Nora examined the gate. It was wrought iron, black paint peeling from it, the metal underneath pitted and bubbling with rust. A row of spikes ran across the upper edge of its frame, but half of the spikes had either broken or fallen off. Despite the appearance of antiquity, Nora noticed that the gate’s hinges were well oiled and its chain and padlock were quite new. No sound came through the trees.
“Easier to climb over the fence than the gate,” Nora said.
“Yeah.”
Neither moved.
“You really think this is a good idea?” asked Caitlyn.
Before she had a chance to change her mind, Nora took the initiative, grasping the rusted chain link with her hands and jamming her toes into the gaps, pulling herself up as quickly as she could. The fence was about ten feet tall. Brackets along the upper edge indicated that it had once been topped by strands of barbed wire, which had disappeared long ago.
In half a minute, she was over. She dropped to the soft leaves on the other side, panting. “Your turn,” she said.
Caitlyn grasped the links and did the same. She wasn’t in nearly as good shape as Nora, but managed to struggle over, sliding down the far side with a quiet rattle of metal. “Whew,” she said as she brushed away leaves and rust.
Nora peered into the dimness ahead. “Better to go through the woods than follow the road,” she whispered.
“No argument here.”
Moving gingerly, trying not to rustle the leaves, Nora moved off the road to the right, where a dark gully ran downhill through oak trees toward the edge of a cleared area. She could hear Caitlyn behind her, moving cautiously. The gully soon became steep, and Nora paused from time to time to peer ahead. It was dark in the woods, but she knew they couldn’t use the flashlight. She had every reason to believe the people inside the Ville were alert to intruders and might investigate a light bobbing in the woods.
The gully gradually leveled out as they approached the flat area marking the edge of a field around the Ville itself. Abruptly, the trees ended and the dead field stretched before them, ending at the rear of the massive, ancient church, attached to—and perhaps even held up by—its helter-skelter accretion of dependent buildings. A chill wind blew across the field, and Nora could hear the rattle of dry weeds.
“My God,” she heard Caitlyn murmur beside her.
This time, Nora had approached the Ville from the opposite side. From the closer perspective, she could see that the bizarre structure was even more rough-hewn than she’d thought. In the pale glow reflected from the night sky, she could almost make out the adze marks on the massive timbers that made up the ribs of the fortress. The central church seemed to have been built in successive layers, each higher layer slightly overhanging that below it, forming an inverted ziggurat that looked perverse and menacing. The vast majority of windows were far up in its flanks. Those not bricked up were filled with old ship’s glass, pale green, though some appeared to be covered in oilcloth or waxed paper. This close, the impression of candlelight from the far side of the windows was unmistakable. A single window—small and rectangular—was placed at eye level, as if just for them.
“Unbelievable that a place like this could still exist in Manhattan,” she said.
“Unbelievable it could still exist at all. What do we do?”
“Wait. See if anyone’s around.”
“How long?”
“Ten, fifteen minutes. Enough time for a guard, if there is one, to make his rounds. Then we might move in closer. Be sure to take note of everything. We want West Sider readers to really get an eyeful.”
“Right,” said Caitlyn, her voice quavering, her hand clutching her notebook.
Nora settled down to wait. As she shifted, she felt the rough charm around her neck scratch her skin. She drew it out, looked at it. It looked as strange as the fetishes that had been left outside her apartment: tufts of feathers, the bundle of chamois. Pendergast had pressed it upon her, made her promise to wear it, promise to keep the flannel bag always on her person. New Orleans bred or not, he didn’t seem like the type to believe in voodoo—did he? She let it drop back, feeling faintly silly, glad the reporter hadn’t noticed.
A faint noise put her on high alert. It had just started out of the darkness, a low drone like the sound of monstrous cicadas, and it took her a moment to realize it was coming from the church. It grew louder and clearer: the sound of deep singing. No, not singing exactly—more like chanting.
“You hear that?” Caitlyn asked, voice suddenly tight.
Nora nodded.
The sound swelled, growing in volume while deepening in timbre. It quavered, rising and falling in a complex rhythm. Nora saw Caitlyn shiver, draw her jacket more tightly around her shoulders.
As they waited, listening intently, the chanting grew faster, more insistent. Now it began to rise in pitch, little by little.
“Oh shit, I don’t like this at all,” said Caitlyn.
Nora put an arm around the reporter’s shoulders. “Just sit tight. Nobody knows we’re here. We’re invisible in the dark.”
“I shouldn’t have agreed to come. This was a bad idea.”
Nora could feel the woman shaking. She marveled at her own lack of fear. She had Bill’s death to thank for that. It wasn’t fearlessness, exactly, so much as feeling dead to fear. After his death, what could be worse? Her own death would be a kind of release.
The chanting grew in urgency, faster and faster. And then a new noise intruded—the bleating of a goat.
“Oh, no,” Nora muttered. She tightened her arm around Caitlyn.
Another plaintive bleat. The chanting was now high and fast, almost like a machine, the humming of a huge dynamo.
Two more bleats cut through the drone: higher, frightened. Nora knew what was coming; she wanted to cover her ears but knew she couldn’t.
“This needs a witness.” She began to rise.
Caitlyn clutched at her. “No. Wait, please.”
Nora shook her off. “This is what we came for.”
“Please. They’ll see you.”
“Nobody’s going to see me.”
“Wait—!”
But Nora was up and running across the field at a crouch. The grass was wet and slick underfoot. She flattened herself against the back wall of the old church; crept along it toward the small yellow window; paused; then glanced in, heart pounding.
Porcelain sink, brown with age; broken china chamber pot; commode of splintered wood. An ancient, empty privy.
Damn. She slid down, face against the cold, rough timber. The fabric of the ancient place seemed to exude an unusual odor: musky, smoky. Close as she was now, the sounds within were a lot louder. She pressed her ear to the wall, listening intently.
She couldn’t make out the words, couldn’t even tell what language, although it was clearly not English. French? Creole?
Along with the chanting, she could hear what seemed like the soft slap of bare feet, fast and rhythmical. A lone voice rose above the insistent ostinato: wavering, shrill, tuneless, yet clearly part of the ritual.
Another long, frightened bleating: high, terrified. Then sudden, total silence.
And then the shriek came, cutting the air, a pure animal expression of surprise and pain. The sound was almost immediately choked off by a thick gargling, followed by a long, drawn-out rattling cough, and then silence.
Nora didn’t have to see to know exactly what had happened.
Just as suddenly, the chanting resumed, fast, exultant, with the voice of what was certainly a kind of priest rising above, wailing with glee. Mingled with that were the sounds of something else: something grunting, breathy, and wet.
Nora gulped down mouthfuls of air, feeling suddenly nauseated. The sound had cut her to the bone and unexpectedly revived that terrible moment when she saw her husband, motionless, in a spreading pool of blood on their living room floor. She felt paralyzed. The earth whirled around her, and spots danced before her eyes. Caitlyn was right: this was a bad
idea. These people, whoever they were, would not take kindly to an intrusion. She gripped the brick wall for a minute or two, until the feeling passed, and then she realized: they had to get out—now.
As she turned, she caught sight of something moving in the dark, at the corner of the farthest building. A lurching, shambling movement; a blur of sallow flesh in the spectral moonlight; and then it was gone.
With a thrill of dread she blinked hard, opened her eyes again. All was silent and dark; the chanting had ceased. Had she really seen something? Just when she was concluding she hadn’t, it appeared again: glabrous, strangely bloated, dressed in tatters. It moved toward her with a motion that seemed somehow both random and yet full of horrible purpose.
As she stared, Nora was irresistibly reminded of the thing that had chased her through the room of whale skeletons two nights before. With a gasp, she lurched to her feet and ran across the field.
“Caitlyn!” she gasped, stumbling into the reporter and grabbing her jacket, her lungs burning. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here!”
“What happened?” She was instantly terrified by Nora’s terror, cowering on the ground.
“Go!” Nora grasped her shirt and hauled her bodily to her feet. Caitlyn stumbled as she tried to get up, and Nora caught her.
“Oh, my God,” said Caitlyn, staring back, suddenly paralyzed. “Dear God.”
Nora looked back. The thing—its face puffy and distorted, impossible to make out in the dim light—was now moving toward them with a horrible disjointed motion.
“Caitlyn!” Nora screamed, pulling her around. “Go!”
“What—?”
But Nora was already running up the dark gully, pulling the reporter along by her arm. Caitlyn seemed drugged by fear, slipping and falling on the leaves, turning to look back again and again.
Now the thing was moving more swiftly, coming at them with a loping motion that was full of sinister design. She could hear its slobbering, eager breathing.
“It’s coming,” said Caitlyn. “It’s coming after us.”
“Shut up and run!”
Oh, God, Nora thought as she ran. Oh, my God. It can’t be Fearing—can it?
But she was all too sure that it could be.
They reached the top of the gully. The gate and fence lay just ahead.
“Haul ass!” Nora cried as Caitlyn slipped and came dangerously close to falling. She was sobbing and gasping for air. Behind, the sound of something treading the ground came up swiftly through the dark. Nora pulled Caitlyn back up.
“Oh, Jesus…”
Nora hit the fence, pulling Caitlyn after her, throwing her against the fence and heaving her upward with as much strength as she could manage. The reporter scrabbled against the chain link, finding a purchase and pulling herself up. Nora followed. They slipped over the top, dropped to the leaves, began running again.
Something crashed into the fence behind them. Nora stopped, turned. Despite the hammering of her heart, she had to know. She had to know.
“What are you doing?” Caitlyn cried, still running like hell.
Nora jammed her hand into her shoulder bag, yanked out the flashlight, turned it on, aimed it at the fence…
… Nothing—except a convex bulge in the rusted steel where the thing had hit, and the faint residual motion of the fence from the blow, creaking back and forth, until silence reigned.
The thing was gone.
She could hear Caitlyn running, her footfalls receding up the old lane.
Nora followed at a jog, and soon caught up with the heaving, exhausted reporter. Caitlyn was doubled over, heaving and gasping, and then she vomited. Nora held her shoulders while she was sick.
“Who… what was that?” she finally managed to choke out.
Nora said nothing, and helped Caitlyn to her feet. Ten minutes later, they were walking down Indian Road, back in familiar Manhattan, but Nora—unconsciously fingering the charm around her neck—could not shake the feeling of horror, of the thing that had chased them, and of the death-cough of the doomed goat. One terrible thought kept recurring, a single irrational, useless, sickening thought:
Did Bill sound like that when he died?
29
Lieutenant D’Agosta sat in his cubbyhole office at One Police Plaza, staring at the glow of the computer screen. He was an author, he’d published two novels. The books had gotten great reviews. So why was it that writing an interim report was so damn difficult? He was still burning from the reaming-out that the commissioner had given him the prior afternoon. Kline had gotten to him, no doubt about that.
He turned from the screen, rubbing his eyes. Feeble morning light came in the room’s single window, from which he could glimpse a sliver of sky. He took a slug from his third cup of coffee, tried to clear his mind. After a certain point, coffee seemed to make him more tired.
Was it really only a week since Smithback was murdered? He shook his head. Right now, he was supposed to be in Canada, visiting his son and signing paperwork for his impending divorce. Instead, he was chained to New York and a case that only grew more bizarre with every passing day.
The phone on his desk rang. That’s all he needed: another distraction. He plucked it from the cradle, sighing inwardly. “Homicide, D’Agosta speaking.”
“Vincent? Fred Stolfutz.”
Stolfutz was the assistant US attorney helping D’Agosta draft the search warrant affidavit for the Ville. “Hi, Fred. So what do you think?”
“If you’re trying to get in there looking for homicide evidence, you’re going to be out of luck. The evidence is too thin, no judge will approve a warrant. Especially after what you pulled on Kline the other day.”
“Christ, how’d you hear about that?”
“Vinnie, it’s all over the place. Not to mention how the commissioner—”
D’Agosta interrupted impatiently. “So what are the options?”
“Well, you said this place is deep in the woods, right?”
“Right.”
“That rules out plain-use doctrine: you can’t get close enough to, say, see evidence of a crime in plain view or smell marijuana smoke. And there won’t be any exigent circumstances, somebody screaming for help or something.”
“There’s been plenty of screaming—by animals.”
“See, that’s what I was thinking. You’ll never get in there on a homicide rap, but I could probably draft something about cruelty to animals. That’s a statute we could make stick. If you go in there with an animal control officer, you can keep your eyes out for the other evidence you’re looking for.”
“Interesting. Think it’ll fly?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Fred, you’re a genius. Call me back when you know more.” D’Agosta hung up the phone and returned to the problem at hand.
On the surface, it wasn’t complicated. Good witnesses, excellent witnesses, had seen Fearing enter and leave the building. And even though the results weren’t official, and couldn’t be used in court, the man’s DNA had been found at the scene, something the official results would eventually confirm. Fearing was stalking Nora and, again, there was the proof of his DNA. His crypt was empty—no body. That was the proof on one side.
On the other side? An overworked, sloppy asshole of a medical examiner who couldn’t admit he’d made a mistake. A tattoo and a birthmark, either of which could be faked or mistaken, given the time the body was in the water. A sister’s ID, but false IDs had happened before when a family member was too distraught, or the body too changed. Maybe it was insurance fraud, with the sister in on it. The fact that she had disappeared afterward just added to the suspicion.
No: Colin Fearing was alive, of that D’Agosta was sure. And he was no frigging zombii, either. Was Kline behind it, or the Ville? He’d keep up the pressure on both.
D’Agosta picked up his coffee, stared at it, then poured it into the wastebasket, following it with the cup. Enough of that shit. He thought about the crime itself. It just didn�
��t look to him like a rape gone bad. And the guy had stared at the camera going in. The man knew he was being recorded—yet he didn’t care.
Pendergast was right. This was no disorganized killing: there was a plan here. But what plan? He swore under his breath.
The phone rang again.
“D’Agosta.”
“Vinnie? It’s Laura. Have you seen the West Sider this morning?”
“No.”
“You’d better get yourself a copy.”
“What does it say?”
“Just get yourself a copy. And…”
“And what?”
“Expect a call from the commissioner. Don’t tell them I told you, just be ready.”
“Shit, not again.” D’Agosta re-cradled the phone. Then he stood up and headed for the nearest bank of elevators. He could probably scrounge a copy up on the floor, but if Laura was right, he needed to carve out some time to digest whatever it was before the commissioner called.
The elevator bell rang, and a set of doors opened. A few minutes later, D’Agosta approached the newsstand in the lobby. He could see the West Sider hung prominently on the upper left rack, as usual. He dropped his two bits on the counter, slid one off the top of the pile, and tucked it under his arm. Stepping into the Star-bucks across the lobby, he ordered a single shot of espresso, took it to the table, and opened the newspaper. The lead article practically yelled out at him:
Animal Sacrifice!
Ritual Death at “the Ville”
Possible Ties to Voodoo and Smithback Murder
By Caitlyn Kidd
D’Agosta stared at the espresso, which barely covered the bottom of the paper cup. Whatever happened to the preheated demitasses they used to serve it in? He shot it down, barely tasting it, snapped the paper flat, and began to read.
He had to admit, for a shit-piece of a story it was effective. Nora Kelly and the reporter had gone up to the Ville at night, jumped the fence, and heard the whole thing. Then they’d been chased away, by who or what was left vague, but the reporter insinuated it had the appearance of a zombii. The reporter went on to wonder how the city could have allowed a public road to be closed, and whether animal cruelty laws were being broken. There were quotes from Smithback’s article on the Ville, descriptions of the vévé left at his apartment door prior to the murder, as well as the weird stuff left at the murder scene itself. There was a pithy quote from the head of an animal rights group. While the reporter made no direct assertions of a connection between the Ville and Smithback’s murder, the thrust of the article was unmistakable: Smithback had started writing about animal sacrifices, and he’d been planning to do more. And then there was a line that particularly burned him, typical of this kind of reportage. “Repeated attempts to reach Lieutenant Detective Vincent D’Agosta, in charge of the Smithback homicide investigation, were unsuccessful.”
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