The doorbell chimed. Nathan thought it was the builders, who were supposed to come and give him an estimate for replacing Denver’s bedroom window, but when he answered it he found Detective Pullet and Detective Rubik standing in the porch.
The wind was getting up, and dry leaves were chasing each other around the driveway.
Jenna said, ‘You don’t need to see my shield, do you, Professor?’
‘What do you want?’ Nathan asked her. ‘I already spoke with an officer from the Fourteenth District.’
‘I know you did. But he called me. The thing of it is, I’ve been assigned to investigate these mysterious limestone statues that keep dropping out of the sky, and these mysterious flying creatures that have been tearing people apart, and I’m beginning to come to the insane conclusion that – somehow – they are one and the same.
‘What’s more, Professor, it sounds to me as if the thing that damaged your house and caused the death of your son’s friend bore a very close resemblance to one of these statues and/or flying creatures.’
Nathan didn’t answer, so Jenna stuck her two index fingers up on the top of her head and said, ‘Horns?’ Then she flapped her arms and said, ‘Wings?’
Still Nathan said nothing, so she bugged out her eyes and pressed her nose flat with her finger. ‘Maybe it had bulging eyes and a beak?’
‘I didn’t see it myself.’
‘But your son saw it, didn’t he? How did he describe it?’
Nathan said, ‘You’d better come in. I think we need to talk about this.’
‘Well, hallelujah,’ said Jenna. ‘He done seen the light. And about time, too.’
Nathan led them into the living room. Grace was sitting at the coffee table, filling in reports for her practice at Chestnut Hill medical center.
‘Grace, honey. These are detectives.’
‘Detective Pullet and Detective Rubik,’ said Jenna. ‘We’ve come to ask you some questions about what happened to Stuart Wintergreen, among other things.’
‘Sit down, please,’ Nathan told them.
Jenna said, ‘I’ve just been to see the statue we hauled out of the wetlands at Bartram’s Gardens. You heard about that?’
‘Of course.’
‘Our chief crime scene investigator has identified it as a gargoyle – from Poland, originally, but shipped over here when they were building the Eastern State Penitentiary. Apparently it was supposed to be positioned on the roof to frighten the crap out of the inmates, as well as about a hundred more gargoyles, but for some reason they never got around to putting them up.’
‘I know all about them,’ said Nathan. ‘I also know who they belong to.’
‘And you didn’t tell me the last time I talked to you? Haven’t you heard about something called “obstructing a police investigation”?’
‘I was being mortally threatened, Detective. My family was being mortally threatened. After that hospital orderly was killed, I knew that the threat was deadly serious. But I thought there was a good chance that I could track the guy down and destroy his gargoyles before he could use them to kill anybody else.’
‘Let me get this absolutely straight,’ said Jenna. ‘The stone statues and the flying gargoyles, they really are one and the same?’
Nathan said, ‘Yes. They are. I know it’s really difficult to believe, but in the Middle Ages, in Europe, there was a plague of gargoyles – thousands of them. They killed cattle, sheep, and countless numbers of people. But in the end an alchemist called Artephius found a way to turn them to stone, and a whole bunch of exorcists was sent out by the Vatican to hunt them down. The Brotherhood of Purity, they called them.’
‘So once upon a time, these gargoyles used to be actual living creatures?’
‘That’s right, before they were petrified. But now this German thaumaturge called Theodor Zauber has discovered a way to turn them back into living creatures.’
‘Thaumaturge? What’s a thaumaturge when he’s at home?’
‘A magician. A sorcerer. A worker of miracles. Theodor Zauber’s late father Christian Zauber was one of the greatest sorcerers of the twenty-first century, and his son has followed in his footsteps. He can do things that would make you doubt your sanity, and bringing gargoyles back to life is one of them.
‘His idea was to turn terminally ill people into human statues – just like cryogenics except that you wouldn’t need the freezers. Sometime in the future – when doctors eventually find a treatment for whatever disease was about to kill them – they would be un-petrified, if that’s the right word, and then, hopefully, cured.’
‘But?’
‘Why do you say, “but”?’
‘Because there’s always a “but”. Because this Zauber character threatened to set his gargoyles on you. Why did he do that?’
Nathan explained how Theodor Zauber had found that his newly-revived gargoyles were unable to stay living and breathing for more than a few hours before they started to turn back into stone, and how they needed an almost endless supply of fresh human hearts to keep them alive. He explained how Theodor Zauber had asked him to join him in his enterprise, and give him the benefit of his cryptozoological expertise. The sorcerer desperately needed a scientist, but the scientist had said no.
‘Do you have any idea of Zauber’s current location, or where he stores these gargoyles?’ Jenna asked him.
‘No,’ said Nathan. ‘None whatsoever.’
He did tell her, however, about Sukie Harris, and how Sukie Harris had pointed south-westward from her hospital bed.
‘She’s convinced that the gargoyles are stored somewhere in that direction. But as my assistant said, that could mean that they’re three blocks away, or three hundred miles.’
‘Do you think that Zauber will try to contact you again?’ asked Jenna. She was frustrated and annoyed with Nathan, but at the same time she could understand that he had been trying to protect himself and his family, as well as his reputation. She had dealt with a similar case only last year, when the Black Mafia had threatened the family of a very reputable lawyer unless he represented one of their members in a drugs prosecution. Before he had given in, the lawyer’s two German shepherds had been decapitated and their heads impaled on each side of his cast-iron gates.
Nathan said, ‘Yes. I’m sure he’ll be in touch. He seriously believes that this petrification scheme is the future of medicine. He’s convinced that it’s going to make him rich and famous, and it doesn’t even occur to him that killing innocent people is wrong, so long as he achieves his dream.’
‘OK, then,’ said Jenna. ‘When he does get in touch, I want you to arrange to meet him. We’ll be there, too.’
‘He’s pretty elusive, I warn you. He can walk in and out of places and nobody even sees him.’
‘There’s nobody born who can get past me, Professor, I promise you. Thauma-thingummy or not.’
‘Like I say, I’m just warning you.’
Jenna and Dan stayed for another hour and a half, asking questions and taking notes. As simply as he could, Nathan explained his cryptozoological research to them, and how he had developed the phoenix, and this time he confessed what had really happened when Ron Kasabian had been burned to death.
Jenna said, ‘You realize there could be a case here for criminally negligent homicide? Not that any jury would believe anything that you just told me, not for a moment.’
‘Right now, it’s only important that you believe it,’ Nathan told her.
He described how Theodor Zauber had visited his room at Temple University Hospital, and how Theodor Zauber had urged the gargoyle to plunge from the top of the physiotherapy building and kill Eduardo Sanchez Delgado.
When she had finished, Jenna closed her notebook and said, ‘You won’t tell anybody else about any of this, will you, Professor? Especially not the media. You know it’s true and now I know it’s true, but if it gets out before we can properly substantiate it, we’re going to look like we’re barking mad.’
Nathan and Grace stood together at the front door watching Jenna and Dan climb into their car and drive away.
‘I’m so angry with you,’ said Grace. ‘I’m so angry I don’t know what to say to you. Stu’s dead because of you.’
‘Stu’s dead because Theodor Zauber is a psychopath. Like I said before, if I had told the police about the gargoyles, they never would have believed me. And even if they had, what then? You think they could have protected us? How do you stop a gargoyle from crashing into your house?’
‘Those detectives believe you now.’
‘You think so? I don’t know. I don’t really believe it myself.’
‘But if only you had told them sooner, they could have done something. They could have found Zauber and arrested him.’
‘On what charge, Grace? Owning a large collection of grotesque medieval statues?’
‘I don’t know. Making threats against you.’
‘My word against his. No, Grace, when it comes down to it, there’s only one person who can stop Theodor Zauber and his gargoyles, and you’re looking at him.’