Nevermore

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “Yeah,” Dean said, not putting his pistol away, “well, if you hadn’t barreled in like a rank amateur, Artie, we might’ve caught the bastard.”

  Again, Mackey looked like he’d been slapped, which was the least of what Dean wanted to do to him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Beg all you want, you ain’t gettin’ it. We’d’ve had the mother if we weren’t so busy tripping over you—or if we coulda snuck in quiet-like. Now someone’s dead.” Dean held up his pistol and pointed it at Mackey. “Any reason why I shouldn’t make you just as dead, Artie?”

  A sheen of sweat beaded on Mackey’s high forehead. “Look, it’s hardly my fault—”

  “Dean.” That was Sam’s insistent voice.

  “What?”

  “We couldn’t have saved anyone.”

  “The hell’s that supposed to—”

  “These remains—they’ve been here for days.”

  Mackey looked over at Sam. “What?”

  Dean lowered his pistol and put it back in his jeans. The metal of the barrel felt cold on the small of his back.

  He peered down under the floorboards that had been ripped up. A rotten meat smell came crashing down on him, and he had to turn away, but not before he saw a lot of individual body parts, all cut to pieces and rotting.

  “You’re right,” Mackey said, “that poor unfortunate was killed several days ago.” He shook his head. “But that makes no sense. The wormwood’s fresh, and tonight’s the new moon.”

  Sam looked like a lightbulb went off over his head. “It makes perfect sense.”

  “How?” Dean asked. “The guy in the brick wall was killed on the full moon, and the kids got beat up by the monkey on the last quarter, right?”

  Sam shook his head and started gesturing emphatically. “Yeah, but the critical moments in those two stories were the deaths. In ‘Rue Morgue,’ the climax is revealing that the orangutan did it. In ‘Amontillado,’ it’s bricking Fortunato up. But in ‘Tell-Tale Heart’—”

  “Of course!” Mackey exclaimed. “It isn’t the old man’s murder that provides the story’s climax, but rather when the murderer rips up the floorboards to reveal the sliced-up corpse!”

  Nodding at Mackey, Sam then looked at Dean. “That’s what he was re-creating.”

  “Whoever he is.” Dean glared at Mackey. “Thanks to you, we’ll never—”

  Holding up both gloved hands, Mackey said, “All right, that’s quite enough. I don’t even know who you two are, and—”

  “I’m Sam Winchester, this is my brother, Dean.”

  Dean shot his brother an annoyed glance. He wasn’t anywhere near ready to start sharing anything with this nimrod.

  But then Mackey’s jaw fell open. “Oh, good heavens—you two are the Winchester brothers? I must say, it’s an honor to meet you! I’ve heard so much about the pair of you—and, of course, I’ve met your father. Strange man, he is.”

  The brothers exchanged another glance. Somehow, this latest revelation wasn’t much of a surprise.

  “I must say, everything I’ve heard about you two is good—and tonight would seem to bear that out, especially given how easily you got the drop on me.” Mackey clapped his hands, which made a slapping sound as latex hit latex. “Well, I wish you’d said something sooner. I’d have gladly defaulted to a pair of veteran hunters such as yourselves. I’m afraid I’m more of a researcher than a field man, but when I saw these Poe-related murders happening, I had to act. It’s rather my specialty, after all. Besides, it’s not as if the police believed me.”

  Dean pointedly ignored the I-told-you-so look Sam was giving him.

  “And you say that this spell is a fake, eh?”

  “Yeah,” Dean said, “Samuels was running a scam. Only really stupid and gullible people believed it,” he added pointedly.

  Sam took out his Treo.

  “Who you calling?” Dean asked.

  “McBain. No sense in her sitting around anymore.”

  “You know Detective McBain?” Mackey asked.

  “Yeah,” Sam said, “she’s checking at Fordham Road and—”

  “What, at St. Nicholas of Tolentine?” Mackey laughed, which sounded to Dean like a squirrel dying. Or maybe Manfred Afiri’s singing voice. “Don’t be ridiculous. The sigil at that intersection is the last one. If the sigil isn’t traced in the proper order, the resurrection won’t work.”

  “It won’t work no matter what,” Dean said through clenched teeth.

  “None of our documentation said that,” Sam said, then talked into the phone. “Detective McBain? Sam Winchester. I’ve got good news and bad news.”

  While Sam filled McBain in, Dean looked again at the ripped-up floorboards. Then he went over to the window, pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket. “Gimme a hand here, Artie.”

  “What is it you’re—oh, I see, you’re eliminating fingerprint traces. You know, for someone who called me an amateur, I’m rather surprised you don’t take so simple a precaution as gloves.”

  Dean focused on wiping the entire windowsill and ignoring Mackey’s barb. The fact was, he hated rubber gloves, and they seriously messed with his ability to use the gun. Wiping the sill probably got rid of the bad guy’s prints, too, but he would have to live with that. As he wiped, he asked, “Hey, Artie, you said you have kids?”

  “Yes. It’s one of the reasons why I don’t do much in the field. Can’t leave the kids fatherless, now, can I?”

  Somehow, Dean forced himself not to react. When Mackey had mentioned Dad, it was in the present tense, so he didn’t know about Dad’s death. Not that he was about to go all chick-flick sharing with Mackey now. In fact, he still considered shooting the twerp in the head to be a viable option.

  Sam put away his Treo. “McBain said to meet her where she is.”

  “To do what?” Dean asked.

  “Work out our next move.”

  Dean snarled. “Oh, come on, Sammy, it’s bad enough we got Masterpiece Theatre here, but now we gotta have the Cop Who Came to Dinner?”

  All that got him was the patented Sam Winchester Glare of Outraged Confusion, and Dean just waved him off and said, “Fine, what-the-hell-ever.” But he didn’t like how crowded this was getting. Every time they added someone to the mix, it went badly: Jo in Philadelphia; Gordon the Vampire Slayer in Montana; hell, even when they hooked up with Dad it went south.

  But Sammy had to be Mr. Share and Care Alike, so he just let it go.

  They went downstairs, Mackey closing the door to 2B behind him, since he had the stupid gloves, and then they drove—Sam and Dean in the Impala, Mackey in a beat-up old Civic—to Fordham Road and MLK Boulevard. Sam found a spot to park on Fordham, and McBain was waiting for them at the gate to the park, which was closed and locked at this late hour. Unlike the nice suit she wore the other night, this time she was dressed in a snug-fitting John Jay College of Criminal Justice sweatshirt and blue jeans, a wool topcoat over it covering her shoulder holster.

  Fordham was a major thoroughfare, and the intersection was a wide one, with plenty of cars about even this late at night. One corner was dominated by a huge gray, two-towered church prominently proclaiming that it was celebrating its hundredth birthday this year.

  Without preamble McBain said, “Please tell me you guys wiped the place down.”

  “We didn’t touch or bleed on anything,” Sam said, holding up his hands defensively.

  “Except the windowsill,” Dean said, “and I wiped that down.”

  “Er,” Mackey said, “I wore gloves.”

  McBain noticed Mackey for the first time. “Arthur, what the hell’re you doin’ here?”

  “You know this guy?” Dean asked.

  “He’s the one who tipped me off to this nonsense in the first place.” She glared down at him. “He also said he wasn’t gonna get involved.”

  Mackey scuffed a toe on the sidewalk. “Yes, well, I could hardly just sit around, could I?”

  “Yeah, actually, you coulda.”


  Dean couldn’t help but smile at the way Mackey tried to make himself smaller. But the smile fell in short order, since they were basically screwed. “Look, we got nothin’ now. It’s another eight freakin’ days until the first quarter, and we don’t have jack.”

  “Well, since you guys didn’t contaminate the crime scene too much, I’ll call it in. Maybe the lab’ll get somethin’.” McBain sighed. “Wouldn’t count on it, though. Lab’s backed up to next year. Only crime scene that’s got any kinda priority is the two kids, ’cause the university’s leanin’ on us, but there ain’t nothin’ more useless than an outdoor scene on a windy night. But Reyes and whoever you two just found, that’ll take weeks to process.”

  Smirking, Dean said, “So what it boils down to is—we don’t have jack.”

  “Yeah, brushy-top, we got jack, happy?”

  “Not really. Only thing we know for sure is that the last part’s happenin’ next Tuesday somewhere at this intersection,” he pointed to the road behind him, “and no idea who. Hell, until tonight, this guy,” now he pointed at Mackey, “was who I had my money on.”

  “Thanks so much,” Mackey muttered.

  McBain shook her head. “Nah, I coulda told you he was a bum lead. I’ve known this guy for years.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve known you for two and a half seconds,” Dean said, “and I’m still not convinced that he wasn’t working with our guy.”

  “I tried to aid you!” Mackey’s voice went all squeaky.

  Sam, finally, spoke up. “And mostly you got in our way. I’m sorry, Mr. Mackey, but you fit the profile. You’re obsessed with Poe, you—”

  “I am not obsessed. Yes, I’ve studied Poe quite a bit, that doesn’t make me homicidal. Or will you go after every academic who’s studied Poe’s life in far greater depth than I can in a simple website?” He shook his head. “In fact, one of them has been sending me e-mails, telling me that it’s all a coincidence.”

  That got Dean’s attention. “Who has?”

  “Someone at Fordham, actually—a nineteenth-century literature scholar over there. Ironic, since it was in one of his papers that I first found out about Percival Samuels, though that only discussed him as one of many spiritualists.”

  Dean looked at Sam. “Sounds like someone we should talk to.”

  McBain looked at them. “What, you’re just gonna waltz onto the campus and talk to this guy?”

  Mackey said quietly, “Er, his name is Dr. Ross Vincent.”

  “Fine.” Dean shrugged. “We’ll go in, say we’re with the ‘Journal of Poe Studies’ or something.”

  Rolling her eyes, McBain said, “You guys really suck at this, don’t you?”

  “What’s the problem?” Sam asked.

  “He’s an academic, dumbass, he’s gonna know everyone from the journals.”

  Dean said, “Then we’ll go as cops.”

  At that, McBain burst out laughing. “You two. As cops. Right. Tell me, brushy-top—how have you two managed not to be dead, exactly?”

  Bristling, Dean said, “We’ve been doing just fine, thanks. And I wish—”

  Sam cut him off, which was probably a good idea, since McBain was also armed, and her gun was in a nice easy-to-access shoulder holster instead of tucked in her pants, so she could probably draw faster than he could. “We usually don’t stick around long enough for people to check our credentials.” Sam smiled. “Or, by the time they do, things have gotten bad enough that they’re more concerned with getting our help than who we are.”

  “Yeah, well,” McBain said, shaking her head, “you been lucky. And luck always runs out eventually. That’s the first thing you learn in this job.”

  Frowning, Sam asked, “You mean the job of hunter or being a cop?”

  McBain stared right at Sam with her large brown eyes. “Both.”

  Everyone was quiet for a moment before Mackey said, “Well, it’s late, and the wife will be getting worried. If there’s nothing else?”

  “Just stay out of our way, okay, Artie?” Dean said.

  Mackey twisted his thin lips. “Yes, well, I’d say I’ve had more than enough excitement for one night. I’ll happily leave it to the pair of you. Unlike your father, I’m sure that you two will handle things well.”

  That got Dean’s back up. “The hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  As Mackey walked over to his Civic, he said, “I mean that the two of you are a good deal better at this than your father is. Which, I suppose, is encouraging—better to see that the next generation is improving.” With that, he got into his car and drove down the steep hill that Fordham Road became, heading toward the Major Deegan Expressway.

  Dean found he had no idea how to feel about that. This wasn’t the first time he’d discovered that he and Sam had any kind of reputation. Gordon had mentioned it back in Montana as well, and it still threw him for a loop. Hell, he was still having trouble wrapping his brain around the notion that there was this whole community of other hunters they didn’t know about. He and Sam had always assumed that the few people Dad had introduced them to—Pastor Jim, Caleb, Bobby—were the only ones out there fighting demons.

  And now finding out that their rep was better than Dad’s? That made no sense to him. Dad, whatever his flaws, was a master.

  Wasn’t he?

  Sam said something to McBain that shook him out of his thoughts—he was asking about Roxy.

  Squinting, McBain said, “Nah, that doesn’t ring a bell offhand—but I’ll check the computer when I’m in the office Wednesday.”

  “Wednesday?” Dean said. “What, you don’t work a full week?”

  “Yeah, brushy-top, I do—it’s just from Wednesday to Sunday. This is my weekend. And believe me, there are people I’d much rather be spendin’ my off-duty time with than your sorry asses. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m goin’ home.”

  It took several minutes for him to get his breathing back under control. He had debated whether it was such a hot idea to put up the trip wire, but the last thing he needed was someone barging in on him unannounced. It wasn’t likely late at night, but the neighborhood was sufficiently troubling that he couldn’t be sure that an empty apartment wouldn’t be used for a drug buy or something.

  But no, he’d been lucky enough not to have that happen.

  Instead, it was something far worse.

  He didn’t recognize the people who came in, but obviously they weren’t from the housing authority or angry neighbors or drug dealers. Leaving aside any other consideration, they were a little too white for the neighborhood.

  Of course, that didn’t automatically disqualify them, but if they were just angry because he was horning in on their “crib” or what have you, he doubted they would have chased him down the fire escape.

  Then again, perhaps they were just high on something.

  It didn’t matter. They didn’t catch him. If nothing else, they helped him out by contaminating the crime scene with irrelevant evidence. Not that he left anything behind—he’d been very careful to eliminate as much as possible. He watched CSI, he knew how much they could potentially find with the right technology.

  They just couldn’t bring back the dead with technology.

  For that, he had to go to something older. It had taken so long to find the right ritual—so many of them depended on the death being recent. Poe had been dead for 157 years. The only resurrections he could find that would bring back someone dead that long required means he simply did not possess.

  Except for Percival Samuels, that underappreciated genius, foolishly imprisoned by an ignorant constabulary.

  He just hoped that those three people were merely drug dealers. He had only seen the one who chased him—he never got a good look at the other two.

  Three down, one to go. Then, at last, the answer will be mine!

  FIFTEEN

  Fordham University

  The Bronx, New York

  Wednesday 22 November 2006

  As soon as he set foot on the campu
s of Fordham University, Sam felt his heart pound into his rib cage. He felt like he had come home again, and wanted to run away screaming.

  In general, Fordham and Stanford didn’t look much alike. Both campuses were built in the nineteenth century, and both had a mix of architectural styles, though Stanford had much more elaborate architecture on the more modern buildings. Being in California, Stanford had plenty of palm trees—most notably on the aptly named Palm Drive, the mile-long entrance to the campus—and a great deal of open space.

  Fordham had smaller patches of greenery, more trees (none of them palms), and a tendency toward more old-fashioned architecture, with the buildings much closer together. The campus’s centerpiece was Keating Hall, built in 1936. A giant stone edifice that rose above the other buildings on campus, it was topped off by a large antenna from which the campus radio station WFUV broadcast. Laid out in front of Keating was Edward’s Parade, a huge green field bordered by a paved pathway and a short iron fence. Had he gone into a coma somewhere else and awakened on the Fordham campus, he would never have guessed he was in New York City. It didn’t even smell the same—green grass and cold stone and battered wood all teased the nose, where just out the gate onto either Fordham Road or Southern Boulevard you got car exhaust and garbage.

  On this cold November day there weren’t very many students on the parade, though Sam imagined that in warmer weather the place was packed with scantily clad students sunbathing and throwing Frisbees around.

  Looking over at his brother, he decided not to share that image with Dean. It would just distract him.

  Their destination was on the other side of the parade from Keating Hall: Dealy Hall, one of two more stone buildings that faced Keating with the parade between them, the other being Hughes Hall, a dormitory. Dealy was the home of the English Department, and they had made an appointment to see Dr. Ross Vincent during his office hours today. They’d tried for yesterday, but he was booked.

  Dealy Hall’s stately exterior was a contrast to its very traditional interior, as the inside looked just like every school hallway in existence: linoleum floor, brightly painted walls, and old wooden doors with small square windows leading to large rooms filled with small desks.