The Green Lama: Horror in Clay (The Green Lama Legacy Book 2) (2 page)

“Give me some good news,” Commissioner Woods screeched as he marched over to Caraway. Woods’s hair was snowy and thinning, his face perpetually beet red, the vein on his neck always threatening to burst. “I’ve got that Democrat in the White House ringing me up every goddamn hour. Next time I talk to him I want to tell him where he can stuff that goddamn cigarette of his.”

Caraway stopped short of reminding Woods that he had donated to the Roosevelt campaign more than a couple of times. “They’re telling me that our witness is about ready to talk,” Caraway said in reply as he stepped out of the elevator. Shattered glass crunched beneath his boots and the blood-soaked carpet slurped. “If that’s not a step in the right direction, I don’t know what is.”

“A goddamn arrest is a step in the right direction,” Woods said through his teeth.

“Well, we’re working on that, Sir,” Caraway replied as evenly as possible. He beckoned over one of the uniformed officers.

“Yes, Lieutenant?” Officer Benjamin Connor said, rushing up to him. Connor was a recent promotion, less than a week, still a little wet behind the ears, but had the gumption a lot of elders had long since lost.

“Connor, where’s our boy?”

Officer Connor indicated the executive office to the left with a tilt of his head. “Urine Boy’s in there. Been mumbling for the better part of an hour, started making sense about ten minutes ago.” He let out a laugh. “Well, as much sense as a German can make.”

“He doesn’t speak English?” Woods asked.

“According to him,” Connor smiled as he squeezed the air between his forefinger and thumb, “
Sehr wenig.
”

“Great,” Caraway said, rubbing his temples. “Does anyone here speak German?” he asked, his voice booming. He looked around the room, finding only blank gaze after blank gaze. “Not even a little? Come on, guys, one of you has to be at least half German.”

In the far corner a small officer meekly raised his hand just past his shoulder. He was a member of the Squad, but Caraway tried to put a name to the face and came up empty. “My grandfather was from Heidelberg,” the officer said. “He used to yell at me in German all the time.”

“You think you can do some translating for us, Officer…?”

The officer frowned as if stung. “Heidelberger, sir.”

Well,
Caraway thought, kicking himself,
that makes sense
. “Officer Heidelberger,” Caraway corrected, forcing a smile. “You think you can handle this?”

The little officer shrugged noncommittally. “Worth a shot, right?”

• • •

Up until now, all they had been able to get out of their witness—and lone survivor—was his name, Johann; anything beyond that was gibberish. Johann sat behind an ornate desk, in what Caraway learned was once the ambassador’s office. There was an audible knocking against the floor from Johann’s leg shaking madly. His bloodshot eyes darted rapidly back and forth. Save for the blood splatter covering his face and uniform, Johann’s skin matched the stark white of the walls, deep black and purple pockets under his eyes.
Poor guy
, Caraway thought. Hell, if he had seen whatever it was that went down here, he’d be a ghost too.

“
Wer sind Sie?
” Johann stuttered as Caraway walked in. Caraway knew he was intimidating—just over six feet tall with a tree trunk neck and biceps that could crack walnuts—but as the head of the Special Crime Squad, that was sort of the point. The bigger you were, the harder they’d fall.

“I, uh, think he just asked, ‘Who are you?’” Officer Heidelberger said.

“Thank you, Officer. I gathered as much. Ask him what happened,” Caraway said, gently pushing Heidelberger toward the desk.

Heidelberger sat down in the chair across from Johann and took off his hat, revealing a clown’s head of curly black hair, forcing Caraway to bite back a chuckle. Heidelberger shifted in his seat for a moment, struggling to get comfortable, finally settling in when Caraway subtly cleared his throat. “Okay… uh…
mein Name ist David Heidelberger
,” he began, pressing his palm to his chest.
“
Ich bin von der New York
… uh …
Polizei.”
He indicated Caraway with a stilted wave. “
Das ist Leutnant Caraway. Können Sie uns sagen, was… passing by… hier?
”

Caraway could see the young officer was struggling to formulate each word, while Johann was struggling to follow along. The two men stared at each other blankly for a moment, the German officer’s jaw slack in confusion.

Heidelberger glanced back at Caraway. “I don’t think he understood me.”

As if on cue, Johann launched into a mile-per-minute monologue, throwing his hands around to pontificate each description.

“What is he saying?” Caraway asked as he leaned down beside Heidelberger.

“He’s… uh… There was a loud sound of thunder and… a flash of green light… A big man. There was a big man that—
Er hat die Haustür durchgebrochen
—broke… broke through the front door. They started shooting at him but the—but the bullets…” Heidelberger listened to Johann for a moment, then glanced back at Caraway. “Sir, if you don’t mind me saying, Jerry here is a few fruits short of a cocktail.”

Caraway crossed his arms over his chest. “What is he saying, Officer?”

Heidelberger rubbed the back of head doubtfully. “Look, Boss, you gotta know my German really ain’t what it used to be, and this is completely different from my pop-pop telling me to keep my hands out of my pockets. But if I understand what this krauthead’s saying… This big guy came bustin’ through the front door, started snapping people in half—y’know… like you saw—and the guards started shooting at him but the bullets… the bullets didn’t hurt him.”

Caraway squinted his eyes at their witness. “‘The bullets didn’t hurt him?’”

Johann brought his forefinger to his chest, mimicking a bullet. “Pow!” he said, and then tapped over his shoulder to show the “bullet” flying straight through. He threw his hands up in a cartoonish shrug, which Caraway took to mean, “like nothing happened.”

This was getting interesting, but not in a good way. “Describe him,” Caraway said to Johann, and Heidelberger translated.

“Six… No, seven.
Sieben
? Seven feet tall, at least.” They watched as Johann waved his hand over his forehead, then tapping it three times from left to right. “He says the man had scars. On his forehead. Terrible, like someone had dug their fingers into his skin.”

Johann continued to ramble, smacking at his forearm with the palm of his hand and then running it up and down as if he were applying lotion.

Heidelberger continued to translate. “But… there was something wrong about his skin. Even his clothes. He didn’t look… ‘alive.’ It was like…
bedeckt im Lehm
?” He turned to look over at Caraway. “He says it was like he was completely covered in clay.”

Caraway ran out of the office without looking back.

• • •

“Everyone! STOP MOVING!!!”

The room fell into pin-drop silence as the crowd of policemen and crime scene photographers spun around to look at Caraway as he burst into the room. Commissioner Woods’s beady eyes seemed to boil inside his head. “What the hell is it, Lieutenant?”

“Clay,” he answered, pointing the ground. “We’re looking for clay footprints. Our murderer was covered in clay.”

Almost simultaneously the entire room looked down at the ground, an audible turning of necks. Some of the officers even started looking at the soles of their shoes, as if they expected to find the evidence waiting for them there.

Caraway ran over to the elevator, remembering the muddy footprints that had covered the floor. He pressed the call button and immediately drew his hand back in pain as a sensation of deep burning flowed under his skin, like someone had jabbed a red hot poker right between the flesh and bone. Glancing at the down button and then at his finger, he saw both were covered in clay.

• • •

Oberst Heinrich Gan’s car pulled up to the embassy shortly before midnight. He had only arrived in New York that morning and already things had gone straight to
Hölle
, cutting short what had been a pleasant dinner with New York City socialites, including the infamous Jethro Dumont. He told the driver in German to wait outside until he returned. All of his American staff had to be of German descent—Aryan, if possible— Führer’s orders. With dark eyes, a drooping nose, and a balding head of black hair, Gan was deeply aware he didn’t fit in to the Führer’s grand plan for a perfect Aryan race, but that wasn’t why he joined the Party.

Police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, and even more hearses surrounded the ornate structure of the embassy. White sheets covered the bodies—or at least the pieces of bodies—that had been thrown out onto the streets. Gan lost count at fifteen. Barricades kept the mumbling crowd of spectators at bay; many of them wrapped in rags and blankets, reminding Gan that while the Führer had quickly turned his country around, the Depression still had a home in America. His eyes fell on one woman, a beautiful redhead, a trench coat wrapped tightly around her well toned frame, who seemed more interested in police proceedings than the spectacle of mutilated bodies and blood. Their eyes met for an instant before she disappeared into the throng of people.

The front entrance was shattered, as if blasted in by a small bomb. Pieces of wood, metal, and glass crunched beneath his boots. Then came the smell, a sickeningly sweet smell with a tinge of iron that could only mean blood. He covered his mouth and nose with his handkerchief, and resisted the urge to vomit when he saw the torso and entrails of Ambassador Meyer spread across the hallway.

“
Gott in Himmel
…” Gan whispered.

“Colonel Gan!”

Gan turned to find a massively obese policeman hopping over pools of blood toward him, the officer’s girth wobbling like gelatin. “Colonel Gan, I’m sorry I didn’t meet you at the front entrance. I’m Sergeant Wayland. Just got word from the top you were heading this way,” the Sergeant said, noticeably out of breath as he shook Gan’s free hand.

“Oberst,” Gan corrected, removing his handkerchief.

“Sorry, sir?”

“My rank is
Oberst
. It is a military rank and you would be good to remember that,” Gan said in heavily accented English. “Tell me, Sergeant, are your men any closer to understanding what it was that transpired here? Where is Ambassador Adalbrecht? I wish to speak with him.”

The sergeant sighed audibly, scratching the back of what Gan assumed was his neck. “Well, Sir, I think you might’ve stepped in him on the way in…”

Before the sergeant could finish, the elevator doors slammed open to reveal a large mustached police officer, his clothing unkempt, one of his hands wrapped in a moist towel. The officer marched purposefully toward the sergeant but didn’t seem to register the tall, balding Nazi. Gan disliked him instantly.

“Wayland, get the word out. We’re looking for a male, at least seven feet tall, with a badly scarred forehead, covered in clay,” the officer commanded.

“Uh, sir? We’ve got—” Wayland stuttered, trying to indicate Gan with his thumb.

“A hell of a lot of work ahead of us. Whoever this bastard is has a few hours on us so we’re gonna to need to spread the net wide. We don’t get moving now, we’re—” Gan cleared his throat and the officer looked over, noticing him for the first time. “Who the hell are you?”

Gan straightened his back and clicked his heels together. “Oberst Heinrich Gan of the Greater German Reich. And who do you think you are, talking to me in such a manner!”

“Oberst?” Caraway scoffed. “What kinda title is that?”

“It means Colonel, sir,” Wayland added under his breath.

The officer’s eyes were icicles, stabbing. He was a veteran, Gan could see it in his eyes; perhaps he had even seen them before on the field. “The name’s Lieutenant John Caraway, head of the New York City Special Crime Squad here in the goddamn U.S. of A., and I’m in charge of this investigation so I will speak to you however I damn well feel like,
Colonel
.”

Gan pursed his lips. “Charming.” He spun on his heel and stepped toward the painting of the Führer, careful not to step on the crushed sternum of one of the former consulate staff members. Gan placed his hands behind his back as he stared into the beady eyes of the portrait. “But seeing how the crime was committed on what is technically German soil, and being that I am now the highest ranking official of the embassy,” he said as he turned back to Caraway and Wayland, “it is I who will be leading the investigation into the brutal murder of my compatriots.”

Caraway gritted his teeth and felt the weight of his pistol at his side.

“You see those hunks of meat out there,” he said, pointing at the bodies that littered the street and sidewalk just beyond the embassy’s gates. “Those are on American soil, which means they fall under my jurisdiction. And all those people craning their necks to get a good look-see? You can be damn sure at least one of them saw something interesting tonight, and I can bet you none of them are gonna be too thrilled about talking to a fascist. So, if you want any chance to solve this case, you’re going to have to talk to me.”