Sirens in the Night Read online

  Jack was amazed at how soothing the detective’s voice was, and how authoritative it had been as well. Her hazel eyes had met his, and for a moment, Jack felt as if he could trust this woman with anything. Unlike her co-workers in uniform, who were none too pleased to see him out of handcuffs, the detective had seemed more than willing to forget his indiscretion of barging into Jason’s apartment. She was simply looking for answers, just like Jack.

  As Jack accelerated along Walnut Street, the image of Jason’s fossilized body flashed through his mind. It was hard to conceive that the desiccated shape sitting on the leather sofa could have been Jason Spinacker. The face, with its skin that more resembled old parchment than flesh, looked nothing like his friend. Granted, the general shape of the head seemed the same, but the sunken eye sockets and recessed cheeks gave the face a horrifying skeletal appearance, which had made it almost unrecognizable.

  When thinking back on Monday, Jack could not remember how he went from being on the hallway floor to sitting on the sofa of his own apartment, but his next recollection was of Samantha Ballard sitting across from him in his living room. The detective had fixed Jack a cup of coffee and had been patiently waiting for Jack to answer her questions.

  “Were you and Mr. Spinacker close?” she had asked.

  “Close enough. I’ve only been living here a little over a year, but we were friends.”

  “Did you see each other often?”

  “Our work schedules didn’t really align,” Jack had replied. “We mostly saw each other in the hall, usually when one of us was coming home and the other was heading out. Sometimes, we’d get together for a few drinks, but that was about it.”

  “When did you last see Mr. Spinacker?” Samantha inquired.

  “Friday night. I’m the Friday night DJ at Pulsar; Jason had come over to the club that evening,” Jack had explained, and then paused as the question jogged something in his memory. “He was at Pulsar, like that other guy!”

  Samantha had leaned forward in her seat. “What other guy?”

  Jack had looked up from his coffee, and stared at the detective. “The guy on the news—the one who was attacked in the parking garage! I saw him Friday night! My god!”

  “What? What is it?” asked the detective.

  Jack had replied, “Two women came into Pulsar on Friday evening. They were together, but separated once they were in the club. One latched on to that guy I saw on the news—the one that got beat up. The other hooked up with Jason.”

  Jack had decided to keep his description of the couple’s erotic dancing to a minimum, and he simply stated that they had been “dancing quite intimately”. He had explained how they had suddenly left the club, and how his friend had vanished from the club with the other woman as well. The detective seemed deeply interested in what he had to say, so much so that she had called her partner into the apartment and asked Jack to repeat his story again.

  As he came to the end of his retelling, two men entered his apartment, one in a dark suit and the other in a shirt and tie. The older of the two men—short, with salt-and-pepper hair—introduced himself and his tall, muscular companion.

  “Special agent Frank Wilkinson, and this is special agent Steve McCloskey. We’re from the FBI.”

  Jack, for the third time, repeated his story to the newcomers, while struggling to come to terms with what he had seen in his friend’s apartment. The FBI agents asked him for a detailed description of the two women, which he provided, and then, after a few more questions, the agents left, with the two detectives following shortly thereafter.

  Jack had spent Monday evening in his apartment with a bottle of Jim Beam as his only companion. He couldn’t understand why he was taking Jason’s death so hard. The two men had only known each other for a little over a year. Jack had not made much effort to make friends since his arrival in Philadelphia. Most of his acquaintances were nothing more than superficial at best. But Jason had been different. The two men had found common ground that had opened up a friendship, which both felt they had been lacking. Jason could often be pompous, arrogant, and a moral reprobate. Jack sometimes found his friend’s attitude toward women to be repugnant even by Jack’s low standards. But there was also an honest quality about Jason that Jack found refreshing. Jason never pulled any punches with Jack, and that was what he liked about his deceased friend. As much as Jack didn’t want to admit it, Jason was his only real friend, and his death was going to take some time for Jack to get over. The last thing that Jack remembered from Monday evening was staggering into the bedroom, and passing out on the end of the bed.

  Tuesday hadn’t been much better with Jack not rising from bed until close to one in the afternoon. He had found three messages waiting on his answering machine. Two were from co-workers at WPLX, saying that they had “heard about what happened and just wanted to make sure you were okay.” He deleted those messages before they had even finished playing. The third message, however, helped snap Jack out of his melancholy.

  “Jack? Hey, it’s Bryan over at Den of Heroes. I might have a lead on that Detective Comics issue you’re looking for. Nothing definite, but a possibility. Give me a shout, or drop by and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  Jack decided that a trip into Center City the next day would be just what he needed. It certainly wouldn’t get rid of the overwhelming depression he had been feeling since Monday morning, but it would help take his mind off of what had happened to his friend, for a while at least.

  Parking his motorcycle on the sidewalk outside of the Den of Heroes, Jack suddenly felt very conspicuous, as if every eye on the street was watching him. He had a distinctive sense that everyone knew that the police had been questioning him in relation to a murder. Jack knew that he had nothing to do with Jason’s death, but with his grief came an underlying guilt, and that had been playing tricks with him ever since Monday. He looked to his left and caught the eye of a tall elderly gentleman, who just happened to be passing. Was he staring at me? Jack thought. To his right, he saw a young woman waiting at the nearby bus stop. She glanced down quickly when he caught her eye. He shook his head, telling himself that it was all just his imagination.

  Bryan Salisbury was alone in the comic book store as Jack entered. The young man was standing behind the glass display case, flipping through a Batman graphic novel. He looked up at Jack, smiled, and pushed the graphic novel aside.

  “I wasn’t sure if you got my message,” he said.

  Jack leaned forward, and rested his elbows on the top of the display case. “I got it. This was the earliest I could get over here. What’s up?”

  “I found a dealer up in New York who said he could get his hands on the Detective Comics issue you’ve been looking for,” explained Bryan. “But, he’s asking for ten grand, and a ten percent finder’s fee.”

  “Seriously? That’s almost twice what it’s worth.”

  Bryan shrugged his shoulders. “I know. That’s what I told him, but he won’t budge.”

  Jack thought over his options for a moment, and then shook his head. “I’m going to pass. That’s a little too rich for me right now.”

  “That’s what I figured. You should have called me. I could’ve saved you a trip.”

  Shrugging his shoulders, Jack replied, “I needed to get out anyway. It’s been a rough week.”

  “I’m not surprised with that attack outside the club this past weekend,” said Bryan. “You remember that body they found a few weeks ago? There’s been a string of those popping up all over the city. All of them just dried husks of who they once were. My police contact’s been filling me in.”

  It was the last thing that Jack wanted to hear that morning. Bryan’s words brought a flood of images back into his head. He only half-heard Bryan’s words as he fought to subdue his emotions, and force the memories back into the recesses of his mind.

  Bryan continued, “I’m telling you
, Jack. The only thing that explains it all is a Seirene. That has to be it!”

  Snapping out of his emotional haze, Jack gruffly replied, “Don’t start with that shit again!”

  “I’m serious, Jack! Nothing can strip a body of every drop of moisture like a Seirene. Let me show you.”

  Bryan reached behind the display case, pulled out a Demons of the Myst book, and started flipping through the pages. Jack, immediately recognizing the book, rolled his eyes.

  “Bryan, they’re just characters in a game. There are no such things as these . . . what did you call them?”

  “Seirenes. You don’t understand.” Bryan paused, took a deep breath to calm himself. “You’re right. This is a game, but what makes this game unique is that it’s based on the true stories behind the myths. Every myth is thoroughly researched. These Seirenes are the real creatures, and if one is in Philly . . . god help us all,” Bryan explained.

  “But it’s mythology. It’s not reality.”

  “Some isn’t true. But don’t you understand? All mythology is based on some level of truth. If you believe Homer’s version, Sirens were just sea nymphs that lured sailors to their deaths with bewitching beauty and song.” Bryan leaned forward, staring at Jack with intensity. “That’s all rubbish, of course.”

  “Oh, of course,” Jack responded with a grand wave of his hand as if to dismiss the idea as ludicrous.

  “The true Seirenes were far more terrifying. They did have the ability to lure men, but with mind control, not beauty and song,” Bryan explained. “They were cannibals, living off the life force of humans, feeding on their victim through their hands. And they’re very sensual. It’s said that they could take a man to the heights of pleasure and then kill him in an instant.”

  Jack shook his head in disbelief. “Bryan . . . you’re delusional. If this was all true, why did the ancient Greeks make them out to be—what did you call them—sea nymphs?”

  “The truth behind the Seirenes was too terrifying. No one dared write about it. Even Leonardo Da Vinci wrote about the Seirenes in one of his notebooks. Let me see, I’ve got that quote here somewhere . . .” Bryan said as he flipped through the book. Finding a handwritten notepaper clipped to a page, he continued, “Ah, here it is. Da Vinci wrote, ‘The siren sings so sweetly that she lulls the mariners to sleep; then she climbs upon the ships and kills the sleeping mariners.’”

  “You see, even Da Vinci didn’t think they were as bad as you’re saying,” said Jack, dismissing the storeowner’s idea with another wave of his hand.

  Bryan continued to vehemently defend his idea. “Jack, there were many stories in old Greece about Seirenes, and of how they would terrorize an ancient city, siphoning off the men, one by one. The people of ancient Greece lived in fear of these creatures.”

  “Even if I believed that these Seirenes ever existed—which I don’t—what makes you think that they’re here? We’re a long way from ancient Greece,” said Jack.

  Bryan leaned forward, and began to speak softly, as if in fear that someone would overhear. “There were rumors that a Seirene arrived in Philadelphia sometime in the late eighteenth century. Supposedly, the citizens of the city put up a fierce fight against the beast. I’ve never had the chance to follow up on it, but I’ve heard that Benjamin Franklin had written about the incident in one of his diaries.”

  Jack let out a loud laugh. “Bryan, it makes for a good story, I’ll admit that. But it’s all bullshit.”

  Bryan’s stare locked with Jack’s. “Then how do you explain the mummified corpses?”

  The vision of Jason’s body flashed again in Jack’s mind. He had to admit that he didn’t have an explanation for what he had seen on Monday morning in apartment 4C. The police had been far from forthcoming with any explanation, only willing to say that they were investigating several leads. The sight of the hollow eyes and sunken cheeks on the face of his dead friend made Bryan’s theory sound plausible. But, if that were true, then there must be two of those creatures in the city. After all, there had been two women at Pulsar on Friday night. Could they have both been Seirenes? He wondered. For just a moment, he found himself considering Bryan’s theory. But, moments later, Jack’s senses returned to him and he laughed again. “No. It’s not possible. You almost had me going for a minute, but it’s just not possible.”

  “But Jack . . . my source at the police department said . . .”

  Interrupting, Jack inquired, “Have you told your source this theory of yours?”

  Bryan hesitantly nodded his head.

  “And what did your source say?” Jack asked.

  Quietly, Bryan bowed his head and replied, “He didn’t believe it either.”

  “There. You’re letting your imagination run away with you.”

  Jack gave Bryan a quick smile, and then turned to leave the store. As he approached the door, Bryan called out from behind him.

  “Jack, be careful out there. If you meet a Seirene, I doubt you’ll realize it until it’s too late. They say that few people can resist their beauty. Only a heart of the purest intentions can resist them.”

  Jack smiled. “Well, that rules me out.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The view from the seventeenth floor of Philadelphia General Hospital was a breathtaking panorama of Center City. Despite the height, Samantha could still hear the sound of horns honking from the traffic below. The faint sound of a distant siren attracted her gaze downward toward the emergency room below her. She watched as an ambulance turned in and disappeared under the canopy by the ER entrance. Looking across the cityscape, she could see the brass statue of William Penn standing tall above Philadelphia City Hall. The Wednesday afternoon sky was bright blue with only a few clouds, which looked like white cotton candy drifting above the city.

  Samantha allowed her mind to drift along with the clouds in a vain attempt to forget the horrors of the past few weeks. She had always loved the city of Philadelphia, and couldn’t imagine ever living anywhere else. But the string of deaths that she had been investigating had begun to turn that love sour. Samantha wanted nothing more than to pack up and leave town before she had to view any more mummified corpses. Between the Spinacker corpse on Monday and another found on Tuesday in a suite at the downtown Parkview Hotel, the body count was rolling into double digits. The local city newspapers had finally abandoned their silence and began publishing scathing editorials about the atrocious way the police had handled the case. Editors climbed on their proverbial soapboxes, and, in black and white print, declared the Philadelphia Police Department to be incapable of ensuring the safety of the city’s citizens. Those would be the same editors that would be praising the valiant police efforts once they caught whoever was committing these heinous crimes. Samantha sometimes felt utter contempt for the city’s fair-weather press.

  The FBI had brought in further resources and the FBI Behavioral Analyst had provided a profile of the perpetrator. “A woman with an extreme hatred toward men” was what he said. “A very domineering personality, and probably sexually abused as a child by a male father figure.” Samantha had rolled her eyes when the FBI presented the profile. It seemed like every profile she had ever heard from the FBI had some sexual angle to it, making her wonder if the Behavioral Analysts just rehashed the same profile over and over again for every case. Samantha’s resentment of the FBI’s interference grew every time Special Agent Wilkinson spoke to her. His patronizing manner only served to make Samantha want to keep him in the dark if and when she had a breakthrough in the case.

  She was also getting a tremendous amount of pressure from her superiors to make some progress sooner rather than later. She was well aware of the rumblings among some of her male counterparts who thought a man would have better handled the case. There had only been one other time in Samantha’s career when she could remember things getting even remotely this bad—the Society Hill Serial Killer case. It ha
d been a long investigation, which had almost ended her career. Not because of anything she had did wrong professionally, but because she had come close to the point of simply not being able to go on any longer. Even four months after the investigation had ended, the hideousness of the crimes and her own personal guilt had been so intense that there had been many nights where Samantha just wanted to eat her gun and be done with it all.

  Because of the recent nightmares, sleep had become a distant companion for her, and she was feeling stretched a bit thin. She caught her reflection in the bathroom mirror that morning. The dark shadows under her eyes told the whole story. Even Peter had commented about how tired she had been looking recently. Although she was hoping that the descriptions provided by the nightclub DJ would give them some kind of lead, she wasn’t going to hold her breath. The two women described could just as easily be innocent in all of this.

  Samantha felt a slight chill run down her spine, and, placing her hands in the pockets of her overcoat, pulled it tight around her body. With little appetite, she had foregone eating breakfast that morning, and barely had much of a lunch. Her sustenance had been three cups of coffee and half a turkey sandwich. When Peter had urged her to eat more at lunch, she’d simply told him to piss off.

  Her mind wandered away once again, and she found herself thinking of her father. She remembered the day the police commissioner came to their front door to break the news of her father’s death. Samantha had just turned eighteen, and was preparing to graduate from high school in a few months. To her mother’s surprise and chagrin, the death of her father had only served to solidify Samantha’s decision to become a police officer. Four years in college was followed by her enrollment in the Philadelphia Police Academy, and then she entered the police force with top honors. She threw herself into her new career as a police officer with everything she had, excelling at every step, and being rewarded over and over again for her efforts. Even with all the accolades, she still had to endure an uphill battle to prove she was just as good as her male counterparts. It had been a long, hard struggle, but she knew her father must be looking down on her and proudly smiling. Over the past few weeks, that single thought had been the only thing that kept her going.