What was it Top had told him about living in George Jetson land?
“Okay,” Chapel said, as he jogged out of the chain-link gate of the heliport. A black car — a Crown Victoria, just like the one Laughing Boy drove — was waiting for him. He had an appointment with a dead woman.
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+8:12
Neptune Avenue was lined with modest houses and convenience stores, pizza parlors and medical clinics. The air smelled of the ocean and pasta sauce and was filled with the noise of cars and thumping radios. Dr. Bryant’s house was a simple two-story structure with bars over its windows and a steel-core reinforced door.
“Looks like she was worried about security,” Chapel said. “Not that it helped.”
“That’s pretty standard for New York,” Angel told him. “Police records say she’s had a couple break-ins before, as well. People who saw her name on the door — saw she was a doctor — and broke in looking for drugs.”
“Does she keep an office here?” Chapel asked.
“No, this was just her home. Her office and her lab are a few blocks away. This is kind of a run-down area for somebody like her. I guess she wanted to live near her patients. By the looks of things, they were mostly Russian immigrants.”
“You have access to her medical records?”
“Nothing privileged, though I could probably get that without too much trouble if you need it,” Angel told him. “I don’t see anything that stands out, right now. I don’t see anything that would have made her any enemies.”
“One was enough,” Chapel said. He gritted his teeth and walked up to the door. A single strand of yellow police tape crossed the opening, and a uniformed police officer was standing just inside. She stared at his ID with a skeptical eye, but she let him through. Angel had already talked to the local cops and let them know he was coming.
The house was dark inside, and it took a while for his eyes to adjust. When they did, he saw the place was full of police photographers and detectives drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups. He would have preferred to visit the scene alone, but that wasn’t an option.
He heard someone crying loudly in the back of the house — probably a kitchen back there; he could see the side of a refrigerator through an open door. The last thing he wanted at that moment was to be questioned by a grieving relative, so he headed up the stairs instead — that was where Angel told him Dr. Bryant had been discovered.
“I’m getting some preliminary reports now; they were just filed by the detectives on the scene,” Angel said in his ear. “Chapel, this isn’t going to be pretty. It sounds like she was beaten to death in her bedroom.”
“I’ve seen dead people before,” he told her.
A detective in a cheap suit, wearing a police laminate on a lanyard around his neck, looked up and stared at Chapel. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
Chapel flashed his ID again, but the detective shook his head.
“How about you just tell me, instead of making me read the fine print on that thing? I figure you have a right to be here or we would have turned you away at the door. But you’re no cop. I’m guessing… military?”
Chapel bit his lip, but said nothing.
The detective scratched at the stubble on his chin. He looked like a tough old bastard. He looked like a drill instructor Chapel had known in basic training, frankly. He looked like the kind of guy who was used to being lied to and didn’t like it at all.
“I can’t answer your questions,” Chapel said. “I can’t tell you anything. This murder is of interest to—”
“DHS,” Angel whispered in his ear.
“The Department of Homeland Security,” Chapel said. It was a lie, but it wasn’t a ridiculous one.
The detective’s eyes went wide. “Yeah, okay. I know that score.” He stepped aside and let Chapel past.
“That was too easy,” Chapel said under his breath.
“This is New York, sweetie. This is where 9/11 happened. They understand terrorism here — and nobody will bother a DHS agent.”
“Good thinking, Angel.” Chapel stepped through another doorway and walked into the crime scene proper.
He may have seen dead bodies before. He had seen the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. This was different, though, and his breath caught in his throat.
Dr. Helen Bryant was lying on the floor, twisted into an unnatural shape. She’d been thrown into a mirror and pieces of broken glass were everywhere, a shoal of them covering part of her face. That was a small mercy. She was an elderly woman. A little old lady. No little old lady should ever have this happen to them. It was just so… wrong.
One of the detainees had done this. Chapel suddenly wanted very much to kill the son of a bitch. He wanted to make the guy suffer.
Chapel forced himself to squat down and take a closer look, much as he wanted to just turn away and shake his head. He made himself look at the wounds on Dr. Bryant’s body, the broken bones, the lacerations. There were no gunshot wounds, and no sign that she’d been cut with a knife.
The bastard had done this with his hands.
“Do you need us to move her?” someone asked from behind him. It wasn’t the detective who had questioned him. This was a paramedic, or maybe somebody from the coroner’s department. “We’re almost done taking fiber and hair samples. If you need something, just ask.”
Chapel looked up at the paramedic. She was black, in her midthirties, and she looked like she was in awe of the DHS agent who had graced her crime scene with his presence.
Damn, Chapel thought. Angel’s ruse had gotten him this far, but now it might cause problems. If the cops thought this case was somehow connected to terrorist activity, they might start asking questions. Well, he decided, that was for Angel or Hollingshead to take care of. He had tougher problems to solve.
He put his hands on his knees and started to straighten up. Turning his face away from the body, he caught something out of the corner of his eye. “What’s that?” he asked.
The paramedic came over to stand next to him, taking care not to step on any evidence as she did so. Together they looked at the bedside table. A book of crossword puzzles and a pen lay on the floor next to the bed, and just above them, on the wall, someone had scrawled a single word.
Chapel moved closer. The letters were shaky and hard to make out, as if they’d been written by someone with a broken arm, someone in a panic, somebody who knew she was about to die. He had no doubt that Dr. Bryant had written the word.
She must have been trying to leave some kind of clue, maybe even to identify her killer. She could have been more clear about it, Chapel thought, and then scolded himself for thinking uncharitable thoughts about the dead. Still, he had no idea what the message meant:
CHIMERA
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: APRIL 12, T+8:20
“Angel,” Chapel said, “you ever heard of something called Chimera?”
“Sounds familiar. Give me a second.” He heard the faint sound of clacking keys and knew she must be looking it up on the Internet. “Right… for one thing, you’re saying it wrong, sweetie. It’s not ‘chim-ur-uh,’ it’s ‘kai-mare-uh.’ It’s a monster from Greek mythology — a lion with a goat head coming out of its back and a snake for a tail.”
“I’m guessing Dr. Bryant wasn’t killed by some kind of weird lion creature,” Chapel told her. “It’s got to be something else. Was there a Project Chimera? Maybe something the CIA was involved in? Maybe that was the name of the place where the detainees were held.”