“I’ve never seen this spearhead before, but he left it for me, I’m sure of it.”
I was pretty convinced of that myself.
Ian slouched down farther in his chair, scowling. “But yet, it’s familiar somehow.”
“Could you have seen it in a book somewhere? Or was it used in a murder you investigated?”
“No and no. If I’d seen it in a book, it would have been here. The researchers don’t have any record of such a weapon in any book in SPI’s library.”
“How about a date when it was made? With all that Celtic-looking scrollwork, it looks old, and is that real gold?” I didn’t want to call a spearhead sticking out of a dead man’s chest beautiful, but this weapon was. The detailing was incredible.
“Dr. Van Daal managed to get it for us, at least long enough to run some tests. It’s up in the lab now. It appears to be bronze decorated with gold, of Irish make, and dated from approximately 200 B.C.”
“Okay,” I said, drawing out the word. I leaned back in my chair in a mirror image of my partner. He seemed to think this was a good angle at which to receive enlightenment, so I’d try the same. Or at least, we could be utterly baffled together. I believed in supporting my partner in all things.
“Well,” I said after nearly a minute of silence. “You are Irish; at least your ancestors were. Other than that . . . I got nothing.”
Ian pushed back his chair and stood.
“Where you going?”
“To the lab to see that thing up close and personal.”
I followed.
• • •
SPI’s labs were equipped to handle, contain, and analyze virtually anything.
When you could be asked to determine the acid content of Brazilian basilisk spit, the ratio of magic to mortal poison in the ink of a late-Renaissance grimoire, or something as simple as determining the gold content in a 200 B.C. Celtic spearhead, our white-lab-coated folks were ready for it.
SPI’s labs were separated by a hallway on the third level of the headquarters complex. One lab dealt with organic materials, the other with inorganic. Though in our line of work, those lines got blurred, a lot. Large, long windows allowed an unobstructed view into both labs from the hallway. I didn’t know what the windows were made of but it sure as heck wasn’t glass. It was rare that an experiment or subject being analyzed got out of control, but those windows had to ensure that what happened in the lab stayed in the lab. The clear view was so when anything did go wrong, and if a tech couldn’t reach an alarm, there’d be witnesses to call for reinforcements. That was mostly an issue in the organic lab, but not always. SPI was a very interesting workplace.
Things were relatively quiet today, and I didn’t think the presence of an itty-bitty spearhead would change that, regardless of how old it was, or who had last used it—and what it had been used for. At least I hoped not.
Ian and I weren’t the first to visit the lab looking for more information on the spearhead.
Alain Moreau was already there, intently studying the spearhead. It was lying on a square piece of white cloth that bore a disturbing resemblance to a formal dinner napkin.
At least someone had cleaned the dead bank guard’s blood off of the blade. The NYPD’s lab must have gotten all the evidence they could from the blood, or more to the point, what might have been underneath it that could help determine the identities of those who had handled it, or where the spearhead had come from or had last been stored.
Standing next to Moreau was Dr. Noel Tierney. Him being here wasn’t a surprise, but he wasn’t acting in his primary job as SPI’s chief psychologist. Dr. Tierney was here because of one of his secondary gifts.
When you fought creatures most people not only didn’t believe in, but thought you were nuts if you saw, mental gymnastics were often called for to keep your mental health on an even keel. Dr. Tierney looked like a lot of the guys I’d seen in photos of my mom’s college days in the 1970s, where she’d done just as much protesting as studying. At least that’s the way it appeared from her photo albums and newspaper clippings. Most college kids were proud of the first “A” they got in their hardest class. Mom was most proud of the first time she ever got arrested. Now she was the mayor of our hometown—re-elected three times—and her sister was the chief of police.
Go figure.
Noel Tierney had multiple psychology and psychology-related degrees from the best schools. His work clothes were khakis, crisply pressed button-downs, and God help us all, bow ties. He had a themed collection. It was a bright, summer day, so today’s tie had tiny daisies on it. One of his most memorable was his Thanksgiving tie, yellow and spotted with itty-bitty cooked turkeys. But other than the ties, Tierney wore doctor clothes at their most proper. However, I’d seen him several times on days off, and he’d been in jeans, environmental T-shirt du jour, round sunglasses, and Birkenstocks. So regardless of what he wore in the office, that was what I saw when I looked at him—a walking flower-child cliché.
I knew he wasn’t in the lab because the spearhead had been emotionally traumatized by being driven into a dead man’s chest.
Dr. Noel Tierney was a psychologist and a psychometric. He would know the entire history of that spearhead simply by touching it. By the looks of him right now, not only did he not want to touch it, he didn’t want to be in the same room with it. That meant it was a seriously nasty knife. He was also an artist, and occasionally could get clear enough images from an object or a person to be able to draw what he’d seen. That’d come in handy on more than one occasion.