Serve

by Laura Wylde

  “What I would like it to grab the shirt ends of one little dirt-kicking FBI agent and toss her on the train to the next cattle town. She has no idea what she’s up against.”

  “Yes sir,” agreed the recruit. “Cappuccino, extra nutmeg, extra sugar. Is that correct?”

  “Suck up,” I called as he scurried off, but with no hard feelings.

  Thaddeus sat on the edge of my desk and placed his hands on his knees. “We can’t let her work this case alone. She has no idea what she’s dealing with.”

  I thundered back and forth across the room. “I tried to steer her away from the bridge. If she finds anything like what we uncovered six weeks ago below the ramparts, she’ll snap like a toothpick.”

  “It was a barbecue,” said Thaddeus. His voice had that haunted sound of reliving the past.“A human barbecue.”

  I snatched up my desk phone. “I’m calling the commissioner. We’re not letting a pint-sized vixen do this to us. If something happens to her, it’s on our hands.”

  I rarely called Commissioner Merriweather. He had a grudging knowledge of what my department does but preferred to remain as much in the dark as possible about our procedures. It was more than an issue of legalities. It was a whole different ball game with its own rules and only the NYPD Special Units knew how to play. Merriweather let me blow off steam for about thirty seconds, then said in an infuriatingly calm voice, “I want you to kiss and make up with Agent Winslow. You will figure out a way to work the case together.”

  “I’m not going to let her order us around like we are her subordinates.”

  “You are her team mates. She is FBI. I don’t care how special your unit is, you’ve got to cooperate with her. Give her what she wants, just be careful how you give it to her.”

  “You should have brought us in months ago.”

  “I should have. I agree. It’s been nuts around here. The case with Richards and his team. I thought they had Central Park cleaned up. Now this. Aren’t there any normal crimes anymore?”

  “We can’t have that girl involved with us. She’s so fresh out of the country, you smell mountain snow on her breath.”

  “It’s not my call anymore. The bureau has been lenient. They could have stepped in when the two tourists disappeared, but they didn’t. They know there’s more at stake than what appears to the eye, but now a child is involved. They can’t sit back any longer. For better or worse, she’s your partner. Get used to it.”

  He disconnected first, not even giving me that much satisfaction. I slammed the phone into the cradle, then pushed my chair violently away from the desk and wheeled it toward the window. The gritty streets looked back, filled with secrets that stretched back hundreds of years. Secrets that moved in the shadows. Secrets that rumbled underground.

  “They carved their captives up like a steer and placed them on a barbecue grill,” chanted Thaddeus. His eyes looked round and feverish. “They made skewers out of the bones and cut slices for shish kabobs. Just like Romania. Just like Vlad the Impaler.”

  Adrien pocketed his cell phone long enough to grin and tease Thaddeus a little. It wasn’t that Adrien was disrespectful. He was just very young and couldn’t begin to imagine the things Thaddeus had seen. Even his ancestral memories, too fresh yet to be tapped, would not know of such horrors. “Then what?” He asked Thaddeus. “Do you believe up there in that big, gloomy castle, they’ve created a portal for your buddy, Vlad to slip through?”

  Thaddeus shot him a look with his agonized eyes. “That would be easier, wouldn’t it, than imagining that somebody or something has risen out of the hideous depths and is as violent or worse than that madman?”

  I placed my hand on my partner’s shoulder. “Take it easy, Thad. Keep things in perspective. You can’t see the present clearly if you’re living in the past. I need for everyone to concentrate on what they know, not just what they suspect.”

  “They cannibalize,” grumbled Thaddeus.

  “Yes, they cannibalize,” I agreed. “That leaves out the vampires. They don’t eat meat.”

  “The hours are wrong, too,” said Adrien from his phone.

  I continued eliminating suspects. “Sirens only go after men. The harpy nests were cleaned out. None of the cults and covens on record have a history of cannibalizing their victims. Are we looking at a new species or new human deviants?”

  “Old species, I think,” Adrien suggested. “The underworld.”

  “Aye mates,” agreed Todd Murray, nodding his shaggy head vigorously. “Before Thad so rudely broke our friendship with Freddy, the coyote was telling us the Underground is growing stronger. It’s rising to the surface. Demons and goblins have been spilling out all over the city.”

  “Where did he get his information?” I asked.

  He tried to appear nonchalant about it. “You know how he is. He gets around.” Realizing he wasn’t going to get away with skipping specifics, he added. “Straight from the mouth of a siren.”

  Thaddeus scoffed. “A siren! You trust the word of a siren?”

  “Why would they lie? Sirens hate us, but they hate the underground more. They’d rather bargain with the gate keepers than allow what they call slimey’s and oozies to take over the city.”

  “Slimey’s and oozies, eh?” I tapped some paperwork into a neat stack and clipped it. “I don’t suppose the siren gave any specifics?”

  Todd scratched his eternally scruffy chin, which gave him a distinct leprechaun look. “That’s the crying shame of it all. Freddy got a little offended by Thad’s treatment. Now he won’t speak to us.”

  “Is his girlfriend still in jail?”

  “Daniel Richards paid her bail.”

  I sighed. “Why did he do that? She’ll probably make a run for it.”

  Todd nodded sympathetically. “She probably will. She’s a coyote.”

  Thaddeus looked like he’d punch Ready Freddy all over again if he could corner him. Thaddeus didn’t like the idea of petty criminals passing on information for favors, but that’s how you played with shape-shifting coyotes when you wanted them on your side. There wasn’t much of anything that got by the finely attuned ears of a coyote. Thaddeus growled, “In Romania, we would have strung him up and hit him with electric probes until he talked. We wouldn’t use kid gloves on a con artist and a thief.”

  “Hey, now. When in New York, you do as New Yorkers would do.” Todd perched up on the desk next to Thaddeus, then slid off again, tripping lightly around the room from one spot to another in what seemed to be a series of hops, behind him, a faint trail of golden particles that dissipated quickly into the air. Whenever Todd was anxious, restless, or simply had been standing in one spot for too long, his hyperactivity kicked in, causing him to move about so quickly, he phased between two realms. It was disconcerting for those who weren’t used to it. In fact, the flickering was so brief, people explained to themselves that it was a trick of the light, if they allowed themselves to acknowledge seeing it at all.

  “You can’t go around torturing the Native shape-shifters. The clans would never tolerate it. Besides, coyotes aren’t the only ones with their ears to the ground. Leprechauns can hear a coin drop one hundred yards away.” He flickered again and reappeared with one arm around my shoulders and the other around Thaddeus’ neck. “We also have a very effective means of making the clans talk that doesn’t involved torture. It’s called alcohol.”

  Thaddeus’ troubled face split into a grin. Maybe he was uptight about our liberal treatment of small-time crooks, which was necessary if we didn’t want to put half the city behind bars, but he enjoyed a good, cold beer as much as anyone. And Todd just happened to be a member of a family business that owned half a dozen bars scattered throughout the town. One of the bars was in downtown Manhattan, close to Central Park. “I call it a good way to wrap up the day,” Thaddeus responded agreeably.

  Todd had a good point. Officially, we were still off the case until Agent Winslow told us otherwise. Unofficially, we could continue to
investigate. The commissioner hadn’t removed us. Unofficially, going to a family-owned bar and listening to the rumbles and the rumors of the streets was not an investigation, just a pastime.

  I began tagging the files and putting them back in the desk. Although the others were reaching for their hats and jackets, Adrien hadn’t moved an inch. I turned toward him, a bound folder in my hand. “Are you with us, Adrien?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said without looking up. “We’re going with the leprechaun to get jolly and get lucky. Stink pool creatures have been popping up like boils. I was just checking something the mer people have been complaining about.”

  He said all this while still touching keys and swiping aside pages. As we began trooping out the door, he fell in step behind us, never once pausing to acknowledge a single soul existed. We got as far as the central room when the entrance door opened, and Agent Winslow waltzed in. I took one look at her face, which would have been cuter strawberry shortcake if she wasn’t always so angry, and that joyful flame of hope for a productive evening, sputtered out, snuffed dry by her snapping, green eyes. “Are you going somewhere?” She demanded, her hands on her nicely balanced hips.

  I stepped to one side to get around her, and she stepped with me, continuing to block our exit. “Listen…agent,” I said, emphasizing her title. “We don’t answer to you anymore, remember? You fired us.”

  “How long have you suspected cannibalism?” She demanded, stepping forward aggressively enough to cause me to back up a few steps.

  Adrien answered for me in the same detached voice he had been using for the last two hours. “It’s not cannibalism, precisely.”

  “It’s precisely not cannibalism?” She pushed past me and marched into my small, glassed-in office, pulling the blinds as she swept through. Man, those eyes sparkled like emeralds placed under a light when she was angry like that. She leaned against my desk, her hands planted so firmly, it would take a crowbar to remove them. “How is it not precisely cannibalism?” She glared at Adrien, who appeared not to notice.

  Thaddeus thought he’d make the situation easier. “What he’s saying is, to be cannibals, they have to be human. They might not be human.”

  She scoffed, a hard, deep sound in her throat. “We’ve found twelve different fragments from eight different sites since yesterday afternoon. Five separate victims. This morning we found a ribcage that had only partially decomposed. The cage had been carved through at the neck, severed from the legs and split down the spine. It had been roasted on a grill, then eaten. No animal has carving skills.”

  I decided to agree quickly so I could make a fast escape. Cold beer and a congenial atmosphere were calling to me. “You’re probably right. There is a cult involved. Probably, some new Hannibal following. They crop up now and then.”

  She crossed her feet at the ankles and kicked her shoes against the back of the desk. She didn’t wear high heels, exactly. Her shoes were short, over-the-ankle boots, with thick soles and piled heels that added an extra inch or so in height. They looked practical. They looked comfortable, but they didn’t add greatly to her size. “I want your notes,” she said decisively. “All of them. I want your witness statements. I want your evidence. I want you to remove that damned “classified” tab that screens me out of half your documents.”

  Todd did that twinkle thing of his, changing some of the computer code so it appeared she had full access to all our online reports. “You just failed to hit the “alt” button,” he said, pretending he had just gotten there. “It’s a safeguard built into our station.”

  She frowned as she scrolled through the largely redacted information. It was like looking for pieces to a puzzle that had been thrown together randomly and had no guarantee all the pieces were there. While we watched her trying to make sense of the data, Adrian sidled over to me and pointed down at his Brainiac device. “Trolls?” I whispered, using my lips only. “You’ve been researching trolls?”

  He nodded. I sighed and watched Agent Winslow still trying to organize the files into some type of order, so angry, her black, spiky hair stood up on its own, with no need for creams or gels. The day just couldn’t get any better.

  Tara

  I wasted an entire afternoon trying to get these four, misguided paladins to share their status reports with me. They appeared to be cooperative. They opened their data base on the main computer and gave me their paper files. It didn’t do a great deal of good. Some of the reports were so redacted, only a few sentences appeared. Taken out of context, they were just vague hints that could mean just about anything. Some of the witnesses used code names only and didn’t even have personal photos.

  Their personal reports were all written in Greek. As I rummaged through their metal cabinets, that twisted feeling in my gut nearly suffocated my ribs. Captain Greek God and his crew had their own coding system, own sense of organization, a sleight of hand Irish local, a Millennial who probably invented the dark web, a retired Romanian, who somehow was excluded from having to volunteer any type of information at all and the rude and inexcusable habit of using Greek as their written language.

  Every single item needed a prolonged explanation. After making a preemptory tour of the office and its contents, I dismissed the team for the evening, telling them I wanted them back at promptly seven a.m. the next morning. As they went out the door, I heard the short Irishman say jovially, “there ye have it, lads! A great night for a few beers and the pursuit of luck and ladies.”

  They defied all sense of order. They were something… I sat on the desk, trying to get a feel for the Captain who occupied it and how he commandeered his team. How he strategized. There was much they weren’t telling me, yet I didn’t believe they were covering a den of corrupt cops. They were loyal. They felt a sense of duty to their fellow man. But they were hiding something. The Romanian’s face turned pale and he began scratching his neck when I mentioned cannibalism, but he didn’t look surprised.

  Nor did the others. They had seemed embarrassed and unhappy, like they had been caught with their hands in the cookie jar, but it was what Thaddeus said that wouldn’t leave my mind. “They aren’t cannibals if they aren’t human.” If they weren’t humans, what would they be? Hybrids? Throw-backs? I’d watched too many X-files.

  A sleepless night, a long shower and a cream cheese bagel convinced me to start the morning over with a little sugar-coating for my new partnership. There are a lot of urban myths surrounding New York City, bed-time stories for teenagers popping chewing gum, but there is no denying, strange things happen, some of them stranger than the myths.

  The autopsy report had not given us a clear identity of the slayer. The carving was described to have been done with a “knife-like” blade, although no knife on record matched the clean slice through the bone. Teeth marks found on the rib bones suggested a slightly larger than human mouth, with two pairs of prominent upper and lower canines.

  I had a box of donuts sitting on the Captain’s desk when he came in that morning. I flashed him a smile, which he returned with a semi-favorable expression. “We started off on the wrong foot,” I said, by way of apology. “I’d like to start over.”

  The Irishman, Todd Murray, came in rubbing his hands together until he had captured a donut. “Another day, another new song to write. That’s what I always say.”

  “When did you say that?” Asked Adrien, setting down his coffee, but not his phone.

  Todd thought about it between large bites. “Maybe I didn’t. I think it was my cousin. He writes music when he isn’t singing and drinking.”

  “Not very often, then.”

  “Well, he sings best when he’s drinking, and nobody will buy his songs if he doesn’t sing.”

  Having finished with one donut, he reached for another, but stopped, his hand hovering in mid-air when Thaddeus growled, “that one’s mine.”

  He left the donut in question and picked up a cinnamon bun. “Now that you’ve given us a right and proper bribe, what can we do for you
, my lassie?”

  I looked around at this highly dubious group that seemed more interested in playing games than in catching murderers. “Let’s begin with the witness statements. Why are so many of them fragmented? Look at this. ‘The sun was low enough to throw long shadows. I think there was more than one. They were under the bridge, so it was hard to tell. They didn’t stand up straight.’ What does that tell us? There’s not one description that can’t be used!”

  “It happens in the shadows of the afternoon,” offered Thaddeus. “They stay in the shadows. And they’re short.”

  “It doesn’t say they are short,” I argued. “It says they didn’t stand straight.”

  “They’re probably short.”

  “So, some short people with unusually large mouths are abducting men and women of all sizes and barbecuing them?” I scrolled through my own dreary collection of observations that began with a careful research of modern Manhattan. I sighed and rubbed my eyes. There was a hot stabbing pain between them that would not go away. I had spent my entire evening trying to make sense of their erratic collection of notes, and the only ones that collaborated with my own documents were the emaciated fact listings of several unsolved mysteries that began in 1959 and led to our current situation.

  “Can we begin with this statement? ‘There were two; maybe three; all covered thickly with mud and hiding in the reeds. The sun flashed on some sort of blade, or an axe, maybe. It was a metal I’d never seen before, blue and very hard-looking, like a blue agate.’ The rest of the comments are all written in Greek.”

  “We were just discussing what type of metal it could be,” hedged Adonis. “I know your autopsy reports couldn’t identify it because ours couldn’t.”

  “So, you decided to discuss this in Greek?”

  Thaddeus, I believe, was trying to be helpful. Although his eyes rolled and the sweat trickled down from his upper lip, which he licked at constantly, he leaned toward me earnestly, scanning the bi-lingual statement. “Our expert in metallurgy is Greek. He suspects the weapon described uses a very ancient technology. We’ve been trying to tie it in to…” He groped for words.