Anton Strout - Deader Still

I shied the pages away from him, hiding the fact that they were still blank. Great. Wesker would be back any minute, and now I had to leave.

“Stop hanging over my shoulder, would ya?” I said. “Give me a second to finish up.”

“Simon . . .” Connor said impatiently and, at the sound of my name, I decided the least I could do was write it down on the sheet.

NAME: Simon Canderous

DIVISION: Other

Then I scanned down the first page until I hit the only essay question:

HOW DO YOU FEEL YOU PERFORMED THE DUTIES ASSIGNED TO YOU WITHIN THE CAPACITY OF YOUR DIVISION?

I stared at it for a moment longer, then hastily scrawled:

Didn’t die.

I snapped the number two pencil in half, stood up, and headed off toward Connor. He handed me back my retractable bat and we pushed through a crowd of Sand People as we headed for the door. I resisted the urge to take my bat to them.

We stopped at a deli to fill my pockets with Life Savers, Connor’s treat. The guy behind the counter didn’t even blink an eye, but this was no surprise. We were only a block away from the Javits Center, and with two Spider-Men, one Co-nan, and three cross-dressing Buffy’s in line behind us, buying eighteen packs of Life Savers looked pretty normal.

When we were done, we headed west toward the water, the cool wind of the river intensifying as we got closer.

“You sure I’m going to need all these?” I asked. I looked down at my bulging pockets. I felt like a squirrel storing up nuts for the long winter.

“Not sure, kid,” he said, darkness in his voice. “Just want you to be ready. We don’t want you sending your body into hypoglycemic shock.”

If Connor was stocking me up with this much life-savery sugar, we were probably heading for something big.

“You mind telling me what’s going on?” I asked.

Connor shook his head.

“I’d rather you see for yourself. I don’t want to put any ideas in your head before you get a chance to check out the scene.”

We crossed the West Side Highway and headed north toward Pier 84. Police tape ran across the entrance to the pier and a few cops were lingering nearby, but none of them would make any sort of direct eye contact with either of us, which was unusual. More often than not, the regular cops regarded the Department of Extraordinary Affairs as a bullshit operation, and we were constantly the butt of their derisive jokes. This time, however, there was a cloud of quiet hanging over the cops that I liked even less than their usual disdain.

Luckily, David Davidson, our liaison with City Hall, was waiting for us outside a small office complex farther along the pier. He was politics personified, but with one foot in our paranormal world, he was also the best friend we had when we wanted to get anything done in this city—when he wasn’t busy being just as helpful to a million other (and often evil) interests.

After showing our badges to the cops manning the police tape line, we ducked under it and headed toward Davidson. The wind blew his tan trench coat out behind him like a superhero cape, making me wonder if he might be heading over to the Javits Center later to hang with that crowd.

“Gentlemen,” he said, forcing a practiced smile. He shook hands with both of us, but the smile disappeared in a grim flash.

Connor seemed unfazed by it all. “Still aiding and abetting the enemy, Davidson?” he said. “The Office of Plausible Deniability keeping you busy?”

“Listen,” Davidson answered with smoothness in his voice. “The mayor has the interests of all his constituents to consider. Politics is a slippery slope. You know that, Connor. And when we took up the clarion call of the Sectarians Rights Movement, well . . . Even we make missteps sometimes.”

I looked back over my shoulder at the somber faces of cops.

“What’s got everyone so spooked?” I asked.

Davidson cleared his throat and looked at me with eyes that often held a hypnotic quality, but didn’t today. “Harbor patrol dragged one of those booze cruise boats in today after the boating company reported that it hadn’t returned to port last night. Party boarded at six thirty; ship left at seven and should have been back around ten after circling Manhattan.”

“A three-hour tour,” Connor said, trying to sound like Thurston Howell but failing on every level. “Were the Professor and Mary Ann on board?”

Davidson gave him a look that shut him down. I reminded myself to thank him later. If I had to hear Connor call me “Lovey” one more time . . .

The sound of footsteps coming from farther down the dock made me turn, and I saw a familiar figure from the D.E.A. heading toward us. Godfrey Candella was in a suit, as usual, with his dark hair neatly parted but threatening to fall down over his black horn-rims.

“Godfrey?”

“Hello, Simon . . . Connor,” he said, fidgeting with a notebook in his hands. His face looked grave.

“You get what you need?” Davidson called out to him.

Godfrey nodded. “For now,” he said, and looked at Connor and me. “I’ll need to talk to you both back at the office when you’re done checking out the scene. For the Gauntlet archives, of course.”

“You okay?” I said, noticing how green around the gills he was. Not that he wasn’t normally a little sickly looking, but today he somehow looked worse.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m just not used to such gruesomeness.”

Connor turned to Davidson. “Since when do you call the Gauntlet in before the investigators get a look at the scene? I’m all for the paper hounds getting things down for historical records, for future generations and all. Hell, I’ll even nominate Godfrey for sainthood just for archiving Simon’s rambling oral history of the whole Sectarians Surrealist Underground thing at the Met, but there’s a protocol for an investigation. Members of the Gauntlet do not do field investigation, only reporting.”

Davidson held up his hands. “Whoa, now. I didn’t call him.”

“Bullshit.”

“Suit yourself,” Davidson said, giving up.

Connor was clearly gearing up to lay into him, but Godfrey cleared his throat.

“Actually,” he said, “I just happened to be in the neighborhood. I was following up on some leads we have in the archives on old ghost-pirate sightings on the river and one of them led to an old boathouse nearby. That’s when I spotted Davidson and his officers and I came over.” He gave a grim smile. “I’m lucky like that, I guess. Anyway, I thought I’d just get down some reporting notes since I was here. I know my job as an archivist is to observe and nothing more. I didn’t even touch the crime scene, I swear.”

“I told you,” Davidson interrupted, the impatience thick in his voice. He walked farther out onto the pier, leaving the three of us behind.

“You’ll stop by after you’ve had a look?” Godfrey asked. “I should get back to the Gauntlet.”

I nodded. Godfrey gave a quick smile and headed toward the city.

“Are you two going to check this out or not?” Davidson called out.

“Keep yer panties on,” Connor said. We started toward the end of the dock, where a boat was moored.

“I’ll warn you,” Davidson said, “you may want to strengthen your resolve before stepping on board.”

The party boat had two short decks and was the length of maybe four city buses. Long windows for sightseeing lined both levels, but from the outside they looked dark, and I couldn’t see through the tempered glass. We boarded at the back of the boat and I stopped dead in my tracks. Inside the main section of the boat there were bodies all over the place, pale limbs sticking up from a sea of colorful suit coats and party dresses.