Immortal City

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Sylvester sat in his darkened cubicle in the Homicide Division, bathed in the blue glow of his computer screen and the yellow cast of the emergency lighting. The storm had knocked out the power, but the backup generator at the station had kicked on almost immediately. The reduced output was running the computers and the televisions and the few dim emergency lights. The amber glow made the normally bright and sterile police station look strange and eerie.

Rivulets of rain traced down the windows as the downpour continued outside.

Sylvester’s cubicle was a temporary one that had been set up for him in the open-air bull pen the detectives all shared. He himself was usually downstairs in a windowless room, double-checking paperwork for other investigators or handling the occasional small property crime. It had been years since he had been invited upstairs. He hadn’t had time to unpack yet. All around him were unorganized stacks of folders and still-unopened file boxes. On top of one of the boxes sat a tub of Red Vines. An indulgence.

The detective had been up at 5 a.m. that morning, investigating another pair of gruesome severed wings. Another star, another Angel — Lance Crossman, who had already been missing. Now probably dead, though they hadn’t found the body yet, only his wings, which had been broken in many places, twisted and cracked. This time the killer hadn’t left them on Lance’s star — with the police barricades and the media coverage, there was no way he or she would have been able to do so unnoticed. Instead, they’d been securely wrapped and delivered anonymously to ACPD headquarters. The desk sergeant who’d had the misfortune of opening the package had been taken to the hospital in severe shock.

After that, Sylvester had gone down to Long Beach.

Local police had fished a mutilated, bloated body out of the bay just hours before — Theodore Godson. At least the press hadn’t been able to get any pictures.

Other detectives in ACPD had no leads on this case, and the Angels weren’t being helpful. They’d just wanted it swept under the rug until after the Commissioning, although someone had already leaked to the press the night before that Angels were being killed. A surge of calls with supposed tips flooded the ACPD offices. Sylvester had been out interviewing potential witnesses all day and all night, trying to unearth solid intel. Or the body of this third victim.

Instead all he’d been able to collect was gossip, like the fact that Ryan Templeton had had a secret cocaine problem. Not very heavenly of him.

On Sylvester’s computer screen were gruesome images of the crime scenes. Disembodied wings. Glistening blood splattered over the famous stars of the Walk of Angels. He studied the images, scrutinizing them for details that he had missed. As he did, the glitz and glamour of the boulevard seemed to mix and blur with the blood and carnage in a very unsettling way.

He flipped to a prison photo of a man with an unkempt beard and an otherworldly look in his eyes. William Beaubourg. Sylvester had interviewed the three arrested HDF members at the Tombs jail downtown, trying to figure out what they knew about the murders and Beaubourg’s current whereabouts. After being released from San Quentin prison earlier this year, Beaubourg had immediately disappeared, releasing videos on the Internet that talked about the coming “War on Angels.” The jailed operatives seemed to hint to Sylvester that the HDF was behind the Angel murders. But were they just trying to gain notori-ety for their cause? Sylvester was unable to piece together what Angel would be helping the HDF. But he couldn’t rule them out.

And then there was Mark. Sylvester was still hunting for hard evidence — all the dots weren’t connecting to point to Mark Godspeed as the culprit. But Sylvester’s gut told him that the Archangel was somehow involved. The detective had already cleared Jackson. His alibi had entirely held up, and he had been seen in public during the time at which forensics figured Templeton was murdered. Plus Sylvester’s long-honed intuition told him the Godspeed kid was clean.

Unlike most of the Immortal City.

But Mark: the way he had almost totally discounted Sylvester’s findings, even basically threatening to discredit the detective. How he merely wanted to cover up the murders, not help with the investigation. Was he going for a strange power play among the Archangels? Was managing this panic somehow going to allow him to consolidate control? Sylvester thought back to Mark’s actions almost twenty years before. With those actions in mind, Sylvester would put nothing beyond him. There was no way he could be trusted.

Sylvester flipped through more files, rubbing his burning eyes. He leafed through a stack of reports Garcia had gathered from locals living near the crime scenes.

Anybody who thought they had seen something strange had been interviewed. Most were nothing of interest, just fancies of worried people, but he took the time to scan through them anyway. One of the reports he stopped on was from a homeless man who had been sleeping in a doorway next to Theodore Godson’s star on the night of the first incident.

The report was several pages long and appeared to be nothing more than the rant of a drunk or a drug addict. Sylvester groaned, pulling the report out of the stack and setting it aside.

Then he stopped. Something on the page had caught his eye. He looked at Garcia’s neat handwriting. There was that word again.

Beast.

He began reading. The man described seeing a black, shimmering beast on the boulevard that night that had seven heads and horrible, twisted horns. But then again the man went on to say the beast looked nothing like the alien spaceship he had seen the previous week. Sylvester sat back in his chair and thought. The witness was clearly unreliable, but the description was familiar to him. And specific. The man had counted seven heads.

He felt a sudden surge of adrenaline as his mind made the connection. He slid the tub of Red Vines off the file box and dug around until he found what he was looking for. His King James Bible. He flipped the book open, paged through to Revelation, and started to read.

It took him only a minute to find it. Revelation 13:1.

He read it twice to himself to be sure: And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

A beast, he thought. He sifted through the reports again, reading them with new eyes. He picked out key phrases from the interviews, felt a strange presence at night, and sinking feeling of terror in the dark. They weren’t just worried. They were feeling something. Sensing that something was wrong. He was convinced. Something as old as time itself, something terrible and forgotten — a myth — was in fact real. And it was loose in the city. His intuition had been right the whole time. He couldn’t prove it, but he knew it as surely as he knew anything. He reached back into the file box and rifled around again until he pulled out a small, ornamental box made of brass. The outside had a series of engravings between small jewels inset in the metal. He looked at it and took a deep breath.

Suddenly a voice from behind startled him.

“Sir?”

He turned to see Garcia.

“What is it?”

“You better come see this,” the sergeant said.

“Jackson Godspeed flying out of his Commissioning?

I heard. But I’ve ruled him out already.”

“You’ll want to see this anyway.” Garcia’s expression was grave. Sylvester set the box carefully on the desk in front of him and rose out of his chair.

They walked down the hall together, their bodies throwing long shadows in the amber glow of the emergency lights. Garcia led him to the TV in the waiting room, where several people had already gathered to watch the ANN special report. A serious-looking anchor was announcing the breaking news.

“Angel City police officials won’t comment at this time,” he said, “but in what may turn out to be the story of the year, Jackson Godspeed has been linked to the series of gruesome Angel attacks on the boulevard this week. And amid the outcry in Angel City, Senator-elect Ted Linden has called for special hearings on Capitol Hill around what he calls the ‘Angel Question.’”

Sylvester turned to Garcia.

“Jackson? Who did this?”

“Wasn’t me,” the sergeant said. “And it wasn’t anyone on our team, either. I checked.”

Sylvester turned and walked quickly back down the hall. Passing his station in the bull pen, he walked back toward the offices and burst into Captain Keele’s office without knocking. The captain, who was signing some paperwork, barely raised an eye as Sylvester came in.

“Oh good, David, we were just about to have you join us.” He motioned with his pen behind Sylvester. “These gentlemen are here from the NAS. From the Council’s Disciplinary Department, I’m sure you’re. . familiar with it?”

Sylvester looked behind Keele. He could just make out the outline of two large figures in the darkened office. They seemed imposing, ominous. He couldn’t see their faces. He turned back to the captain.

“Sir, Jackson Godspeed has nothing to do with this.

That is a totally unrelated situation.”

“You yourself had him questioned—”

“And quickly ruled him out.”

The captain regarded Sylvester patiently.

“They seem to think otherwise, Detective. They say they have good reason to suspect him, and I’m inclined to believe them. I think they have more experience in these matters, wouldn’t you agree?”

Sylvester looked at the captain in disbelief.

“Then show me the evidence,” he countered. “They can sit down with me at my desk and show me what they’ve found. If I think it’s relevant to the case, I’ll share what we know from the crime scenes.”

Captain Keele leaned forward in his chair, the leather chirping.

“David, how long have we known each other?”

“A long time, sir.”

“Good. Then you can trust me when I tell you to just leave this one be,” he said. “Let this go.”

Sylvester was furious.

“This is my investigation—”

“Actually, it’s not,” the captain said, his voice turning impatient. “The chief and I are handing the investigation over to the NAS. They’re simply more experienced and better prepared to handle this sort of thing than we are. The department will, of course, still be involved, but in an auxili-ary capacity. You’ll be providing them with any assistance they need, and they will be making the decisions. Understood?”

Sylvester glanced at the two shadowy figures again.

They had not moved since he entered.

“These orders didn’t happen to come directly from Mark Godspeed, did they?” Sylvester asked.

The captain looked down at his desk.

“Sir, whatever’s doing this is extremely powerful, and extremely dangerous,” Sylvester said. “Something terrible is out there, something from another world, and I’m getting closer to finding it. This investigation is too important to be used as a public relations stunt for the NAS. In fact, there is reason to believe high-standing members of the Archangels might be involved in this violence.”

The captain’s gaze flickered briefly to the agents standing in the back. His expression was almost embarrassed.

“David, I think I made a mistake when I pulled you off your light duties. I can see now that you’re not emotionally equipped to handle something like this at present. Starting Monday, you’ll resume your work downstairs. Now I want you to go home and get some sleep. You look like you need it. That’s all.”

Sylvester turned without saying anything and left the office.

He walked slowly back down the hall to his temporary cubicle and sat. His computer monitor had clicked over to a colorful screen saver. He removed his glasses and polished them.

After a moment Garcia appeared from the hall again.

“I heard,” he said.

“Go home, Bill,” Sylvester said. “Your wife and daughter haven’t seen you for days.” Garcia looked regretful, but nodded in assent.

“For what it’s worth, sir, you did a hell of a good job on this one.”

Sylvester looked up.

“You proved a lot of people wrong, sir, including me.”

Garcia hesitated a moment longer, then turned and shuffled away down the hall.

Just as he was getting closer to the truth, the NAS was pulling him off the case. Mark Godspeed was pulling him off the case.

Sylvester sat back in his chair and stared at the small box he had set on his desk. A minute passed. Then two. Suddenly he sat forward and began scooping up files and papers and stuffing them into his satchel. He threw in his Bible, along with a handful of Red Vines from the tub. Then he picked up the small box again, opened the lid, and looked inside. Appearing satisfied at what he saw, the detective snapped it closed and put it in his pocket. Standing, he pulled on his overcoat from the wobbly rack in the corner and prepared to face the weather outside.

It was going to be a long night, and he had work to do.