The Mission Is Never Over—A Victim of the Art

From the movie Scanners.

 April 24 (con't)

An unknown number called the Agents' burner phone. "MELANIE" identified herself as a friend of MARCUS and wanted to speak with them ASAP about the "birthday cake." She directed them to a military hangar at Francis S. Gabreski Airport., where they found eleven young airmen doing pushups while their CO watched. They seemed too young, too well-rested and well-adjusted to work for the Program... or maybe to know they worked for the Program. The CO ordered his men to their feet and out the door when he saw the team.

At the other end of the hangar was a woman in officewear and combat boots typing at a laptop. "MELANIE" introduced herself as Dr. Rebecca Thornhill. She got right to it: the Program believed the Chiropractor was some kind of "EBE" with volatile tissues, and the remains must be recovered for study. She provided the team with biohazard suits, body bags, and a metal coffin-like device that would preserve the remains for transport.

They had questions of their own.

• Was this standard operating procedure for dealing with "EBEs?" There wasn't a standard operation procedure as such. Each EBE presented unique issues and called for unique procedures: they'd designed this one based on what they'd been able to learn from the gray sludge.
• Could she provide them with military-grade body armor and weapons? No. The military couldn't be seen operating in Glenridge. Anything else the Agents needed would have to be requisitioned through the FBI.
• How about the airmen? Could they get backup? No. The airmen were only there to transport what the Agents recovered. They didn't know they were working for the Program and were to be kept in the dark.
• What kind of area of effect should they expect from the EBE's toxic gas? Given their estimates on its mass, she expected anyone standing two meters away would be safe without protection.
• Did she have any sense of the EBE's motives? She speculated it may have chosen Glenridge as new hunting grounds. Why it had arrived in Glenridge and how it was choosing its victims were questions she needed the Agents to answer for her.

It was getting dark out by now, and the team returned to the Dive Right Inn. Rex emailed the South America department at the American Museum of Natural History with Wren's recording of Sandra Harrogate, hoping someone would get back to him with a translation in the morning. While a good idea, actually composing the email took the entire team the rest of the night. ("This is a complete stranger. You can't end it with 'Love, Rex.'")

April 25, Day: The Next Victim

Wren got a phone call from Detective Gregson bright and early. Another body had been found.

The team pulled up at the local community pool. It was too early in the season for the pool to be filled yet, so the body had splattered when it the concrete bottom. The head was gone, the spine was gone, the torso was split down the middle even before it hit the ground... it was one thing to read about the Chiropractor's handiwork. This was the first time the team had actually seen the mutilations up close, and it left all of them shocked and queasy. A worse shock came when they learned the victim’s identity: Devon Malouf, the local conspiracy crank Aaron had told them about two nights ago.

Working on an idea, Wren climbed down into the pool and knelt beside Malouf's body. She discreetly took off one of her nitrile gloves and touched it, trying to meditate, to bring on a vision, but one wouldn't come to her. After a minute, she chose not to force it and stepped away.

Outside the pool, Malachi distracted Detective Gregson from Wren's unorthodox approach.

• Had anyone been to Malouf's house yet? She'd sent cops to look the place over. Malouf had a shed on his property he used as a dark room, and they said it looked like he'd been attacked between there and the house.
• Had anyone contacted Malouf's next of kin? Not yet. He had an adult daughter who lived upstate. Gregson was planning to make the call herself once she left the pool.
• Did Malouf have any connection to the local high school? Gregson initially didn't think so, but...

It turned out Malouf had been convinced the Glenridge Chiropractor was some kind of experimental combat drone, and he'd begun stalking employees of a nearby Northrup Grumman plant. He'd been outside the house of an engineer named Mark Dengler yesterday afternoon, and when Dengler's teenage son got home from school, they got into a physical altercation. It was certainly noteworthy that Malouf had died within hours of provoking the family; fortunately, Malachi talked Gregson into letting the FBI question the Denglers.

With all this happening, Rex received a phone call from his boss Heidi. She demanded to know why a podcaster had called her office about Rex and bodies going missing from a morgue; she nearly had a heart attack before realizing Rex was throwing accusations at a different morgue. She explained to him, as discreetly as she could over, that Rex had accused Dr. Santorini of doing the exact thing he was doing for Heidi. When this podcast episode came out, both their asses would be on the line, and Heidi swore she would not go down with him.

For the first time in a very long while, Rex realized that there might actually be consequences to his impulsivity. If he did nothing, Dr. Santorini would be investigated and then exonerated of wrongdoing, making his nemesis look like a martyr. Meanwhile, Gregson would be furious and complain to the FBI. Rex might lose his job. Hell, he might face criminal charges if anyone went looking in his closet and realized the skeltons that were supposed to be there, weren't. Not to mention it would put his friends Wren and Malachi in the awkward position of having to testify in court against him.

...unless someone investigated Dr. Santorini and found a body had gone missing from the medical examiner's office. Suddenly, Rex's accusations were no longer baseless. In fact, the appearance of impropriety wouldn't just demolish Santorini professionally; it would kickstart the perfect coverup. Nothing supernatural had been going on with the Chiropractor killings, and if it looked that way, it was just because the medical examiner was a crook who sucked at his job.

It was decided. For the good of humanity, Rex had to steal a body.

The Denglers

It was still early enough that Malachi caught Eloise Dengler about to pull out of the driveway and teenage Thomas getting onto his bike. He introduced himself as FBI and asked to speak with them inside.

He dropped the bomb that Devon Malouf was found dead that morning, the latest victim of the Glenridge Chiropractor. Inside, Eloise tried to be gracious about it, but Thomas blurted out that the guy was an asshole: just because he was dead didn't make it ok what he'd done yesterday.

Thomas had gotten home from school when he saw Malouf standing outside their house with a picket sign, shouting stuff about drones and the military-industrial complex. Thomas tried to go around him to get inside the house, but Malouf grabbed him by the shoulder and started shaking him, screaming that Thomas's father was a murderer, that something he'd been working on had killed people and it was getting blamed on a made-up serial killer. Thomas managed to shake him off, ran inside, and called the cops. Malouf kept shouting and pounding on the door, but eventually a squad car pulled up, and he got real quiet once they said they'd arrest him if he didn't beat it. Eloise and Mark had made an appointment with a lawyer to seek a restraining order, but there wasn't much point now.

Malachi asked if they knew anything about the other victims that might help the investigation. Thomas attended the local high school, right? Did he know Lauren Harrogate or Vanessa Hatvan? And he did: he had homeroom with Lauren, and Vanessa had helped him find books on archeology in the school library. Malachi noted all of this but moved on, asking about Carl Maretti: Thomas had gotten a root canal surgery from him about a month ago, shortly before Maretti had died. A pattern was starting to emerge, and Malachi thanked the Denglers for their time.

The Recording

Rex got dropped off at Malouf's house, but before going around the back, he saw someone from the American Museum of Natural History had replied to his email. They identified the language in the recording as Quechua, spoken in the Andes for millennia. The term "ai-apa" that appeared so often meant "Silent One," and it referred to a creature that existed only in the lore of a pre-Incan culture called the Chavín. Supposedly, the ai-apa was a huge flying creature the priests of the Chavín would call upon to help build temples and monuments with its great strength. The ai-apa was a wild animal, not domesticated, so the priests couldn't command it to do anything: they could only bargain with it or entice it with a human sacrifice, or a "victim of the art" as literally translated. In fact, whoever was being recorded seemed to be offering up just such a victim.

The strangest part was that Quechua has specific grammatical effects for how trustworthy the information being conveyed is. For instance, mythological figures and religious experiences use a different set of grammar than events from normal life, but the person reciting the chant spoke about ai-apa like any other animal: to them it was obvious that ai-apa was real.

The email ended by noting the Chavín were little-studied compared to the Inca, and the ai-apa myths had only been explored in depth by a now-deceased archeologist named Derek Wheeler. Perhaps his children could help him with anything more. Rex googled the name: Derek Wheeler had been active in Peru from the 1940s into the 70s, and he was survived by his daughter Marielle Wheeler of Eugene, OR, and Eloise Dengler (nee Wheeler) of Glenridge, NY.

The Marettis

Wren spent the morning at Carl Maretti's dentistry office. His wife Caroline was looking to sell the practice, and she spoke with Wren between potential buyers. She was in shock, saying anyone who spoke to Carl left with a smile on their face (high praise for a dentist!). And indeed, Wren saw a number of gifts around to show just how beloved he'd been. Carl Maretti simply wasn't a man with enemies.

• Did her daughters attend Glenridge High School? Not yet, Cathy was 10 years old and Donna eight.
• What about Carl's regular patients? The high school was in walking distance, so yes, Carl often treated students with after-school appointments.
• Did she know anything about the Denglers or their dispute with Devon Malouf? They knew the Denglers from around town but weren't especially close, so this was news to her. Thomas Dengler was a patient, though. He'd been in that week for surgery... every day that week, in fact, from the time school ended until the office closed, including the day Carl had died.

Cleaning House

Back at Malouf's house, Rex spoke with one of Gregson's officers. The door to the shed/ dark room had been wide open, the red light had been on, and the grass was spotted with blood and that gray sludge again. Rex went inside and found that Malouf's pictures had degraded significantly when he uploaded them to the internet: there were more here that gave a much clearer look at the creature, a headless beast with wings that shouldn't have been able to support it in flight. He started to take them down when the same cop asked if they were evidence. Realizing he needed to try something different, he gathered up pamphlets Malouf had printed with the addresses of multiple Northrop Grumman employees. He managed to fast talk the cop, a former basketball player who towered over Rex and was surprisingly receptive to praise, into helping dispose of the pamphlets since they could be used for harassment while Rex discreetly snatched the photos.

April 25, Dusk

Back at the motel, the team reconvened. Wren refused to be part of Rex's body theft but decided not to interfere, removing herself from the conversation. Malachi was all in, though... as was Doug. Rex had called his intern and Bond on the sly earlier, and he had just arrived in Long Island to assist his mentor.

While the others schemed, Wren scanned the Dream Syndicate for updates on the #human-sacrifice dream. She spoke with CreditToTeam, one of the channel's active users, who revealed that in his dreams, the priest-figure conducting the sacrifice was wearing a kind of clay amulet on a leather cord. She shared information about the Chavín with him, and he immediately noted carvings of a chimera with features of big cat, eagle, and serpent: one that bore uncomfortable resemblance to Malouf's puctures. CreditToTeam congratulated her on this great find and left to share it with the server, promising to credit her.

April 25, Night

The plan to steal a body was simple. They would cut down a tree near the medical examiner's office so it struck the building and took out the power. Then Rex and Doug would get in and swipe Devon Malouf's corpse, and Malachi would drive them to a salt marsh to dump it.

Unfortunately, they were caught in the act. With Malouf half-sticking out from a body bag, a flashlight swept the morgue's white tiles, landing on Rex's face. And who else was holding it but Dr. Santorini himself? He was shocked, hurt, frustrated: he had no idea why Rex hated him so much, but this was beyond the pale. He took out his phone to call Detective Gregson. 

Rex shouted at Doug to cover his eyes. And he summoned the power awakened in him at Indian Rocks.

Hot blood and gobs of brain splattered Doug's hands. He heard a body collapse to the floor, then another. Dr. Santorini's corpse lay on the floor, headless. Rex lay there too, still headed but unconscious. Panicking, Doug started carving away at Dr. Santorini's body until he could remove the spine, then threw the corpse from the building's roof, thinking to frame the Chiropractor for the death. Then he cleaned up the morgue as best he could, dragged Rex out to the car, dragged Malouf out next, and the team sped off.

Across town, Wren decided to keep watch on the Denglers' house, but a patrol car pulled her over... only for the cops to apologize when they realized who she was. Someone in the Dengler house watched the interaction, and Wren put her lights on, making sure they could see FBI on the car's side.

Then someone started tailing her again, this time a black SUV with government-issued plates but definitely not a cop. Behind the wheel was the Air Force CO from Gabreski Airport. He acknowledged passing the team earlier and asked to buy Wren a drink, his tension suggesting something more urgent than a date.

They ended up at the back of a dive bar outside Glenridge, Wren with a water and 1st Lt. Gilberto Smith nursing a beer. Smith knew more than he should: he didn't know a thing about the Program, but he'd seen people die in impossible ways. Unnatural ways. Not everything his team were given was 100% safe to handle. And he wanted to know if he should be worried for the men under his command. It reassured him a great deal when Wren said she proritized the lives of him and his men over recovering... what they had been sent to recover. Smith thanked her, saying she reminded him of a guy the PJs told stories about.

He didn't share that guy's name. They'd both said too much as is. But if she needed the kind of help he could give, he'd give it in order to keep his men out of the way.