1 Blood Price (12 page)

“Vicki, it’s Rajeet. Sorry to call so late—uh, it’s 11:15, Monday night, I guess you’ve gone to bed—but I figured you’d want to know the results of the tests. You have positive matches with both Ian Reddick and Terri Neal. I don’t know what you’ve found, but I hope it helps.”

“. . .
although the police department refuses to issue a statement at this time, the Coroner’s Office has confirmed that Mark Thompson, the fifth victim, has also been drained of blood. A resident, who wishes to remain nameless, living in the area of Don Mills Road and St. Dennis Drive, swears he saw a giant bat fly past his balcony just moments before the body was found
. Jesus H. Christ.” Vicki punched the paper down into a tightly wadded mass and flung it at the far wall. “Giant bats! No surprise he wants to remain nameless. Shit!”

The sudden shrill demand of the phone lifted her about four inches out of her chair. Scowling, she turned on it but at the last instant remembered that the call might be business and modified her response accordingly. A snarled, “What!” seldom impressed potential clients.

“Private investigations, Nelson speaking.”

“Have you seen this morning’s paper?!”

The voice was young, female, and not instantly identifiable. “Who is this, please?”

“It’s me. Coreen Fergus.
Have
you seen this morning’s paper?”

“Yes, Coreen, I have, but. . . .”

“Well, that proves it then, doesn’t it.”

“Proves what?” Tucking the phone under her chin, Vicki reached for her coffee. She had a feeling she was going to need it.

“About the vampire. There’s a witness. Someone saw it!” Coreen’s voice had picked up a triumphant tone.

Vicki took a deep breath. “A giant bat could be anything, Coreen. A blowing garbage bag, the shadow of an airplane, laundry falling off another balcony.”

“And it could also be a giant bat. You are going to talk to this person, aren’t you?”

It wasn’t really a question and although Vicki had been deliberately not thinking about trying to find an unnamed source in the rabbit warren of apartments and townhouses around St. Dennis Drive, talking to “this person” was the next logical step. She reassured Coreen, promised to call the moment she had any results, and hung up.

“Like looking for a needle in a haystack.” But it had to be done; a witness could break the case wide open.

She finished her coffee and checked her watch. There was one thing she wanted to check before she hit the pavement. 8:43. Cutting it close, but Brandon should still be at his desk.

He was.

After greetings were exchanged—perfunctory on one side at least—Vicki slid in the reason for her call. “. . . and you and I both know you’ve found things that you haven’t told the papers.”

“That’s very true, Victoria.” The coroner didn’t even pretend not to understand. “But, as you know very well, I won’t be able to tell these
things
to you either. I’m sorry, but you’re no longer a member of the constabulary.”

“But I have been hired to work on the case.” Quickly, she outlined the pertinent parts of Coreen’s visit for him, leaving out any mention of the young lady’s personal belief as to the supernatural identity of the killer as well as the latest phone call.

“You’ve been hired as a private citizen, Victoria, and as such you have no more right to information than any other private citizen.”

Vicki stifled a sigh and considered how best to approach this. When Brandon Singh meant no, he said it, straight out with no frills. And then he hung up. As long as he remained willing to talk he remained willing to be conviced. “Look, Brandon, you know my record. You know I have as good a chance as anyone in the city of solving this case. And you know you want it solved. I’ll stand a better chance if I have all available information.”

“Granted, but somehow this smacks of vigilantism.”

“Vigilantism? Trust me, Brandon, I am not going to dress up in some silly costume and leap around making the city safe for decent people.” She doodled a bat symbol on her notepad, then hastily crumpled the page up and tossed it away. Under the circumstances, bats were not a particularly apt motif. “All I’m doing is investigating. I swear I’ll hand over everything I turn up to Violent Crimes.”

“I believe you, Victoria.” He paused and Vicki, fidgeting with impatience, jumped into the silence.

“With a killer of this caliber on the loose, can the city afford not to have me on the case, even in an auxiliary position?”

“Think highly of yourself, don’t you?”

She heard the smile in his voice and knew she had him. Dr. Brandon Singh believed in using every available resource and while he personally might have preferred a less intuitive approach than hers, he had to admit that “Victory” Nelson represented a valuable resource indeed. If she thought highly of herself, it wasn’t without cause.

“Very well,” he said at last, his tone even more portentous than usual as though to make up for his earlier lapse. “But there’s very little the papers don’t have and I don’t know what use you’ll be able to make of it.” He took a deep breath and even the ambient noise on the phone line seemed to fall silent to listen. “We found, in all but the first wound, a substance very like saliva. . . .”

“Very like saliva?” Vicki interjected. “How could something be
very like saliva?”

“Something can’t. But this was. What’s more, every body so far, including that of young Reddick, has been missing the front half of the throat.”

“I’d already discovered that.”

“Indeed.” For a moment, Vicki was afraid he’d taken offense at her interruption, but he continued. “The only other item kept from the press concerns the third body—the large man, DeVerne Jones. He was clutching a torn piece of thin membrane in his hand.”

“Membrane?”

“Yes.”

“Like a bat wing?”

“Remarkably similar, yes.”

It was Vicki’s turn to breathe deeply. Something very like saliva and a bat wing. “I can see why you didn’t tell the papers.”

Celluci hung up the phone and reached for the paper. He couldn’t decide whether the apology had been made easier because Vicki was out of her apartment or harder because he’d had to talk to her damned machine. Whatever. It was done and the next move was hers.

A second later Dave Graham barely managed to snatch his coffee out of harm’s way as his partner slammed the paper down on the desk.

“Did you see this bullshit?” Celluci demanded.

“The, uh, giant bat?”

“Fuck the bat! Those bastards found a witness and didn’t see fit to let us know!”

“But we were heading out to St. Dennis this morning. . . .”

“dealt,” Celluci shrugged into his jacket and glared Dave up out of his chair, “but we’re heading down to the paper first. A witness could blow this case wide open and I don’t want to piss away my time if they’ve got a name.”

“A name of someone who sees giant bats,” Dave muttered, but he scrambled into his own coat and followed his partner out into the hall. “You think it really could be a vampire?” he asked as he caught up.

Celluci didn’t even break stride. “Don’t you start,” he growled.

 

“Who is it?”

“It’s the police, Mr. Bowan. We need to talk to you.” Celluci held his badge up in line with the spy-eye and waited. After a long moment, he heard a chain being pulled free and two—no, three—locks snapped off. He stepped back beside his partner as the door slowly opened.

The old man peered up at them through rheumy eyes. “You Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci?”

“Yes, but . . .” Surely the old man’s eyesight hadn’t been good enough to read that off his ID.

“She said you’d probably show up this morning.” He opened the door wider and moved back out of the way. “Come in, come in.”

The detectives exchanged puzzled looks as they entered the tiny apartment. While the old man relocked the door, Celluci looked around. Heavy blankets had been tacked up along one wall, over the windows and the balcony door, and every light in the place was on. There was a Bible on the coffee table and a water glass beside it that smelled of Scotch. Whatever the old man had seen, it had caused him to put up the barricades and reach for reassurance.

Dave settled himself carefully on the sagging couch. “Who said we’d be here this morning, Mr. Bowan?”

“Young lady who just left. In fact, I’m surprised you didn’t pass her in the parking lot. Nice girl, real friendly.”

“Did this nice, real friendly girl have a name?” Celluci asked through clenched teeth.

The old man managed a wheezy laugh. “She said you’d react like that.” Shaking his head, he picked a business card off his kitchen table and dropped it into Celluci’s hand.

Leaning over his partner’s shoulder, Dave barely had a chance to read it before Celluci closed his fist.

“What else did Ms. Nelson say?”

“Oh, she seemed real concerned that I cooperate with you gentlemen. That I tell you everything I told her. Course I had no intention of doing otherwise, though I’ve got no idea what the police can do. More a job for an exorcist or maybe a pri. . . .” A yawn that threatened to split his face in half cut off the flow of words. “S’cuse me, but I didn’t get much sleep last night. Can I get either of you a cup of tea? Pot’s still hot.” When both men declined, he settled himself down in a worn armchair and looked expectantly from one to the other. “You going tc ask me questions or you just want me to start at the beginning and tell it in my own words?”

“
Start at the beginning and tell it in your own words. ”
Celluci had heard Vicki give that instruction a thousand times ar d had no doubt he was hearing her echo now. His anger had faded into a reluctant appreciation of her ability with a witness. Whatever mood Vicki had found him in, she’d left Mr. Bowan well primed for their visit. “Use your own words, we’ll ask questions if we need to.”

“Okay.” Mr. Bowan rubbed his hands together, obviously enjoying his second captive audience of the morning in spite of his fright of the night before. “It was just after midnight, I know that ’cause I turned the TV off at midnight like I always do. Well, I was on my way to bed so I turned off the lights, then I thought I might better step out on the balcony to have a look around the building, just in case. Sometimes,” he confided, leaning forward “we get kids fooling around in the bushes down there.”

While Dave nodded in understanding, Celluci hid a grin. Mr. Bowan, no doubt, spent a great deal of time out on his balcony checking out the neighborhood . . . and the neighbors. The binocular case on the floor by the armchair bore mute witness.

Last night, he’d barely stepped outside before he knew something was wrong. “It was the smell. Like rotten eggs, only worse. Then there it was, big as life and twice as ugly and so close I could’ve reached out and touched it—if I was as senile as my daughter-in-law seems to think I am. The wings were spread out seven or eight feet.” He paused for effect. “The giant bat. Nosferatu. Vampire. You find his crypt, gentlemen, and you’ll find your killer.”

“Can you describe the creature?”

“If you mean could I pick it out in a lineup, no. Tell you the truth, it went by so awfully fast I saw mostly outline. But I’ll tell you this much,” his voice grew serious and a note of terror crept in, “that thing had eyes like I’ve never seen on any living creature and I hope to God never to see again. Yellow they were and cold, and I knew that if they looked back at me I wouldn’t last much beyond the first glance. It was evil, gentlemen, real evil, not the diluted kind of evil humanity is prey to but the cold uncaring kind that comes from old Nick himself. Now, I’m old and death and me’s gotten pretty chummy over the last few years; nothing much scares me anymore but this, this scared the holy bejesus out of me.” He swallowed heavily and searched both their faces. “You can believe me or not—that reporter fella didn’t when I went down to see what the sirens were about—but I know what I saw and I know what I felt.”

As much as he wanted to side with the reporter, who had described Mr. Bowan as an entertaining old coot, Celluci found himself unable to dismiss what the old man had seen. And what the old man had felt. Something in his voice or his expression raised the hair on the back of Celluci’s neck and although intellect argued against it, instinct trembled on the edge of belief.

He wished he could talk this over with Vicki, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.