Jeff Rovin - Vespers

“What was the condition of the bicycle?”Gentry asked.

“Absolutely intact,” Moreaux told him. “Spokes, paint job, everything. It was just lying near the curb. A little later in the day, with more traffic, it probably would’ve been ripped off.”

Gentry thanked him. He got on the computer and asked the interlinked citywide Stat Unit for a list of any reported carjackings or parked-auto thefts the night before, anywhere from the Bronx down to the Upper West Side. Nothing had been reported. Often, joyriders will stop and grab a “snack” for the road. A lone woman on a bicycle would have been a perfect target, bumped and abducted. Sometimes the kidnappers will kill them and dump them when they’re finished; that was what had happened to the dead woman Gentry had pulled from the Hudson River. But joyriders don’t typically stop, crawl into a subway tunnel, gut a body, then leave it underground. Besides, a good nudge from a car usually leaves a mark on a bicycle.

Gentry went down the hall and refilled his coffee cup. Then he turned to accident reports that had been filed last night and early this morning by personnel in his unit. A horse-drawn carriage colliding with a bicycle deliveryman. A window box falling onto a woman walking her daughter to school. Nineteen others. He signed all but one and left them to be filed. Then-leaving his door open in case the phone rang-Gentry went over to the squad pit with the unsigned report, an investigation into an early morning fire at a Times Square movie theater. Apparently, a broken wire had shorted inside the wall of the projection booth. There was a little bit of smoke and no one was injured.

“Do you have any idea what caused the wire to break?” Gentry asked.

“Looks like a nail might’ve gone through it during renovation,” the officer said. “The Fire Department’s bureau of investigation has that one.”

“Did you make it to the booth?”

“Yes.”

“Was there any kind of unusual smell up there?”

“Just the burning insulation.”

“What’d it smell like?”

The officer shrugged. “It smelled like burning rubber, Detective.”

“Not ammonia?”

“No.”

“Any cockroaches running around?”

“Not that I noticed.”

“Thanks,” Gentry said.

“Can I ask what this is about?” the officer said.

“Yeah. I was thinking some bats might’ve gotten into the wall and chewed through the wire. Their guano smells like burning leaves and they scare the hell out of bugs.”

Gentry went back to his office and signed the report. He turned to the computer and input the keywordbats. He restricted the search to the past two days but asked it to include all of New York State. The database would provide any instances where local or state police had been called regarding bats.

There were four. In addition to the incident at the Central Park Zoo and the assault in Westchester, a motorist fixing a tire on Interstate 87 in Kingston, New York, had been bitten by “a group” of bats. He managed to get back in his car and drive himself to a hospital. That happened two nights ago. One night ago a woman leaving work at the South Hills Mall in Poughkeepsie was attacked in the parking lot. A security guard who was on patrol heard her cries and pulled her into his car. In both cases the bats left when the people did.

The phone beeped and Gentry jumped. He picked it up just as he realized that Kingston to Poughkeepsie to Westchester to NewYork was a straight line down the Hudson.

“Detective Gentry here-”

“Robert, it’s Chris Henry.”

“Hi. You get everything okay?”

“I did,” Henry said. “I appreciate it, I think. It’s a nasty one. What about the missing organs?”

“The Metro North police are going to keep looking. If they find them, you’ll get them.”

“Good. I also wanted to make sure you don’t need a full rundown right away. This one’s gonna take time.”

“I figured.”

“I will tell you what you probably already know: Whoever did this is some fucked-up piece of work. I took a quick look for signs of sexual attack. There’s nothing. But there is one thing I noticed. Some very strange marks on a couple of the rib fragments.”

“Strange?”

“Yeah. Deep gouges, like knife wounds. Only they’re fatter and rounder than a knife blade. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Any guesses what made them?”

“A lion,” he snickered. “If it wasn’t that, you got me.”

Gentry felt his stomach burn a little. Nancy had said something about big cat teeth too.

The detective asked Henry to make exact measurements of the gouges and to beep him when he had the figures. Then he hung up.

A mountain lion,he thought. What the hell did that have to do with bats? Nothing. It made no sense. Gentry was about to call Nancy at the museum when the phone rang.

It was Nancy.

“You’re back,” she said. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

Her enthusiasm sounded a little on the light side. Or maybe that was just his own guilty interpretation.

“Thanks,” he said. “I got in a few minutes ago. I was just about to call you.”

“Did you find anything in the room that I should know about?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” he said. “The bats were definitely there-”

“Were they still there?”

“No. But there were fifteen victims. All dead.”

She was silent.

“Most of them looked like they’d been sleeping. They were badly lacerated and covered with guano.”

“How fresh did the guano look?”

“Exactly like the stuff in the tunnel,”Gentry said. “I’m waiting for lab results. Although there was one thing-my forensics guy said that one of the victims looked like she’d been attacked by a lion.”

“Was he serious?”

“It wasn’t a scientific judgment, if that’s what you mean. Just an off-the-cuff observation. Nancy, can we talk about this face to face?”

“Why?”

“Because I want to brief you and I want to apologize for what happened down in the tunnel. I’m also sorry about the way it happened. I told you, it wasn’t personal. It was just-the way it had to be.”

“Had to be?”

“Yeah. It’s a long story.”

Joyce was silent again. Then she asked, “Can you come up to the museum?”

“I can.”

“All right. When the professor and I are finished, we’ll talk. We’re on the fifth floor, Professor Lowery’s lab. There’s a private elevator-ask one of the security people.”

“Thanks. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Gentry hung up, then sped through the eight messages on his voicemail. He forwarded a few to Detectives Anthony and Malcolm, saved the rest, then hurried downstairs. Anyone who needed to reach him could get his pager number off the voicemail message. He stopped in Captain Sheehy’s office and informed him that he’d like to spend time on the Grand Central killings. The precinct commander was surprised by Gentry’s interest in a hardcore case but okayed the request, as long as the detective didn’t step on the toes of the homicide team that was also investigating the deaths. Sheehy said he didn’t want an IDPS-an intradepartmental political shitstorm. Gentry said he didn’t anticipate the two investigations overlapping. Then he bummed a ride from a patrol car heading uptown.

While he was in the car, his pager beeped. He looked down, expecting it to be Chris Henry. It wasn’t.

It was Ari Moreaux.

The Christopher Street subway station serves west Greenwich Village and New York University. To the south, it allows riders access to the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island ferry, and a transferride into Brooklyn. To the north, it’s a short hop to Times Square, Lincoln Center, Columbia University, and Grant’s Tomb.