V – Silent Bird

The amorphous blob slammed into the wall. BLAMM! It gurgled towards me! It slithered, pounding away at the cavern walls, and…

Someone was pounding at the door. I opened my eyes, but couldn't tell the difference. I heaved myself up out of bed. The knocking continued unabated. I meandered toward the door, still partially asleep. I yanked it open, and looked out into the well-lit hallway. Empty. I couldn't believe that some joker was getting his jollies by waking sleepy detectives. Still, whoever had done it had worn strong cologne. Smelled a bit coppery, and a bit like cooked meat…

Oh. God. I knew that smell. I'd become intimately acquainted with it a couple years ago, when I had tracked down Mad Peter, a psychotic who enjoyed mutilating the burned bodies of his victims. I had found his stash of corpses by accident, and this same smell wafted up to my disgusted nostrils; the smell of blood and charnel death. I turned, and looked into the darkened room. The light from the hall washed over Merle's desk. With Merle still in it. I shut the door.

No. I turned on the light. Her face was frozen in a paroxysm of terror. Her hands had slumped onto the desk, scattering papers everywhere. Her eyes… Her eyes had been burned out of her head. I picked up her hands, and ash sifted past her bone onto the papers. Something had burned them, as well. This flame, if flame it was, had burned hot enough to consume flesh. Oddly enough, no papers were burned, not even singed. I walked around her, noting the hundreds of small but deep lacerations across her body. One thing was clear. She had died violently, but silently. How? I could think of many ways that this could happen; all of them had the victim screaming bloody murder in the first two minutes. The police hadn't been here, which means that she hadn't screamed. I reexamined her hands. They were curled into talons. Whether that was from the tendons disintegrating or from grappling with her assassin, I didn't know.

Something disturbed me about this scene, and it wasn't that a gallon of blood had been spilled onto my floor. I had come in here not, (I checked my pocket watch. 1:30 AM,) two hours ago, and I had smelled nothing. That didn't make sense. With this amount of blood, I should have smelled something! Also, something about her posture had me quirked. It wasn't as if she had slumped over the desk naturally. The angles were all wrong! There was nothing here that offered any more clues. If Merle had knewn her attacker, she'd taken that secret to the grave.

The smell began to irritate me. I pulled out my last cigarette and lit it, the sweet smell of nicotine drowning out the stench of death. I heard sirens outside. With my luck, the boys in blue were here about Merle. Even if they weren't, the smell of her would set them off. I dove behind her desk, and opened my safe. Inside was my P. I. license, a half-empty pack of cigarettes, and three hundred dollars. That would do me well. The sirens had stopped, and I could glimpse flashing lights outside my window. I launched myself up, and ransacked the place, taking everything with my name on it and stuffing it into my briefcase.

On my way out the door, I grabbed the glass scraper I had bought for this exact purpose, and scraped the frosted letters off my window. Devil takes the unprepared, I always say.

I took one last look into my destroyed office, at Merle's ruined corpse, and ran like hell. Blackie would tell no secrets again, not even to her employer. As I did my best to outrun the penny-men, (for even now, I could hear their frantic bootfalls,) my only thought was that I had been set up. No other explanation for it. Not only had I been framed, I had been framed so expertly that I had walked right into the damn thing. I…

…Hesitated. Little red specks by the fire escape caught my eye. Checking behind me for signs of pursuit, and finding none, I investigated. It seemed to be some liquid that had pooled here when something was dropped. I touched it. Blood, there could be no doubt about it. Someone had been dragged through here not too long ago. I swirled my finger around in it, and found clumps of clot tissue. This was coagulated? But that only happens after you…

Merle. Damn it! She had been killed elsewhere, and brought back to my place. Whoever was doing this was doing a bang-up job so far. Now was the time to be looking for screw-ups; nobody's perfect.

I opened the fire escape door, bounded down three flights of stairs, and out into the New York City night air. The rain had stopped. I had to find somewhere to lay low for the next few days. I had to get a new piece, a new apartment, and I had to follow up on this case.

I sniggered. Out of a home, a (rather cute) secretary, out of luck, and I was still trying to get this case closed. It's weird the way a man's brain works after he's become used to routine. I ducked into an alley, set my briefcase on top of a trash can, opened it, and began to sort it into manageable piles. This one became This Case, that became Later, and another became Trash. I dug through the This Case pile, and uncovered Virginia Hatherly's contact information. I had recovered it with the three hundred dollars. Her phone number was listed as Room 39, Park Hotel. I recognized the number, as I had stayed at that hotel more often than I care to think about. After throwing away the Trash pile, I found a pay telephone and set to dialing the Park Hotel.

It rang once…

Twice…

Three… And someone was on the other line. A voice I knew, but couldn't place.

"Park Hotel."

"Who's dis?" I uttered from behind a crumpled cigarette I found myself smoking.

"This is Richard Booker, who is this?"

"Richie? Dat you? Impossible! I'd know yer voice anywhere."

"Tony Pierard?! As I live and breathe! What you up to, pal?"

"A lotta trouble, and a lotta close calls."

"The usual?" I could hear the smirk in his voice.

"Nope, sumpthin' a little hotter this time. Lissen, before we get much farther, I gotta ask you a question."

"Anything."

"You have a Brit dame there by the name o' Hatherly?"

"Lemme check, ol' buddy."

I heard him set the receiver down, and shuffle papers. I finished my cigarette, and reached for my flask. It was gone. I had to have left it in the office. I cursed myself. Richie was still digging through the registry, so I had time to think. Rich had done me a couple good turns before, and I could usually trust him to lend a hand when I needed it. Once, back on that "Mad Peter" case, I had stayed at the bar where he was working, the Inebriated Vampyre. I hadn't realized he had switched jobs. It was about 3:00 A.M. on a Friday morning. On the other end, I could hear voices.

"Hey, Tony. You still there?" Richard rang back on. His voice sounded oddly muffled.

"Yeah. Whatcha got fer me?"

"Two bits of news, both bad."

Jesus, just what I needed. "Awright, give 'em over."

Richie sighed. "There is no Hatherly, or if there was, there's no record of her being here."

"Damn it!" I slammed my fist into the phone booth, and felt the glass rattle. "What else?"

"Officer James McKnight is over here in the lobby asking if I've seen you. He… You… You're wanted for murder. They're after you, Tony. I can't help you this time."

I held the phone in half-disbelief. No way this was happening. I looked around me frantically. If they had fingered Richie, there was no telling where they might be. I took a deep breath.

"Tony, you there?"

"Ye-e-ah, just a little shaken. Whose murder, did he say?"

"Uh… I don't think so."

"Damn."

"Do you want me to check?"

"NO! Hell no. Can't have you linked to me anymore than you already are. Damn it, this complicates matters. Is McKnight in the room with you?"

"No, he's out by the front desk. Where are you, Tony?"

I could hear sirens approaching. Instinctively, I turned away from the road. The police car blasted past either in search of me, or on its way to another atrocity. I sighed. "I don't know what to do, Rich. I'll call you back."

I heard his protests as I hung up, and placed the receiver on the hook. Something about this whole thing rubbed me the wrong way. Something about the way Richie had addressed me seemed so off, so against his nature that I found it hard to believe that I wasn't being set up. Again.

A headache slammed into me, playing an all percussion orchestra, and me with season tickets. It went on a four-city tour of my brain, and left me swimming. It took me a minute to recognize that I was still in the phone booth.

I needed to get out of here. I needed someplace safe.

I sucked down the last drag on my cigarette, and flicked the butt into the street. I walked woodenly down the street, and entered the first hotel I came to. I checked in, went to my room, set my briefcase down on the table, and collapsed into bed.