Dragonfire: A Gulliver Swift Adventure

The Nightmare Recurs

A pair of NYPD helicopters circled overhead, spotlights focused as much as possible on the body sprawled on the plastic sheeting it had been wrapped in, now spread across the rusted siding and, despite the rocks piled at the corners, flapping in the wind. Squad car headlights ringing the scene added illumination, as did the light atop Lloyd's camcorder and the many high-intensity flashlights in the hands of the uniformed patrolmen focused on the individual wounds, shredded flesh, and severed limbs, the goateed face with one bulging eye hanging from the socket, the jaw unhinged.

"It's him," Lt. Lang verified, the only investigator on site to have interviewed Dr. Felix Caravalho in connection with the theft of Cy Tate's laptop. Until today he had regarded the physicist's colleague as a background witness; someone who could substantiate the potential of Tate's research—but not after his protégé James Hawtree had gone nonexistent along with the VW bus seen fleeing the scene of Veronica Tate's murder, and not after the j.g. assigned to investigate the background of everyone connected with the case had just come up with an interesting factoid:

Caravalho when he was attended Science High School had been a student in Marcia Ulsten's class, something the detective would have questioned the physicist about had he not just gone from person of interest to Victim Five.

Another dead end.

"Wounds commensurate with other four vics," the ME was observing as he straightened up from a crouch, "and take a look at this"—several fissures in what was left of Caravalho's jacket. "I get it under the microscope I'd be surprised it didn't match one of the pieces Gulliver found next to Tate's wife."

"Pretty convincing evidence Felix was present when the lady was slaughtered," Swift had to say, stepping out of Commissioner Rose's Town Car, Ivan Marsh having demurred—but not before giving the archeologist qualified approval to remain on the case:

"Instant it gets too much you call it quits, you hear?"

He heard. He didn't think it would come to that. He wasn't thinking about it much, in fact; the investigation itself releasing the icy fingers once clutching his heart. If Gulliver wasn't yet back at the top of his game he was beginning to get there, back in the thick of things after all these years, drawing conclusions from a few scattered fragments:

"The tears in Caravalho's jacket probably puts him behind the wheel of the Weekender Elaine Ziegler saw."

"Unless," the Deputy Chief countered, "the two of them were working together, Caravalho and Hawtree, Hawtree driving getaway. Don't need a monster from the Syfy channel, you got two human sociopaths who get off on ripping people apart."

"Could account for the blood at the lab." The Commissioner leaned in, undeterred by the gashes and fractures. "They had a falling-out, Hawtree won the argument."

"What did he do, drive the body here and round-trip the Weekender back to the cement plant?" Robertson couldn't see that. "Instead of just hitting the road he was already supposed to be on?"

"Any of the people your squad talk to spot a VW bus around here around dusk?" Vicar's inquiry was directed at Lang, the detective flipping the leaves of his police pad and responding with a "no—

"But one of the track walkers saw a UPS van; thought it was on the way to the Hunts Point Produce Market." The security cameras here were working, "maybe we'll get lucky."

"What about at the lab?" asked Rowdy. "Super-secret facility like that, coverage ought to be 100 percent."

"Not according to Justin," the archeologist recalled. "All show, no go."

"Wouldn't surprise me Hawtree made sure of that," Vicar sniffed. "Premeditated the whole thing; didn't want a record he's skinning Felix alive."

"Anybody know what 'this Hawtree kid' looks like?" Like most people, the journalist expected physics majors to be nerds by definition, Harry Bostridge the exception that proved the rule. Could a nerd inflict this kind of damage, even to a teacher who was going to flunk him out?

"The stakes get high enough; the passion does, too." Making Commissioner Rose all the more interested in apparatus in Caravalho's lab—"not just what he was building it to do, but what that could be worth." All they had so far was hearsay—the kids he and Swift talked to on campus knew nothing for sure—"and it'd be nice to have a leg up before the Feds swoop in and kick us out of the place."

Were it not so blank-faced, their collective surprise would have been amusing.

"Pentagon financed it, they'll snatch it out of our hands before we get a good crack at it." Did anyone know if they'd been notified yet? "Bill?"

"Don't look at me," the Chief protested. "We just found the guy dead, for chrissakes."

"Doesn't matter," Justin Edward Larrabee II interceded, the cellular conversation he'd been conducting in the peripheral darkness concluded. "You don't operate on the assumption the black helicopters and armored SUVs aren't whooshing in we're standing here, you do what somebody does he's well-connected and time is flying—get the NYPD an expert in subatomic physics Caravalho's level to come take a look-see and figure what's what. He's on his way to the cement plant; ETA like in two minutes."

"'Like in two minutes'?"

"Government's not the only owns a fleet of black helicopters"—the announcement like Lang's cell drowned out by the bird setting down several tracks over, Larrabee Enterprises logo glittering on the cabin door. "Seating for eight, anybody interested—which I'd be disappointed you weren't."

"This expert," Gulliver didn't actually have to ask.

"Cyrus P. Tate," the mogul grinned. "Who else? What?"

Uncharacteristic dismay was blossoming on Lang's face, his I-phone lowered. "Something bad is going on at the lab," he said.