"Birds of Pray"

Chapter 10

"The Mystery That Was Gabriel"

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Unfortunately, they never gave Joseph a last name in any of the Prophecy movies… so I gave him the last name of the actor who played him.

Greg drove up the long, dusty, desolate highway that led to Chimney Rock.

He still couldn't believe he was on his way to attend Katie's funeral… how could so much have changed in only a week?

Katie was dead, he'd broken up with Carolyn, and Gabriel was nowhere to be found.

Greg was still enraged that law enforcement wasn't doing anything to find Katie's mysterious friend. Sure, the Coroner's Office had ruled that her death was due to natural causes, but who has a stroke at the age of 42? As illogical as it was, he was certain that Gabriel was somehow responsible.

And with that in mind, he had spoken to the police and finagled his way into Katie's house, where he had taken photographs of those odd drawings that Gabriel had left on her guest room walls… and that was when he'd found the pile of big white feathers on the bed, just like the feather that Katie had had in her hair that last day they'd been together. Leave it to Gabe, Greg had thought ruefully. He must've started collecting them when he found out I'm allergic… that explains why I always had an allergy attack whenever I came over here!

The feather on the top of the pile was broken and stiff with dried blood and would – Greg had guessed – provide a nice little DNA sample for analysis. He hadn't been sure why it seemed so important to collect and collate this evidence, but something had told him that these feathers were the key.

He'd gotten an extra large Ziploc bag from the kitchen, and wearing rubber gloves (and sneezing all the while), he'd put the feathers in the bag and taken them to a contact he had in the Coroner's Office.

"I'm not a vet," Mike had said bluntly. "What do you expect me to do with them?"

"Find out what kind of bird they came from," he'd answered.

"Is it really that important?"

"Yeah," Greg had nodded. "I think it is… but I'm not sure why. I know it sounds crazy, but – "

"I'll do my best," Mike had promised with a shrug.

Greg had gotten a friend in the DA's Office to put the photographs of Katie's guest room walls on several different law enforcement databases, hoping against hope that they would lead somewhere.

Not that he was very optimistic. Gabriel had vanished as though he had never even existed. The police had humored Greg, dusting Katie's house and car for prints and coming up with nothing. The only prints they found in Katie's guest room were Katie's. Ditto the two coffee cups they found in the sink. Greg's prints were all over the house too… but evidently Gabriel's weren't.

The driver's seat of her car had been moved, suggesting that it had recently been driven by someone taller than Katie… but the only prints on the steering wheel were her own. It wasn't possible that the driver had somehow wiped the wheel – as Greg had suggested – because Katie's prints were perfectly clear, not smudged.

Greg just couldn't figure it out.

The paramedics who had answered the 911 call had initially thought that Katie had killed herself; she was arranged neatly on the bed, she had called 911 to insure that her body would be found, and she had even left the front door unlocked for them. It had seemed to be an obvious suicide, but the autopsy had proven otherwise.

So how had she called 911 when she was lying there comatose, dying? That was a question that neither the police nor the Coroner's Office could answer to anyone's satisfaction. Unfortunately, they weren't overly concerned about pursuing it since there was no evidence of foul play involved in her death, no fingerprints on the phone aside from her own.

Greg's cell phone rang, and even though the highway was deserted, he pulled over to the side of the road to answer.

A quick glance at the caller ID told him that it was his friend in the Coroner's Office calling. "Yeah," he said into the phone.

"Greg," Mike said. "I have some news about those feathers."

"Great! What's up?"

"I FedEx'ed one to the Cornell College of Veterinary Medicine – they have an Avian Health Unit, so I figured that if anyone could identify what kind of bird that thing came from, it'd be them."

"And?" Greg asked.

"No dice. They said it's a primary flight feather, which means it came from a wing. And they never saw anything like it before… they said it's probably from a raptor of some kind, but there aren't any raptors that big. In fact, they said that there aren't any birds that big that are capable of flight."

"How big?"

Mike hesitated. "They said that whatever that thing came from, it'd have to be human-sized."

Greg blinked. "What?"

"Yeah."

"Is that possible?"

"I don't know – I told you I'm not a vet, remember? But get this… I ran the DNA on that bloodstained feather, and it was the weirdest DNA I've ever seen in my life."

"It's probably bird DNA," Greg suggested. "You probably don't see too much of that in your line of work – that's why it looked weird."

"No, it's not from a bird, because I had Cornell fax me some examples of avian DNA for comparison. Sure, there are a lot of similarities, but not enough to explain – "

"A feather that didn't come from a bird?" Greg interrupted, puzzled.

"Yeah, it's weird. But you know what? It gets weirder."

"How?"

"Whatever this thing is, it doesn't have sex chromosomes… you know, X's and Y's."

Greg frowned. "And that means… what?"

"No gender. Nada. It's not male, it's not female."

"So what is it?"

"Dunno. I asked Cornell… they told me there are reptiles and fish that rely on things like environment and incubation temperature for gender determination, and they don't have sex chromosomes either. They're true hermaphrodites – both male and female, all at once. I guess you could say they come from the factory fully loaded."

"Bizarre," Greg murmured.

"Yeah, bizarre – and I saved the best for last. Believe it or not, I actually recognized the DNA from the feather right away, because I'd already seen it."

"You did?" Greg frowned. "Where?"

"Are you sitting down?"

"Yeah."

"We found a couple of black hairs on Katherine Henley's body… and it's the same DNA."

Greg's mouth opened, but nothing came out for a long moment. "How – "

"Your guess is as good as mine."

"So… if the DNA is similar, that means… what, exactly?"

"No, Greg. Not similar – the same. Exactly the same. As in a one hundred percent certain match with whipped cream and a cherry on top."

"So it's from the same… person… bird… thing… whatever it is?"

"Yeah. Whatever it is, it has black hair to go with those big white wings."

"You're sure it was a hair and not part of another feather, right?"

"Absolutely sure, Greg. Checked it out under the microscope and everything. I do know a little bit about forensic investigation, you know!"

"The hair…" Greg groped, still trying to make sense of all this. "Is it possible that the sample from the feather got contaminated somehow?"

"Nope. A contaminated sample would show two distinct types of DNA. Not one."

"Gabriel has black hair," Greg said suddenly.

"Gabriel?" Mike asked.

"Oh, he's Katie's weird friend. The one who vanished."

"Gabriel," Mike mused. "Like the angel, huh?"

"Angel?" Greg repeated, frowning.

"Yeah, you know – from the Bible?"

"I'm not really religious."

"Well, maybe you should be. Think about it, Greg – mystery solved!"

Greg wasn't sure if Mike was joking or not. "Angels? I don't believe in that stuff."

"Hey, it's as good a theory as any I've got," Mike said. "I don't know what else to tell you. As far as I know, this DNA isn't from anything we've ever seen here on this planet. Even Cornell is stumped."

"All right," Greg agreed, feeling even more puzzled now than he had been when he began this conversation. He was sure that the black hair had to have come from Gabriel… and then he suddenly recalled Katie's angry vow to take Gabriel home and screw him. With a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, he forced himself to ask, "Hey, one more thing… you did the autopsy, right? Did Katie have sex with… with anyone?"

"Yeah… she had consensual sex with someone the night before she died, but it wasn't with the Bird-Thing, if that's what you're worried about."

"It was with me." Greg sighed. "OK, thanks, Mike."

"Anytime, buddy."

Greg hung up the phone and drove on for a few more miles, all the while trying to make sense of what he'd just been told. How could a feather have Gabriel's DNA – DNA that was like nothing else on Earth? Unless Mike's bizarre theory was right…

No, that was absolute insanity. Only fanatical nut jobs believed in things like that. And anyway, why would an angel have been hanging around with Katie? It didn't make any sense… even if he believed in that stuff. Which he most certainly did not.

His cell rang again – now it was his office calling. The dusty road was as deserted as ever, and this time he didn't bother to pull over.

"Listen, I know you didn't want to be bothered," his secretary apologized when he picked up. "Doctor Joseph Hytner from the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office called for you."

"Oh yeah? What's he want?"

Greg could hear the frown in her voice. "I told him that you were away on personal business and couldn't be reached. He wanted your cell, but I wouldn't give it to him. So then he absolutely insisted that I call and give you this message. He wouldn't let me hang up until I swore on the life of my firstborn child that I would do it – believe it or not."

"OK… that's really weird."

"Yeah."

"So, what's the message?"

"He said he saw those pictures you had Shirley post on VICAP yesterday and he needs to talk to you as soon as possible. He thinks you're in real danger, and he said he can't emphasize that enough: real danger."

"Danger?" Greg repeated, leaning forward in his seat. "Why?"

"He wouldn't say… said I'd think he's a nut, that you'd think he's a nut, that everyone else already thinks he's a nut."

"He sounds like a nut."

"Well, he was a very worried nut. Just be careful, OK?"

Greg sighed. "Yeah, I will. Did he leave a number?"

"Sure did," she said, and read off the digits. Greg pulled over and scribbled them down on the legal pad he always kept on the front passenger seat for just such occasions.

"Great, I'll call him when I get to the hotel. Thanks, Phyllis."

"Anytime."

"Listen… you go to church a lot, right?"

"Yes, Greg," she said, sounding amused. "Why?"

He hesitated. "What do you know about angels? Do they hang around with humans?"

"Uh… no, I don't think so."

"What about an angel named Gabriel?" Greg frowned, trying to recall the long ago Sunday school lessons of his childhood. "He's an important one, right?"

"Yeah, he's God's Messenger."

"And he doesn't hang around with humans, does he?"

"No… I think he just delivers his message and leaves. That's how he did it in the Bible, anyway."

"So, no hanging around drinking coffee in the kitchen or watching DVDs or getting into fights at the Olive Garden or stuff like that, right?"

This time she laughed. "No, Greg. I really can't picture it."

"Yeah, me neither."

"Why are you asking me these things?"

"I don't know, Phyllis… maybe I'm turning into a nut like that doctor."

She laughed. "All right. I'll see you when you get back – and don't forget to call the nut."

"Believe me, I won't!" he promised.

He hung up the cell and got back on the road. He would definitely make that call as soon as he could, and maybe – just maybe! – he'd finally get to the bottom of the mystery that was Gabriel.

Chimney Rock was a ghost town.

The clerk at the Motor Lodge told Greg that the town had been slowly dying over the years, after the copper mine closed back in the early 90s. The school had closed four years ago, and the stores were being boarding up one by one.

"So what brings you here?" the clerk asked as he handed back Greg's Visa card. "We don't get many visitors, nowadays."

"A funeral," he replied shortly.

"Oh, you must mean that schoolteacher… yeah, she left when the school closed. I'm surprised she didn't leave a long time before that."

"She felt it was her duty to stay. You know – for the kids."

"No money in duty," the clerk said with a laugh.

"Not much money in hotels, either, from the look of things around here," Greg said rather sharply.

But the old man behind the counter only laughed some more.

"'Spect I'll be closing down and moving along too, pretty soon," he agreed. "Go live with my daughter and her husband out there in Tempe."

"Well, good luck to you," Greg said, collecting his key.

"You too, buddy. Room 105's the sixth door on your left when you walk out the door."

"Thanks."

"You bet. I'd say enjoy your stay, but under the circumstances – "

"Yeah. See you later."

Locating the room wasn't difficult, and soon he was fitting the key into the lock.

The blackout curtains were drawn against the afternoon desert sun, and so it was quite dark in the little motel room. It was nice and cool as well; Greg could hear the air conditioning unit running. He fumbled at the wall and found the lightswitch.

He left his briefcase and his one piece of luggage in the room, grabbed the little plastic ice bucket off of the bathroom counter and went back outside to the soda machine he'd passed on his way to the room. He bought two cans of Pepsi and filled up the ice bucket from the ice machine.

He returned to the little motel room, popped open a Pepsi, and sat down to call Doctor Hytner.

He gave his name to the lady who answered and was put on hold. He sipped his Pepsi as he waited and tried to decide whether he should tell the doctor about the feather and hair DNA.

"Hello?" a male voice said in his ear. "Gregory Bailey?"

"Yeah, that's me."

"I'm Joseph Hytner, and I saw those pictures you posted to VICAP."

"I heard. So what can you tell me about them, Doctor Hytner?"

"Call me Joseph. How much time do you have?"

Greg frowned. "As much time as you need, I guess. I'm here in Chimney Rock for a funeral tomorrow, and – "

"Chimney Rock?" Joseph repeated. "Oh boy."

"What?"

"Once upon a time, there was a homicide detective named Thomas Daggett. One day, he followed a murder investigation to Chimney Rock. He came back to LA raving about a War in Heaven, the Devil, and the Archangel Gabriel. You with me so far?"

"Yeah," Greg agreed, taking a deep breath. "I'm totally with you."