8.4: Case Closed
Matt Bluestone walked back to his car, stifling a yawn; he really needed more sleep than he'd gotten that day. But the pleasant afternoon he'd enjoyed had been worth losing a few hours of sleep.
One of the former Labyrinth residents had given Anne Marsden two tickets to see him in his first stage performance, an off-Broadway musical number, and Fox had urged her to go, even offering to watch Bethany and Alex for a few hours. So last Sunday when Anne had asked shyly if he'd like to attend the matinee performance with her, Matt had figured it would be worth losing a few hours of sleep to catch a free show. Which is all it had been, getting to watch a musical performance for free; they'd both agreed on that it had definitely not been a date, because they weren't dating. Nope, hadn't been a date, even if he'd put on aftershave and spent ten minutes deciding what to wear.
Ramone Davocchio the former Labyrinth resident had a good singing voice and was an okay actor, but the musical itself had been so-so at best. But it had been good enough to attend with Anne, and afterwards he'd treated her to dinner before driving her back to the Aerie building. But it still hadn't been a date; he'd gotten her dinner because he'd been hungry, and what kind of heel would eat in front of a lady without getting something for her too?
And of course he'd had to come up with her to the castle, to see Bethany and give the little girl another piggyback ride, because the poor kid would have been so disappointed if he hadn't; she hardly had anyone to play with and pay attention to her since the gargoyles had left for New Orleans. Nope, he hadn't done more than any decent guy would do. And he hadn't been at all disappointed that Bethany hadn't slipped up and referred to him as 'Daddy' again. Really, he'd hardly noticed that she hadn't said it.
But with one thing and another, before he'd realized it the clock had been saying it was time to go to work again. No time left for a pre-work nap after all, but he hadn't really minded much.
Earlier that night, a Tribeca resident had screamed into the phone about a flock of miniature gargoyles that had taken over his attic, and had been overheard plotting to kill him and his family in their sleep. Since death threats were a serious matter, rather than just making note of the call and categorizing it with the dozens of others they'd gotten that night, the GTF had sent someone out to investigate; rather than send one of the rookies, Matt had gone himself, figuring a ride in the cold night air would help him stay awake.
The 'miniature gargoyles' had been common brown bats, to Matt's utter lack of surprise. It was a source of mild amusement to many night shift workers that most people in New York had no idea how much wildlife had taken up residence within the city limits; more people were prepared to believe in alligators in the sewers than in bats in their attics.
Matt had given the embarrassed resident the brand name for an ultrasonic pest control device that would drive the bats out, since it was a fact that bats could be dangerous; not because they were blood-suckers—brown bats were actually insectivores, and did the city a favor by keeping the insect population down—but because they were one of the more common carriers of rabies. Due to their habit of roosting close together in large flocks, one sick bat could infect hundreds of others before dying of the disease.
Walking back to his car, Matt paused as he noticed the slip of paper tucked under his windshield wiper. He turned it over, and read: Get food at McD's on 44th.
Matt scowled. Oh, great; another Illuminati meeting. Must be somebody pretty low on the totem pole; usually they ordered him to meet for dinner in some fancy restaurant. Matt had grown to hate those meals; there was nothing like being told "do this for us, and don't ask why" to ruin a perfectly good steak dinner. And sometimes they even stuck him with the check!
His good mood ruined, he went to the fast-food joint as ordered, got himself a burger and fries and bit into it viciously. Whoever was expecting him there had better show up before he was finished, and they'd damn well better order and pay for their own food!
A tall red-headed woman got up from the table where she was sitting and came over to him, drink in hand. "Hi! Mind if I join you?" She looked vaguely familiar; Matt wordlessly shrugged and gave a 'help yourself' gesture towards the seat, and she sat down in it. She took a sip of her soda, then said quietly, "So, I understand you've been poking into a couple of cold cases; the murders of two people back in 1989. The assistant DA Catherine Chandler, and the millionaire John Gabriel."
Dammit, not again! Matt wished now he hadn't recognized Catherine Chandler in that chance meeting, in a grocery store two weeks ago. He scowled at the woman and hissed, "Look, I told Martin Hacker this already; I thought I had a lead on Ms. Chandler's kidnapper, one who could have killed Gabriel too, but it turned out to be a big fat lie. It's a dead end, and it can stay dead as far as I'm concerned; I've got bigger problems now. The whole gargoyles situation, for one."
"I see." The woman sipped her soda. "So, confidentially speaking, what's your personal opinion of Martin Hacker?"
"First-class lying S.O.B., and I'd say worse than that if there weren't women and children present," Mat shot back. "It's no secret that I'm not too happy about him keeping me in the dark and jerking me around for all those years."
"Mm, yeah, that does tend to get people upset," the woman said noncommittally. "Since we're here together and just for the sake of conversation, what was that false lead you mentioned?"
So Matt told her the same lie he'd told Martin ten days before: "It came up in a gargoyles case I was investigating; a homeless man said the gargoyles had been around in the city for decades, and he'd personally seen a huge black gargoyle swoop down and kidnap Ms. Chandler from right off the street. He said she'd drawn her gun on the gargoyle and fired a shot, but the gargoyle had just laughed and snatched the gun away from her, and thanked her for the new toy before carrying her off into the night. John Gabriel was killed in his penthouse with Ms. Chandler's gun, and no one ever figured out how the killer had gotten up there. But if someone had flown in through a window… So I looked into it, but it turned out that the man was lying though his teeth; he'd been in Bellevue from spring of 1988 to the summer of 1990, so no way he could've witnessed anything."
Of course, when telling that story to Martin he'd embroidered on it a bit; said that he'd thought it was plausible because he just knew in his guts that Martin had known about the gargoyles for years too. Knew about their existence and never said anything to him about them either, because they were all part of the Illuminati's Master Plan for God-knows-what.
It had been good to have another excuse to vent on his ex-partner, the two-faced bastard who'd gotten him kicked out of the FBI when he'd gotten too close to the truth about the Illuminati. He'd been secretly pleased to get Martin on the defensive, swearing that he'd really had no idea about the gargoyles until a few months after Xanatos had broken the spell on them; on the defensive, instead of poking holes in the story Matt had been spinning.
"Interesting," was all the woman said in reply to the whopper. Then after a few more sips of her soda, she said quietly, "She recognized you too."
It took a second for the meaning to sink in. "She…" Matt stared at the woman, and finally he realized where he'd seen her before. Not at an Illuminati function, but in a photo hanging on the wall of the 55th precinct, one of the places he'd visited while investigating, before dropping the whole affair after Martin Hacker had come snooping too.
"Detective Diana Maxwell." The most celebrated detective of that precinct, regarded as almost spooky by her coworkers for the way she could dissect a crime scene and profile the perpetrator from just a few shreds of evidence. Back when she'd been Diana Bennett, she'd been the detective assigned to Ms. Chandler's 'murder' investigation.
Detective Maxwell nodded, then said with a wry smile, "Sorry I missed you when you came by, but one doesn't keep an Italian mother-in-law waiting on an anniversary dinner."
Matt waved that away impatiently as he asked, "So you've seen her recently?"
"Yes… and that's all you can know. She's safe where she is, but I suspect this Martin Hacker you mentioned is one of the people still very interested in finding her, and ruining her safe place. And I'm not going to let that happen," she said with determination as cold and hard as steel.
Matt nodded slowly. "You're right, he is. That's why I stopped investigating, and burned all the notes I'd been taking. But please, just give me a yes or no answer to one more question, okay? The docs said that just before her 'death', Ms. Chandler gave birth. Was the baby ever found alive, and is it with her now? Okay, that's two questions, but please, can you tell me?"
After a brief pause, she nodded. "Yes, to both. His father found him and rescued him, not long before he rescued her. And no, no questions are allowed about the father. At all."
It was more than he'd ever expected to know, anyway. Matt nodded and agreed, "Case closed."
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Next: Counting the Hours