‘What the Sam Hill happened here, Nathan? Jean and I were on our way up to bed and then ker-ash! And then ker-ash again. We thought a plane had come down, didn’t we, Jean? We were expecting to see bodies and bits of plane all over.’
‘Who’s been hurt, Nathan?’ asked Jean. She looked toward the open front door of the house, where Grace and Denver were putting on their coats and their shoes. ‘Thank God it wasn’t Grace.’
‘It was a friend of Denver’s, Stu Wintergreen. He and Denver, they were trying some kind of science experiment.’
‘Science experiment? Looks more like they were trying to build a home-made bomb! Was this Stu hurt bad?’
‘We don’t know yet. We’re just off to the hospital. Listen, Jim, maybe you can do me a favor and keep an eye on the house for me while we’re gone.’
‘Of course. What are neighbors for?’
Several more neighbors came up to him to express their shock and offer their sympathies. Grace came to the door and called out, ‘Nathan? Come on! We’re ready to go! I’ve called Stu’s mom and dad and they’re going to meet us at the hospital!’
The neighbors dispersed with a chorus of, ‘If there’s anything we can do for you, Nathan, you just holler.’ ‘We’re always here if you need us.’ ‘You take good care, you hear?’ ‘Hope that young boy gets better.’
Nathan turned back toward the house. He looked up at Denver’s bedroom and the jagged widescreen hole where his window had been. He could see Denver’s AxCx and Misery Index posters on the wall, and also a high spray of Stu’s blood in the shape of a shepherd’s crook. For the first time that evening he felt afraid.
‘Nathan!’ Grace repeated.
‘OK, I’m coming!’
As he started to climb up the steps to the front porch, however, he heard a faint, echoing howl, high in the sky above him. He stopped and twisted around and looked up. At first he saw nothing but the moonlit clouds, but he was about to continue up the steps when he heard another howl, louder this time, and much harsher. It sounded triumphant, challenging, heartless. A dark shape was circling high above – a shape with widespread wings and a long, lizard-like tail. It circled once, twice, three times, directly over the top of the Underhills’ house, as if it were warning him that it knew where he lived and it might come back to cause even more damage and destruction.
‘Nathan!’ called Grace. She didn’t sound at all happy. ‘Nathan – what are you doing?’
The dark shape flapped away in a south-westerly direction, toward Manayunk and the Schuylkill River, like a ragged black sheet blown by the wind. Nathan stared at it until it was out of sight, and then he went back into the house. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was just inspecting the damage. Jim’s going to take care of things until we get back.’
They climbed into Nathan’s car, backed out of the driveway and headed east toward the Albert Einstein Medical Center.
Grace turned around in her seat. ‘All right, Denver. So what’s all this about a monster? Were you and Stu smoking something you shouldn’t?’
‘It was a monster, Mom,’ Denver insisted. ‘We were sitting there minding our own business, eating pizza and listening to music, and then this thing came busting right through the window. I mean like a goddamned bomb.’
‘This thing? And don’t blaspheme.’
‘I don’t know what it was. It had a kind of a curvy beak like a buzzard and great big starey eyes and claws like goddamned swords, you know? Like there was glass flying everywhere and this thing kept screaming at us like it was trying to force itself right into the room and tear us to pieces.’
Grace turned to Nathan. ‘Do you believe him?’ She paused, and then she said, ‘Oh. Of course you believe him. You told him not to mention anything about it to the paramedics. And you didn’t do that in case they buckled him up in a straitjacket and carted him off to the psych ward, did you?’
‘No,’ Nathan admitted.
‘So what are you not telling me? Or shall I put two and two together? This monster exists, doesn’t it? It really exists?’
‘Yes, Grace, it does. It’s a gargoyle. It’s one of Theodor Zauber’s gargoyles. He came to visit me in the hospital and he asked me again if I would help him. I said no, I wouldn’t. He said that I would regret it, and he gave me a very graphic demonstration of why I would regret it. There was a gargoyle sitting on the hospital roof. A real, living medieval gargoyle. Zauber called out to it, and it dived down and killed that hospital orderly.’
‘A gargoyle killed him?’
‘That’s right. I was talking to one of the interns who saw what was left of him. He’d been out in Afghanistan with the Army medical corps, and he said that the poor guy looked as if he’d stepped on a roadside bomb, only much worse.’
‘And you didn’t tell the police about Zauber? Why on earth not?’
‘Do you really think they would have believed me? And even if they managed to track him down, him and his gargoyles, what could they do then? These are mythical creatures that have been turned to stone. Do you think the police are seriously going to believe that he can bring them back to life again, so that they can fly, and attack people? All he has to do is deny it. Besides, he was threatening to set his gargoyles on you, and Denver, and that’s why I didn’t tell you what happened at the hospital, and that’s why I didn’t tell the police, either.’
‘But he did set a gargoyle on us, didn’t he? Regardless of the fact that you didn’t tell the cops. It’s lucky that Stu wasn’t killed. It’s lucky that all of us weren’t killed.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Nathan, as he turned into the parking garage of Albert Einstein Medical Center. ‘I’m not going to let Zauber get away with this. I’m going to find him, and I’m going to put a stop to this gargoyle insanity for ever.’
‘What is a gargoyle, anyhow?’ Denver asked him.
‘You should know what it is already, the number of times I’ve talked to you about it.’
‘Sorry. Maybe I wasn’t exactly listening.’
‘It’s another mythical creature, just like that gryphon I was trying to recreate, and like that basilisk that put your mom into a coma. Just like the phoenix we’ve managed to bring to life.’
‘Oh, great. Another mythical creature. Why can’t you just breed rabbits or something?’
They went into the hospital’s main entrance and the receptionist directed them through to the emergency room. It was Friday night, so the waiting room was crowded with people with minor injuries – young men and women who had already drunk too much and fallen down flights of stairs, elderly people who had fractured their hips or their wrists or their ankles, a nightclub doorman who had been hit in the face with a beer glass.
Nathan went up to the nurses’ station and asked if they could see Stu Wintergreen. ‘They brought him in about fifteen minutes ago. He had a deep laceration in his right leg.’
‘Please wait here, sir,’ said the nurse, and disappeared for almost five minutes. A small boy who had fallen out of his top bunk bed and broken his finger went on crying and crying and wouldn’t stop. After a while, Nathan was sorely tempted to put him out of his misery by strangling him.
‘So how do you propose to find Theodor Zauber?’ Grace demanded.
‘I expect he’ll find me. He’ll want to know if tonight’s attack has persuaded me to change my mind. Believe me, Grace, Zauber needs me if he’s going to make his gargoyle project work. He can turn his gargoyles into living flesh but he doesn’t know how to make them stay that way.’
The nurse reappeared, followed by a short, tired-looking young doctor who strongly reminded Nathan of Michael J. Fox.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Doctor Brainerd. Are you Stuart’s parents?’
‘No . . . but they should be here any minute. Stu’s a friend of my son here. They were together in my son’s bedroom when Stu got injured.’
‘How did it happen?’
Nathan was trying to think of a convincing explanation when Denver said, ‘The win
d caught the window and it slammed real hard, and the glass broke.’
Doctor Brainerd looked as if he were too exhausted to worry about the plausibility of this scenario. ‘OK . . .’ he said. ‘Stuart sustained a very deep cut which severed the main artery in his right leg. The problem with severed arteries in the lower part of the body is that the blood is always under more pressure than the upper part of the body, which means that a patient is likely to bleed out very quickly.’
Grace said, ‘I’m a doctor myself, Doctor. Doctor Grace Underhill, from the Chestnut Hill medical practice.’
‘Oh, good. In that case you’ll know that a patient only has to lose five or six pints of blood before they expire.’
‘What are you saying?’ asked Nathan. ‘Didn’t you give Stu more blood?’
Doctor Brainerd shook his head. ‘There was no point, sir. Stuart was dead on arrival.’
Denver opened and closed his mouth. His eyes were suddenly filled with tears. ‘He’s dead? I don’t believe it! He can’t be dead! We were eating pizza and listening to music! He can’t be dead!’
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Doctor Brainerd.
Nathan looked at Grace and Grace looked back at him with an expression of such anger that he couldn’t think of anything to say. He had believed that if he kept quiet about Theodor Zauber’s threats that he could protect his family from the gargoyles, but instead his silence had led to the death of his son’s best friend. He might just as well have stabbed Stu himself.
They were all still standing in shock when Nathan heard a voice calling, ‘Nathan! Grace! We just got here! How’s Stu?’
He turned around and saw Kenneth and Frances Wintergreen pushing their way toward them through the crowds of emergency patients.
Grace said, ‘What are you going to tell them, Nathan? Are you going to tell them truth?’
TWENTY-EIGHT
Saturday, 7:55 a.m.
Jenna came into the office carrying a plastic cup of cappuccino and a box of jelly donuts. She hung her parka over the back of her chair and sat down at her desk. ‘That is the very last time I have breakfast at Joe’s,’ she said, snapping the lid off her coffee.
‘You say that every single morning, without fail,’ said Detective Brubaker. ‘What was wrong with it this time?’
‘I ordered corned beef hash, not fatty pink slurry. And what that man can do to eggs . . . it ought to be a misdemeanor, at the very least.’
‘Murder most fowl,’ said Detective Brubaker, and when Jenna didn’t respond he said, ‘F-o-w-l, get it?’
‘I get it, for Christ’s sake.’
Detective Brubaker eased himself up from his desk and came across with a torn-off sheet from his notepad. ‘Jokes apart, we had a real strange call passed across from the Fourteenth District about a half-hour ago. They know that you’ve been working on these unexplained objects dropping out of the sky and they thought it might interest you.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘A taxi driver said he was passing through West Mount Airy around nine thirty yesterday evening when he saw something fly into the second story of a private house. He says he only caught a glimpse of it and at first he thought it was a guy on a hang-glider who had gotten out of control.’
Jenna put down her coffee cup. ‘A guy on a hang-glider? Are you serious? Where the hell could anybody have hang-glid from, in West Mount Airy? Is that the word? Or is it “hang-glided”?’
‘I don’t think it matters, because our taxi driver soon realized that he couldn’t have been a guy on a hang-glider because he circled around and collided with the house a second time. I mean like really smashed into it. Then he flew off.’
Jenna took the note and studied it with a frown. ‘Did they send out any officers to check this out?’
‘Yes, they did, because they’d had several calls from neighbors, too. They all reported two loud crashes, and severe damage to one of the windows at the front of the property. It seems like somebody in the property got badly hurt, too, because the residents called for an ambulance. Officer Dolan at the Fourteenth promised to call me back when he had further information on that, but so far he hasn’t.’
‘Did any of the neighbors see this mystery out-of-control hang-glider who couldn’t have been an out-of-control hang-glider?’
‘Nope. The only eyewitness was our taxi driver. His name and his number’s at the bottom of the page, works for Victory Taxis.’
‘Do we know whose property this was?’
‘No. But I can call Dolan and ask him.’
‘It’s OK,’ said Jenna. ‘I’ll do it. Thanks for taking the message.’
‘You’re welcome,’ said Detective Brubaker. ‘That’ll cost you a donut. In fact, that’ll cost you two donuts.’
Jenna opened the box and he helped himself. She picked one out, too, and took a large bite. She punched out the number of the Fourteenth District and they answered so promptly that she still had her mouth full and a drip of raspberry jelly on her chin.
Officer Dolan was just about to end his shift, but she caught him at the front desk.
‘Thanks for calling about that flying thing,’ she told him. ‘I appreciate anybody who does real joined-up police work.’
‘To be honest, it was my partner, more than me. He said it reminded him of all that wacky stuff about statues falling out of the sky, and I remembered seeing that interview you did on the TV.’
‘Have you found out yet if anybody was hurt?’
‘Yeah. I had a call from the ER at Albert Einstein Medical Center about ten minutes ago. Hold on, let me check my notes. Yes, here. The casualty was a seventeen-year-old male name of Stuart Wintergreen. He was hit by flying glass when the window of the property was smashed in, and he suffered a severed femoral artery.’
‘What’s his condition now?’
‘He bled out before they could get him to hospital. He died.’
‘Jesus,’ said Jenna. ‘Do you have any idea what it was that hit that house?’
‘None at all.’
‘Do you have an address?’
‘Sure. Six-oh-five, West Mount Airy Avenue. Home of Professor Nathan Underhill and Doctor Grace Underhill.’
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘No, no – I’m sorry. You just took me by surprise, that’s all. Professor Underhill seems to be involved in every single case I’ve been investigating lately.’
‘Yeah. I get people like that. They turn up at every crime scene and every fire and every traffic accident. You look through the photographs and there they are, in every single picture, standing in the background. My partner reckons they’re aliens.’
‘I think your partner may be right.’
Jenna gulped down the rest of her coffee and left her desk with a donut gripped in her mouth like a giant teething ring. Dan was waiting for her in the parking lot outside, with his engine running. It was starting to rain.
‘Suits you,’ he said, nodding at the donut.
Jenna took it out of her mouth. ‘You want some?’
Dan bit into it and then handed it back. ‘This Professor Underhill . . . maybe it’s just a series of coincidences, you know – him being around when that guy from Schiller got burned, and that hospital orderly got torn to pieces, and this kid got killed.’
‘Oh, you think? I don’t believe it for a moment. There’s a connection between all of these fatalities, and it’s my hunch that Professor Underhill knows what it is.’
‘If he knows what it is, why hasn’t he told you? There’s no circumstantial evidence so far that he was responsible. I don’t know about this kid.’
‘Stuart Wintergreen,’ said Jenna, checking her notebook. ‘Seventeen years old, attended West Airy High School. Model student, apparently. Loved dogs. Wanted to go to Penn Vet when he graduated to study veterinary medicine.’
They had only just reached Pennsylvania Avenue when Jenna’s cellphone played. It was raining harder now, and the rubbery squeaking of t
he windshield wipers made it difficult for her to hear.
‘Jenna? It’s Ed Freiburg. I’ve identified that statue that we found in the wetlands at Bartram’s Gardens. You want to come over to Arch Street and take a look?’
‘Maybe later, Ed,’ said Jenna, but then she thought, if there is a connection between Professor Underhill and these falling statues, the more I know about them before I go to question him, the better. ‘No – change of plan. I’ll come on over right now.’
‘What’s up?’ asked Dan.
‘Turn around. Ed Freiburg has something to show us.’
‘Nothing disgusting, I hope. I just ate breakfast.’
They met Ed in the large chilly garage at the rear of the CSI building on Arch Street. It was mostly used for the forensic examination of vehicles that had been involved in crimes or suicides or suspicious accidents, and there were two SUVs parked side by side, one burned out and the other with its driver’s door riddled with bullet holes. The garage was high-ceilinged and neon-lit, and it echoed with the banging of hammers and the persistent nagging of circular saws.
The statue that had been retrieved from the wetlands at Bartram’s Gardens was standing at the far end. Ed came over to greet them, wearing a noisy blue Tyvek suit and a baseball cap. He was carrying a large Manila folder in one hand and a hotdog in the other.
‘Breakfast,’ he remarked, holding up the hotdog. Then he nodded at the statue and said, ‘He’s a real beauty, ain’t he? America’s Next Top Gargoyle.’
The statue scowled back down at them – over ten feet tall, carved out of grayish-white limestone, with horns and bulbous eyes and a distinctive beak with sharp teeth protruding from either side. It had curved claws like scimitars and it looked no less threatening for having been damaged. Its broken wing lay on the floor close beside it.
‘Its eyes are open,’ said Jenna.
Ed stared at her. ‘It’s made out of limestone, Jenna. It couldn’t close its eyes if it wanted to. Not that it could ever want to do anything, because it’s an inanimate object.’
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