by C. S. Poe
“Makes sense,” I whispered before covering my nose and mouth with my sleeve. “All it takes is getting pulled over for a taillight out, and bam!—cops find an unconscious detective in the back seat or something.”
“So what’s that say?” she pressed.
“If the Collector is smart, they would have dropped Calvin off at a safe house—or maybe even—” I stopped. Saying his name was hard. I forced myself to swallow the lump building in my throat. “The same place the headless body might have ended up. Or maybe… where Frank Newell currently is.”
Neil tossed a rat carcass up from the basin, the partially decomposed body landing on the asphalt with a splat.
“I will give the benefit of the doubt as to this individual’s intelligence,” I said, clearing my throat. “Because they’ve already killed two, possibly three people, and have taunted the police without being caught. I say they’d move away from their safe zone in order to ditch the phone.”
“Between Calvin leaving the hotel and you speaking to the Collector on his phone, that gives us under an hour and twenty minutes to account for.”
I perked up and turned to Quinn. “Take the traffic into consideration….”
“And we have a working search radius,” she concluded.
“How’s it smell down there, Crime Scene Guy?” One of the city workers laughed as he leaned over the basin and called down to Neil.
I didn’t hear a response from the Third Circle of Hell, but based on the chuckles from the DEP gentlemen, I suspected Neil had flipped them off while standing up to his hips in refuse.
I took my phone from my pocket and turned the screen on. Half a dozen missed calls from Max. I ignored them and opened the maps application. This close to the East River, the streets were turned into wind tunnels and the temperature was noticeably lower than neighborhoods north of here. My fingertips were frozen, making for a few frustrating attempts as I zoomed in on streets. Pop-ups began appearing on the screen to warn of heavy traffic areas.
“If we allow the Collector… say, ten minutes for making a drop-off… that’s still just over an hour to get as far as they can, then turn around and reach the Financial District. Quinn.” I looked up. “That doesn’t narrow the scope enough. Calvin could be in Dumbo or Brooklyn Heights. The Collector could have made it seem as if they wanted to leave the borough to give us a false trail. In which case, Calvin might actually be in Tribeca.”
“Seb.”
I calculated how much time had passed since I opened the package of human teeth, and typed it into a timer app. “We can’t search that much ground in… forty-six hours and forty-two minutes.”
Quinn looked at me. She grabbed the front of my coat, dragged me away from the commotion of the basin, and said in a hushed tone, “I need you here and now, Sebastian.”
“I am here. But I—”
Her mouth formed a thin, grim line. “Calvin’s my best friend.” She put her hands on her hips and avoided my eyes, instead scanning the scene over my shoulder. “September twenty-eight—twenty-two days after I was promoted and we were assigned to work together—he saved my life. Drug dealers don’t like being hauled in for questioning by cops. Imagine that.” Quinn reluctantly returned her gaze to me. “I made a stupid mistake. Didn’t clear behind the door. Next thing I knew, the barrel of a semiautomatic is resting on the back of my fucking head. Anyway… Calvin’s a hero. To a lot of people. Including me.”
I barely nodded.
“But this isn’t the same situation. I can’t save him with brute strength alone. The Collector contacted you. Let’s not forget that.” She reached up and flicked my forehead with her thumb and forefinger.
“Ouch.”
“Keep your head on. We need it.” She walked back to the side of the road.
I turned around. Neil was climbing out of the hole, the lower half of his jumpsuit covered and dripping in a foul-smelling, dark-colored slop. I walked to the edge of the sidewalk.
Neil lifted his mask up and over his head. He handed it off to a nearby officer and squelched toward us. He held what was once a working iPhone. “What color was Calvin’s phone?”
“Really?” I asked.
Neil corrected himself and directed the question at Quinn.
“Red,” she answered. “The limited-edition one that came out a few months ago.”
Neil turned the phone, showing what I had to assume was a red backing. “The serial will confirm—but I’m happy to make an intuitive leap and say this is Calvin’s.”
“You really stink,” I muttered.
“Yeah,” Neil answered in a very matter-of-fact tone.
Tires squealed at the end of the block, and the three of us turned. An unmarked car with lights flashing had parked diagonally along the street. Two figures got out of the front, but I couldn’t make out any details at this distance.
“Shit,” Quinn swore. “My sergeant.”
“Who’s the other guy?” I asked.
“Rossi,” she answered with a growl. Quinn moved around me to take a line of defense. “Sir—”
“I want him out of here, Lancaster,” Sarge ordered, pointing at me as he joined the hubbub.
“But Mr. Snow is—” she started.
“The whole reason the best detective in my precinct is missing,” he finished.
“I didn’t kidnap him,” I protested.
Quinn held up a hand as if to tell me now is so not the time to open your damn mouth. “Mr. Snow is an expert in his field, sir,” she tried again. “His knowledge has helped our department crack several cases in the past.”
“I know all about Mr. Snow,” Sarge said. “I read the reports, remember? He’s a smartass busybody. I never should have allowed you and Winter to take the call at his shop yesterday.”
Rossi had slinked beside the sergeant by then, keeping one step outside the volatile circle. I had a sickening feeling that this little beat-cop, wannabe detective was the reason Quinn’s boss, who I’d been told was a stern but good man, was having an intense, public blowup.
“That incident was directly related to John Doe at the museum,” Quinn argued. “As well as the disappearance of Frank Newell. It’s our case. We had to respond.”
“And one misinterpretation of the evidence due to clouded judgment leaves us up one sleuth and down a decorated officer!” Sarge barked.
My fists were clenched so tight, the tips of my fingernails were digging holes into my flesh.
“All of the evidence pointed to a repeat of the Newell situation,” Quinn said. “The body parts, followed by similar messages, indicated that Mr. Snow would go missing in forty-eight hours. We had no way of knowing until an hour ago that the perp’s plan was to snatch Calvin!”
“Assigning police protection probably spooked our perp,” Rossi spoke, directing an accusing finger at me. “He had to change his usual MO—hence grabbing Winter instead.”
“Our perp?” Quinn repeated with a laugh that made my soul shake. “You aren’t a damn detective, Rossi.”
“Lancaster!” Sarge butted in.
“The Collector was forced to make amendments to their original plan because of me,” I interjected. “But not because you were following me,” I added, looking at Rossi. Before Sarge was able to take a breath, I continued. “They know me—at least a little. Enough to know they needn’t bother offering money as a reward. I would have engaged for the history aspect and puzzle alone. The threat was merely incentive to do it… faster.”
“Then why didn’t you snoop?” Rossi retorted. “You’ve had no problem ‘helping’ the NYPD in the past.” He actually used air quotes when he said that.
“I told you, I’ve retired,” I stated. “I made a promise to Calvin, and I wasn’t going to let the Collector push me. They must have realized that….”
“This isn’t your case anymore,” Sarge said to Quinn. “I don’t give a damn about Spencerian script or dinosaur bones or angry paleontologists. Mr. Snow’s expertise is no longer required.”
<
br /> “But sir—!” Quinn tried.
“You can’t ignore those details!” I objected.
“Getting Winter back is the priority now,” Sarge said over both of us. “The Chief of Detectives is already getting heat to involve the damn Feds.”
“You can’t let the FBI take over,” I pleaded, desperation in my tone going unchecked. “The Collector warned for the police to back off. It has to be me!”
“And if the chief finds out I’ve let Winter’s compromised and civilian fiancé run amok, it’ll be my ass,” he concluded. He jutted a thumb over his shoulder. “Get out.”
THE HISTORY.
The clues.
The Collector gave me—gave Frank Newell—the tools necessary to figure out this puzzle. Each word written, each gruesome package mailed, were all deliberate hints in a word game that would bring Calvin back to me.
The Collector wanted me to think.
This person was different from all of the others. Not an obsessive, delusional stalker like Duncan Andrews. Definitely not a vigilante like Brigg. And they didn’t seem to be a money-hungry thief like Pete White.
They were brutal. Methodical. Smarter. At least… they wanted me to view them as more intelligent. Better than all the rest. The pièce de résistance of my sleuthing career.
Declining official escort, I walked from the immediate vicinity and left the clusterfuck of traffic and police presence behind me. Anger toward the sergeant had gotten my blood pumping, and I was feeling particularly fiery. He was ignoring the most important facts of the case. I knew it was because he wanted to find his officer and felt he needed to look at a bigger picture, but this—I looked over my shoulder at the mess of vehicles, flashing lights, and law enforcement running this way and that—this wasn’t how we’d find Calvin.
No one in the NYPD wanted a dead cop. No one wanted to give a press conference about how their golden goose detective was kidnapped and murdered.
I understood that.
But Quinn had been right. The Collector had contacted me. And now I needed to make that the Collector’s first mistake.
Because maybe I wasn’t an action hero like Calvin, but I was a know-it-all who ran headfirst into danger. I had an undeterrable curiosity and an inability to give up. That alone made me one serious pain in the ass. But couple that with having the love of my life torn from my grasp?
They’d taken up battle with the wrong color-blind sleuth.
I jumped over a puddle of slush at the end of the block and raced across the street as the crosswalk hand began flashing. I pulled Max up in my phone’s contacts once I reached the other side.
He picked up on the first ring. “Boss! I called you like a hundred times!”
“Five,” I corrected.
“What’s going on?” he continued. “Neil called me a while ago—Calvin sent me some bizarre text—but when I asked Neil what it meant, he was a total jackass and wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“Max,” I interrupted. “Listen to me. The Collector—ah, the person—”
“Oh, Jesus,” he groaned. “He’s got a serial-killer nickname now.”
“Listen,” I hissed before taking a deep breath. “Calvin’s in trouble. A lot of trouble. The Collector took him, and I have less than forty-eight hours to save him.”
I could hear Max’s voice shaking as he said, “I d-don’t understand.”
“I think I was the original target,” I explained. “But I wasn’t budging.”
“Calvin,” Max whispered, piecing it together on his own.
“Right,” I said, clipped. “Because now I’m fucking invested in the mystery.”
“But what was that text message?”
“We’re assuming the Collector sent those from Calvin’s phone after he was taken. The phone was ditched. Neil pulled it out of a drain in the Financial District.”
“Holy shit,” Max said, voice still panicky. “This is some fucked-up Hollywood bullshit!”
“You saw the message. No cops. But try telling them that,” I said in a mocking tone. “I have to find Calvin before the law-enforcement pressure makes the Collector act earlier than planned.” I was breathing hard, pace short of an all-out sprint. “I need help,” I pleaded. “I’ve been tossed curbside, even after Quinn fought her sergeant to keep me involved, and—”
“Let’s get this guy,” Max returned. “What do you need from me?”
The relief of those words hit me like a brick to the face. I slowed to a brisk walk and took a deep breath. “Calvin told me an assistant curator at the Museum of Natural History, Frank Newell, received a package of human remains last Wednesday,” I explained. “That’s where the case began. The same man was reported missing on Saturday by his girlfriend. As far as anyone can tell, he’s simply vanished.”
“Dead,” Max muttered.
“I think so,” I admitted. “But he wasn’t our head. So something happened to an additional person between Wednesday and yesterday. I need to figure out what.”
“Are you going to go to the museum?”
“Yeah. To try to get Frank’s supervisor to talk to me. While I do that, can you try to get some information on his girlfriend?”
“How, pray tell?”
“The Face-stalking thing you do.”
“Dude. I can try, but do you at least have her name?”
“No.”
“Job?”
“No.”
“Absolutely anything useful?”
“No.”
“Great,” he said.
“Text me what you find,” I replied.
“Will do. I’ll meet you in the city.”
“Max?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks,” I murmured. “I mean it.”
Chapter Eight
I SPARED the towering dinosaur fossils in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda a second look as I stood in line at the ticket counter in the Museum of Natural History. An epic reimagining of a herbivore defending against a sharp-toothed predator. They weren’t real fossils, of course. The soaring display would have been too heavy. Plaster castings.
They seemed more important today.
“Mommy.” A young girl in line behind me was insistent on getting her mother’s attention. “See! Look! That one’s Barosaurus.”
“Oh, I see it. The tall one?”
“Yes. And the carnivore is Allosaurus,” the girl continued, speaking in a tone as if she were defending a dissertation.
I smiled a little, reminded of my own childhood and how I tried to teach Pop everything I ever read. He was always a sport about it, even if he’d already known that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s father’s first cousin once removed was hanged for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.
“Next in line,” a cashier called.
I moved quickly to the next teller. “Hi. I, uhm, have a bit of a strange request.”
The man behind the computer raised his eyebrows. “Okay….”
“Your fossil halls,” I began. “Specifically dinosaurs….”
“Yes, sir,” the young guy said with a smile and sudden upbeat tone. “It includes six permanent exhibits of—”
I waved a hand. “No, I know about the halls. I mean, there’s an assistant curator who works in the department. His name is Frank Newell.”
He made a sort of exaggerated expression. “I wouldn’t know that, I’m afraid.”
“It wasn’t a question,” I answered. “I’m telling you that there is. I need to talk to his supervisor.”
“Sir,” Ticket Boy said, starting to get a bit snotty. “Our academic staff isn’t available to answer questions from the general public. They’re all very busy.”
I frowned, noticed a name tag, and squinted a bit. “Chad.” I stared at Chad. “Look. Frank Newell was reported missing four days ago. It’s vital I speak to his boss.”
Chad licked his lips, huffed, then squared his shoulders. “Are you a cop?”
“No.”
“Then, sir… you need to ei
ther purchase an admission, or I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” Chad was one head bob away from wagging his finger in my face.
I begrudgingly slid my credit card across the counter. “One adult.”
THE HALL of Ornithischian Dinosaurs was pretty crowded. Not that I could complain. I mean… dinosaurs were pretty cool. I stood in front of a Stegosaurus display, hunched over with my magnifying glass to read the information plaque.
Scientists once thought Stegosaurus had two brains because its head was so small….
Poor Calvin. Of all dinosaurs to adore growing up, he’d chosen the one that paleontologists said simply had to have a second brain, because there was no way such an animal could have managed with one the size of a walnut.
I smiled a little as I straightened my stance. I didn’t know what to do with the apparent dead end so soon into my sleuthing. I needed to talk to someone who knew Frank. Preferably someone who would also know a thing or two about whatever skull would have brought an end to the Bone Wars. But Chad wasn’t sympathetic to my plight, and up here in the hall, the security guards overseeing the crowds either told me to fuck off in various levels of politeness, or feigned deafness in order not to have to deal with annoying visitors. Paid too little to give a shit, I figured.
A young woman walked past me then, an ID badge hanging from her sweater and a few binders tucked under one arm. She had a certain kind of bubbliness to her step, with a warm smile that suggested she was the sort who simply loved her job. An academic who hadn’t yet lost the joy for research and had it replaced with bitter cynicism.
“Hey!” I rushed after her. “Ma’am?”
She paused midstep and turned to look up at me. “Yes?”
“Sorry to bother you,” I began, doing my best to match a smile to her sunny disposition and not come across totally cranky and riddled with anxiety.
Her gaze faltered.
Not working. Okay, skip that. “Er—do you work here? I mean, in paleontology?”
“Oh! Yes, I do!” Her hand instinctively went to her badge, suggesting she was quite proud of herself. “Three weeks now. Is there something I can help you with?”
