Deader Still

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.

“This side’s mostly blank,” he said, taking a picture anyway. “Probably weathered away over the years by wind. I’ll send these to the Department if you want to head back there and see if you can decipher any of it after blowing them up.”

“Or I can just check this marvelous thing called the Internet,” I said.

Connor gave me a stern look. “Yeah, well, maybe these will show something the others don’t,” he said. “The Inter-net doesn’t solve all, especially when it comes to the occult. Just get going.”

I hesitated. I didn’t necessarily want to go back downtown to the offices, but Connor was clearly trying to reassert his authority over me after the lead I had been given by the Inspectre.

“What, kid?” he said, but it wasn’t just his normal shortness with me. He looked pissed off. Was it just the job, or was it something more? Connor walked over, meeting me eye to eye.

“Is that a problem?” he asked.

I shook my head no immediately. I didn’t like being put in my new role of responsibility, especially if it meant this type of confrontation came with it. Connor must have seen the look of fear and concern in my eyes. He backed off.

“Sorry, kid,” he said. There was a weariness on his face I had never seen before. “There’s just a lot going on right now.”

“You wanna talk about it?” I offered.

Immediately, the anger returned to his face. Anger and fear. “No. Just drop it, okay?”

This was a new attitude for Connor, and he didn’t wear it well. Back when we had been testing my skills, he had started to trust me as a partner. That trust meant a lot, especially since it had partly concerned the disappearance of his brother. Now it seemed gone, and I made a decision not to push it for now. I had already pushed my luck by going through his desk. I changed the subject.

“What about the booth back at Comic Con?” I said. “Won’t Inspectre Quimbley need me there?”

“Don’t worry,” Connor said, relaxing with the switch to more mundane subject matter. “I can cover the booth with the Inspectre.”

The thought didn’t exactly thrill me. If I wasn’t there to monitor the situation, what might the Inspectre possibly tell my partner about the case? Would the fact that I outrank Connor on this investigation come up?

I didn’t think so. Orders given under the confidence of the Fraternal Order of Goodness were usually not discussed with outsiders. At least, I hoped that was the case.

Handling the actual investigation of Cleopatra’s Needle all by myself back at the Lovecraft Café would give me a chance to find out if it meant anything to the case at all.

“Sure,” I said, resigning myself to his orders. It was just easier to let Connor think he was in control, especially because he didn’t look like he wanted to be crossed at the moment. Besides, his instincts in this investigation seemed to be leading us in the right direction, so no harm, no foul.

“I’ll log what I know with Godfrey or one of the other archivists once I get a better idea what arcane connections this thing might have,” I said.

Connor nodded and I started up the path leading to the park’s Fifth Avenue exit.

“Oh, and kid?” he shouted after me. I turned. Connor was staring down at the base of the spire where the jogger had been found. “Don’t make any plans for tomorrow morning. Davidson said the time of death was sometime between four and six.”

“Let’s hope this ghost jogger is a repeater, then,” I said. I didn’t relish the idea of waiting for this ghost to appear again, but the likelihood of it showing up was stronger during the hours it had originally died. “So what time are we talking?” My body already ached from our chase, and without an early bedtime, I knew it would be as stiff as a board come morning. I wasn’t looking forward to it.

Connor checked his watch.

“On second thought,” he said. “Maybe you just better meet me here at three a.m.”

“You sure it’s wise to be here that late at night?” I shouted back down the hill. “You’re wary of the park in daylight hours.”

“Kid, the idea of being here at night terrifies me,” he said, looking around, “but I’m sick of playing catch-up on this case. If we go back to the docks now, we’d simply be wasting time. We need to catch this ghost if we’re going to get some answers. We’ve got a job to do, and even though I’m not happy about being out here at three a.m., at least I can take comfort that I won’t be alone in my misery.”

Connor smiled and turned back to the spire just in time to miss me flipping him off, which, all in all, was probably a good thing. I didn’t need to give him any excuses when we met up later tonight to push me into the path of any creepy crawlies or boogeymen we might run into.