Vespers Page 19

  “We obviously need a faster fix,” Weeks said. “Any suggestions?”

  “Yes. To start with, I suggest you try and get any videotape that may have been taken of the female’s approach. There may be something that could help us. Her reaction to light, her control over the other bats, possible soft spots for your marksmen.”

  Weeks got on his radio and told Marius Pace to hit the TV stations for copies of their tapes.

  “What else?” Weeks asked.

  “Not much,” Joyce admitted. “We may know more when we get a look at the dead bat. Cell structure, possible microbial weaknesses, circulation and respiration-to tell us how much sleep and food the big bats need.

  “Dr. Joyce,” Weeks said, “will you be available when we do the autopsy on the big bat?”

  “Actually,” Joyce said, “unless anyone has any objections, I was going to suggest that you let me handle it.”

  Weeks shoved his hands into the pockets of his white windbreaker. He looked at Joyce. “Al?”

  “We have a long-standing relationship with Dr. Berkowitz at the Central Park Zoo,” Doyle said.

  “Berkowitz isnot a bat person,” Joyce huffed.

  Weeks said, “The long relationship aside, would you personally have any problem with Dr. Joyce conducting the autopsy?”

  Doyle’s thin lips and heavy eyebrows dipped in disapproval. “I’d have no problem with herbeing there-”

  “Mr. Doyle,” Joyce said, “I’ve done microdissections on more than seventy different species of bats. I know what to look for and how to get it without damaging the surrounding tissue.”

  “Al,” Weeks said, “Dr. Joyce has been the point person on this situation from the get-go.I’d like her to conduct the autopsy and write the report. Can we do that?”

  Gentry was watching with interest. Weeks hadn’t left Doyle much room to maneuver.

  Doyle said, “Berkowitz probably won’t let us use the zoo facility.”

  “That’s not a problem,” Joyce said quickly. “I’d be taking the bat to Professor Lowery’s laboratory at the Museum of Natural History. I’d also want him to work with me on this.”

  “Professor Kane Lowery?” Doyle sniffed.

  “That’s right.”

  “He’s very good.”

  “Right again.”

  “Then we’re all okay?” Weeks said. “Let me know, because I’ve got to run.”

  Doyle nodded once. “We’ll bring the bat to Professor Lowery’s laboratory. But your report goes to me, Dr. Joyce, and I take it from there. And you don’t talk to the press.”

  “I don’t care about the press,” she said.

  Still standing off to the side, Gentry frowned.

  “Excellent,” Weeks said. “Thank you, Al. Thank you both.”

  Weeks went over to talk to the mayor, who was watching the ironworkers rig lifelines before walking up the cables. He was trailed by a small string of deputies who held reports about bat activity from around the city. From what Gentry could overhear, the worst problem at the moment was dogs going wild whenever bats flew past windows or went down chimneys. Weeks said he could live with that.

  Doyle walked over to the DOT personnel at the bridge. Gentry came over to Joyce. She was looking across the river. The lights of the bridge were sparkling on its dark surface.

  Gentry looked at Nancy. Her black hair was twisting away from her neck, riding the wind. There was a moment when her courage, her mind, her determination, her eyes, the smoothness of her skin, the delicate curve of her shoulders, her slender fingers, the way she stood with her feet pointing outward slightly-when everything came together and made his breath catch in his throat. It was a moment such as Gentry had never experienced.

  “I can probably scare you up some coffee or a windbreaker if you want,” he said.

  “No thanks.” She was frowning. “That bastard Doyle let me have the bat as soon as I put Lowery in the picture.”

  “At least you have it.”

  “Yeah, but it’s still a boys’ club.”

  “I’m still not sure I agree with that. Doyle jumped at your Lowery reference because it gave him a way out. Who could refuse letting a scientist of his stature examine the bat? He can sell that to Berkowitz and to the press. Anyway, like I said back at the apartment, Weeks is on your side.”

  “That’s true, at least.” She looked at Gentry. “You know what I’d really like?”

  “What?”

  “I’d like to sit down somewhere and close my eyes.”

  “I think we can arrange that,” he said. “There are a couple of ESU REP trucks on the corner of Front Street. They’re probably going to hang around in case they’re needed for rescues or a bat attack. I’m sure no one would mind if you stretched out in one of them.”

  “Great,” she said. “I just want to call President Lowery first and let him know I’ll be coming in.”

  “Withyour trophy,” Gentry said. “Make sure he knows that.”

  “He’ll know.”

  She went to the closest truck. Gentry introduced her to the officers and she made her call from there. When she was finished, the ESU personnel were delighted to have her crash there. One of the younger officers, having heard of her exploits, declared his love for Joyce and asked if she would entertain a marriage proposal.

  Gentry said, “Sorry, officer, but you’ll have to take a number and wait in line.”

  Nancy didn’t respond as she climbed into the backseat and lay down.

  Gentry felt a little bad. After he said it, he realized he hadn’t entirely been joking.

  * * *

  It took just over four hours to get the bat off the bridge. Once it was down and bundled in canvas-its wings carefully folded over-Doyle supervised its loading into an ESU Construction Accident Response Vehicle. Inside the wide CARV, the bat was laid out on a pair of four-person inflatable rafts. The rafts were arranged in two rows of two to cushion the creature. It was secured there with a 220-foot-long 5/8-inch lifeline.

  Kathy Leung tried to get herself and her muscular camera operator T-Bone Harrold past the police barricade. She was turned back. Until the bat was down and the cables had been checked out, no one was going near the bridge. Then she tried to get Gentry’s attention by shouting over. He pretended not to hear her. He didn’t like ignoring anyone or helping to shut down the press. Four years ago, in one of those freak incidents that happens only in real life,New York Times crime reporter Sam Lawrence had scored an interview with Akira Mizuno up in Connecticut. Gentry was in the room when Lawrence arrived. The two of them used to bump into each other once or twice a week at the Lord Camelot diner on Forty-fifth Street and Eighth Avenue, just a few blocks from theTimes. Lawrence would have had a hell of a story if he’d chosen to blow Gentry’s cover. But he didn’t. Things like that would give the press a good name if people ever heard about them.

  Only when the bat was down, only when Doyle was finished with it, did Gentry go over and wake Nancy. He was a little light-headed from not having slept. But he’d wanted to make sure that Doyle didn’t give the bat to Berkowitz while she slept. Doyle was the kind of clever bureaucrat who wouldn’t hesitate to tell Weeks, “Securitycame first. I couldn’t find her so we took the bat to Berkowitz’s lab.” When the big bat had come down, Gentry had gone over to the ESU drivers and personally made certain that they knew where to go.

  Nancy hadn’t moved from where she’d fallen across the seat of the REP truck. Gentry looked at her. Behind him, across the East River, the sun began to lighten the skies.

  Gentry had no trouble seeing the girl in the woman. He hadn’t always seen that in his wife or some of the other women he’d been with. But he saw it in Nancy. Despite the occasional bursts of indignation and anger, there was a sweetness that life hadn’t squeezed from her.

  He leaned into the truck, his hand on the back of the front seat. He reached down and lightly shook her arm.

  She awoke with a jolt. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,�
�� Gentry said quietly. “We’ve got the bat down. We’re ready to head up to the museum.”

  “Right.” She sat up and looked at her watch. “Almost six-thirty. That was pretty quick.”

  “You feel any better?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Much.”

  Joyce swung her long legs from the seat. Gentry backed away from the truck and she slid out.

  “Are we supposed to notify Professor Lowery?” Gentry asked.

  “I will,” Joyce told him. “He usually gets in at seven o’clock.”

  Gentry asked Joyce if she wanted something from the “chuck wagon,” the coffee-and-muffin cart that the DOT had set up by the river for the crews. She said she wouldn’t mind a bran something-or-other, so they got that and then headed over to CARV.

  Gentry made sure that the paperwork from OEM had arrived, giving Joyce authority to take charge of the bat. It had, brought by one of Gordy Weeks’s assistants who would be accompanying Dr. Joyce to the museum. The assistant, a twenty-something biologist named Heidi Daniels, would be taking notes and writing the report that was going to Al Doyle.

  Joyce thanked Gentry for everything he’d done, then climbed into the back of the truck with Heidi and an ESU sergeant. They headed uptown.

  Joyce was very intense and focused and she hadn’t said anything about seeing Gentry later or getting together again. Maybe she didn’t plan to. Or maybe she’d just assumed they would.

  Gentry had. That was a swift, disturbing sock in the gut.

  When she left, the slightly shell-shocked Gentry bummed a ride up to the station house. There would be paperwork and voice mail to attend to. He’d also try to stay on top of any other missing person or animal reports, information that might tell them something about the whereabouts of the female bat.

  A reason to call Nancy.

  And he’d get a little rest if possible. With all those bats roosting in town-including the big one-Gentry had a feeling that sundown was going to rock New York.

  Thirty-One

  Marc Ramirez joined the museum autopsy group in the late afternoon. He came to the fifth floor wearing a black leather jacket and carrying his bat helmet under his arm.

  He noticed Heidi right off. He kept his eyes on her as he greeted Dr. Joyce and Professor Lowery. The young woman gave him only a passing look.

  “How are things going?” Joyce asked.

  “Outside?” He asked, shifting his eyes toward the scientist. “You’ve got a few quintillion reporters waiting at the delivery dock.”

  “I mean at the zoo,” she said.

  “Oh. No one is there. Zerobody. And even fewer people are coming to see the bats. There’s a fall-of-Saigon rush to get out of town.Worse than the day before Thanksgiving.”

  Ramirez hung his jacket across the desk chair, then looked toward the black laboratory table. Joyce was in the center, Professor Lowery was on her left, and Heidi Daniels was on her right. All three were wearing lab coats and masks. The young man opened the locker beside the desk. He removed the last mask and lab coat and slipped them on.

  “I thought it would be like when a singer dies and people put the CDs back on the charts,” Ramirez said as he walked over. “But uh-uh. After last night no one wants to know from bats.”

  “That’s because most people are not curious by nature,” Lowery said without turning.

  “I think they’re just scared shitless, Professor,” Ramirez said. “And after the news footage I saw this morning, I don’t blame them. Nobody wants anything to do with bats.”

  Lowery responded with silence. Even bent over the bat, Joyce was very much aware of his displeasure. That had always been his way: he passed on his wisdom, and you either accepted it or you didn’t. If you didn’t, he had no time for you. That could be hurtful to a career in a field as small as this one.

  But Marc, bless his strange little self, didn’t seem to care.

  The grad student walked over and stood between Heidi and Dr. Joyce. The OEM deputy scooted over several steps so Ramirez could move in. He smiled at her through his mask. She looked at him again, nodded once, then went back to writing in her steno pad.

  Then Ramirez saw the bat.“ Madre de Dios!” he said.

  The giant creature was lying on its belly on the canvas. Its wingtips were hanging over the sides of the table. Its head was turned sideways against the wall so the body could fit. An incision had been made along the shoulders and along the neck. There were dark, red muscles roped one over another, giving the bat fat mounds on the shoulders, down the back, and along the neck. Joyce was carefully removing layers of muscle with a scalpel while Lowery watched. A video camera set on a tripod behind Lowery was recording the dissection.

  “Forget what you said last night about bats as territorial carnivores,” Ramirez told Joyce. “Thisis my doctoral thesis.”

  “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. And you bagged it.”

  “Barely.”

  Ramirez glanced at her. “How’re you doing?”

  “I’ve had quieter nights,” Joyce said.

  Lowery exhaled impatiently.

  Ramirez stopped talking. But only for a moment.“Is he a vespertilionid?”

  “He is,” Joyce said. “Myotis mystacinus.”

  “How much does he weigh?”

  “Five hundred and sixty-six pounds, seven and one-half ounces,” Joyce replied. “A lot of that’s muscle, though not as much as you might think. There’s an extremely high percentage of fat in the lower thorax, roughly forty-six percent of its body weight.”

  “That makes sense,” Ramirez said. “He’d need to burn a lot of fuel when he flies.”

  “But he’d burn that up very fast,” Joyce said, “which would account for his enormous appetite and the need to shift, very quickly, from insects to other life-forms.”

  “And there’s a female like it still out there.”

  “Right.”

  “She’s probably, what? Seventy percent as large?”

  “If the normal ratios hold, yes. I couldn’t tell when I saw her. She was too far away. It’s amazing, though, Marc. We were just looking in this one’s chest. The lungs and heart are enlarged seven percent more than the bat’s overall size increase, though all the other organs are proportionately smaller.”

  “Providing more oxygen and increased blood flow, less flying weight,” Ramirez suggested.

  “That would be my guess.”

  Ramirez slowly shook his head. “So what part of them did the radiation kick into overdrive?”

  “I haven’t gotten to the microscope yet,” Joyce said, “but the database references a similar mutation among mice. In their case, probably this one as well, the mutation was centered in the muscle. Radiation affected the gene that encodes myostatin-”

  “Right,” Ramirez said. “So the growth-regulating protein shut down, growth continued unchecked outside the womb, and in just one generation you end up with Mothra.”

  “Exactly.”

  Ramirez thought for a moment. “How old is this bat?”

  “About eight years.”

  “Long past the age when it could have sired pups.”

  “Right, and I know exactly where you’re going with that. I’ve been thinking the same thing. Increased musculature usually leads to reduced fertility, just as it does with heavy-duty human weightlifters. So when an animal like thisdoes become pregnant-”

  “Its mate does everything it possibly can to ensure the safety of the offspring,” Ramirez said. “It searches for a place where there’s enough water, food, shelter, warmth, and privacy to suit the mother and child. It prepares a nest. Then it goes and gets her.”

  “Or given the infestation we saw last night, she or he summons an escort,” Joyce said.

  Lowery shook his head. “That kind of call-pattern communication among bats would be unprecedented, and I don’t see how radiation would affect that.”

  “Not directly,” Joyce said, “as in increased intelligence. But we have
no way of knowing what effect a larger larynx and a lower vocal range would have on a colony.”

  “You haven’t done the larynx yet?” Ramirez asked.

  Joyce shook her head. “The pest control people wanted the mechanics of the bat itself first. What it’s capable of, what its weaknesses might be in case they have to-”

  There were pops in the distance. Joyce stopped cutting.

  “What’s the matter?” Lowery asked.

  “That sounded like gunfire.”

  The others were silent. The sound came again; there were three muffled reports.

  “That could be a car,” Lowery said, “or one of those people who bang on plastic containers in the street-”

  “I know guns,” Joyce said. “That was a rifle.”

  The woman put down the scalpel, took off her mask, and walked to the door. Before she reached it there was a crash that rattled the building. The frosted glass wobbled in the door, and there was a deep creaking sound from the other side of the back wall.

  “Maybe it’s construction,” Heidi said. “Aren’t they building a new planetarium over on the north side of the building?”

  Joyce opened the door and stuck her head out. The corridor was quiet. She listened. The creaking came again, from down the hall. There were shouts in the distance.

  Joyce jumped when Lowery’s phone beeped. Since she was closest to the desk she turned and answered it.

  “Professor Low-”

  “This is Rebecca Oliver at security!” a woman shouted on the other end. “They’re all over!”

  “What? Who is?”

  “Thebats! They’re all over the lower level!” she shouted. “And another big one! It’s trying to get-”

  The line went dead. Joyce looked over at the others. Her eyes shifted to the big bat.

  “Shit,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?” Ramirez asked.

  “The bats are here,” Joyce said. “Little ones and a big one. And the phone just died.”

  Joyce stood staring down at the desk. Bats had a very highly developed sense of smell, which enabled them to identify bats of the same species. This was especially true during courtship and mating. It became even more intense in expectant bats, since it enables females who might have difficulty flying to follow males to rich food sources.