Deader Still

by Anton Strout

  We rounded a bend in the path, following a paved section of road that led toward a set of stone stairs. Several police officers were blocking the way, but when we flashed our IDs, they let us up the stairs without a word. At the top was a small circle of benches about one hundred feet across, and at the center of it stood a tall stone spire that rose at least eighty feet. Standing by its base, waiting for us, stood Dave Davidson. At his feet was a body covered by a sheet.

  “Things must be slow at City Hall if they can afford to keep you hanging around here waiting for us,” Connor said, giving him a polite nod.

  Davidson smiled, all polish.

  “Believe me, they can afford to keep me standing here when things of this nature keep turning up,” he said. He motioned for us to come closer. Davidson reached down and pulled back the sheet. On the ground was the body of a man in his early forties with a typical wreath of baldness going on. He wore running shorts, track shoes, and a T-shirt that read “Sherlock Ohms.” Beneath him a small pool of blood coated the bricks and stones.

  “ ‘Sherlock Ohms’ . . . ?” I asked.

  “We believe it’s some sort of electrical joke,” Davidson said. “We think he’s a scientist. Name’s Dr. Richard Kolb.”

  “Or a yoga nerd,” Connor suggested.

  “Let’s compromise,” I said, “and go with science nerd.”

  Our usual manner of bantering away our discomfort wasn’t working, so the three of us stood in silence, taking in the scene for a few moments.

  “People get killed in the park all the time,” Connor said by way of dismissal, sounding rather heartless. “What makes this guy so special?”

  Davidson reached down and turned the dead man’s head, revealing a savage tear wound to his neck. “As you can see,” he said, “there’s a little bit of blood around the bite mark, but that’s about all that’s left of it.” Davidson stepped back. “The coroner’s already been by and said he’s drained. Feel free to take a closer look.”

  Connor and I stepped to either side of the body. Already I was thinking about the people on the boat. I looked at Connor.

  He placed his pinkie and index finger against his mouth, making fangs with them.

  “The vamps from the dock by the Javits Center,” I continued. “Great. While we wait on the goddamned paperwork to go through, more people are dying.”

  Connor turned from the body and was already stepping away as Davidson laid the cloth back down over the dead jogger. I stood.

  “We’re putting it through as fast as we can,” Davidson reassured, but I was already getting pissed and couldn’t hold back my frustration.

  “How many people are going to have to die before City Hall picks up the pace? Don’t you have any feelings?”

  Davidson held his hands up disarmingly.

  “I’m just a political liaison. It’s not in my job description that I have to have feelings. Sorry.”

  He was so cold about it all that I wanted to pull my bat on him. I turned to Connor, who was looking back down the stairs and off into the park.

  “Do something,” I said. “Say something.”

  “Sure, I’ll say something,” he said, distracted by whatever was catching his eye. “You want to get some answers? Turn around and take a look.”

  I did, and started scanning the park.

  Connor specialized in dealing with ghosts, so that was what I was looking for, but in broad daylight it was near impossible for me. I didn’t notice anything unusual, and I threw up my arms in frustration.

  “What am I supposed to be looking at?” I said. “I don’t have your power. I don’t do your thing . . .”

  “Just shut up, kid,” Connor said. He raised his arm and pointed off to a specific section of the park. “Shut up and concentrate.”

  I gave up trying to argue with him and stared down the trajectory of his finger, putting more effort into really observing the crowd.

  There were people everywhere, very few of them paying attention to us or to Davidson’s regular cops nearby. Two couples were walking hand in hand, three Rollerbladers, a line of passing bicyclists, and one jogger.

  Bald and wearing a “Sherlock Ohms” shirt. It was the ghost of Dr. Richard Kolb.

  “Son of a bitch,” I marveled, but before I could get anything else out, Connor shoved past me, jumping down the stairs. I fell in behind him, the cops scattering as the two of us pushed past them all.

  By the time Connor and I hit the middle of the Great Lawn, I was a mess, winded and already aching in my calf muscles. I must have run through at least seven different picnic setups, angering the people trying to have a pleasant afternoon in the park.

  “Why couldn’t he have been some big old fat guy?” I shouted ahead to Connor, who was still sprinting like the dickens after our jogger. My foot came down in a wicker picnic basket and I heard a plastic crunch.

  “Sorry!”

  “Don’t let it get away, kid,” Connor shouted back to me, and poured on the steam. I wasn’t about to be shown up, and despite my aches and pains, I started running to catch up, gaining on Connor little by little. We were just about at the crosstown road that connected Eighty-sixth Street on both sides of the park when I overtook him. I was wheezing by this point, but I kept pushing myself. The jogger dashed down the embankment and out onto the two-lane road without a glance either way, and although the cars passing by almost hit him, not one of them sounded a horn or moved to swerve. They clearly didn’t see him, and I remembered that I hadn’t seen him either, until Connor had pointed him out to me.

  I slid down the embankment and tried to keep my pace while I crossed the road with caution. Horns blared, but I was almost all the way across when I felt a tug on my jacket that spun me around like a top. I heard the sound of it tearing. My coattail must have caught on a passing car because the speed at which I spun reminded me of the old Wonder Woman quick-change on TV. I was no superhero, though, and although my coat luckily tore free from whatever car had snagged it, I was dizzy and stumbled around as I regained my footing.

  Connor came down the hill and across the street at a slower pace, and by the time he reached me, I was ready to fall back into pursuit mode. The jogger was already halfway down the next embankment, headed toward the reservoir. There wasn’t anywhere for him to go without having to circle the reservoir. My blood was up and I was pissed about almost dying, not to mention the tear in my jacket. I charged down the second hill after our elusive dead athlete.

  The jogger still didn’t seem to notice that he was being chased, but he was quite fast for a dead science nerd.

  “Don’t make me drown you,” I shouted after him, hoping to get his attention. He was almost at the reservoir now. I pulled my bat free from the holster on my belt and flicked off its safety before telescoping it to full length. I wasn’t sure what the jogger would do once cornered at water’s edge—or what damage my bat could do to a ghost—but I wanted to be prepared for anything. I slid the rest of the way down the embankment with Connor right behind me.

  “Be careful, kid,” he shouted. I came in swinging low, hoping to take the jogger right below his knees. I didn’t, however, expect him to just keep on running—not into the water but along the top of it. Without breaking stride, the jogger continued his pace across the top of the reservoir.

  Connor slid into position next to me. “Well, that was a bit biblical.”

  In my frustration, I made one last attempt to stop the jogger by chucking my bat at him. I couldn’t help myself. My aim was perfect, but unfortunately the bat sailed through the jogger’s body and fell into the water with a splash.

  “Simon—” Connor started, but I interrupted him.

  “Right,” I said, slapping my forehead. “Ghost.”

  We watched the jogger disappear off into the distance. Even if we made our way around the reservoir, he’d be long gone by then.

  “That,” Connor said, huffing and puffing from the run like he was going to die, “ends that. Let’s head back to the s
cene, kid.”

  I sat down at the edge of the water and pulled my shoes off.

  “Kid?”

  “It’s already killing me that I’m waiting for a replacement phone from Supply,” I said, rolling up my pants above the knee. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait on a new telescopic bat. It’ll take months, because even after I churn through all the paperwork, they’ll still have to have it custom-made. If I have to wait on it, I’ll be long dead before the order ever comes through.”

  “Suit yourself,” Connor said, starting up the embankment, showering me with little bits of dirt and pebbles as he climbed. “I’ll be waiting up by the road.”

  I stepped into the freezing water. My foot hit the slime-coated reservoir bed and I fought back the urge to throw up. Was being a do-gooder really a better life than the one of crime that I had left behind—a world of Mina’s and other assorted psychotics? As something slithered its way over my toes, I really wasn’t sure.

  13

  My luck held true to form and my bat was much deeper in the water than I’d expected. By the time I got it, I was soaked through to the middle of my thighs. On the bright side, being wet was a step up from being covered in liquefied rats.

  The chase had taken a lot out of us, and as Connor and I hobbled back to the crime scene, I asked, “You think our vampires did this?”

  Connor shrugged as he limped.

  “The cause of death seems to be the same as the one for the people on the boat,” he said.

  “Do you think the vampires knew the jogger? Or was it something random?”

  Connor shrugged again. “Maybe they simply hated bad science jokes.”

  “Eh?”

  “The jogger’s shirt,” Connor reminded me. “ ‘Sherlock Ohms.’ If I were of the evil persuasion, I might kill some guy just for wearing that shirt.”

  “That doesn’t seem very likely,” I said.

  “Always consider the unlikely, kid,” Connor said. “We’re Other Division. Unlikely is our bread and butter.”

  When we returned to the little park surrounding the spire, the Metropolitan Museum of Art rose into sight through the trees like a scenic backdrop, and in the foreground I could make out the figure of David Davidson pacing near the body. Connor and I headed straight for him.

  “What was that all about?” Davidson asked when we were within earshot. He shooed away several of the cops meandering near the crime scene.

  “Nothing,” Connor said.

  “That chase was for nothing?” Davidson raised his eyebrows.

  “Did you see anything?” Connor asked, sounding a little sharper this time.

  Davidson shook his head.

  “Okay, then,” Connor continued. “Well, that’s that, and until I have something more concrete to say on the matter, keep considering it nothing. I don’t want you reporting guesswork back to the people downtown.”

  “Just have them push through the paperwork on the you know what,” I added.

  The cops were still lingering too close for my liking.

  “Vampire?” Davidson whispered under his breath.

  I nodded as I checked to make sure no one had heard us.

  “Easy there,” Connor said. “I don’t know if this is the same thing, kid. Look at the body. There’re an awful lot of tears in the jogger’s shirt. Those could be claw marks.”

  “I’d try clawing, too, if someone sank their teeth into my neck,” I said. “Unless we’re talking about Jane, of course.”

  Connor rolled his eyes. “You want to take a reading off him?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t do the dead. Well, not off the body, anyway. At least the DJ had equipment with him on the boat. Remember?” Connor nodded. “But let’s see what he has on him. Maybe I can read that.”

  As I reached for the body, Connor stopped my hand. “Don’t bother. With jogging short-shorts like those, he’s not hiding anything.”

  “Besides, we already checked,” Davidson added. “No keys. No wallet. Nothing. The only way we ID’d him was because he matched the description of a missing-person call that came in.”

  I stepped away from the body, frustrated. “Jesus. You’d think he’d at least be wearing an iPod or something.” I turned to the spire at the center of our little park. “What is this thing anyway?”

  Davidson and Connor both looked up at it, but it was Davidson who spoke.

  “That, my friends, is Cleopatra’s Needle.”

  “That’s some big needle,” I said.

  “It was a gift to the United States,” Davidson said, “from Egypt, in the hopes of establishing good trade relations. I believe there are three of them.”

  “Three?” Connor perked up. “A triumvirate . . . a power number.”

  “Maybe we’re approaching this investigation in the wrong way,” I offered.

  “Meaning what, exactly?” Davidson said with a bit of venom.

  “Don’t take it personally,” I said. “I’m not blaming anyone, but rather than wondering if this specific dead jogger was an actual target of the vampire, maybe we should be looking at the things around us for answers. Things that, say, stand out.”

  “You mean something like an ancient Egyptian artifact in the middle of Central Park?” Davidson said.

  I nodded.

  “Gee,” Connor said, “where would we go about finding one of those?”

  “I know, right?”

  “Well, then,” Davidson said. “I trust your little Indiana Jonesing around the spire here means that I can finally attend to my corpse. You two enjoy your giant phallus investigation. The boys in blue and I have a body to drop off.”

  Davidson gestured to his men and two of the cops laid a long black bag out on the ground next to the body before moving the dead jogger into it.

  “I’ll trust you two to let me know if you come across anything of any significance?” Davidson asked. Neither of us answered. We were too caught up taking in the impressive sight of the giant needle.

  When the cops were done packing up the victim, they headed down the path and Davidson started off after them.

  “One last thing,” Connor said. “Is there a time of death on the victim?”

  David Davidson turned back to us. “We won’t know for sure until we get him to the forensics lab, but the onsite medical examiner guessed between four and six this morning.”

  Connor started circling around Cleopatra’s Needle with a hint of a smile in his eyes and a look of awe on his face. Up close to the spire, it was hard not to marvel at the sight.

  Cleopatra’s Needle was surrounded by a short, decorative railing to keep people from getting too close to it. The monolith itself was set upon three white stone steps that surrounded a ten-foot-high block of rock that acted as the spire’s base. Little indentations just below the main shaft housed four bronze crabs about the size of medium-sized dogs, one sitting at each corner.

  “Impressive,” I said, giving a whistle. “What’s it made of?”

  “Red granite,” Connor said. I turned to him, impressed. He shrugged. “If I had to guess.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Jones,” I said, moving closer. “It looks like a miniature version of the Washington Monument.”

  As I approached, I noticed it was covered with inscriptions all up and down the sides. I climbed over the low railing and approached it. “Are those hieroglyphics?” I asked, reaching out. Connor came dashing around from the other side of the needle and grabbed my arm before I could touch the structure.

  “Yeah, kid, all of it is in ancient Egyptian,” he said, lowering my arm. “I don’t really think you should be touching it, though.”

  “My powers,” I said, getting it. It was foolhardy for me to even reach for it, especially not knowing what psychometric flashes it might have in store for me.

  Connor pointed down at a large gray slab of rock at the base of the steps. The words “Translation of Hieroglyphics” were written across the top of the slab. It talked about the history of Horus and Ramses,
but I couldn’t make any direct correlation to our case out of it. I stared back up at the statue.

  “If this doesn’t serve some arcane purpose in this town,” I said, “I don’t know what does.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions, kid. Our vampires may not even be linked to this thing, whatever it is. This is something better left to Greater and Lesser Arcana. You ask Janey about it when we get back to the offices, okay?”

  At the mention of her name, I felt my heart twinge a little.

  Connor pulled out his phone. He flipped it open and started taking pictures of each face of the Needle. He circled to the far side of it.