Stones Unturned (The Menagerie #3)

Stones Unturned (The Menagerie #3) Page 4

Clay Smith had been to an eternity of funerals, so many that they had long since lost the ability to touch his heart or bring him to introspection. Wakes were something else entirely; they fascinated him. A great deal could be learned about people - both the deceased and their survivors - just by observing the behavior at a wake. Most often, when the deceased had died of something natural, such as that equal opportunity killer, time, or something typically stupid, like smoking, wakes were like cocktail parties held in a library, people laughing and reminiscing, but trying to do so with a certain hush to their voices.

The wake of a murder victim was different. No one laughed. There was nothing funny about murder.

Clay stood in the back of the room at Yerardi & Sons where Corey Gillard had been laid out in his casket so that people could say a prayer over his corpse and be quietly grateful that they, themselves, were still alive. As grim as a wake was, for each attendee it was also a quiet celebration of his or her continued existence. Clay could see it in their eyes.

That was the sort of wisdom imparted by immortality.

He wondered how many of them would be so grateful for life after a few thousand years without the possibility of death.

Don't be so morbid, he thought. You have a job to do.

Clay glanced around the room again and studied the mourners one by one. Based on the crime scene, the way the body lay, the lack of a struggle, Boston homicide figured the dead man had known his killer, so it stood to reason that the murderer might well be in this very room.

One way to find out.

He stepped past a little girl in a dark green dress that might have been more appropriate for Christmas, nodded to the girl's mother, and started toward the front of the room, where the casket stood on a low platform. Clay inhaled deeply the aroma of the hundreds of flowers arranged in a display around the dead man. But laced within that smell was the odor of chemical air fresheners used by the funeral home. No matter how fresh the body was when it was embalmed, there was apt to be a stale smell to it. The flowers were usually enough to cover it, but funeral homes always pumped in that overwhelming floral stink, like an overzealous grandmother's perfume.

As he moved past the family of the deceased - Corey Gillard had been twenty-seven and unmarried, so that meant parents, two brothers, a couple of small nieces - Clay didn't bother studying the faces of the grieving any further. The truth wasn't going to be revealed in their eyes. The killer might be struggling with guilt, but in the aftermath of a tragic death, people reacted in all sorts of ways. Emotions overflowed. Too many people in that room were troubled to make any presumptions based on their behavior.

Clay waited while a gray-haired man knelt beside the coffin and said a prayer. When the man stood, sniffling and wiping at his nose, and moved away, Clay slid in to take his place. The kneeler was warm from all of the people who had paused to pay their respects in the half an hour since the wake had begun.

The top third of the casket was open and within lay a waxy figure that had once been a man. That absence of life had always intrigued Clay, for he could not die. Perhaps he might be killed, but many had tried since the dawn of time and no one had succeeded. Death was loss, but to Clay it was not less of self. It was loss of love and warmth and comfort and fondness, and the acquisition of ache and regret. He thought of human death whenever he saw a squirrel crushed on the road, or seashells littered along a beach.

That was all that remained of Corey Gillard now, a shell.

The dead man's face was slack in some places, taut in others, where the thread used by the mortician had tugged at his flesh. His arms were crossed, hands laid over his heart. Somewhere further south, beneath the heavy maple of the lower two-thirds of the coffin lid, was the wound that had actually ended his life. But it would have been sewn up now and dwarfed by the incisions left by the medical examiner during the autopsy.

What did it matter, though. He was a shell.

The thing that had been within the shell, his soul or spirit or whatever one was inclined to call that spark of life, had vacated the premises. But life left traces behind. No one knew that better than Clay.

And taking life . . . that left traces, too.

Behind him, an old woman cleared her throat, impatiently awaiting her turn to pray over the corpse of Corey Gillard. Clay lowered his head as though in prayer, fingers steepled in front of him, eyes closed. He waited a few seconds for appearance's sake, and then reached out to touch the dead man's hand, just a moment of contact, his own good-bye.

At least, that was how it would appear to the people in the room.

When he stood and backed away, allowing the old woman to gingerly replace him at the kneeler, his vision had changed. There was a tint to the air in the room, at least in his eyes, as though a light mist had begun to gather. Clay took a deep breath and ran a hand through his close-cropped hair, then straightened his tie as he studied Gillard's corpse more closely.

A ghostly line traced through the room, a thick tether of ectoplasm that began at the center of the dead man's chest. It was not his entire soul, but only a fragment, a spiritual connection that linked every murder victim with his or her killer.

Clay had been forged by God. He was the Clay of God. There was much about his eternal life he could not recall, and his earliest memories were cloudy at best. But in addition to the malleable nature of his flesh, the Lord had given him this gift as well, this curse. In the aftermath of a murder, if he arrived in time, with the touch of his hand he could see the soul tether that connected killer and victim . . .

And he could trace it back.

The susurrus of low voices in the funeral home surrounded him. There were tears and quiet sobbing and a great many faces that were simply numb. But as he turned, his gaze following the soul tether of Corey Gillard, he felt as though he was somehow beyond the perception of those in the room, as though they had been frozen in the depths of their grief and he could wander through, unseen and untouched.

The tether snaked through the room toward the corner furthest from the door and around a massive arrangement of flowers complete with a card that read, "In Memory of Corey, From Your Family at the Arielle Gallery." Clay took up a position just beside the flowers. People were milling about, some already leaving, others just arriving, but from here he could clearly follow the trail of soulstuff that Gillard's murder had left behind.

At the back wall, near a window, stood a small cluster of men and women who were the best dressed of the mourners. The eldest was perhaps fifty, a woman of obvious sophistication, who seemed out of place mainly for the utter lack of emotion on her face. She spoke quietly to a man beside her with a goatee and a polished, elegant look who was at least ten years her junior. They did not seem like lovers. In fact, Clay judged the relationship to be employer and employee, an observation that quickly spread to include the rest of their small group. There were four other people around them, two men and two women, all in their late twenties to early thirties, of varied races but each with the same sophistication.

All but one.

Even when not speaking to her, the way they stood around her made it clear that the group all deferred to the older woman. From their appearance, and in comparison to the others in the room, he presumed they were neither family nor old friends of the dead man.

Coworkers, then, from the art gallery.

But one of the men with them seemed out of place, a broad-shouldered, square-jawed tough in an ill-fitting suit, who held the hand of a petite, attractive Asian woman. There was a protective quality to the way he held onto her . . . or so Clay thought at first glance. When he studied them again, he corrected himself. Possessive, not protective. They both wore wedding bands and Clay guessed they were husband and wife.

The Asian woman shook her head and wiped at her eyes. She smiled sadly as she looked at one of her coworkers and gave a self-deprecating shrug, perhaps mocking herself for being unable to stop crying. Her husband's jaw tightened and he cast her a sidelong glance, bitterness unmasked. She seemed to feel his disapproval, and her expression went blank. The woman took a breath and wiped a fresh tear from her left eye.

Clay wondered if she knew that her husband had murdered Corey Gillard.

The tether led right to him, not to the center of his chest, but to his right hand, which must have held the knife that he had stabbed Corey over and over with, twisting it in his gut.

The man leaned over and whispered something to his wife. Regret creased her brow, and she turned to the others, exchanging hugs as she prepared to depart. Reluctantly, she allowed her husband to lead her from the room.

Clay followed the tether, which floated in the air, a serpentine stream of wavering smoke. He pursued them out into the foyer of the funeral home. There were sitting rooms on either side of the front door. In one, two young boys sat on a loveseat, obviously uncomfortable in their suits, attention locked on the screens of their GameBoys. The other sitting room was empty, and the husband held his wife's elbow and escorted her into the room. Clay paused in the foyer, just out of their line of sight, checking his pockets as though he'd forgotten something.

"You said no one knew," the husband rasped.

"No one does," the wife replied.

"The way they were comforting you -"

"He was my friend. They all knew that much. But no one . . . no one knows -"

"No one knows you're a whore," the husband said, words like hammering nails.

Clay's contact from Boston Homicide was waiting out on the sidewalk. He should have left then, just walked out the door, but he found that he could not. Instead, he glanced into the opposite parlor to make sure the two kids were still absorbed in their GameBoys, and then he rubbed his fingers together, remembering the feeling of Corey Gillard's skin.

A ripple went through Clay's flesh. Bone popped quietly, reknitting. Muscle shifted. Pigment changed. This was what God had made him, a shapeshifter, able to take the form of any creature the Lord ever imagined, and with a touch, to duplicate the appearance of anyone, alive or dead.

When he turned and walked into the sitting room with the murderer and his wife, he wore the face of Corey Gillard.

The husband saw him first. His face went slack, all the color draining from his cheeks. He narrowed his eyes and shook his head in denial, no sound coming from his mouth. When his wife saw his expression, she turned.

Her scream echoed through the building.

"Oh, Corey," she whispered then, holding one hand up to her mouth. "Oh, my God."

Wearing the dead man's face, Clay pointed at the killer. "It was him. He cut me open. He murdered me."

Her hands fluttered, and they both covered her face as she backed away from her husband, gaze shifting quickly back and forth between him and what she thought was her dead lover.

"You . . . you can't be here," the murderer snarled.

Clay smiled with Corey's mouth. "You're right. Corey's not here. He's dead and gone. His soul's in a better place. But guess where you're going."

Clay raised his arms, and once again he willed his flesh and bone to shift. Bone spikes thrust up through his scalp, two rows of sharp horns. Skin tore wetly as black, leathery wings sprouted from his back. Of all the shapes he had ever taken, Clay found the form of a demon the most difficult. It left him feeling filthy, his mood dark.

But his mood was dark enough already.

Now it was the killer's turn to scream. The man fell to his knees and began to plead for mercy, from Heaven, from Hell, and from his wife. He reached for her leg, and she recoiled in disgust.

Clay towered over him, appearing as a nine-foot demon, a thing right from the depths of Hell, skin the color of dried blood and thick and hard as stone. Fire spilled from his mouth as he pointed again at the murderer and laughed.

"See you soon," he said.

Then he turned, hooves thumping the carpet, and as he left the room, his flesh changed, and he was himself again. Joe Clay. The human face was not the one he had begun life with, but it was the one he wore most often, the one the world saw.

The two kids in the other parlor were still playing with their GameBoys.

People were running down the corridor now, summoned by the screams. Clay ignored them, turned left, and went out the front door of the funeral parlor.

The sky was gray and drizzling rain. An unmarked police car sat at the curb across the street. When Clay started down the stairs to the sidewalk, the passenger door opened, and detective Adam Hook climbed out.

Detective Hook was forty-four, fit, and handsome in a grizzled, sad, seen-too-much-fashion way that had probably contributed a great deal to his divorce. His hair was more pepper than salt, and he walked with a brutal confidence that would intimidate most people.

He knew far too much about the things that lurked in the shadows of the world. Clay himself was partially responsible for that. It might have been the reason for the cynicism in Hook's gaze, but it was also the reason they had become friends. Hook wasn't the kind of man who would ever turn away from the truth, no matter how terrifying, no matter how deep the darkness.

"How'd it go?" the detective asked. "Was he in there?"

"Job's done," Clay replied. "Victim was sleeping with the perp's wife. Go on in. You won't be able to miss them. I suspect he may be in the mood to confess right about now, too."

Hook shook his hand. "Much appreciated. I prefer to solve them myself, but this one -"

Clay waved the words away. "Hey, any time. Guy like this, you need him off the street. If I can help, I'm glad to do it."

Hook started up the stairs. "Say hello to Doyle for me," he said over his shoulder. "Haven't heard from him in a while."

"I will. And I'm sure you'll hear from him," Clay said. "The second he needs you."

The ghost of Leonard Graves had haunted Conan Doyle's house for so long that he was almost immune to the absurdity of having a room there, complete with a bed and bureau, as though he had clothes and needed to sleep. Over time, Dr. Graves had come to appreciate this small space, this place where he could store the memories of his human life, now more than sixty years in the past.

A place where he could rest, and remember.

The room was on the second floor of the old townhouse. Over the years, he had allowed himself to ruminate on his life and accomplishments, so that there were shelves with souvenirs of his adventures, as well as framed newspaper stories. Here, in his room, he often felt the tug of the past. In its way, it was even more powerful than the lure of the afterlife, against which he was constantly struggling, fighting the tide that threatened to sweep him to his final rest.

But Graves had things to do before he left the physical plane, where he could join his beloved Gabriella. He had a murder to solve.

His own.

Times like these, he became lost in contemplation of the past. The bureau drawers were open, and their contents spread across the floor and bed, newspaper clippings from his exploits as an adventurer in the 1930s and 1940s, journals of his experiments and thoughts as one of the preeminent scientists of the day, and yellowed photographs of him as he was when he was alive. There were clippings full of controversy and hate - in those days, no black man could become prominent without drawing the venom of the ignorant and the cruel. Graves traced his spectral fingers over a page without touching it, a story about his capture of a killer the newspapers had called the Butcher of Brooklyn.

It had not been the first time he had captured a killer or thwarted a criminal, but it had been the most public. The New York papers had called him a hero. The mayor had offered the gratitude of the city. Even then Graves had thought it ironic, when so many in the city thought he was trash because of the color of his skin. And when his reputation became national, it had only become worse, particularly because his wife was a white woman, an Italian-American, they would call her today.

Things had improved since then, out in the world. The ranks of the ignorant and cruel had thinned, thankfully, but they were not extinct. Not yet. Of late, he'd begun to worry that they were, in fact, coming around again, their numbers growing.

He did not like to think of it.

Most of the clippings were of a different nature. Joyful. Triumphant. And those were bittersweet. The real irony was that the best of his memories were the ones that hurt the most, but he clung to them, savoring the pain.

Better to have lived, to be sure.

And oh, how he had lived.

As a young man, he had been grim and overly earnest, but what else could be expected of a boy who had spent his entire life honing his mind and body to the pinnacle of human capacity? His mother had died when Graves was quite small, and his widower father had determined that through his son he would show the world that race was something ephemeral, that discipline and determination were what made a man.

But as he had matured, Graves had discovered a passion for science that discipline could not instill. While he continued to devour up-to-date theory, and often advance theories of his own, on topics as varied as abnormal psychology, space travel, and vegetable fuels, certain subjects took up more and more of his time. He journeyed across the face of the world as an archaeologist, tropical botanist, and cryptozoologist. Whenever he was back at home in his labs in Washington Heights, New York, he was a part of a social circle that included playwrights, architects, dancers, biologists, and jazz musicians.

The ghost hovered a few inches off of the ground, barely aware that he had given up the pretense of solidity and substance for the moment. His spectral form felt heavy with melancholy as he reached out to brush phantom fingers over a photograph taken nearly seven decades before in the infamous jazz nightspot, Birdland. Graves himself was in the photo, looking smart in a tux, his arm around the trumpet player Henry Watkins. Henry, called "Blat" by his nearest and dearest, was busy lighting a cigarette, too cool to glance at the camera.

The third person in the photo was a woman who stood on the other side of Blat Watkins, hip slightly cocked, an insouciant little smile on her face. Gabriella Gnecco was confident and beautiful, her eyes alight with intelligence. At that time she had been in the United States only four years, and her accent had begun to fade. Graves had thought the petite little Italian girl charming.

That first night, dancing, he had fallen in love.

The newspapers had pounced on the story, serving the romance up to the public. Graves had not cooperated, but the reporters did not rely on cooperation to create a story about a public figure. His love for Gabriella had earned them admiration and scorn in unequal measure, with the emphasis on the latter, but it had also increased the adventurer's celebrity. He had been famous in the city of New York, and then in the northeast United States, but soon his notoriety began to spread around the world. The spotlight brought upon him because of his wedding to Gabriella meant a focus on his work as well.

So when Dr. Graves helped the police solve a series of mysterious deaths - leading them to a greenhouse where a curious sociopath had been cultivating poisonous plants - the whole world knew of it. Even now he could close his eyes and drift, touching his own spirit to the soulstream, and practically relive those moments. The triumph. The feeling that came with a job well done, and knowing he had saved lives.

The ghost opened his eyes. A newspaper clipping on the bed caught his eye. "Nazi Science Spy Busted!" said the headline, and beneath it, in smaller type, "Feds Credit Dr. Graves."

There were many others. Influential individuals at nearly every level began to seek him out. It was thrilling work. Graves had always detested crime, but never imagined that combating it would become such a focus in his life. Slowly, however, he began to realize that pursuing killers, traitors, and madmen had become more than just a public service, a favor to the world. It had become his entire life. His own research had been neglected, and so had his wife.

So he tried to withdraw, or at least, limit the amount of time he spent away from his personal pursuits. The effort was doomed. There had been other mysterious figures emerging to share the burden, to take on the cases the police could never handle, but the criminals only grew more dangerous and more ambitious.

By the time he stopped Professor Erasmus Zarin from releasing poison gas into a thunderstorm from the upper decks of the Empire State Building, he had all but surrendered to the reality that had claimed him. His life was no longer his own.

Five years passed as Dr. Graves tried to balance the various passions and obligations of his life. And then it was snuffed out with a bullet in the back.

"Dr. Graves Dead! Famed Adventurer Shot! Identity of Killer Still Unknown!"

He stared now at that headline on the newspaper clipping from October 7th, 1943, where it hung on the wall. Conan Doyle - who was unaffected by almost any degree of hideousness - thought it morbid to the point of perversity that he displayed the news of his own murder on the wall. Graves ignored him. He could not live in this room, but he could abide here, exist here, and the details of his death were a part of the tale of his existence.

And the mystery of his murder was the reason he had remained so long.

During his life Dr. Graves had been a vehement skeptic of all things supernatural. He was a man of science and debunked charlatanry and fraud wherever he encountered it. His discovery - upon his death - that ghosts did indeed exist, that the souls of the lost dead commonly wandered the physical world in search of some final bit of closure, had been quite a shock.

But as all good scientists do, Graves adapted. It had taken years before his consciousness had coalesced enough to regain true awareness, something he had never quite understood. But once he had realized what had happened, that he was, in fact, a ghost, he had approached his circumstances with the same intense single-mindedness with which he had lived his life.

As a specter, Graves had learned soon enough how to maneuver in the spirit world, how to navigate the soulstream, and in death he put to use the skills he had mastered in life, investigating his own murder. Yet it quickly proved a fruitless pursuit. His focus on his task kept him tethered to the fleshly world, but no matter how much effort was devoted to discovering the truth, he could find not a single clue. There was nothing at the scene, nor written in any police report, that would indicate who the killer was.

At first he had suspected Zarin of his assassination, but the ghost quickly discovered that the mad professor was in prison at the time and could not have killed him. Years of pursuing the wrong threads and intimidating Zarin's lackeys had finally led Graves to the conclusion that Zarin had neither killed him nor orchestrated his death.

Finally, at a loss, he had begun approaching the world's mediums and sorcerers, searching for someone who could help him find his murderer. During this journey, his path had crossed that of Arthur Conan Doyle, and the ageless mage had vowed to aid him in his search, to use all of his formidable abilities to solve the mystery.

The ghost of Dr. Graves had been patient . . . and then grown impatient . . . and at last become bitter. He still counted Conan Doyle as a friend and was dedicated to the man's efforts to combat the forces of darkness when they arose, but the time had come when Graves could be patient no longer.

He couldn't wait any longer for Arthur's help.

Spectral, ectoplasmic fingers traced the photograph of himself and Gabriella flanking Blat Watkins. If ghosts had tears, perhaps he would have shed them, then.

A light knock came at the door.

"Come in," the ghost said, turning as the door swung open and Clay entered the room.

"I hear you wanted to talk to me," the shapeshifter said.

The phantom studied him, always amazed at the stillness of Clay's flesh. He was entirely malleable, his substance as fluid as any ghost's, despite that it was solid. And yet he seemed so formidable, as though his brawny form occupied space on more than one level of existence.

"Thank you for coming by," the ghost said.

Clay gestured to the door. "You want it closed?"

"That's all right. I have no secrets."

The shapeshifter nodded, but there was a dark light in his eyes that seemed dubious of the claim. Graves quietly approved. Anyone who said he had no secrets was a liar. He tried to compose his thoughts, staring at Clay.

"You have . . . that is, I've seen you use a remarkable ability," the ghost said. "How does it work, the way you touch the dead and find their killers?"

Clay frowned. "You know that."

"I'm thinking," Graves replied. "Would you care to humor me?"

"All right. Well, it's simple, really. Not the mechanics but the reality of it. I touch a corpse - a recent corpse - and I can see a kind of string of ectoplasm, bits of soul that leads from the victim to the killer. See, in a murder, a trace of the ghost of the victim, or maybe even just some echo of the dead, clings to the killer, leaving a trail that I can follow.

"If I get there in time."

Graves smiled thinly. "And with older remains?"

Clay narrowed his gaze. "The more time that has passed, the less chance that there will be a soul tether to lead me to the killer."

The ghost faltered, lowering his head and nodding. He felt a ripple of despair go through his spectral form.

"What is it, Leonard?" Clay asked. "Whose death are we discussing, here?"

Graves met his gaze. "Mine, of course."

"Of course. I should've realized," Clay replied. "You do realize that I've helped solve a good many murders even when there was no obvious link to the killer?"

"I've been dead more than sixty years."

Clay leaned against the doorframe. "And you've finally decided to stop waiting for Arthur to solve it for you."

Graves nodded.

"Then we should get started," Clay said. "I'll do whatever I can to help."

"Good," Graves said. "You can start by helping me dig up my corpse."

The next day dawned so gray that it could barely be called morning. What fell from the sky was more mist than rain and the absence of sun cast a pall across the city. Detective Hook drove his immaculate 1985 Cutlass Calais through the crappy weather and tried not to think about potholes. Other guys restored forty-year-old Mustang convertibles. Hook wanted a sedan with burgundy leather bucket seats and enough weight to carry it through a wall instead of just turning into a metal accordion on impact.

It had been his father's car, a couple of decades ago. But his old man was in the ground now, and didn't have any further use for it.

Hook turned down Tremont Street, water hissing around his tires. Up ahead he saw the illuminated circular sign for the T. Three prowl cars were parked at odd angles in front of the subway station and at least a couple of unmarked, all of them with blue lights flashing. A rookie on shit detail strung crime scene tape across the front of the T station.

"It's too early for this shit."

He wasn't the kind of cop who lived on doughnuts. Uniforms tended to embrace the stereotype, hanging out in cafes and doughnut shops when they could manage it. Hook did not smoke or drink, either. His father had drunk himself to death, and his mother had died of lung cancer. Addiction, to his mind, was cowardly.

If his need for coffee in the morning made him a hypocrite, it was not that he did not see the irony. It was just that most days he didn't care.

This morning he hadn't had time for coffee. Not yet.

It soured his mood.

Hook double-parked the silver Cutlass and slid his ID card onto the dashboard, then climbed out.

With a sigh he stared up at the gray shroud of sky. The mist had begun to turn to rain. Hook ran his fingers through his already damp hair, just a contact reminder of the white streaks that had begun to propagate there.

"Geary," he said as he passed a small group of uniformed officers who were keeping the gawkers back. Even the rain would not drive the vultures away.

The officer nodded in his direction. "Morning, detective."

Hook grunted, needing coffee more than ever. He reached into his shirt and pulled out the lanyard that had his badge and ID hanging from it, so that uniforms who didn't know him on sight wouldn't get in his way.

The rookie stringing crime scene tape saw him coming and lifted the tape for him to duck under.

"What's your name, kid?" Hook asked.

"Castillo, detective."

"Related to Jace?"

"He's my uncle."

Hook nodded in approval. Maybe the kid would turn out to be a decent cop.

He reached for the door to the T station. Through the filthy window in the door he could see Lieutenant Nathanson talking to a CSI photographer. Nate seemed to be giving the guy a rash of shit, and when Hook opened the door, he caught the tail end of it.

". . . anywhere, you got me. Those pictures end up in my hands. Not in the case file, not on line, not in some newspaper. From you to me. Anyone else sees those pictures, it's your job. We clear?"

The photographer flinched. He didn't like being bullied, but then, who did?

"Crystal," the CSI guy said.

Lieutenant Nathanson saw Hook out of the corner of his eye and started to turn. Before either of them could say a word, there was a ruckus on the stairs below them. Robbie Stetler, another of the crime scene unit guys, came running up toward the doors . . . toward the street. He had one hand on his belly and the other over his mouth.

"Oh, Jesus," Stetler whispered. "Oh, fuck."

He didn't make it to the doors. Four steps from the top, he clutched the railing like it was a bit of electric fence, turned, and puked on the concrete steps.

"Nice," Hook observed, wrinkling his nose at the stink.

Lieutenant Nathanson arched an eyebrow and shot him a look. "Wait'll you see it, smartass."

"See what?"

The lieutenant smiled. "No. Go on. The joy of discovery is yours."

Hook shrugged and started down into the tunnel of iron bars and concrete columns that was Tremont Street station. A couple of uniformed officers were taking statements from witnesses by the ticket booth. Near the turnstiles he passed several other cops milling around, faces tinted sickly green. All of them looked like the back row of church in the last twenty minutes of Sunday mass, just itching to get the hell back outside, rain or no rain.

The rest of the CSI crew were still in the process of doing their jobs when he went past the turnstiles and out onto the platform of the closed station. When he approached, the forensics team all turned to give him a grim hello and stood aside a moment so he could have a look.

Something bitter rose in the back of Hook's throat, and he was glad he hadn't had his coffee yet this morning.

"Hell," he muttered.

"Yeah," one of the crime scene cops replied, a fiftyish woman whose dark eyes had seen it all, until now. "What does something like this? What kills like this, without any decent witnesses, with this kind of brute force."

Hook said nothing. He was afraid it would be his turn to throw up. Either that, or he might mention that he'd already given them an answer. Hell. He'd had enough experiences with unnatural things - supernatural things - that he had no trouble looking at the human debris on that platform and knowing, without question, that nothing human was responsible.

His meet-up with Clay the day before came back to him now. He'd asked after Conan Doyle, thinking about how long it had been since he'd seen the man. Now he realized that he never wanted to see Doyle. Didn't even really like him. Mainly because every time they crossed paths, it was because of hideous shit like this.

Hook turned and walked back to the turnstiles. Lieutenant Nathanson beckoned to him as he passed.

"Bad news, Adam. We've got two more over on Tremont."

Two more. Hook swore under his breath, then nodded. "All right. Give me just a minute. I've got a call to make."

"Later," the lieutenant replied. "You can call your girlfriend after we've secured the scene. I don't want the unis tracking their boots all over the place."

Hook hesitated, but the lieutenant wasn't giving him any slack. The phone call would just have to wait. He just hoped Conan Doyle hadn't changed his number.