bryant’s house was a simple two-story structure with bars over its windows and a steel-core reinforced door.

  “Looks like she was worried about security,” Chapel said. “Not that it helped.”

  “That’s pretty s
tandard for New York,” Angel told him. “Police records say she’s had a couple break-ins before, as well. People who saw her name on the door—saw she was a doctor—and broke in looking for drugs.”

  “Does she keep an office here?” Chapel asked.

  “No, this was just her home. Her office and her lab are a few blocks away. This is kind of a run-down area for somebody like her. I guess she wanted to live near her patients. By the looks of things, they were mostly Russian immigrants.”

  “You have access to her medical records?”

  “Nothing privileged, though I could probably get that without too much trouble if you need it,” Angel told him. “I don’t see anything that stands out, right now. I don’t see anything that would have made her any enemies.”

  “One was enough,” Chapel said. He gritted his teeth and walked up to the door. A single strand of yellow police tape crossed the opening, and a uniformed police officer was standing just inside. She stared at his ID with a skeptical eye, but she let him through. Angel had already talked to the local cops and let them know he was coming.

  The house was dark inside, and it took a while for his eyes to adjust. When they did, he saw the place was full of police photographers and detectives drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups. He would have preferred to visit the scene alone, but that wasn’t an option.

  He heard someone crying loudly in the back of the house—probably a kitchen back there; he could see the side of a refrigerator through an open door. The last thing he wanted at that moment was to be questioned by a grieving relative, so he headed up the stairs instead—that was where Angel told him Dr. Bryant had been discovered.

  “I’m getting some preliminary reports now; they were just filed by the detectives on the scene,” Angel said in his ear. “Chapel, this isn’t going to be pretty. It sounds like she was beaten to death in her bedroom.”

  “I’ve seen dead people before,” he told her.

  A detective in a cheap suit, wearing a police laminate on a lanyard around his neck, looked up and stared at Chapel. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

  Chapel flashed his ID again, but the detective shook his head.

  “How about you just tell me, instead of making me read the fine print on that thing? I figure you have a right to be here or we would have turned you away at the door. But you’re no cop. I’m guessing . . . military?”

  Chapel bit his lip, but said nothing.

  The detective scratched at the stubble on his chin. He looked like a tough old bastard. He looked like a drill instructor Chapel had known in basic training, frankly. He looked like the kind of guy who was used to being lied to and didn’t like it at all.

  “I can’t answer your questions,” Chapel said. “I can’t tell you anything. This murder is of interest to—”

  “DHS,” Angel whispered in his ear.

  “The Department of Homeland Security,” Chapel said. It was a lie, but it wasn’t a ridiculous one.

  The detective’s eyes went wide. “Yeah, okay. I know that score.” He stepped aside and let Chapel past.

  “That was too easy,” Chapel said under his breath.

  “This is New York, sweetie. This is where 9/11 happened. They understand terrorism here—and nobody will bother a DHS agent.”

  “Good thinking, Angel.” Chapel stepped through another doorway and walked into the crime scene proper.

  He may have seen dead bodies before. He had seen the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. This was different, though, and his breath caught in his throat.

  Dr. Helen Bryant was lying on the floor, twisted into an unnatural shape. She’d been thrown into a mirror and pieces of broken glass were everywhere, a shoal of them covering part of her face. That was a small mercy. She was an elderly woman. A little old lady. No little old lady should ever have this happen to them. It was just so . . . wrong.

  One of the detainees had done this. Chapel suddenly wanted very much to kill the son of a bitch. He wanted to make the guy suffer.

  Chapel forced himself to squat down and take a closer look, much as he wanted to just turn away and shake his head. He made himself look at the wounds on Dr. Bryant’s body, the broken bones, the lacerations. There were no gunshot wounds, and no sign that she’d been cut with a knife.

  The bastard had done this with his hands.

  “Do you need us to move her?” someone asked from behind him. It wasn’t the detective who had questioned him. This was a paramedic, or maybe somebody from the coroner’s department. “We’re almost done taking fiber and hair samples. If you need something, just ask.”

  Chapel looked up at the paramedic. She was black, in her midthirties, and she looked like she was in awe of the DHS agent who had graced her crime scene with his presence.

  Damn, Chapel thought. Angel’s ruse had gotten him this far, but now it might cause problems. If the cops thought this case was somehow connected to terrorist activity, they might start asking questions. Well, he decided, that was for Angel or Hollingshead to take care of. He had tougher problems to solve.

  He put his hands on his knees and started to straighten up. Turning his face away from the body, he caught something out of the corner of his eye. “What’s that?” he asked.

  The paramedic came over to stand next to him, taking care not to step on any evidence as she did so. Together they looked at the bedside table. A book of crossword puzzles and a pen lay on the floor next to the bed, and just above them, on the wall, someone had scrawled a single word.

  Chapel moved closer. The letters were shaky and hard to make out, as if they’d been written by someone with a broken arm, someone in a panic, somebody who knew she was about to die. He had no doubt that Dr. Bryant had written the word.

  She must have been trying to leave some kind of clue, maybe even to identify her killer. She could have been more clear about it, Chapel thought, and then scolded himself for thinking uncharitable thoughts about the dead. Still, he had no idea what the message meant:

  CHIMERA

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+8:20

  “Angel,” Chapel said, “you ever heard of something called Chimera?”

  “Sounds familiar. Give me a second.” He heard the faint sound of clacking keys and knew she must be looking it up on the Internet. “Right . . . for one thing, you’re saying it wrong, sweetie. It’s not ‘chim-ur-uh,’ it’s ‘kai-mare-uh.’ It’s a monster from Greek mythology—a lion with a goat head coming out of its back and a snake for a tail.”

  “I’m guessing Dr. Bryant wasn’t killed by some kind of weird lion creature,” Chapel told her. “It’s got to be something else. Was there a Project Chimera? Maybe something the CIA was involved in? Maybe that was the name of the place where the detainees were held.”

  “No, nothing like that is showing up. And I’ve got access to some pretty weird databases, so I’d expect at least a footnote somewhere.”

  He glanced over his shoulder to see if the paramedic was listening, but she had stepped out of the room, maybe to tell the detective about the scrawled message on the wall. Chapel stood up straight, ignoring his protesting knees.

  “Maybe it’s a person’s name,” Angel suggested. “Or at least an alias.”

  “Maybe,” Chapel said. At the very least it was a clue. Dr. Bryant had died to give him this information. It had to mean something.

  But it was going to have to wait. Dr. Bryant was dead—there was nothing more he cou
ld do for her. There was one other name on the kill list that was located in New York City. He needed to get moving.

  At the door the detective was waiting for him. “Anything you can share?” he asked.

  Chapel shook his head and started to push past the man.

  “Maybe you should talk to the daughter,” the detective told him.

  “Daughter?”

  The detective nodded. “You probably heard her on your way in—she’s in the kitchen, grieving pretty hard for her mom. She’s the one who found the body. They were supposed to have lunch together today.”

  Chapel’s heart went out to Dr. Bryant’s daughter, but it wasn’t his job to console anyone. His job was to make sure nobody else’s kids had to mourn their parents today. “Did she give you anything you can use? Did she see anybody running away from the house, or tell you about any enemies Dr. Bryant might have had? Otherwise—”

  The detective shrugged and pulled a notepad out of his jacket pocket. “Julia Taggart, thirty-two, lives in Bushwick. No, nothing like that. We liked her for this at first—the skinny is she and her mom had some fights, just screaming matches. But I’ve seen what people look like after they kill their moms and she ain’t the type, she—”

  “Taggart,” Chapel said, his eyes going wide.

  “Yeah,” the detective said, “that’s her name, does that mean something to you?”

  Angel’s voice sounded in his ear. “It definitely means something to me,” she said.

  “Taggart—not Bryant,” Chapel said.

  The detective nodded. “Sure. The deceased and her husband split up back in the late nineties, nothing weird about it, just a divorce. Dr. Bryant went back to using her maiden name, but the daughter kept her dad’s.”

  “Number seven on the kill list is Dr. William Taggart,” Angel said. “He lives in Alaska.”

  Chapel had already made that connection. “Yeah. I definitely want to talk to her,” he told the detective.