Sirens in the Night

by Bradley, Michael;

  Sirens in the Night

  Michael Bradley

  Amberjack Publishing

  New York, New York

  Amberjack Publishing

  228 Park Avenue S #89611

  New York, NY 10003-1502

  http://amberjackpublishing.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, fictitious places, and events are the products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Michael Bradley

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, in part or in whole, in any form whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

  Bradley, Michael, 1970-

  Sirens in the night / Michael Bradley.

  pages cm

  ISBN 9780692517192 (pbk.)

  ISBN 9780692517208 (ebook)

  1. Mythology, Greek --Fiction. 2. Detectives --Pennsylvania --Philadelphia --Fiction. 3. Women detectives --Fiction. 4. Paranormal fiction. 5. Fantasy fiction. 6. Mystery and detective stories. I. Title.

  PS3602 .R34273 S57 2015

  813.6 -dc232015950083

  Cover Design: Jerilyn Hassell Pool

  Printed in the United States of America

  Author’s Note

  One of the challenges with writing a novel that is based in the world of radio broadcasting is the fact that it is necessary to identify a radio station by its call letters. The problem with this is that call letters often come and go at the station management’s whim. Stations often select call letters that either reflect the city they are in, or their format. When writing this story, I selected the call letters WPLX because the story takes place in Philadelphia. At the time of writing this story, those call letters are assigned to an AM radio station in Memphis, Tennessee.

  This is the long way of saying that this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and radio station call letters are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, radio stations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  “The more real things become, the more like myths they become.”

  Rainer Werner Fassbinder

  Chapter One

  Samantha Ballard cursed under her breath as she watched the line of cars on South Street remain motionless, just as they had for the past ten minutes. It was a typical Monday morning in Philadelphia with traffic tied up for blocks. She sat in the passenger seat of the Dodge Charger wondering if it would have been quicker to just get out and walk. Glancing out the side window, she took in the scenery, which was mostly brick, concrete, glass, and graffiti. A man, who was carrying a laptop bag, walked along the sidewalk past the car, moving at what seemed like the speed of light compared to her own forward progress. She could see the bus stop ahead at the corner of South Street and Fifteenth Street, with a dozen people waiting for the next bus. Despite having the Charger’s windows closed she could still smell the acrid exhaust violating her olfactory senses from the idle cars and trucks ahead. Someday I’ll end up with cancer from sitting in too many of the city’s traffic jams, Samantha thought.

  Flipping down the sun visor over her seat, Samantha gazed at herself in the small mirror. With a flick of her hand, she brushed a few stray auburn hairs back into place. Just like every other Monday, her hazel eyes seemed dull and tired. Although she had gotten eight hours of sleep the night before, she still felt like crap. Samantha was no longer the kind to go out and party hard all weekend, and then rise early on Monday ready for another week. Telling herself that she was too old to still be acting like a college student, she had given up most of that life a few years ago. She was only thirty-three, but she knew her limits.

  Her partner, Peter Thornton, gripped the steering wheel and joked, “Lookin’ to hook up at the crime scene?”

  Returning the sun visor to its original position, Samantha glanced at her partner. The tall African-American was five years younger than Samantha, a fresh faced college boy who had “rising star” written all over him. His face reminded Samantha of an inverted teardrop, with a round top covered in dark, close cropped hair, and a chin that formed a dull point. Dark eyebrows matched his hair, and rested above two narrow brown eyes.

  Her captain had assigned the homicide division rookie to Samantha as her new partner three months ago, and it had been a long three months. She had never had much patience when it came to “mentoring” her fellow officers. Her previous partner, Eddie Murdock, had retired four months ago with a full pension and plans to move south to get away from the harsh Philadelphia winters. Having been together for five years, Samantha and Eddie had a routine, and they understood each other. It was almost as if they could read each other’s minds. It was the rapport that she missed the most. Peter asked too many questions, forcing her to stop doing something that she could normally do with her eyes closed, and actually think it through in order to answer his inquiry. It was driving Samantha crazy.

  “Not really into that sort of thing,” she replied, turning her eyes to gaze at the traffic before them.

  Peter gave a quick snort. “What are you into?”

  Samantha refused to look his way. She knew he was just speaking in jest, but she wasn’t in the mood. “You’ve heard the rumors. You figure it out.” She gave him a quick glance and a half smile. “Now piss off.” Peter chuckled.

  The Ford pickup in front of them started to move, so Peter gently inched the car forward as well. Beginning to regret telling her partner to skip the lights and Sirens, Samantha went back to staring out the window, and thought of the past. She had been on the Philadelphia police force for ten years, five as a uniformed officer and five as a detective. Even as a child, it seemed that she was destined to be a police officer. Her father had been a uniformed officer in Philadelphia for twenty-five years, until he was killed in the line of duty. Her grandfather, on the other hand, had been lucky and retired from the force after thirty years. By the time she had turned five, her father had already taught her how to fire his department-issued revolver. These days, she could shoot rings around most of her fellow detectives. Before she had turned twelve, she knew every legal move for taking down a perp, as well as a few illegal ones. By her seventeenth birthday, Samantha could recite almost every rule and regulation in the department. It seemed that she had been fated to become part of the thin blue line.

  As an old man, wearing torn trousers and a stained T-shirt, pushed a rusted shopping cart filled with trash bags past them on the sidewalk, Samantha felt momentarily nostalgic for her days as a uniformed officer walking a beat on the streets of the city. Patrolling the city had never been easy, but the one thing she loved was getting to know the people who lived and worked along her beat. Whether they were male or female, homeless or millionaires, young or old, she would remember the names of each and every one. It was a trick that her father had taught her. Now, the only faces that she remembered were the ones that had been brutally murdered.

  Peter Thornton turned the steering wheel to the right as he guided the unmarked police car onto Broad Street. Traffic was flowing only slightly better, with their progress being a slow crawl as opposed to a complete standstill. As they inched up the busy thoroughfare, Samantha could see their destination ahead indicated by the flashing red and blue lights of two police cars par
ked in front of the building. Five minutes later, Peter nosed the Dodge into a space between the two other police cars. Samantha glanced at her watch—eight thirty-seven.

  Pushing the car door open, she said, “Let’s see what we got.”

  The crisp, chilly March air forced Samantha to slide her hands into her grey overcoat, and push it closed in front of her. It had been a colder than normal March, and it didn’t look as if it would warm up anytime soon. Sidestepping to avoid a puddle of water left from the previous evening’s rain, Samantha stepped up onto the sidewalk and surveyed the scene before her. The old six-story brick building was nothing more than a shell. The windows and doors had been removed, leaving nothing but gaping holes between the dark red brickwork. A large green dumpster, filled to the brim with lumber and other construction rubbish, sat to the right of the entryway of the building. Construction workers, most with yellow hard hats pushed back from their foreheads, milled around the exterior of the building talking and laughing amongst themselves. When Samantha strode by, the workers fell silent, some giving her physique their undivided attention, their eyes scanning her from head to toe. Others, however, turned away, avoiding eye contact with the police. Her five foot five trim physique was the result of years of a rigorous fitness routine that Samantha followed religiously. It was expected that every officer on the Philadelphia police force stay physically fit. For her, it was doubly so. Even during these enlightened times, there were still men in her male-dominated workplace that would look for any excuse to get her fired. She didn’t smile, or even look in the construction workers’ direction, leaving them to watch her pass. She wondered how many of those that averted their eyes had criminal records.

  With Peter at her heels, Samantha climbed the three concrete steps that led into the old building. If she had found the exterior to be just a shell, the interior seemed even more so. The floor had been stripped down to the plywood subfloor, and the walls were nothing more than two-by-four studs. A string of bare light bulbs illuminated the interior of the building in harsh white shades of bright incandescent light. A uniformed officer had been waiting for their arrival by the entryway.

  “You get stuck in traffic?” the officer asked as they approached.

  “No. We stopped to pick up doughnuts for you and your partner.” Samantha glared at the officer. “We’re nice like that.”

  The officer gave a mock laugh. “Ha, real funny.”

  “You reported a triple homicide?” asked Peter.

  “Down those stairs.” The officer gestured toward a flight of stairs in the far corner. “Sergeant Williams is waiting for you.” Pausing, the officer added, “Some weird shit down there. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Briskly brushing past the officer, Samantha replied, “Lucky you’re not leading the investigation then.”

  Pulling a small flashlight from her coat pocket, Samantha shone the beam down the dimly lit stairwell leading underneath the old building. The concrete stairs were damp and slick, and the two detectives had to tread with care to keep from falling. The chamber below was cold, dark, and empty with the exception of the three figures standing at the far end.

  “Over here,” said a raised voice.

  As Samantha approached, she could see two more uniformed officers and another man standing around the top end of an aluminum ladder, which disappeared into a dark hole in the floor. Sergeant Williams, wearing a white uniform shirt and black trousers, turned and waved to Samantha and Peter. His white octagonal police hat was pushed back on his head, with wisps of dark hair peeking out from under the brim. The dark skin of his pudgy face showed the lines of a twenty-year veteran of the police force. Because of her father, Samantha had known Williams for many years. There were a few officers still on the force who could say they had watched Samantha grow up. One or two had even kept their eye on Samantha after her father had been killed. Williams had been one of those. The other officer, who, she thought, had all the looks of a rookie, was unfamiliar to her. The lanky, young policeman looked ill at ease in his pale blue uniform shirt, and his trousers still had the “fresh from the package” crease down the front.

  Extending his hand to Samantha, Williams said, “Sam, good to see you. Got a bizarre one for you.” Williams turned, and gestured to the third man. “This is Stanley Henderson, assistant foreman for Rhinehold Construction. He discovered the bodies this morning.”

  Peter Thornton pulled a pair of latex gloves from his coat pocket, and as he pulled them over his hands, asked, “Where are they?”

  Williams pointed toward the ladder. “Down there.”

  _______________

  Samantha’s feet touched the cobblestone-covered ground as she stepped off the bottom rung of the ladder. The fetid air was a musty mix of odors, from mildew to a faint smell of vomit. Clicking on her flashlight again, she swept the room with the beam of light to get her bearings. The walls and low ceiling of the near claustrophobic chamber were lined with rotting timbers held in place with old peg and hole construction. Centered in the floor was a round opening, like an oversized manhole Samantha would have expected to see on any street in the city. An oxidized ring of iron encircled the outer edge of the opening, and must have been, at Samantha’s best guess, at least a century or more old. Attached by a crude hinge on one side of the ring was a heavy iron hatch, five inches thick. Embedded into the cobblestone surrounding the opening were eight thick iron hoops, covered, like everything else, in layers of rust and oxidation. A long length of chain, with its metallic links corroded with age, snaked across the floor, ending in a pile in the far corner. Aiming her flashlight into the hole, Samantha discovered a well about ten feet deep by her estimation. It was a narrow shaft with red bricks forming the outer walls. The sandy bottom of the shaft was uneven, and, although she couldn’t be sure, appeared to hold the indentation of numerous footprints.

  As her light swept to the opposite corner, it froze on the three occupants of the chamber. They were seated on the floor with their backs propped against the wall. The attire adorning the three corpses seemed as modern as anything she would see on the streets above her. Blue denim jeans, grey trousers, white shirt and tie, tan work boots, and even a green Philadelphia Eagles sweatshirt seemed like perfectly normal attire to find on a modern day corpse. What caused Samantha to shudder were the faces and hands of the three bodies. The skin on each face had a color and texture more like dried, cracking leather than human flesh, and had sunken in around the skull, showing a distinctive outline of the underlying bone structure. The flesh on the fingers of each hand had the same leathery appearance as the face, and also seemed to have shrunk around the bones, revealing every joint. The eyeballs looked lifeless and unreal, as if they had been substituted for eggshells. Stepping off the ladder behind her, Peter Thornton turned and followed her gaze.

  “Whoa! Didn’t expect that!” he exclaimed.

  Taking a cautious step forward, Samantha felt uneasy and a little fearful. The scene seemed like something out of a horror film. Between the modern clothing and the dried mummified remains, she couldn’t help but wonder if someone was playing an elaborate hoax. She knelt down before the middle corpse to get a closer look, and immediately felt ill. She fought back the bile that was rising from her stomach.

  Upon closer examination, Samantha noted that each corpse had hair, which was something that she never remembered seeing on any museum mummy. The first corpse had a full head of dirty blonde hair, which looked freshly washed and styled. The thinning hair on the second corpse was grey. And, although bald, the third corpse had a tuft of dark chest hair peeking out from under the green sweatshirt. A silver watch dangled from the emaciated wrist of one of the bodies, and a gold wedding band hung precariously from the bony knuckle of another. Around the neck of the bald corpse was a silver chain, on the end of which hung a St. Christopher medallion. Standing beside her, Peter summed up his own assessment of the unusual crime scene succinctly by sa
ying, “It’s a hoax. It’s got to be.”

  Without responding, Samantha rose to her feet, and swung the flashlight around the chamber once again. The beam halted on the iron hatch, and she studied the reddish orange object carefully. The metal work was crude compared to modern day standards. It was pitted and uneven, with round indentations scattered around the surface. Samantha stepped closer, and peered at the dents. As she focused her flashlight on one of them, she was surprised to see a row of four smaller depressions. Studying the markings, she felt certain they looked familiar.

  “Peter, come look at this,” she said, using the beam of light as a pointer. “What do you make of these dents?”

  Peter gave the hatch a cursory glance. “Solid iron, pretty damn old by the looks of it. Maybe happened when the hatch was forged?”

  Silence fell over the chamber as Samantha continued to examine the markings on the hatch. She tilted her head to one side, and then sighed. Making a fist, she looked at her hand for a moment before gently inserting it into one of the indentations on the hatch. The knuckles on her hand slid into the row of small depressions almost perfectly.

  Looking up at Peter, she said, “Tell me something. How strong do you have to be to dent iron with your fist?”

  _______________

  The forensics team was just arriving when Samantha and Peter emerged from the dark hole. Sergeant Williams was still standing above with Stanley Henderson and the other officer. Samantha peeled off the latex gloves from her hands, and slid her flashlight back into her coat pocket.

  “Who upchucked in the corner down there?” she asked.

  Williams smiled. “It’s Stoltz’s first murder scene.” He jerked his thumb toward the young officer. “Couldn’t keep his Egg McMuffin down.”