The Artifact I

(First of all, I'd like to apologize for the fact that none of the 'tab' characters from Microsoft Word carried over into this blog. If you'd like me to send you the file instead of having to deal with this, just let me know. And now without further adieu...)

I. The Testimony of Inspector Donald Hart, Pt. 1




“Do you mean the beginning of the case as a whole, or just when I got involved with it?” Donald Hart asked, speaking louder than usual so his voice would carry over the dull, ambient buzz of halogen lights. He stared across the table waiting for an answer from his questioners, two federal agents now themselves getting involved in the case. ‘My case…’ he thought, disgruntled. It was always like the feds to swoop in on a big case as soon as a lead cropped up.
“Take it from the top, please,” the federal agent who had not yet taken off his black sunglasses looked down at his chart briefly, “Mr. Hart.”
“Again, we really appreciate you cooperating with us in these investigations” said the federal agent who had taken off his sunglasses. He put his hand down on the table, almost as a sign of understanding. “We know these are touchy subjects.”
Donald put his left hand in his pocket and fumbled with his fingers idly. He had been appointed to the rank of inspector for the NYPD a few years back, but he had learned the part quickly. He was a well respected man, known for getting the job done and having a reliable, no-nonsense attitude. He grumbled in his head, ‘If you appreciate it, why are you still trying the good-cop bad-cop routine? Fuckin’ feds…’ With a deep, resigned exhalation, he said, “Then I guess I’ll start with the theft at the Museum of Natural History. I don’t know what else you think I can tell you that you haven’t already heard though; I’ve told you everything I know and I wasn’t even in New York at that point yet.”
“Any information at all you can give us would be helpful, Mr. Hart.” The fed without sunglasses said reassuringly.
The inspector composed his thoughts for a moment and shivered a little, despite his best efforts to conceal this reaction. The fed in the sunglasses wrote a quick note on his chart and then nodded at Hart to continue. “Well, about a month ago that paleontologist I mentioned, Crane, he got back from some expedition for the Museum. I never got to talk to him about the stolen artifact; he’s become somewhat of a recluse since the first death. Apparently he came upon some sort of ancient burial chamber, everyone was excited about it. Something about predating a lot of human activity. The researchers at the Museum said it was going to be a pretty big deal.” Hart looked into the corner of the room, just for a moment so as to not raise the suspicions of the agents. “Well, most of the artifacts from the find were pretty simple: bones, clay pots, a few ceremonial clay knives, nothing really out of place. Except that one, of course, that cursed thing.”
The fed with the sunglasses raised an eyebrow above the concealing black lenses. “Cursed?”
In his head, Donald reprimanded himself for so clumsily saying such a thing. “Oh, yeah, sorry. In the precinct some of the guys were joking around that maybe this was like a ‘mummy’s curse’ sort of thing.” Both agents stared at him blankly. “What, you don’t have gallows humor in the bureau?”
The fed with the sunglasses said “Let’s try and be professional here so we can stop wasting your time and you can stop wasting ours. Tell us what we need to know and we can all go home.”
“What else can I say that I haven’t already fucking told you yesterday? It’s not like the story’s going to change.” Donald yelled for a second but then realized his mistake, pushed his hands into his pockets, and took a moment of silence to again compose himself. “Sorry. This case just has me kind of tense. You know how it is.” After another suppressed glance to the corner of the room, he continued.
“So according to the Museum officials, Crane brought the artifact in question with the others but it wasn’t put on display due to its off-putting nature.”
“Off-putting?” asked the fed without sunglasses, a curious look in his eye. “How was it off-putting? What exactly was this artifact?”
“Damned if I know what the hell it really was.” Hart said curtly. “All I know is some people were disgusted by it, but sometimes…Well, sometimes people seemed to develop a sick fascination with it.”
“Go on.”
“Well when I asked around in the precinct there were some rumors about a complication when Crane first found the item in question. All I know about it is that Crane left with two assistants and came back alone. He himself could never even stare directly at the thing, they said, but some people just got lost in it. We think that’s what happened to Richard Prentke, he was the main suspect in that particular case. Prentke was working as an intern with the researchers in the Museum, and they say he very often had his eye on the artifact.”
“And what did it look like again? Refresh my memory.” Donald was beginning to dislike the fed with sunglasses still on.
“It’s like a…It’s hard to describe, I have no idea what it was used for.” He tapped his fingers on the table idly as he began to describe it, almost trying to distract himself from his memories. “It was flat and made of some kind of brownish-gray stone, and could fit in the palm of your hand. It looks kind of like an eye, with another eye inside of it. There were some strange swirling marks on it and little pockmarks, but I couldn’t tell if they were from design or age. The object narrowed to a tapered point on both sides of the outer eye, and each side had strange, twisted protrusions emanating from the eye. One side vaguely resembled a series of hook-like appendages, and the other…I guess I should call them clusters of teeth. Long, sharp fangs just jutting out of the rock. It was a very strange artifact, that.”
“And what happened with Prentke?”
“Well, nobody knows exactly. He offed himself before we could get any answers, and his family’s testimony is a little too traumatic to really give any valid insight to his motives. With the exception of the one phrase he, er, painted everywhere we really don’t have any leads- and I wouldn’t even call that gibberish a lead.”
The fed without sunglasses said, “Do you think you could run us through that again?”
Donald Hart’s eyes filled with pain and discomfort for a moment, but he was trained to process and deal with these feelings regularly. He said, “Yeah, sure. Poor kid, it’s really a shame.
Prentke was a grad student working with the Museum of Natural History’s intern program, couldn’t have been older than 23. The researchers there said he was always a little thin-skinned, and that he got freaked out easily. They seem to think something about the artifact just pushed him over the edge. They’d all be doing work, and time and time again one of them would catch Richard absent-mindedly looking at it.”
“The artifact?”
“Yeah, they had it in a little glass case and they told me he’d wind up just staring at it. Then one day, it was gone. The glass case was smashed and Prentke was missing. His family, a married couple and his little brother, says they don’t remember him coming home that night, but that he was already there when they woke up. He must have come home pretty late. Poor kid, his little brother must be only eight or nine.”
The fed with the sunglasses on leaned in. “And what happened next?”
Donald cocked his head and said, “I wish I knew for a fact, it’d make my job a little easier. If he did take the artifact, he lost it by the time we found his body. According to his family he just woke up and started screaming at the top of his lungs.”
“What was he screaming about?”
“Nothing coherent, not even words according to them. Just screaming. I wish that was it, though; when his family came into his room to check on him they unfortunately witnessed the final proof that he had clearly become unstable. Prentke had slit both of his wrists with a small penknife, and was using the blood to write the nonsense phrase “Aasahna No’aktu” on all the walls of his room, over and over again.”
“Hold on, let me make sure I have that right here.” The fed without sunglasses flipped some pages over his clipboard and then clicked his pen in preparation. “‘ah-sah-na no-ach-two’, is that correct?” Hart nodded grimly. “What language is that?” He asked, half to himself.
“Hell if I know. Crane would probably know, you should ask him.”
“Dr. Jacob Crane, you said?” The fed with sunglasses asked matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, him. Good luck finding him, though- we couldn’t. Like I said the other day, he just up and left after dropping that thing off at the Museum.”
“Right, right. Sorry, go on.” The fed without sunglasses said in a casual tone. Donald looked him in the eyes for a second, curious as to his motives and the calm nature of his voice. He put his sunglasses back on.
Inspector Hart continued, “But yeah, all over the walls. He was pretty prolific about it. His family says they tried to restrain him but he kept pushing them back to write more of that strange phrase, all the while still screaming. Eventually, his efforts and the screaming stopped. They moved in close to him to try and help, but when they were about a foot away he perked up as if in a moment of clarity and sprinted off, taking a flying leap through the window into open space.”
“At which point he fell to his death” one of the feds finished for Inspector Hart, who nodded. “And this was the first death in the case?”
“If the deaths are linked, yes. There still isn’t enough evidence to suggest that.”
“Of course. Then what happened?” Inspector Hart sighed and looked past the two men across the table from him, seemingly lost in thought. He sat there for a minute, tapping his fingers and gazing into space. “Hart?” the fed continued, “We agree with you that something about this doesn’t add up, so we need to pull together as much info as possible to try and find out exactly what’s going on here.” After a minute of silence, he said “How exactly did Jessie Larson factor into the case? From what you’ve told us this is where she came in, right?”
“Yes, hers was the next in a series of strange occurrences. Again I must stress that none of this is conclusive, really- it’s just at this point a coincidence like this is worth considering. A week and a half or so after the Richard Prentke incident, Larson gets institutionalized. Drowned her two year old daughter in the bathtub, wouldn’t stop explaining it was just to ‘satisfy the hunger’ whatever the hell that meant.”
“Interesting.” responded one of the agents, briefly scanning his notes. “And one more time, how did she connect to the case?”
Hart added, “She was the one who called the police for Prentke’s suicide. He hit the pavement right in front of her.”
“Maybe the trauma just got to her.” One of the feds suggested.
“Probably, yeah. We don’t have any proof to indicate anything else so we don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but… Honestly, shit like this doesn’t just happen- there has to be a connection. I still say if you really want information your best bet is to look out for that Carmichael girl.”
“Ah yes, Ms. Carmichael. What was her name again? Mary?”
“Maggie.” Donald corrected the agent. “You find that girl and keep a close eye on her, I’d bet my career that she’s gonna get it next.”
“And why exactly is that, Mr. Hart?” The other agent asked, scribbling down some quick notes.
“I already told you that, she’s the one who has the artifact now.”
“Interesting. And you said she took it from the evidence locker? How did it get there?”
Donald rubbed his head for a moment as if straining to remember. “The boys took it in after Daniels went postal. I’m sure you read about it before I gave you my accounts, that’s probably why you’re here now, isn’t it?”
“We can get into that later, Mr. Hart. Right now we need to ask you a few more questions. Where were you at the time of Deputy Henry Daniels’ shooting spree?”
“I told you yesterday,” Donald said, growing exasperated at how many times this question had been asked, “I was on vacation with my family in New Hampshire. We have a nice little timeshare and it was real pretty. The end. I had nothing to do with that shooting and you know it.”
“Actually, Mr. Hart, we don’t know it; that’s one of the reasons why we’re here.” One of the feds said, his voice growing stern and harsh. “So, just help us out and we can all move on.”
“None of the guys at the precinct knew why he did it. He just lost it.” Hart begrudgingly admitted. “He shot up five civilians, killed four of them and put the fifth in the hospital. They locked him up and tried him, but his lawyer had him plead insanity and now he’s in a padded room somewhere. It’s not surprising either, after that it was like his mind just didn’t work anymore. I even got to see him once or twice after I got back. He just kept talking about eyes and got real paranoid, talked a lot about everything having eyes and everyone being watched. The doctors chalked it up to caving under the stress of the NYPD, but I don’t know. Us in the precinct, we don’t know what’s going on but something’s not right here.”
“And the artifact?”
“Oh yeah, that. He had it on his person when they finally subdued him. It fit the bill of the missing artifact from the Museum but they said they had to hold it in the evidence locker until we were done looking into the case. Things got a little complicated.”
“What do you mean, complicated?” one of the feds asked.
“Well when a deputy goes on a killing spree while in possession of a stolen historical good, it makes you think. They called me back when they identified the artifact as the missing one from the Museum of Natural History so I had to end my already brief vacation early and come back to New York, but the week was almost over anyway so my family didn’t really mind. Once I got back to the precinct, we were working under the impression that maybe Daniels had stolen the thing in the first place, but after that Carmichael girl took it now I’m not so sure. There’s something strange about that artifact, let me tell you.” Neither of the agents said anything for a little while, and Donald Hart added, “I know you don’t believe me. Again.”
“Strange how?” the other fed asked after a brief pause.
“Strange like witnesses saying when Daniels started shooting, he was holding the artifact. The coroner says he’d been squeezing it so tight in his hand that the teeth were cutting into his palm.”