Stones Unturned (8 page)

"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 cafés 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.

CHAPTER FOUR

Squire loved this time of day.

The hobgoblin, clad only in boxer shorts and a wife-beater T-shirt, squirmed around in the leather recliner, trying to get comfortable.

He called it Squire time, that special time of day when everyone seemed to just leave him alone. He wasn't sure what made these hours between eleven in the morning and one in the afternoon so damn special, but it was almost as if the Dark Gods had set a small pocket of time aside for him alone, a time when he could think only of himself — his wants and desires.

Squire time
.

His hearing was ultra sensitive, and he listened to the heartbeat of the brownstone: the gentle hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen below, the ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer, the exhalation of comforting heat blown up from the ancient furnace in the basement through the many vents that opened into every room.

But not a sound of life. Conan Doyle and Ceridwen had yet to return from England, Danny and his mother had gone out a short time earlier, and Graves and Clay had left the brownstone in the wee hours of the morning, and no one had seen hide nor hair of them since.

Squire was alone.

Well, Eve was in her room. But she was dead to the world and would remain that way until the sun started to creep below the horizon. He could have run a marching band through her room, and she still wouldn't have been able to get that beautiful ass out of bed.

He remembered a time about ten years back when Conan Doyle had suspected the house was under attack by a spell of decimation — a nasty piece of sorcery that was almost like an airborne cancer, though not as pleasant — and had ordered everybody into a circle of protection he'd conjured. It had been up to Squire to pass the news and gather the troops together. He'd saved Eve for last, knowing what it would be like to drag her from her bed.

Squire smiled, raising a hand to his chest, slowly running his nubby fingertips over the front of his shirt, feeling four raised scars through the material. It was probably the fact that he'd pulled back the covers, exposing her naked body that had caused her to practically tear out his heart.

His smile got wider as he continued his stroll down memory lane. He'd almost bled to death from the gashes made by her talons, but what he had seen beneath the covers had made it all worthwhile.
She's one hot tamale
, the Hobgoblin thought, scratching at his crotch.

He reached down to retrieve the remote from between him and the cushion and turned on the big screen television in the large wooden cabinet across the room. He wasn't sure what he was in the mood for, considering
The Price Is Right
before moving on to one of the multiple movie channels he subscribed to through local cable. He could always find something to hold his interest there. Yesterday while channel surfing, he'd caught an
Ernest
movie he hadn't seen yet, the one where the hilarious son of a bitch saved Christmas. He'd just about pissed himself it was so funny.

He didn't find anything with half of Ernest's entertainment value, so he flipped back to
The Price Is Right.

"Awesome," he grunted, seeing that they were playing the High/Low game. He was good at that one and would probably kick ass if he had the opportunity to play, but he couldn't see Mr. Doyle agreeing to allow him to appear on the morning game show. Too bad, he would have loved to rub elbows with Bob Barker.

He reached down beside his chair and picked up the can of Pringles he had waiting, just the first of many snacks he would indulge in during Squire time.

"Thatta girl," he squawked through a mouthful of chips, cheering on a housewife that he would've let eat Pringles in his bed any time. She was getting closer to winning herself a pair of
Waveriders
when the phone started to ring.

"You gotta be kiddin' me," Squire grumbled, spewing crumbs toward the television set. He considered letting the machine pick up, but realized it was probably something relatively important since no one ever called the Doyle residence just to shoot the shit.

The hobgoblin reached down under the leather seat cushion, fishing for the phone, and finally found it behind him, wedged beneath his left buttock. He stared at the Caller ID and saw the name Hook. It took him a minute, but then he remembered Hook was the homicide detective that Conan Doyle had assisted with some matters over the last few years.

"Thrill me," Squire said as he picked up, quoting the great thespian Tom Atkins from one of his '80s favorites,
Night of the Creeps
.

There was a long pause, but he knew somebody was there.

"Hello?" He was ready to hang up if nobody started talking.

"Is this the Doyle residence?" the voice on the other end asked tentatively.

"You got it," Squire replied. "What can I do for you?"

He turned the volume down on the television set. His sweet potato of a housewife had won the Waveriders and was jumping around like a duck on a hotplate. Bobby B was practically knocked unconscious by her overflowing excitement.

I'd like to show her some overflowing excitement
, the hobgoblin thought, waiting for the detective to spill his reason for calling.

"I'm looking for Joe Clay," the man said. "I saw him last night — but something's come up this morning that I think he . . ."

"Clay ain't here," Squire interrupted. "Is there something I could do, Detective?"

"You know who I am?" Hook asked, surprise in his voice.

"Mr. Doyle told me all about you," Squire replied. "Said we should give you a hand whenever we could. So what's the scoop?"

"I'm in an alley way off of Tremont Street," the detective began. "The remains of two bodies were found here this morning by an old lady walking her dogs. And they aren't the first. There's another crime scene just like it in Copley station."

"Go on," Squire said, helping himself to another handful of Pringles. "What's the angle?" he asked. "You wouldn't be calling here if it was just your average homicide."

"One of the bodies," Hook started. "One of them appears to be partially eaten and the other . . . the other is missing all its skin. The one in the T station was even worse."

Squire swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "I can see why you called," he said. "Have the remains been removed yet?"

"The Copley victim, yeah. But not these two. Not yet," Hook said. "Forensics is finishing up at the scene now and —"

"Don't move anything," Squire told him. "I wanna check out the scene."

"I'm not sure how long I can hold them off," Hook explained. "How quickly can you get down here?"

"Give me a minute to get on a shirt and some pants," he told the detective.

"How will I know you?" Hook asked him.

"Just look for the handsome son of a bitch stepping out of the shadows," the hobgoblin replied, and broke the connection.

So much for Squire time.

Danny had always loved the New England Aquarium.

He stood to one side, away from the line, as his mother bought their tickets. It was cold today, and the wind was blowing across the harbor. People wearing heavy coats and hats stamped their feet in line, trying to stay warm, but Danny really didn't feel it. He was wearing a heavy hooded sweatshirt, a wool cap on his head to cover his horns, and dark sunglasses to protect his sensitive eyes from the glaring sun and hide their yellow, reptilian look. The clothing wasn't meant to keep him warm, only to hide the changes to his body.