Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales: An Anthology(44)
“The Fountain?” he said.
“Precisely.” In an instant the conglomeration of dark birds—as if the strokes of an ink pen upon blue paper—transformed into the image of a fountain. Starlings in the form of water, sprayed at the top and fell into the catch basin. The entire thing lasted no more than ten seconds but I distinctly saw it.
“If I’m not mistaken, Inspector,” said Jallico, “that was not just any fountain, but the fountain over by the cathedral.”
I realized he was right. “So it was,” I said, and patted the young man on the shoulder.
On the first anniversary of the murder of Clifford Von Drome, Jallico and I lurked in corners where we’d not be seen. From mine, the fountain was due west, and straight through the front doors of the cathedral. The wind blew through in gusts, leaves and stray paper, but not a soul. Later we walked the twisting cobble stone streets back into the ancient neighborhood. As day slid toward night, it began to snow. We got lost finding our way back to the cathedral where, when we finally arrived, we huddled for warmth before trying to make it to the streetcar. Jallico had a nasty habit of cigarette smoking, but I tolerated it because it helped him think. We sat in the front pew before the altar and beneath the empty echoing dome. We could hear the wind outside.
“He’s not coming, is he?” asked my assistant.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s not coming out this year to kill. I think I can feel it.”
“You’re delusional, brother,” I told him. “The first time you think that, he will assuredly strike.”
As it turned out, Jallico was right, but that didn’t spare us the angst of the months between the end of autumn and spring. News of a body seemed always waiting just around the corner until late March.
It was three years before the Beast returned. Jallico and I stayed on the case, trading off days during which one of us either tailed Vienna Von Drome or wandered the streets around the cathedral. We witnessed the girl grow into a young woman. As she got older, it seemed that she became more aware of the existence of other people. She noticed, watched, winced, and nearly smiled once, or at least that’s what I thought. Mortimer stayed by her side. She never left the apartment without him. Almost every day, a long walk all around the Knot. And yes, on October 15 of each of the three years, Jallico and I witnessed, in the empty park, the murmurations of Vienna Von Drome. Each year the swarm left us with another clue: a cat, a triangle with a circle above and one below, and a giant starling. Although my assistant and I never disagreed about the images, there was always the slight sense that they were no more than a figment of the imagination. In other words, there was doubt.
The hissing cat head was a thousand starlings or more. The creature pounced into the air and burst apart. In the moment it was airborne, its hair was depicted as sharp angles and its eyes were enormous. The same thing with the giant starling made of starlings. A conundrum but it too was impressive. Once you’d seen these images born of the bird’s unified flight, there was no forgetting them. I wondered how much Vienna’s pet, Mortimer, had to do with it. “What if the bird’s running the show?” I said to Jallico.
He shivered slightly. “If that were the case,” he said. “I’d quit on the spot, but what if the Von Drome girl is the one who killed her father?”
“Vienna the Beast?” I said. “I suppose it’s possible, but she’d have had to have been ten when the first of the murders took place.”
We learned from the Commissioner of the constabulary that our office and our budget line would be stricken from existence if the Beast didn’t kill in the fourth year since its last slaughter. Our good fortune depended upon someone’s murder. That October there was no murmuration. Vienna and Mortimer showed up on the bench beside the carousel, but the bird never left her shoulder.
Something was up. She’d met a young man on the patio of the Coffee Exchange in late August. I watched the entire affair transpire from a distance. I’m not even sure you could call it an affair. They sat at a metal table, each drinking coffee, watching the horse-drawn carriages ferrying citizens off to their appointments. She didn’t speak to him. He carried on a conversation for the two of them. The few times I drew close enough to catch the topic of his monologue, he was going on about love and the cosmos. Jallico pegged him as having a loose screw. Still, Vienna, who cast no eye his way or gave any indication that she was listening to him, came every afternoon for two weeks in August to sit and drink coffee. That was it. Of course, the bird was with her. And old Mortimer wasn’t that pleased with the fellow. He’d fly high above them and shit on the young man’s hat. We did a background check on the guy, Kemton Lair, a pretentious lout living off his wealthy mother’s money. My assistant and I took him aside and warned him that there should not be any improprieties with the young woman. We told him we were watching. Then Jallico punched him in the gut as hard as he could. Definitive punctuation to an important message. One of the good reasons to have a younger assistant.
We kept an eye on Vienna’s meetings with Lair. Once winter set in and the weather grew very cold as it does in the Knot, they moved their rendezvous inside the Coffee Exchange. The surveillance seemed pointless. Nothing was happening. Still, one of us usually followed her. One day in January when it was Jallico’s turn (I was over in the old town skulking around the cathedral), he saw, from a bench across the street from the Exchange and through its plate-glass window, Lair surreptitiously pull a knife on Vienna and grab her arm. He forced her to stand and he led her out the back door of the place. My assistant took off, bolting through the coffeehouse and out the back. The two had a head start on him but they made slow progress. Mortimer, who’d been riding his mistress’s shoulder all morning, now flew wildly around the young man’s head pecking at his eyes and pulling his hair and ears with sharp talons. As they came into view, Jallico drew his pistol, took a bead on the assailant’s forehead, and yelled for him to stop. Kemton Lair pushed Vienna to the ground and fled.