Nevermore

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  “You okay, Sam?” Dean asked.

  “Uh, yeah,” Sam said. “Why?”

  “You’re twitching.”

  “I am not,” Sam said defensively, even though he knew he was. “I just—this is weird, y’know?”

  Grinning, Dean said, “Thought you liked all this academic stuff. Ivy-covered halls, higher learning, all that crap.”

  “Yeah, and the dead girlfriend,” he said bluntly.

  Dean opened his mouth and closed it. “Sorry, dude,” he said quietly.

  Sam found himself unable to respond to that. Dean rarely apologized for anything, and Sam didn’t want to cheapen so rare an occurrence with a snarky comment.

  They walked to the back of the building where the elevators were, and Dean pushed the up button.

  And then they waited.

  Several ice ages later the elevator finally arrived, the metal doors sliding open at a glacial pace. Dean looked at Sam. “Shoulda walked.”

  The elevator then moved up to the fifth floor at a speed that was so slow that if they were going only a hair slower they’d have been going down instead of up.

  Eventually they arrived at the top floor of the building and stepped off to see a small wooden desk at which nobody was sitting, and behind it a hallway with several mailboxes hanging on the wall, leading back to a series of cubicles and offices. Sam assumed this was the English Department office, though there was also a hallway behind them that had more offices and cubicles.

  A short man with a frizzy red beard and wild brown hair came out wearing the classic professor clothes: corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows, flannel shirt, dark-colored tie, and jeans. Sam couldn’t believe it—four years at Stanford, and nobody ever really dressed like that. Yet here this guy was.

  “Yolanda? Listen, I—” He saw that the desk was empty, stopped short and looked at Sam and Dean. “Neither one of you is Yolanda.”

  “No, sir,” Sam said quickly before Dean could comment. “We’re here to see Dr. Vincent—we have an appointment.”

  “Well, you’re in luck, then. I’m Dr. Vincent. You must be the gentlemen from Lincoln Center.” He started walking back the way he came. “Come, come, let us speak.”

  Sam and Dean followed him back and to the left, past several cubicles on the left and offices on the right, before coming to a particular office, the front door of which was decorated in various bits of Poe memorabilia, much of which Sam recognized from similar items in the Poe Cottage—mostly reproductions of book covers—as well as a few yellowed Far Side cartoons.

  Vincent sat down on a big leather chair and started fiddling with the gold wedding band on his left ring finger. There was only one other chair in the room, and it was covered in books and papers. “So—which of you is which?”

  “Uh, I’m Archie Leach, and this is Marion Morrison.”

  Dean glared at Sam for a second. Sam managed to keep a straight face. Somehow the fact that his nom de guerre for this particular interview was the real name of John Wayne wasn’t enough to mollify Dean’s annoyance with being given the name “Marion.” Of course, Dean would think that his fake name was from A Fish Called Wanda, which it was, but that movie used it for the same reason he did—it was Cary Grant’s real name.

  In response to Dean’s annoyance in the Impala on the way over, at the names he’d come up with, Sam had just shrugged and said, “This is what happens when I pick the names, man. At least it beats yet another classic-rock pairing.”

  Dean had pouted most of the rest of the way to Fordham. Not that Dean would admit that he pouted, though Sam didn’t know what else to call it when his lips set like that.

  “And you gentlemen are taking Dr. Lauer’s class, and she recommended you talk to me?” the professor said.

  “We’re collaborating on a short story for Dr. Lauer’s creative writing class,” Sam replied. He’d checked Fordham’s website and noted that, while this was the main campus, it wasn’t Fordham’s only location. In addition to the Rose Hill campus in the Bronx, there was the College at Lincoln Center, located on the west side of Manhattan, and another up in Tarrytown. He had pulled Lauer’s name as one of the English teachers down there who taught a creative writing class. “It’s supposed to be about a historical figure, and we went with Edgar Allan Poe.”

  Vincent smiled, took a cigarette pack out of his pocket and pulled one out. “Don’t worry,” he said quickly, “I won’t light up. Thanks to the ridiculous new laws, I can’t even smoke in the privacy of my own office. Used to be this was a civilized campus. Anyhow, I’m glad you came to me instead of just going to some stupid website.”

  “Well, we did some research on the web, and we found this one site—”

  Grabbing the unlit cigarette out of his mouth, Vincent said, “Please, God, tell me it isn’t Wikipedia. I swear, that site should be banned.” He leaned back and put his hand to his forehead. “I’ve had to give out more F’s because of numbnut students who think copying an entire Wikipedia page constitutes research. You know what I did one time? I went in and edited one of their idiotic pages and filled it with false information. Sure enough, five students put the wrong information—which was only there for a day, and that day was the one before the paper was due—in their papers. It is to weep.” He started fondling the cigarette. “So, what is it you want to know?”

  “Actually, the site belonged to someone who calls himself Arthur Gordon—”

  “Pym?” Vincent winced, and got up from his chair. Sam, who was standing in the office’s doorway next to Dean, stared longingly at it, even as Vincent stood by the window, staring out at several leafless trees and the maroon-brick administration building, which was behind Dealy. “That lunatic gives Poe scholarship a bad name. For one thing, he keeps insisting on definitive scholarship, but there’s no such thing when it comes to Poe. Sometimes Poe said he shunned fame and didn’t care for it, yet sometimes he claimed he was desperate for it. Sometimes he seemed the prototypical starving artist, other times he seemed to be a money-grubbing hound like most of humanity.” Vincent turned around and pointed at Sam with his cigarette. “And then there’s his death.”

  Sam frowned. “He died of alcoholism, I thought.”

  Vincent threw up his hands. “See? This is exactly what I’m talking about! Where’d you get that, eh, Mr. Leach? Probably at www.poeroolz.com, or some other ridiculous website. They should just ban the entire Internet, I swear.” He sat back down in his chair. “The fact is, nobody knows precisely what Poe died of, we only know that it happened in Baltimore, and they buried him there.”

  Dean spoke up. “Professor, there’s something I’m wondering. Did Poe ever meet a spritutalist by the name of Percival Samuels? See, what we were thinkin’ about our short story being was Poe meeting with Samuels, but we weren’t sure if they met. Dr. Lauer said you’d know.”

  Vincent started tapping the side of his forehead with the cigarette. Sam was starting to wish he’d just light the damn thing up already, city smoking ordinances be damned.

  “Interesting that you should ask. We don’t have any records of the two meeting, as it happens, although it’s certainly possible. Poe, obviously, was interested in the supernatural. You’d think that a proper psychic would have warned him about that awful Vincent Price version of ‘Masque of the Red Death,’ if nothing else.” Vincent chuckled at his own witticism, and Sam gamely smiled back.

  “Was Samuels a proper psychic?” Dean asked. “I always thought he was kind of a quack.”

  Vincent raised an eyebrow. “Well, the man’s been dead for some time. I can’t imagine we’ll ever know for sure. Which is a pity, I can tell you. Drives me mad, really, watching my colleagues bicker about things we can never get solid answers on. It would be nice to know for sure about these things.”

  Sam and Dean talked for a while longer with Vincent, asking some more questions, many of which had the same answers as the research Sam had dug up over the past few days about Poe, both in the library and on Vincent’s ha
ted Internet. After they’d talked for twenty minutes, Vincent suddenly got up and said he had a class and rushed them to the elevator bank. However, the brothers followed him to the staircase, which the professor said was wise. “I didn’t have this beard until I had to wait for the thing this morning,” he quipped.

  As they walked around Edward’s Parade on the way back to the parking lot, Sam asked Dean, “Whadja think?”

  Dean shrugged. “All college profs like that?”

  Chuckling, Sam said, “A lot are, yeah.”

  “And you liked college, why, exactly?”

  Sam shook his head. “I still don’t get why anyone would want to resurrect Poe.”

  “What do you mean?” Dean asked.

  “Well, it’s like Dr. Vincent said, he had a pretty miserable life. His wife died young, his career never really took off while he was alive to the extent that he wanted it to, most of his business ventures failed, and he was depressed most of the time. Hell, if he was born now, he’d probably be on Prozac, Zoloft, and Xanax all at the same time.”

  They got to the Impala. Dean walked to the passenger side, as he still refused to drive in the Bronx. “Maybe we’re goin’ about this wrong. Maybe it’s somebody who hates Poe—someone who wants him to suffer.”

  “Who would that be?”

  Smirking as he got in the car, Dean said, “Anybody who had to read his work and then write a paper about him.”

  Sam settled into the driver’s side, his left hand on the steering wheel as his right inserted the key. “That doesn’t exactly narrow our list of suspects.”

  Before Dean could reply, “Smoke on the Water” sounded from his jacket pocket. He pulled the phone out, flipped it open and said, “Hey, Manfred.”

  Sam pulled out of the spot as he heard Manfred’s tinny voice over the turned-up earpiece. “Hey, Dean, I was just chattin’ with some of the guys here over lunch, an’ I just ’membered somethin’ ’bout Roxy.”

  “What’s that, Manfred?”

  “Well, see, there was this one time when I slept with her.”

  SIXTEEN

  The Afiri house

  The Bronx, New York

  Wednesday 22 November 2006

  “Start from the beginning,” Dean said angrily.

  They were sitting in Manfred’s living room. He’d put Disraeli Gears by Cream on the turntable, and “Tales of Brave Ulysses” was playing. Manfred was in the easy chair, with Sam and Dean on the couch. Dean was about ready to haul off and belt Manfred, since if Manfred had mentioned this sooner, he might have been spared having to listen to Scottso for a second and third night.

  Manfred was holding a beer bottle in his lap and staring down into the bottle’s mouth. “Look, it was a while ago, okay? It was way back, when Roxy was still high on everything, y’know? Mary Jane, coke, speed, booze—you name it, she smoked it, snorted it, drank it, or popped it. She came with some friends to the Park in Rear—this was when we was first startin’ out, and we didn’t have the weekend gig yet. The friends didn’t like us much, an’ they left.”

  Gee, what a shock. Somehow, Dean forced himself not to say that out loud.

  After gulping down some beer, Manfred went on. “She stayed behind, though, an’ after the show she didn’t have nowhere to go. So I offered her a ride back to her place, which was this dump in Morris Park, so I said, ‘I got a house,’ and we came back here, did a few lines, spun a few disks, then went upstairs.”

  “And you didn’t remember this until now?” Dean asked angrily.

  “I forgot it was her! Look, fellas, it was just the one time. Okay, two times—she came back for a couple more gigs—but she was seriously messed up by then, an’ then she went into rehab. By the time I saw her again, it was a year later, and she was all cleaned up. Hell, I didn’t recognize her the first time she walked into the Park in Rear after rehab—no makeup, hair cut shorter, and she wore T-shirts insteada tube tops. Totally different lady. An’ she went for Aldo, and that was groovy with me, ’cause I got real tireda her temperance act.”

  Dean looked at Sam as Manfred guzzled the rest of his booze and shook his head.

  Sam shrugged, and said, “Manfred, did she ever express any interest in getting back together?”

  “Hell, no. Like I said, she was a totally different person. Wouldn’t go near me.”

  “I thought she liked the house,” Dean said, suddenly remembering a previous conversation at the Park in Rear.

  “Sure, she did. Hell, everyone likes the damn house. I got Gina beggin’ me to move in here half the time.”

  “You mean Janine?” Dean asked.

  “Yeah, right, my cousin’s girl.” Manfred gave a gap-toothed smile. “Y’know, Dean, she kinda had a thing for you, looked like.” The smile fell. “Don’t mess with her, okay? I got enough problems with my cousin. ’Sides, she’ll flirt with anything that moves.”

  “No worries,” Dean said. Even if he was interested—and he had to admit, Janine was kinda hot—he had no interest in getting involved with this man’s family in any way once Roxy’s spirit was taken care of. And the next time Ash needs a favor, he can go bite me.

  “I gotta say,” Sam said, “this may be why Roxy’s haunting you. She keeps saying, ‘Love me,’ and it might be that it’s directed at you.”

  Shaking his head, Manfred said, “Well that don’t make no kinda sense. I mean, when she got outta rehab, she was all over Aldo, then she just up and disappeared after that weekend I was in Pennsylvania, and then—”

  Dean started. “What weekend you were in Pennsylvania?”

  Manfred frowned. “Didn’t I tell you ’bout that?”

  “About what?” Dean was now on the edge of the couch, ready to leap up and beat Manfred about the head and shoulders.

  “Damn, fellas, I’m sorry, I thought I told you ’bout the time Aldo house-sat for me. See, that was the last time I saw Roxy. Well, okay, not then, exactly, it was a couple days before. I had a family reunion thing happenin’ out in Pennsylvania, and back in those days I had a cat. He passed last year, poor little guy, but he was diabetic and someone had to give him shots. I didn’t like boarding him at the vet, ’cause he got all skittish, and he really liked Aldo, and since Aldo lives in this dinky apartment in Mamaroneck, he took me right up on the offer.” He got up. “This is assumin’ I ’member this all right. I’m gonna get me another beer. You want any?”

  “Yeah,” Dean said emphatically, as the urge for alcohol was suddenly overwhelming. After Manfred left for the kitchen, he looked at Sam. “Can you believe this?”

  “After living in the same house with him for the better part of a week? Yeah, I believe it. Dean, half the time, I’m stunned he remembers his address. He said it himself, he can barely remember last week. For that matter, he didn’t even remember that you two already had that conversation about Janine.”

  Dean nodded, conceding the point. “So are you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’, Pinky?”

  “Yup.” Sam sighed. “We need to start digging.”

  Manfred came back into the living room with three beer bottles.

  After taking the bottle, Dean took a long swig and then said, “Manfred, listen—we need to dig up your backyard.”

  That caused Manfred to splutter his beer into his beard. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he said, “Excuse me?”

  Sam’s Treo started to ring then. Jumping up from the couch, he put his beer down on a stray empty spot on the coffee table, pulled the phone out of his pocket and walked over to the hallway entrance. “Hello? Oh, hi, Detective.”

  Manfred gave Dean a look, and Dean said, “We know someone who works for Missing Persons. We asked her to check on Roxy.”

  “Uh, okay. What’s that gotta do with diggin’ up my yard?”

  Before Dean could answer, Sam said, “Really? Who else did they talk to? Okay. Okay. Okay, thanks, Detective. Talk to you soon.” He disconnected and walked back to the couch. “That was McBain—she said that Roxanne Carmichael was reported mi
ssing to the Forty-ninth Precinct on September 23, 2004.”

  Manfred nodded. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Those reunions, they’re always right after Labor Day.”

  Sam sat back down on the couch and grabbed his beer bottle. “It’s still an open case. And according to McBain, they talked to Aldo Emmanuelli, Manfred Afiri, and Tom Daley.”

  Manfred frowned. “I don’t ’member that.”

  “Also,” Sam said, “they identified the body that was cut up and put under the floorboards. It was a woman named Sarah Lowrance. She worked in a Blockbuster Video store on Boston Road. And according to the M.E. report, she was killed anywhere from six to twelve days ago.”

  “Dammit,” Dean muttered. He desperately wanted to blame that little pipsqueak Mackey for that, but he knew better. The Lowrance woman had been dead for a while, probably since before he and Sam even came to New York. There wasn’t anything they could do for her, except stop the bastard who killed her and that Reyes guy.

  Manfred looked a bit pale. “What in the hell are you fellas talkin’ ’bout?”

  Sam waved him off. “Long story.”

  Shrugging, Manfred said, “Whatever. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you fellas ’bout Roxy ’n’ me sooner, but I honestly forgot. Now if I can get you two off this whole cuttin’-up-bodies thing, talk to me about diggin’ up my yard.”

  “We think it’s possible,” Sam said slowly, “that Aldo and Roxy got into some kind of fight here when he was house-sitting for you that weekend, that Roxy died, and Aldo buried her in your backyard. That’s why she’s haunting the house.”

  “And also why she only shows up after gigs,” Dean added.

  “You sure about this?”

  Dean and Sam exchanged a guilty glance. “Well—no,” Dean finally said. “It’s just a guess.”

  “But it fits the evidence,” Sam added as “Mother’s Lament” finished. “We’ve been doin’ this awhile, and we’re right more than we’re wrong.”