Grave Beginnings (The Grave Report, Book 1) Read online

They didn’t like my bantering.

  Flashes of lights started bombarding the windows of the car, there were reporters outside, snapping away no doubt at “the person of interest” that everybody assumed was me. Well technically I guess it was me, but if we really get down to it, it was an animated golden tiger statue…. somehow I didn’t think they’d buy that story.

  I was ushered out of the car rather forcefully and that’s when I noticed that the group of reporters was considerably larger than I had first thought, much larger. There must have been dozens, literally dozens! My little late night tiger excursion must have really garnered some attention but then, I guess if a massive tiger starts chasing people down the streets of New York, it’s bound to make the news.

  I took a look at the massive gathering of reporters all trying to shove their way towards me, microphones, cameras and all, trying to ask me questions but they were being restrained by a group of stone faced men.

  “My, aren’t I the popular one?” I said aloud to myself.

  I guess one of the men escorting me must’ve heard that because I received a good shove, an indication to keep moving and stop talking.

  “Asshat,” I muttered dejectedly.

  I was led into the building and escorted to an elevator and then some other stuff happened, I really wasn’t paying all too much attention. Though my calf had healed and I wasn’t leaving a trail of blood everywhere I went, my head was still somewhat groggy, I probably had a concussion, wouldn’t have been the first time. I was going in and out of a coherent state of mind, all I remember is my body, well Norman’s body, being pulled or pushed along.

  Manhandling at it’s best. Seriously, no concern for their fellow disembodied spirit currently inhabiting the body of their deceased fellow man and also suffering a concussion, probably.

  Bright and somewhat painful light bombarded my eyes like a sledgehammer as I was forced into a small cold room and shoved into a chair. I propped my head on atop my closed fists as I rested my elbows on the table before me. They didn’t bother to take the handcuffs off, which went to show just how much they trusted me. I waited there for a little less than five minutes before some scrawny little man came in and gave me a quick look over, a physical really. They apparently wanted to check on my physical state and state of my mind to see make sure I would be able to answer their questions properly.

  “So now you care?” I mumbled, struggling to stay awake.

  He ignored me and shined an annoyingly bright light in to my right eye, then waved it out sideways and then again; he repeated the process to my left eye before turning to speak to someone behind him. “It’s possible he might be suffering from a concussion—”

  “You think, House?” I grumbled.

  “But,” he said, continuing as if I hadn’t spoken at all, “he’s lucid enough to answer some very simple questions.”

  “Make sure,” replied a familiar feminine voice.

  He ran another series of very small physical checks, once even asking me to identify how many fingers he was holding up, I told him where he could put all four his fingers…he didn’t like that response.

  Apparently though, being able to give a snarky answer like that indicates that one is indeed coherent enough to answer questions asked by federal agents.

  Yippy…

  “I’m sure you remember me?” asked the feminine voice, just as the top doc was getting up to leave, revealing an attractive woman casually leaning against the sides of the doorway.

  A smile crossed my face when I responded, “I never forget a woman who puts me in a pair of these,” I said, holding up my still shackled hands.

  She calmly walked up to my side of the table and produced a small key from her pocket, shooting me a molten hot smile as she undid my handcuffs. Boy she was good; she knew how to play off her looks and the whole situation. Let the bruised and battered suspect be manhandled by a bunch of rough angry guys and then let the beautiful woman come in and take off your handcuffs and bat her eyelashes at you. What guy wouldn’t warm up and confess to that?

  Me…

  “Better?” she asked, still smiling.

  I rubbed my hands together and then over my wrists before answering, “not really, I thought things were about to get more interesting, the kinky kind of interesting.”

  “They still might,” she replied, her smile broadening.

  Damn she was good.

  “So,” she began, “would you like to tell me what you were doing at this hour of the night in the alleyway where we found an entire fire escape that somehow managed to be crushed?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “So you’re going to be uncooperative in a federal investigation hm? Should I put the handcuffs back on?” her attitude quickly changing, guess the good cop bit was over.

  Great.

  “Ah well you know, sticks and stones and whips and chains and all that,” I replied, a smirk making it’s way across my face.

  She let out a sigh of exasperation, “would you like to explain why I’m hearing nonstop about sightings of…” she paused for a good moment before speaking, “a giant golden tiger terrorizing the streets?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “And there are eye witnesses saying that they saw you running away from it,” she began before shaking her head in disbelief, “I still can’t believe any of this.”

  I merely shrugged.

  “So what really happened?” she asked, a bit of heat entering her voice, she wasn’t playing games anymore.

  “You wouldn’t believe me, you’d think I was crazy, lock me up and throw away the key,” I replied.

  “Was this all some sort of wildly ridiculous prank gone horribly wrong?”

  I kept my mouth shut.

  She exhaled again, clearly getting wound up by my lack of cooperation, “why am I being told that people have videos captured on their cell phones of you running through the streets of Manhattan being chased by a tiger? Why were people running away from you afraid for their lives?”

  “Nobody wants to play with me,” I suggested with a bit of a grin, maybe she’d get the reference.

  She slapped her hands down on the table all of the sudden in a fit of frustration, scaring me too in the process, guess now she was bad cop.

  She must’ve seen my reaction because she quickly apologized, “sorry about that, I tend to lose my composure when being denied the information I’m looking for.”

  “You’d have an easier time getting my phone number,” I quipped.

  I could hear her teeth starting to grind.

  Just before she was able to speak, a tall solid built man entered the room and cleared his throat pointedly. He was African American, dressed in a similar fashion to her; well his suit was a bit more masculine looking, if there’s such a thing when it comes generic suits. He was holding a very thin manila envelope, which he handed to her, she muttered a quick thanks and he responded by bobbing his head before leaving.

  The next few minutes went by in what would have been disturbing silence if I weren’t so accustomed to this situation, but unfortunately, I was. She was probably reading up on something that pertained to this whole fiasco and whilst doing so, using the utter silence to unnerve me, but I knew how to play along.

  I started humming fairly loudly, tapping my feet rhythmically on the floor and drumming my fingers across the tabletop, hoping to press her buttons a bit more. The idea being that she’d get frustrated to the point where she wouldn’t want to deal with me and just tell me to get out.

  Apparently she was better than I thought.

  “So, Norman Smith, fifty-eight years of age,” she paused for a moment, looking me over curiously. She must’ve been taken aback by my, Norman’s unnaturally youthful appearance. “Curator of the American Museum of Natural History and currently resides in one seriously overpriced townhouse in Upper Manhattan,” she finished with an appreciative whistle.

  I forgot that feds could do that, access all that information, not the whis
tling thing.

  “Now Norman, may I call you Norman?”

  I nodded.

  “Now Norman,” she repeated, “Would you like to tell me how a curator is able afford a place like this?”

  I knew what she was doing; she was trying to scare me by implying that I, or rather Norman, was doing something shady to make some extra cash. By blackmailing me or making it look like she was planning to, she would hope to scare me into cooperating.

  “I’m a really hard worker,” I answered, “look,” I said, pulling out and holding up Norman’s battered Rolex. “ Been working for ‘em for thirty years, they gave me a watch and everything.”

  She seemed unfazed by my semi witty response, “so, if we get a warrant to search your place, we won’t find anything out of the ordinary?”

  “No,” I answered flatly.

  “Why do you seem so certain?”

  Because I haven’t found anything yet, I thought to myself, aloud however, I responded rather nonchalantly with, “‘cause there’s nothing to find.”

  “Maybe we’ll take a look anyways,” she replied, “sate my curiosity Norman, you’re an interesting person.”

  “Not really.”

  “I beg to differ, you’re doing exceptionally well for someone in your position and now you’re making news headlines and destroying property.” She said with a dangerous smile.

  Right, I had forgotten about the whole wrecking a fire escape thing, she could charge me with that.

  “So?”

  “So what?” I replied.

  “You going to tell me what in God’s name happened out there tonight or am I going to have to make things difficult?” she asked sternly, I didn’t seem as much as a question though as a command.

  I shrugged before answering, “I told you, you’re not going to believe me.”

  “Try me,” she repeated only this time through gritted teeth.

  “I thought I heard a gunshot, did what any sane person would do, I ran, so did many others, that’s what caused the panic,” I lied.

  “Bullshit,” she said with such definiteness, she sounded as resolute in the way she said it as anyone would when stating an obvious and irrefutable fact. She didn’t even consider the possibility, she was either really good at picking up on when someone was lying, or it was something else.

  “What do you want me to tell you?”

  “How about the truth?” she replied, “how about something that has a tiger in it?”

  “You really think that’s possible?” I asked incredulously.

  “Whether or not it is possible is largely irrelevant at this moment.”

  “Isn’t it? I figured it would be the most relevant thing.” I said.

  “Right now, what I want from you Norman is the truth, I want what you believe.” Her face was all stone when she said it, she had the look of a woman who was all done playing games.

  “I don’t know, maybe a tiger got loose from a zoo or something, went on a rampage, if that’s what you want to hear, and yes, I ran from it happy!?”

  She shook her head in disappointment when she replied, “and here I thought you weren’t going to lie to me this time. As soon as we got the reports of a loose tiger on the streets, we got in touch with anything and everything wildlife related in the area to see if any of them had lost a tiger…they didn’t.”

  I shrugged once again, “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “How about the truth, try again, make sure the tiger stays in the story.”

  I remained silent.

  “So what was it, some exotic pet you had that got loose,” she asked, “that almost makes sense,” she muttered quietly, more to herself than me anyways.

  “Trust me, there’s no sense involved in this whatsoever.”

  “Then tell me, maybe I can make sense of it,” her voice was almost a plea when she said it, almost, there was still a fair bit of anger in it too.

  What the hell, I already wasted enough time arguing and avoiding her, maybe the truth would get me out of here. Not likely but it was all I had left at the moment, so I told her. “Look, yes there was a tiger but I honestly have no idea where it came from. As for it chasing me, I ran, it’s a big cat, that’s what they do when you run. That, and I managed to piss it off at one point, some stupid couple were snapping pictures of it and it didn’t take too kindly to that. I threw something at to get its attention, it chased me to an alleyway, I scrambled up the fire escape.”

  “Truth.” She said so firmly, it was like she really did know that that was the actual truth, even if she had a hard time believing it.

  “And how do you know that?” I asked, rather interested in how someone could be so sure of something like that.

  It was her turn to shrug casually before she answered, “I just do, I’ve always just been able to tell, call it a hunch or a woman’s intuition.”

  “Impressive,” I muttered.

  She shrugged again, trying to make it seem nonchalant but there was a bit of pride in her face, showing that she appreciated the compliment.

  “So?” I asked.

  “So?” she repeated right back.

  “Are we done here?”

  “I don’t know Norman, are we? Is there anything else you have left to tell me? Anything that could make things easier for me, it would only make things easier for yourself as well, keep that in mind.”

  I shook my head, I couldn’t think of anything else left to share, but I did still have a question lingering on my mind. “So, are you charging me with anything Agent Ortiz?”

  “Well I could, the destruction of property—”

  “Hey!” I blurted out, cutting her off midstream, “that wasn’t my fault. If you’re running away from a tiger and jump up a rusted poorly maintained fire escape to escape, which is what it’s for, whose fault is that? It’s the building managers fault!” I shouted defensively.

  “But I’m not going to,” she finished simply.

  “Oh,” was all I was able say, it’s kind of hard to come up with a decent reply after you go on a defensive tirade only to find out you’re really not in trouble. “So…I can leave now, right?”

  She nodded and gestured towards the door.

  I got up gingerly and shuffled towards the door, as I was about to leave, she spoke again.

  “Norman,” she began.

  I turned to look at her.

  “If I find that you’re responsible for this, for endangering the public and causing quite a degree of panic, I. Will. Lock. You up. And throw away the key.” She said in a tone that left no doubts on whether or not she would actually carry out that threat. She most assuredly would.

  I nodded and left, getting all manner of looks as I walked in the direction of the elevator, some were confused looks, others were downright nasty glares. Guess my little adventure made quite a bit of people upset, screw ‘em, they weren’t being the ones chased.

  The worst part of all this wasn’t being brought in for question, wasn’t the attention I attracted, it was the fact that I was getting close and yet at the same time remained clueless. I had had a lead, almost caught that person and somehow ended up being chased by an animated tiger statue. I had never seen magic like that at work, was the person magical…or were they the very monster I was hunting. No magic in my experience could warp reality like that, animate something and not to mention enlarge it to that scale…and give it a pissed off predisposition towards me.

  That realization impressed upon me just how careful I had to be, I was starting to feel a little out of my depth for the first time in a very long time.

  I didn’t like it.

  I waited outside the building, near the curb for a while, waiting for any cab to pass by, it’s New York, there’s always a cab somewhere. Hailing one is the problem. I finally got one after about ten minutes; I gave the cabbie Norman’s address and leaned back against the seat, resting for the first time in a while since starting this case.

  Chapter Eight

  I had g
otten back home, well, Norman’s home relatively quicker than it had taken to get down to the FBI headquarters, weird, guess cabbies knew something the feds didn’t on driving. I paid the man with one of Norman’s ridiculously unnecessary premium members credit cards, the kinds with minimum yearly spending requirements in the six figures range. If the cab driver thought it to be a bit show offish or something like that, he didn’t mention it, he just took it, swiped it and I was done.

  I stepped out of the cab and was confronted by the very familiar sight of Norman’s Manhattan town house, a beautiful home that was about hundred or so years old. Nice clean set of steps that led up to a heavy oak door, a big place that was painted some color that resembled peach…or maybe it was just peach, who knows, who cares? It was quite the sight, an immensely expensive place but what was even more an impressive sight was the little man sitting atop the lowest step.

  He was about four foot two, dressed in a grayish blue plaid shirt, darkish blue gray jeans and grayish green bowler cap. He had a wiry coarse looking beard; it was the color of sandalwood, an orangey reddish brown color. It matched the strands of equally wiry reddish hair falling from beneath his cap, and his wispy eyebrows. His oceanic blue eyes were narrowed, angrily I might add and the clenched setting of his jaw made that abundantly clear. This man was mad.

  Except, he wasn’t really a man, he was another gnome. Someone working for Gnosis I figured. He sat there holding a rather full looking binder; you know the hard plastic kind that children use in elementary school. One look at me and stood up and took a few steps towards me.

  I extended my right hand for a handshake and said, “hey,” as pleasantly as I could.

  The next instant I had a binder jammed into my hand rather fiercely, the plastic was hard and dug a fair bit into the soft flesh of my hand, not enough to break the skin but still…. ouch!

  “The hell’s got your Pampers in a bunch Rumpelstiltskin?” I asked.

  When he spoke, he answered with an English accent, not the elegant and sophisticated kind, “you’re a right arsehole, you know that?”

  “Me? What’d I do?”