Vespers Read online

  “Kathy. How are you?”

  “Not good.”

  “Sorry to hear that…”

  “Come on, Robert, talk to me. What’s going down?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit,” she snapped. “Subway service has been disrupted, and I got a solid tip that there was a dismembered bicyclist down there and that you found her among a bunch of dead homeless people. True?”

  “If the tip’s solid, why are you asking me?”

  “Because I need two sources, and that’s all my other source would tell me.”

  “Which source was that?”

  “Don’t do that,” Kathy warned.

  And then it hit him. “I saw you on TV last night withKathy.” Not Kathy Leung, just Kathy. Officer Arvids Stiebris, you dumb, beauty-struck, horse’s ass of a rookie. He’d been sticking up for Nancy, too, the Romeo.

  “I’ll tell you what, Kathy,” Gentry said. “I’ll tell you what we found if you promise to do me a favor.”

  “That depends. What kind of favor?”

  “I want you to spin it as an aberration, a one-time event. You go tabloid on me, give me a subway system under siege, and I’ll make sure Arvids Stiebris is transferred to a place where he’ll do you absolutely no good in the future.”

  “You’ve got a deal,” Kathy said quickly.

  “We found the body of a young woman in a bicycle helmet down there. We also found several dead homeless persons. We have no idea who the woman was,” he lied to protect the privacy of the family, “but it looked like all of them were killed by animals.”

  “What kind of animals?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  “Dogs? Rats?”

  “We’re not sure.”

  “How old was the woman?”

  “Our guess is late twenties.”

  “How’d she get down in the subway?”

  “We don’t know. Maybe she was some kind of outreach worker-we just don’t know.”

  “How long will subway service be disrupted?”

  “Until the bodies have been removed.”

  “Good,” she said. “Now that you’ve told me not very much, how about the truth?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You’re playing me. I want to know about the bat guano that was found on the tracks.”

  What did that dopey bastard Arvids do? Tell her everything?

  “Kathy, there’s nothing unusual about bat guano on subway tracks,” he said. “Ask Al Doyle over at health.”

  “I will. In the meantime, what really went on down there?”

  “I told you, we don’t know.”

  “What do youthink? Is there any connection between the dead people in the subway and bats? Could this be related to what happened in Westchester?”

  “We don’t know that either.”

  “Whatdo you know?”

  “Nothing other than what I’ve told you,” Gentry said. “Maybe your source can tell you more. Why don’t you go back to him?”

  “I will. But frankly I’d rather talk to you. I’d rather that you help me-that we help each other.”

  “I know. Wasn’t that the real reason you agreed to date me after the Mizuno bust?”

  “Not entirely-”

  “That didn’t do a lot for my ego.”

  “Look,” she said, “I went from Connecticut to Westchester, which isn’t exactly a step up. I want off the fucking beat. If these incidents are connected, the story’s still mine. That puts me in the big city with a big breaking headline. Help me and I can help you in the future. Promote the work you’re doing.”

  “I don’t need help, thanks.”

  “Maybe not now. But one day you will.”

  Gentry said nothing. The idea of cooperating with Kathy was not an option. When he worked undercover his policy was to trust only those people who were with him in the trenches. He paid for help or information in cash, not trust.

  “Kathy, I’m sorry. No.”

  “Detective, I’mgoing to get this story.”

  “I know.”

  “I can call Dr. Joyce. She went on the consultant payroll last night.”

  “Fine.”

  Kathy hung up.

  Gentry placed the receiver in the cradle. He looked out at the street. He smelled hot tar from a roof across the street.

  Part of him actually wished he could have helped Kathy. He admired independence and tenacity, and she had a lot of both. And he still liked her. But until he knew exactly what had happened in the subway, he wasn’t going to say anything.

  Gentry put in a call to Moreaux to find out whether he’d discovered anything about where Barbara Mathis had been before they found her. Captain Moreaux said that a patrol car had found her abandoned bicycle and makeup kits on Riverside Drive near 120th Street at 5:22A.M. There were traces of blood on the seat. They found the address inside one of the kits, went to her apartment building, and contacted her husband at work. He gave them her destination and they confirmed that she never arrived.

  “What was the condition of the bicycle?”Gentry asked.

  “Absolutely intact,” Moreaux told him. “Spokes, paint job, everything. It was just lying near the curb. A little later in the day, with more traffic, it probably would’ve been ripped off.”

  Gentry thanked him. He got on the computer and asked the interlinked citywide Stat Unit for a list of any reported carjackings or parked-auto thefts the night before, anywhere from the Bronx down to the Upper West Side. Nothing had been reported. Often, joyriders will stop and grab a “snack” for the road. A lone woman on a bicycle would have been a perfect target, bumped and abducted. Sometimes the kidnappers will kill them and dump them when they’re finished; that was what had happened to the dead woman Gentry had pulled from the Hudson River. But joyriders don’t typically stop, crawl into a subway tunnel, gut a body, then leave it underground. Besides, a good nudge from a car usually leaves a mark on a bicycle.

  Gentry went down the hall and refilled his coffee cup. Then he turned to accident reports that had been filed last night and early this morning by personnel in his unit. A horse-drawn carriage colliding with a bicycle deliveryman. A window box falling onto a woman walking her daughter to school. Nineteen others. He signed all but one and left them to be filed. Then-leaving his door open in case the phone rang-Gentry went over to the squad pit with the unsigned report, an investigation into an early morning fire at a Times Square movie theater. Apparently, a broken wire had shorted inside the wall of the projection booth. There was a little bit of smoke and no one was injured.

  “Do you have any idea what caused the wire to break?” Gentry asked.

  “Looks like a nail might’ve gone through it during renovation,” the officer said. “The Fire Department’s bureau of investigation has that one.”

  “Did you make it to the booth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was there any kind of unusual smell up there?”

  “Just the burning insulation.”

  “What’d it smell like?”

  The officer shrugged. “It smelled like burning rubber, Detective.”

  “Not ammonia?”

  “No.”

  “Any cockroaches running around?”

  “Not that I noticed.”

  “Thanks,” Gentry said.

  “Can I ask what this is about?” the officer said.

  “Yeah. I was thinking some bats might’ve gotten into the wall and chewed through the wire. Their guano smells like burning leaves and they scare the hell out of bugs.”

  Gentry went back to his office and signed the report. He turned to the computer and input the keywordbats. He restricted the search to the past two days but asked it to include all of New York State. The database would provide any instances where local or state police had been called regarding bats.

  There were four. In addition to the incident at the Central Park Zoo and the assault in Westchester, a motorist fixing a tire on Interstate 87 in Kingston, New York, had been bit
ten by “a group” of bats. He managed to get back in his car and drive himself to a hospital. That happened two nights ago. One night ago a woman leaving work at the South Hills Mall in Poughkeepsie was attacked in the parking lot. A security guard who was on patrol heard her cries and pulled her into his car. In both cases the bats left when the people did.

  The phone beeped and Gentry jumped. He picked it up just as he realized that Kingston to Poughkeepsie to Westchester to NewYork was a straight line down the Hudson.

  “Detective Gentry here-”

  “Robert, it’s Chris Henry.”

  “Hi. You get everything okay?”

  “I did,” Henry said. “I appreciate it, I think. It’s a nasty one. What about the missing organs?”

  “The Metro North police are going to keep looking. If they find them, you’ll get them.”

  “Good. I also wanted to make sure you don’t need a full rundown right away. This one’s gonna take time.”

  “I figured.”

  “I will tell you what you probably already know: Whoever did this is some fucked-up piece of work. I took a quick look for signs of sexual attack. There’s nothing. But there is one thing I noticed. Some very strange marks on a couple of the rib fragments.”

  “Strange?”

  “Yeah. Deep gouges, like knife wounds. Only they’re fatter and rounder than a knife blade. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Any guesses what made them?”

  “A lion,” he snickered. “If it wasn’t that, you got me.”

  Gentry felt his stomach burn a little. Nancy had said something about big cat teeth too.

  The detective asked Henry to make exact measurements of the gouges and to beep him when he had the figures. Then he hung up.

  A mountain lion,he thought. What the hell did that have to do with bats? Nothing. It made no sense. Gentry was about to call Nancy at the museum when the phone rang.

  It was Nancy.

  “You’re back,” she said. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

  Her enthusiasm sounded a little on the light side. Or maybe that was just his own guilty interpretation.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I got in a few minutes ago. I was just about to call you.”

  “Did you find anything in the room that I should know about?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did,” he said. “The bats were definitely there-”

  “Were they still there?”

  “No. But there were fifteen victims. All dead.”

  She was silent.

  “Most of them looked like they’d been sleeping. They were badly lacerated and covered with guano.”

  “How fresh did the guano look?”

  “Exactly like the stuff in the tunnel,”Gentry said. “I’m waiting for lab results. Although there was one thing-my forensics guy said that one of the victims looked like she’d been attacked by a lion.”

  “Was he serious?”

  “It wasn’t a scientific judgment, if that’s what you mean. Just an off-the-cuff observation. Nancy, can we talk about this face to face?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to brief you and I want to apologize for what happened down in the tunnel. I’m also sorry about the way it happened. I told you, it wasn’t personal. It was just-the way it had to be.”

  “Had to be?”

  “Yeah. It’s a long story.”

  Joyce was silent again. Then she asked, “Can you come up to the museum?”

  “I can.”

  “All right. When the professor and I are finished, we’ll talk. We’re on the fifth floor, Professor Lowery’s lab. There’s a private elevator-ask one of the security people.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  Gentry hung up, then sped through the eight messages on his voicemail. He forwarded a few to Detectives Anthony and Malcolm, saved the rest, then hurried downstairs. Anyone who needed to reach him could get his pager number off the voicemail message. He stopped in Captain Sheehy’s office and informed him that he’d like to spend time on the Grand Central killings. The precinct commander was surprised by Gentry’s interest in a hardcore case but okayed the request, as long as the detective didn’t step on the toes of the homicide team that was also investigating the deaths. Sheehy said he didn’t want an IDPS-an intradepartmental political shitstorm. Gentry said he didn’t anticipate the two investigations overlapping. Then he bummed a ride from a patrol car heading uptown.

  While he was in the car, his pager beeped. He looked down, expecting it to be Chris Henry. It wasn’t.

  It was Ari Moreaux.

  Fourteen

  The Christopher Street subway station serves west Greenwich Village and New York University. To the south, it allows riders access to the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island ferry, and a transferride into Brooklyn. To the north, it’s a short hop to Times Square, Lincoln Center, Columbia University, and Grant’s Tomb.

  The morning rush hour over, the crowd on the downtown platform built slowly. It consisted of a handful of tourists who were double-checking maps in guidebooks and a pair of slouching students wearing baggy clothes and blank expressions. A guitarist performed near the turnstiles, his instrument case open at his feet for donations. A businessman with a Walkman and a crisply foldedWall StreetJournal stood alone at the end of the platform.

  Save for the guitarist’s unplugged sounds of Oingo Boingo, it was quiet on the platform. Then the first of the little brown bats flew in. It scratched a jagged course high over the tracks and snared the attention of one of the students.

  “Hey, cool,” he droned. His sullen eyes opened slightly as he raised a pale finger and pointed.

  The girl had her back to the tracks. She turned and looked as the bat zigzagged toward them. It landed on the boy’s black wool cap, and he suddenly came to life. He backed away, swinging his gangly arms at the creature as the talons pierced his scalp.

  “Fuck, man!”

  The girl stepped forward and swatted at the bat. The boy turned circles blindly as four more bats suddenly raced from the tunnel to the platform. Two of them descended on the girl from above and snatched at her long black-and-green hair while the other two dug at the back of a boy’s neck. She screamed in pain as the bats pulled her head back.

  The tourists finally looked over, and the guitarist stopped playing. Shouting for help, they all ran toward the kids. The businessman standing one hundred feet away saw and heard nothing. His eyes were on his newspaper and his ears were full of opera.

  Sitting in her bulletproof booth and counting out five-dollar bills, subway clerk Meg Ricci heard the cries of the people on the platform. She looked up over her reading glasses and saw the tourists and students dancing and flailing. She saw the musician swinging his guitar around him. Then she saw the flapping wings and the dark little bats attacking their faces and hands. She snatched up the phone and called for police assistance.

  As Meg told the dispatcher what was going on, something else happened. A well-dressed man at the end of the platform had removed his earphones and looked over. As he turned toward the others, a large shadow enveloped him. It came over the man from above, like poured paint, and then spilled quickly to the left. When the inky blackness was gone, so was the man.

  Meg reported exactly what she saw before she realized how insane it must sound. The dispatcher matter-of-factly asked her to repeat it. Meg did. That was what had happened.

  A few seconds later the bats suddenly stopped attacking the people on the platform. They fluttered around for a moment, circling just under the ceiling like leaves in an eddy. Then they darted back over the tracks and took off down the tunnel, following the inky shape.

  While the dispatcher put out a call, Meg broke the rules. Pulling a first aid kit from under the counter, she left her booth and hopped the turnstile. She turned back long enough to tell new arrivals not to come in, then went to help the riders who had fallen.

  Two patrolmen from the sixth p
recinct arrived moments later. While one of them called for an ambulance from St. Vincent’s and kept other people from entering the station, the second officer went to help Meg.

  She was extremely calm as she applied disinfectant and bandages to the students’ scratches and told the officer about the bats and about the well-dressed man who must have fallen from the platform. What she saw, she decided, had been his jacket flying up. Or maybe it was the reflection of her own dark hair on the glass of the booth.

  The officer went to the end of the platform to have a look. He hopped down onto the tracks. When he came back he was holding headphones from a Walkman. The foam ends were wet with blood.

  He called for backup from the transit police and recommended that the station be closed.

  Still calm, Meg went back to her booth and called her supervisor for instructions. He told her to lock the money drawer and the booth and to do whatever the police told her.

  Transit police arrived. They took Meg’s name, address, and phone number, and told her she could go.

  She took the next bus back to Queens.

  Fifteen

  The American Museum of Natural History was built in 1874. Located along Central Park West between Seventy-seventh and Eighty-first streets, it is best known today for its unparalleled collection of prehistoric fossils and dinosaur skeletons. However, it was originally designed to be a showcase for contemporary nature and archaeological displays.The dioramas of modern-day animal life, from birds to bison to fish, remain among its most popular attractions.

  But the galleries and spacious display halls are not the museum’s only service. Research, exploration, and education are also important functions, and the fifth floor of the museum-closed to the public-has long been a haven for scientists and scholars. There, in hundred-year-old cabinets and drawers as well as in modern cryogenic chambers, the museum stores countless animal, vegetal, and fossil specimens for study.

  Given what had happened in the tunnel, Gentry was in as good a mood as he could be. He was guardedly optimistic for a reconciliation. He liked Nancy Joyce, he admired her courage and determination, and he felt bad about what he’d done. He didn’t feel repentant, for he’d do it again. Just bad. And all he wanted was the chance, at some point, to tell her everything-except the fact that he wouldn’t have done anything differently.