Through it all, though, the Angels still seemed to keep clean.
They’d moved up to their houses in the hills years ago to keep from getting splashed with the mud from down below.
Sylvester turned right on Angel Boulevard, leaving the group of tourists laughing in the night.
The crime scene was alive with activity. Floodlights illuminated a section of the Walk of Angels cordoned off with yellow police tape. An Angel City Police Department chopper droned overhead, its searchlight slicing through the night. Sylvester pulled up in his cruiser and waited for a moment in the car, observing the busy scene through his windshield. It was the first time in a long while he had been at an active crime scene. He had almost forgotten the chaos. The adrenaline. The rush. He opened the car door and made his way out into the cold and noise.
“Hey, you can’t come in here,” a uniformed officer said as he approached the tape. Sylvester fumbled out his badge. “Oh. Sorry, sir,” the officer said, and held up the tape.
Sylvester ducked under and took in the scene. On the sidewalk he saw a white sheet covering a lump directly over one of the famous Angel Stars. There were gangs in Angel City, and the occasional homicide was not uncommon. And it was certainly nothing that he was normally trusted with.
The one thing that caught his attention was that the bulge under the sheet looked small. Too small, he thought, to be a body. As he looked around for the sergeant, he thought he heard one of the officers mumble something as he passed. Burnout, he thought the man had said. Sylvester stiffened, plunging his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, and tried his best to put the man — and the past — out of his mind.
When Sylvester finally found him, Sergeant Bill Garcia looked especially upset.
“Hey Bill, what’s going on?” said Sylvester. Garcia seemed surprised to see him.
“They put you on this?” Garcia said, worry edging his voice.
Sylvester nodded.
“Guess so. What’s this all about?”
When the veteran sergeant looked at him again, Sylvester was startled to see fear glimmering in his eyes.
“Come on, sir,” Garcia said. They walked together toward the sheet on the sidewalk. “Everyone keeps asking me if it’s ever happened before. I tell them I don’t know. I mean”—he paused—“not like this. I don’t know these things, Detective, I just do my job.”
“Settle down, Bill. What’s going on?”
“I mean, we’re running gang interdictions tonight, usual procedures, but this doesn’t even seem like our juris-diction anymore—” Sylvester stopped and held up his hand.
The sheet was at their feet.
“Bill, stop. What’s the big deal?”
Garcia pursed his lips.
“The big deal? Come take a look, Detective. I’ll show you the big deal.”
The sergeant knelt down and Sylvester followed. Out of the corner of his eye, Sylvester realized the other officers on the scene were staring in their direction. Either watching him or curious as to what was under the sheet. Or both.
Garcia took the edge of the sheet in his hand and raised it.
The gory mess on the sidewalk was perfectly reflected in Sylvester’s glasses. Two severed Angel Wings had been neatly placed over the Angel Star, crossed one on top of the other. Their ragged stumps glistened with thick, glittering Angel blood. Steam rose faintly from the wings in the cold night air. Whatever had happened, it had been very recent.
A jolt ran through the detective’s body. He ran the back of his hand over his mouth.
“Is this for real?” Sylvester asked.
“Yes, sir,” Garcia said, “This is for real. And read the name on the star.”
Sylvester pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket and used it to lift one of the wings, just enough to look under. The gold lettering, though spattered in blood, was still readable.
“Theodore Godson,” he read aloud.
Garcia nodded. “Theodore Godson was reported missing earlier today.”
He pulled the sheet over the wings again, and the two men stood up. Sylvester looked down the length of the deserted boulevard. All of a sudden he seemed to have a terrible headache. He pulled his glasses off his face and began to polish them with the end of his shirt.
“What do you think, Detective?” Garcia asked.
“If someone cut off his wings, then he was probably mortalized.”
“Mortalized?” Garcia said.
“Yes,” Sylvester said. “He was made mortal.” Sylvester was surprised to realize he was out of breath. A cold sweat had broken out on his forehead.
“Excuse me, sir, aren’t Angels immortal?”
“Yes, well. .” He paused again and had to lean against a wall. The ground had begun to move under him.
Garcia looked at him, concerned.
“Hey, are you okay?”
“Just give me a second,” said Sylvester, clutching the wall. A sudden wave of nausea had risen in his stomach.
“Sir, are you. .” The sergeant trailed off, peering back toward the other police.
Sylvester steadied himself and after a few moments turned back to Garcia. The sergeant was looking at him with concern. So were the other officers, the forensics team, everyone. He gazed back into their disbelieving eyes. No one thinks I can do this, he thought. The spotlight of the chopper cut through the scene again, pointing at the severed wings on the sidewalk like a white finger in the night.
Sylvester peered down the street. A few straggling tourists had seen the light and were coming over to investigate what was going on. Sylvester straightened and put his glasses back on.
“Get that chopper out of the sky,” he suddenly barked.
Then he turned to Garcia. “We’re going to keep a low profile starting right now. Absolutely no press. You keep your men buttoned up, okay?” Garcia nodded. “Who else knows about this?”
“Just a few of the responding officers,” Garcia said, surprised by the sudden confidence in the detective’s voice.
“Okay, let’s keep it that way,” Sylvester said. “Document the crime scene and then clean everything up like it never happened at all. Have those wings taken to forensics and find out who they belong to.”
Garcia had begun taking notes.
“Contact the Angels and get them involved. I want someone I can interface with on this, preferably someone close to the Council. Got all that?”
“Yes, sir.”
Sylvester looked back at the other officers. They had all gone back to their work.
“So, what am I writing in the report then? Homicide?”
“Maybe,” Sylvester said as he walked briskly back to his car. “We won’t know for sure until we can find Theodore Godson. But if those really are his wings. . it’s not good.”
“We’ve been getting reports of HDF activity in the run-up to the Commissioning. Do you think. .?” Garcia kept trailing Sylvester. “I mean, um, when was the last time something”—Garcia stumbled on his words—“well, something like this happened? In this way.”
“Something on your mind, Garcia?” Detective Sylvester paused. The sergeant shook his head and dropped his head. Sylvester looked off into the distance as he continued, his expression hard: “It’s been. . a while.”