Deader Still sc-2

by Anton Strout

  I’d hit that too, I thought, rubbing my pained jaw. I’d hit that with a bat if I ever saw her again.

  Connor looked at my hands. “I see you’re wearing your gloves again.”

  “Yeah,” I said, realizing I had put them back on after triggering off everything in my apartment. “Crazy thing … those Illinois gypsies must not be as powerful as we previously thought. Their curse just kinda wore off while I was out … with my friend … during our appetizers.”

  Connor stared me down, but I refused to flinch.

  “Anyway,” he said, drawing his words out slowly, almost painfully so. “Hope you enjoyed … dinner with your friend.”

  He was making it so obvious that he had pieced it together himself that the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

  “Fine,” I hissed across to him. “Her name’s Mina. She’s from my past, alright? What do you want me to say? You want a full confession?”

  Connor shook his head with disappointment.

  “You think that wig would fool me, that I wouldn’t recognize my own partner?” he asked. “I just wanna know why, kid.”

  I paused. Mina was my business, and I was damned if I was going to bring everyone into it when it was my mess to clean up. “I … can’t tell you,” I said finally.

  “There’s a world of difference between can’t and won’t, kid.”

  There was such superiority in his voice, I snapped.

  “Why don’t you tell me about your letter, then?” I asked.

  Connor looked like he’d been slapped in the face.

  “We’ve all got our dirty little secrets,” I continued. “So don’t get holier than thou on me, alright?”

  “So you know about the letter, then, eh?” he said, standing up. He grabbed his coat from behind him. “Yeah, why don’t we both mind our own business?”

  “You’re keeping things from me,” I said, feeling defensive about having been caught. Now I was lashing out.

  Connor put on his coat, fished out his keys, and made sure to lock his desk.

  “There’s a world of difference between keeping something private and breaking the law while lying to your partner about it,” he shouted. “You don’t want to trust me enough to help you? Fine, kid. But don’t expect me to keep this from the Enchancellors forever, especially since you seem to think you’re running the show around here now, giving the orders.”

  “I am giving the orders,” I shouted back. Connor fell silent. “The Inspectre put me in charge of this whole vampire chupacabra mess under the jurisdiction of the Fraternal Order of Goodness. I didn’t tell you because … well, because I didn’t want to pull rank, and also because I knew you’d fly off the handle, just like you are now.”

  Connor’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t. Instead he just turned around and stormed off, heading for the doors.

  I felt like the worst partner in the world. I couldn’t even bring myself to stand up to follow him. What good would it have done anyway?

  Fucking things up with everyone around me was becoming my new pastime.

  29

  I went home and slept, but woke up the next morning good and depressed. I unlocked the door that led to my Fortress of Solitude, the White Room. I flicked on the light. Every piece of furniture and even the walls were all the same shade of white, and, more importantly, nothing in the room would set off my psychometry. I was hoping to clear my head by sitting in the neutral room, but it was no good. Its blinding whiteness and blank features only served to depress me further, and so I decided to skip out on going to the Javits Center later. If I didn’t see Connor, I wouldn’t have to deal with him, right? Instead, I would work on this chupacabra case all on my own. Well, mostly on my own, anyway. First I had to bait Godfrey.

  “Donut?” I said, holding out the box I had just bought from the front counter of the Lovecraft Café. Godfrey Candella looked up from the wingback chair he was sitting in, pausing his pen on the page of his open Moleskine notebook.

  “Oh,” he said, quite surprised by my offer. “Thank you.”

  “Try the powdered ones,” I said. “They’re lemon filled, I think.”

  “I don’t do powdered donuts,” he said, quite serious. He took one of the plain ones out of the box. “The powder gets all over my suit.”

  Given the fastidious nature with which Godfrey dressed himself, it wasn’t surprising. I sat down across from him and helped myself to one of the powdered ones.

  “Suit yourself,” I said. “I don’t care if I get all powdery. Brushes right off the leather.”

  I bit into the donut. Jelly. I hated getting jelly when I was expecting lemon. I swallowed the bite, but put the donut back in the box. I grabbed the other powdered one. This time when I bit in I was rewarded with the taste of delicious lemony goodness.

  When I looked up, Godfrey was staring at me.

  “Is there something that you needed, Simon?”

  “Me?” I said, nonchalant. “Not really. Just … enjoying my donut here.”

  “Oh,” Godfrey said, finding his place in his notebook. “Okay. You don’t mind if I get back to my notes, then?”

  “Not at all,” I said. Godfrey’s concentration fell back to his work while I finished my first donut in silence.

  “Another donut?” I asked when I was done.

  Godfrey held up his first one; only three bites were gone from it.

  “Still working on this one,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Sorry,” I said, then started poking around the remaining ones in the box.

  Godfrey seemed put off by my being there.

  “Honestly, Simon, if there’s something that you need …”

  “Well,” I said, “now that you mention it, I was kind of looking for a little help with something.”

  “Ah,” he said, and closed his notebook. “I see. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Thing is, I really can’t tell you what it’s about,” I said, feeling bad about being so cryptic.

  “Is this something to do for the Fraternal Order?” he said.

  “Yes,” I lied, but it was only a half lie. I had discussed Godfrey and his history with the Inspectre and the both of us were F.O.G.gies, so didn’t that count a little?

  “But I really can’t tell you,” I continued.

  Godfrey gave a sad but knowing smile. “You’d be surprised how often I hear that. For someone as archival as myself, a lot of people prefer me in the dark around here. I’ve never quite understood why.”

  After talking to the Inspectre, I understood. No one ever wanted to run the risk of letting Godfrey in on his innate luck power.

  I stood up.

  “Can you come with me?” I asked, gesturing toward the street.

  Godfrey looked astounded. “You mean … out into the field?”

  “Why do you look so shocked?” I asked. “I’ve seen you out on operations plenty of times.”

  He shook his head. “No one really asks me to go there. I just happen to be in the neighborhood and catch some of the commotion. But no one’s ever asked me officially to come on an operation.”

  “And you still haven’t been asked officially,” I said with pointed wariness in my voice. I sat back down and leaned in conspiratorially. “I need you to keep this under wraps for now.”

  He smiled like a little kid, then wiped it from his face before nodding his head with vigor.

  “Sure,” he said. “Absolutely. Do you think I should change?” He looked down warily at his suit.

  “Do you own anything other than suits?” I asked.

  He considered it for a moment. “Truthfully, no,” he answered.

  “Then don’t sweat it.” I stood up. Godfrey stood as well, ready to follow, his eyes already showing his excitement. “Should just be a walk in the park.”

  *

  “When you said it would just be a walk in the park,” Godfrey said, taking off his suit coat and throwing it over one shoulder, “I thought you meant it fig
uratively, not, you know, an actual walk in the park.”

  During the day, Central Park was far less spooky. I led Godfrey toward the crime scene. We stood at the base of Cleopatra’s Needle, staring up the side of it. The crabs, I noticed, were still missing.

  The Gauntlet archivist stood there, stone still, as if his eyes were recording every last detail of the monument, writing it to the hard drive that was his brain.

  “God?” I asked. “You okay?”

  “Sorry,” he offered when he pulled out of his trance. “I don’t usually get to see many of the things in our archives up close. Fascinating.”

  I wanted to give the poor guy a hug. Godfrey looked kind of lonely. Given that it was daylight in a park full of people, I opted for clapping him on the shoulder in reassurance. That seemed to do the trick for now.

  “You need to get out more,” I said.

  The park was unseasonably warm and the two of us were sweating bullets. Godfrey even loosened his tie, a feat I wouldn’t have imagined possible for him.

  “So now what?” he said after we had stood at the crime scene for a couple minutes.

  “I hoped having a second set of eyes might help me figure out something more about what happened to that jogger here,” I lied.

  Honestly, when I’d talked Godfrey into joining me, I didn’t know what was supposed to happen. The Inspectre had told me about his powers, but I had no idea how they worked. I had simply brought Godfrey here because I thought I might be able to use him as some kind of clue lightning rod that would lead me in the right direction.

  I was grasping at straws just to keep this case moving. The shame of having called a false alarm on vampiric activity stung, and in my desperation I needed a break in the case. I’d hoped that, however Godfrey’s power worked, whatever innate ability he had would have kicked in by now.

  “Let me clean my glasses, then,” Godfrey said, untucking his shirttail, nearly causing me to die of shock. Candella was a fastidious dresser, but he was so focused on actually being out in the field that he didn’t care what was happening to his outward appearance. He wiped his glasses clean before sliding them back onto his nose just as one of his lenses popped out and rolled off across the stones.

  “Oh, bother,” he said, and knelt down to find it. I joined him in his search.

  People walked by, giving us strange looks as they went, no doubt wondering why two grown men were crawling around together in Central Park. After several minutes, Godfrey found his lense and we stood back up. Earlier I had printed out a map to mark the two incidents I had dealt with so far—the attack at the pier and the one on Dr. Kolb—and I pulled it out now to examine it.

  “I’m sorry,” Godfrey said as he fished around in his pockets for something. “I don’t notice anything. I’m afraid I’m not much use out here.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  I looked up from my map, and Godfrey was heading back up past the monument and toward the East Side exit onto Fifth Avenue.

  “Hey, God,” I called after him. “Where the hell are you going?”

  Godfrey turned, and his face was slack. When he spoke, it was like he was in a fugue state. “I need to repair my glasses. Have to find a repair kit.”

  He turned back around and started walking off again.

  “God!” I called out after him, but it was no use. Godfrey Candella was on a mission, and with every passing second, I started thinking that maybe he was on to something. I folded up my map and followed him, but still kept far enough away so as to not disturb whatever mojo he had going on.

  At Fifth Avenue he crossed against the light, almost getting himself run over in the process. Tires screeched and horns blared, but Godfrey didn’t react to any of it. He entered a Duane Reade that was on the corner. Minutes later he reappeared at the door with an eyeglass repair kit, which he quickly opened, using the tiny tools to pop his lense back into place before fishing out a miniature screw to hold it in his frames.

  When he was done, he noticed that his shoe was untied. Godfrey leaned against a lamppost to steady himself while he lifted his foot to retie it, but even so he stumbled and had to reach out for the post. His fingers grabbed for it, but only ended up tearing away one of the flyers affixed to the post itself. He read it and started heading up Fifth Avenue. This was the strange sort of stuff I had been hoping for out of him. I followed.

  When he stopped in front of the Guggenheim Museum, I finally ran up to him.

  “Oh, hello, Simon,” he said, coming out of his trance. “Have you come for the show?”

  “Huh?” I said. “What show are you talking about?”

  Godfrey held up the flyer, and I snatched it from him. It advertised a modern art installation currently going on, but other than that, it looked normal enough.

  “This is why you came here?” I said. Godfrey nodded.

  There had to be more to this. He had stopped here, of all places. I pulled out the map and consulted it again. I found the tourist icon for the Guggenheim, then the one for the boat at the pier. Running in a straight line between them was the very spot where we had found the body of Dr. Kolb. The chupacabra hadn’t been after Dr. Kolb. The good doctor had merely gotten himself in the way of its direct beeline for the museum. I put the map away.

  “Follow me,” I said, and started walking around to the side of the building. If the chupacabra had come to this spot, I doubt it had gone in through the main entrance of the museum. I doubted they could open doors, anyway. There had to be another opening. I crept along the wall and tried every door I found, only to find each and every one locked. At the end of the building, however, was a gated area and the gate was slightly open. The door inside of it sat oddly ajar as well. I ran over to it.

  “We’re not going in there, are we?” he said, his eyes widening like a fifth-grader spying an ice cream truck.

  “Not we,” I corrected. “Just me. This is where you get off.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  Godfrey looked nervous, scared, and a little relieved that his field trip was about to end this way. I had no other choice but to send him back to the offices. I wouldn’t put him at further risk. Using him like a lightning rod for what I was looking for would probably get me in trouble anyway.

  I reached for the door just inside the broken gate but pulled away from it.

  Up close, the door wasn’t just open, but its lock had been busted by force. I looked for whatever security system was attached to it, only to find that someone had already looped the exposed circuits in an expert manner so there would be no danger of setting off any of the alarms. Professional work, something I was pretty sure a chupacabra couldn’t do.

  I turned back to Godfrey.

  “Listen,” I said. “You can’t breathe a word of this to Connor or the Inspectre, okay? They’d just get pissed off or worried. But if I’m not back in the office by six or so, let them know where I went. Got it?”

  Godfrey nodded and backed away from the gate. He gave an all-too-enthusiastic thumbs-up at me. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, I returned it before entering and closing the door behind me.

  With my power back, I could certainly handle a little re-con with just my bat by my side, couldn’t I? After all, it was just a museum in the daytime.

  The interior of the Guggenheim corkscrewed downward underground the same way the museum proper did upward. A set of dimly lit stairs ran down into the depths of the abandoned part of the building and I followed them, contemplating the finer differences between bravery in the face of potential danger and stupidity. I blamed my time with the Fraternal Order of Goodness for blurring the line so much.

  30

  As I crept downward inside the museum, I tried my best to keep as quiet as I could. Muffled sounds came from farther down the corridor. I quietly pulled my retractable bat out and cupped my hand over the end of it as I slowly extended it, hoping to hide my own sounds from whoever might be listening. The wall of the downward-spir
aling corridor opened up to an archway off to my left. I could barely make it out in the little amount of light in this subterranean area, but the noise definitely seemed to come from that direction. I hugged myself to the curved wall and moved closer to the archway.

  As I approached, the sounds I heard became more familiar. It was the sound of someone digging through packing materials, without a doubt. Given the state my living room was often in, with all its own half-packed antiques and art finds, I could hardly mistake it. I chanced a peek around the corner of one side of the arch.

  The room before me was so dark and long that it disappeared into the shadows. Wooden packing crates marked with symbols both arcane and simply illegible cluttered the entire area, reminding me of the government warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. At first glance I didn’t notice anyone, so I quickly slipped around the edge of the arch and sank into the shadows of the piled crates. As I crept forward, my mind began to play tricks on me in the darkness.

  Be vewy, vewy quiet, I thought. I’m hunting chupacabras.

  Row after row of crates formed a labyrinth as I proceeded toward the sounds. Within several minutes my sense of direction was shot to hell. I had zero idea of which path actually led back to my escape route after the first few turns, but I supposed I’d improvise if a hasty retreat were called for. Knowing my luck, it would probably be hastier than not.

  I peeked around one corner and spied movement up ahead, and for once the sound didn’t seem muffled anymore. Light, however, was not at its best here, and all I could make out was shadowy movement against the backdrop of three half-opened crates that looked like they had been searched through in haste. I pressed myself against the opposite row of crates as hard as I could and moved forward, keeping the bat hidden on the far side of my body to prevent it from catching any light on its metallic surface by accident.

  As I got closer, a lone figure came into view, but before I finished closing in on it, I was able to identify it by the curvaceous shape of its dark silhouette.

  “Mina,” I hissed.