I scooted over to have a look.
Dr. Tarbert looked just like his brother James: brown hair, kind of pale, average-looking features. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were from the police report photo, but I got the feeling he had a lot going on in his gray matter. He kind of reminded me of a professor I’d had in college—intensely focused on his subject, and the rest of the world might as well not have existed. Intense. Yeah, that was it. Intense and intelligent.
There was a lot of police-speak in the report, and I didn’t know what half of it meant. “Care to translate?”
“They didn’t have to cremate Dr. Tarbert any more than he already was,” Ian told me. “He died in a fire, a hot one, completely destroyed his lab. The CSI team found traces of a body at the scene; barely enough to fill an evidence bag, let alone an urn.” He scrolled down some more. “They found the slag of the good doctor’s Rolex among the bits and pieces and the burnt-out shell of his Mercedes in the parking lot. The detectives had two witnesses who saw Dr. Tarbert enter his lab about twenty minutes before the fire started. One of them called nine-one-one.”
“Jeez, what kind of lab did he have?”
“Whatever it was, I doubt if it was supposed to have military-grade accelerants in it.”
“They’re thinking arson?”
Ian nodded. “With Tarbert inside. Whoever doused that lab didn’t want anything left.”
“You thinking little brother James?”
“That’s exactly what I would be thinking except that he alibied out, which is why he was dead in Green-Wood rather than alive in prison. He was in White Plains the night of the fire, and the witnesses at the scene didn’t see anyone other than Dr. Tarbert in the area.”
“What about the ex-wife?”
“In Europe when the lab burned.”
“Does she have enough of her own money to pay for a little murder and arson?”
“Unknown, but we can find out.”
Yasha came out of the break room carrying a massive mug of coffee and heard Ian’s last comment. “I take it death not accident?”
“Not unless Tarbert accidentally sprayed down his lab like a charcoal grill then started tossing around lit matches,” Ian said. “The case is listed as an unsolved homicide.” He paused. “Of course, there’s another possibility.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“That wasn’t Jonathan Tarbert in that lab. No body to speak of, and not enough DNA on what was there for testing.”
“Faked his own death?”
Ian shrugged. “I’ve heard of stranger things.”
I thought for a few moments. “Today, his twin brother gets himself killed while waiting to sell a monster head to Ollie, and while carrying a flash drive that a vampire and his men in black were willing to kill me to get. Is there anything in that police report about the kind of research Tarbert was doing?”
Ian clicked quickly through the pages. “No info on the research, but a couple of guys in suits were the ones answering the detectives’ questions—or more like deflecting their questions.” He smiled. “But they couldn’t avoid identifying themselves. Department of Defense.”
We both looked over at Kenji’s still empty computer command center.
“We need to know what’s on that flash drive,” I said.
“Kenji has it,” Ian said. “I passed him in the hall. He was just coming out of a meeting.”
“Meeting about the flash drive?”
“Possible. Though Kenji prefers to work at his own station.”
“Maybe someone does not care what Kenji prefers,” Yasha said.
I did some math. “Okay, we’ve got a possibly dead researcher, probably Department of Defense, and his lab was definitely destroyed. Underneath his family’s mausoleum are crates with ‘Property of the U.S. Government’ on them.” I stopped, baffled. “Who in the government would want a monster head? And why hide a bunch of government crates? Dr. Tarbert’s dead. Well, maybe. Little brother starts selling off the inventory—and the mysterious contents of the flash drive—and gets himself killed for his efforts.” I sat back. “We need to know what else’s in those crates. The Tarbert brothers were the last of the family, so those boxes don’t belong to anyone now—unless Dr. Jonathan puts in an appearance from beyond the grave.”
“I would imagine they still belong to the government,” Ian said.
“It’s a big government.” I grinned slowly. “Until we know what’s inside, we won’t know who to return them to.”
Ian actually gave me a wink. “Which is why a SPI team is emptying the crypt as we speak.”
Alain Moreau appeared silently on the other side of my desk. I squeaked and jumped again, but didn’t have anything left to turn over on my desk.
“Madame Sagadraco and the rest of the team are waiting for you in the main conference room,” the vampire lawyer said without expression. “Follow me.”
“Team?” I whispered to Ian. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“Because it never is.”
11
THE main conference room at SPI headquarters resembled a scaled-down version of the Security Council Room at the UN. I’d been in here only once before. Meetings in this room were super secret, hush-hush, and meant that the supernatural crap had hit the fan big-time. Needless to say, not many people wanted to be called into a meeting in here. It looked like telling the boss about my adventure in Brooklyn would have to wait.
A massive U-shaped table dominated the room, with the light from a pair of projectors—one mounted in the ceiling, the other in the floor—coming together to form a hologram of SPI’s company logo, a stylized monster eye with a slit pupil. The eye slowly spun, a placeholder for whatever visuals the boss was going to use in the meeting. Plush and pricey executive office chairs were spaced every few feet around the table, a closed folder at each place. There were only two vacant chairs. Vivienne Sagadraco stood at the open end of the table, arms crossed, remote in hand, perfectly still, waiting. I hoped we hadn’t kept her waiting for long.
“Be seated,” she said without moving, or looking at us. With a dragon’s sense of smell, she wouldn’t need to look to know who we were.
We did as told, and Alain Moreau took his usual place in the shadows behind Vivienne Sagadraco.
The others seated around the table had given us a quick glance when we’d come in, then put their collective noses back into the contents of the folders in front of them.
I recognized everyone. Some I knew; others I’d only seen but had been told their names and what they did.
Kenji Hayashi was sitting directly across from us. Ian caught his attention and gave him a questioning look. Kenji nodded once and held up two fingers with the flash drive between them, before tucking it safely back in his shirt pocket.
That was a relief. It’d be even more of a relief if he’d already looked at it, but when Vivienne Sagadraco asked you to a meeting, you came.
In addition to Kenji, both of SPI’s monster hunter/commando commanders were there, meaning that the combat boots were about to hit the pavement. One of those commanders was a woman, as were many team members on both squads. SPI was an equal opportunity employer of combat badassness regardless of sex, species, or dimensional origin.
Ian and I had a copy of the folder and the contents that had everyone else in the room grimly enthralled.
I opened it. Reports and crime scene photos—both ours and the NYPD’s. SPI had people in the police department who kept us in the loop on cases that involved monster perps. Our people had taken the photos of Kanil Ghevari. The cops had done the honors on what had been left of Dr. Adam Falke. I hadn’t seen the aftermath of the first murder, but I’d seen more than enough of the second so that I didn’t feel the need to linger over the visual records of either one. There was also a copy of the text of the letter that the adversary had sent to the boss.
“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming on such short notice,” Vivienne Sagadraco said. “You’ve all been briefed on recent events. I’ve called you here because I have just acquired new information that escalates these events to a critical level. As you know, the killers left behind physical evidence at both crime scenes: a claw at the first murder and a lock of hair at the second. These, combined with an artifact recovered today by Agents Byrne and Fraser, led me to contact my counterpart at SPI Scandinavia, Lars Anderssen. He was able to provide a wealth of information.” She paused. “Most notably, confirmation of what we are dealing with.”
Everyone looked up from their gory photos at that.
“Director Anderssen sent us this.” She pointed the remote at the empty area in the center of the table. The SPI eye logo vanished, and in its place a nightmare formed from its clawed feet to the top of its leathery head. The boss clicked once more, and the hologram began to rotate slowly so everyone could get the full effect.
A full effect I could have gone the rest of my life without.
The monster was gigantic, corded with muscle, and with what looked like veins protruding just under the surface of its skin. I couldn’t tell if the skin was mottled or extensively tattooed. The only difference between the face presented on the hologram and the head we’d found in the box was that it wasn’t desiccated and mummified. It had the same hair, facial features, and mouthful of razored teeth. The monster’s legs were powerful and its knees slightly bent, but it was the arms and hands that really got my attention. Long and thick with muscle, they extended almost to the creature’s knees, each ending in a hand that could easily encircle my entire waist, and tipped with claws that could have shredded Ollie’s office door like toilet paper and gutted the two of us with one swat.
All the little hairs on my arms stood straight up, and my bagel threatened to come back up the way it’d gone down. I suddenly felt light-headed and realized that I’d forgotten to breathe. I glanced around the room and saw I wasn’t wearing the only stunned expression at the table.