Gentry went back to his office and signed the report. He turned to the computer and input the keywordbats. He restricted the search to the past two days but asked it to include all of New York State. The database would provide any instances where local or state police had been called regarding bats.

There were four. In addition to the incident at the Central Park Zoo and the assault in Westchester, a motorist fixing a tire on Interstate 87 in Kingston, New York, had been bitten by “a group” of bats. He managed to get back in his car and drive himself to a hospital. That happened two nights ago. One night ago a woman leaving work at the South Hills Mall in Poughkeepsie was attacked in the parking lot. A security guard who was on patrol heard her cries and pulled her into his car. In both cases the bats left when the people did.

The phone beeped and Gentry jumped. He picked it up just as he realized that Kingston to Poughkeepsie to Westchester to NewYork was a straight line down the Hudson.

“Detective Gentry here-”

“Robert, it’s Chris Henry.”

“Hi. You get everything okay?”

“I did,” Henry said. “I appreciate it, I think. It’s a nasty one. What about the missing organs?”

“The Metro North police are going to keep looking. If they find them, you’ll get them.”

“Good. I also wanted to make sure you don’t need a full rundown right away. This one’s gonna take time.”

“I figured.”

“I will tell you what you probably already know: Whoever did this is some fucked-up piece of work. I took a quick look for signs of sexual attack. There’s nothing. But there is one thing I noticed. Some very strange marks on a couple of the rib fragments.”

“Strange?”

“Yeah. Deep gouges, like knife wounds. Only they’re fatter and rounder than a knife blade. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Any guesses what made them?”

“A lion,” he snickered. “If it wasn’t that, you got me.”

Gentry felt his stomach burn a little. Nancy had said something about big cat teeth too.

The detective asked Henry to make exact measurements of the gouges and to beep him when he had the figures. Then he hung up.

A mountain lion,he thought. What the hell did that have to do with bats? Nothing. It made no sense. Gentry was about to call Nancy at the museum when the phone rang.

It was Nancy.

“You’re back,” she said. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

Her enthusiasm sounded a little on the light side. Or maybe that was just his own guilty interpretation.

“Thanks,” he said. “I got in a few minutes ago. I was just about to call you.”

“Did you find anything in the room that I should know about?”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” he said. “The bats were definitely there-”

“Were they still there?”

“No. But there were fifteen victims. All dead.”

She was silent.

“Most of them looked like they’d been sleeping. They were badly lacerated and covered with guano.”

“How fresh did the guano look?”

“Exactly like the stuff in the tunnel,”Gentry said. “I’m waiting for lab results. Although there was one thing-my forensics guy said that one of the victims looked like she’d been attacked by a lion.”

“Was he serious?”

“It wasn’t a scientific judgment, if that’s what you mean. Just an off-the-cuff observation. Nancy, can we talk about this face to face?”

“Why?”

“Because I want to brief you and I want to apologize for what happened down in the tunnel. I’m also sorry about the way it happened. I told you, it wasn’t personal. It was just-the way it had to be.”

“Had to be?”

“Yeah. It’s a long story.”

Joyce was silent again. Then she asked, “Can you come up to the museum?”

“I can.”

“All right. When the professor and I are finished, we’ll talk. We’re on the fifth floor, Professor Lowery’s lab. There’s a private elevator-ask one of the security people.”

“Thanks. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Gentry hung up, then sped through the eight messages on his voicemail. He forwarded a few to Detectives Anthony and Malcolm, saved the rest, then hurried downstairs. Anyone who needed to reach him could get his pager number off the voicemail message. He stopped in Captain Sheehy’s office and informed him that he’d like to spend time on the Grand Central killings. The precinct commander was surprised by Gentry’s interest in a hardcore case but okayed the request, as long as the detective didn’t step on the toes of the homicide team that was also investigating the deaths. Sheehy said he didn’t want an IDPS-an intradepartmental political shitstorm. Gentry said he didn’t anticipate the two investigations overlapping. Then he bummed a ride from a patrol car heading uptown.

While he was in the car, his pager beeped. He looked down, expecting it to be Chris Henry. It wasn’t.

It was Ari Moreaux.

The Christopher Street subway station serves west Greenwich Village and New York University. To the south, it allows riders access to the World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island ferry, and a transferride into Brooklyn. To the north, it’s a short hop to Times Square, Lincoln Center, Columbia University, and Grant’s Tomb.

The morning rush hour over, the crowd on the downtown platform built slowly. It consisted of a handful of tourists who were double-checking maps in guidebooks and a pair of slouching students wearing baggy clothes and blank expressions. A guitarist performed near the turnstiles, his instrument case open at his feet for donations. A businessman with a Walkman and a crisply foldedWall StreetJournal stood alone at the end of the platform.

Save for the guitarist’s unplugged sounds of Oingo Boingo, it was quiet on the platform. Then the first of the little brown bats flew in. It scratched a jagged course high over the tracks and snared the attention of one of the students.

“Hey, cool,” he droned. His sullen eyes opened slightly as he raised a pale finger and pointed.

The girl had her back to the tracks. She turned and looked as the bat zigzagged toward them. It landed on the boy’s black wool cap, and he suddenly came to life. He backed away, swinging his gangly arms at the creature as the talons pierced his scalp.

“Fuck, man!”

The girl stepped forward and swatted at the bat. The boy turned circles blindly as four more bats suddenly raced from the tunnel to the platform. Two of them descended on the girl from above and snatched at her long black-and-green hair while the other two dug at the back of a boy’s neck. She screamed in pain as the bats pulled her head back.

The tourists finally looked over, and the guitarist stopped playing. Shouting for help, they all ran toward the kids. The businessman standing one hundred feet away saw and heard nothing. His eyes were on his newspaper and his ears were full of opera.

Sitting in her bulletproof booth and counting out five-dollar bills, subway clerk Meg Ricci heard the cries of the people on the platform. She looked up over her reading glasses and saw the tourists and students dancing and flailing. She saw the musician swinging his guitar around him. Then she saw the flapping wings and the dark little bats attacking their faces and hands. She snatched up the phone and called for police assistance.

As Meg told the dispatcher what was going on, something else happened. A well-dressed man at the end of the platform had removed his earphones and looked over. As he turned toward the others, a large shadow enveloped him. It came over the man from above, like poured paint, and then spilled quickly to the left. When the inky blackness was gone, so was the man.

Meg reported exactly what she saw before she realized how insane it must sound. The dispatcher matter-of-factly asked her to repeat it. Meg did. That was what had happened.