Blood Crimes: Book One (8 page)

      “Which was?”

      Hayes took out his handkerchief and wiped it along his neck and forehead. He felt shaky. Deep inside he knew this was a mistake letting her in on what he knew. As if his voice were coming from outside of himself, he heard himself tell her about the pattern of murders he had recognized, and about the latest murder in Kansas City. There was a cold silence on her end that she eventually broke by asking Hayes if he had mentioned his theory to anyone else.

      “You mean the authorities?” he asked.

      “I mean anyone.”

      “No, of course not,” he said. “You’re paying me for my confidentiality. As long as you’re not asking me to break the law, I’m under no legal obligation to go to the police with any hunches I have.”

      “You do realize this hunch of yours is ridiculous?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      “What you’ve so ingeniously discovered has been nothing more than a series of bizarre coincidences.”

      “I realize that’s possible.”

      “No, Donald,” she said confidently, her sing-songish lilt back, “it is most definitely only a coincidence. But still, it’s been a lucky one since it led you to
Jim
. And only four days ago he was in Kansas City?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      He could hear a slight purr on her end as she considered that. Then, “Any ideas where
Jim
might’ve gone next?”

      “None yet. But I have a few more leads to check out. From our previous sightings, he seems to be heading to the East Coast.”

      “It does seem that way.” Some more soft purring, then, “Donald, keep me informed if you find anything.”

      “I will.” He hesitated, and wiped his handkerchief along his face and neck. “Serena, there is something else.
Jim
is traveling with a young woman, probably in her early twenties. I have a sketch of her that I am confident is of a good likeness.”

      A painful silence, then her voice crackling like a whip, she asked, “Why haven’t you mentioned this to me before?”

      Her tone took Hayes by surprise. He found himself stammering, telling her he needed to confirm this first, but that he was now convinced of
Jim
’s traveling companion.

      ‘Is…Is she pretty?” Serena asked hesitantly, sounding a bit like a little girl.

      “A matter of taste,” Hayes said.

      “Would you say she’s pretty?”

      “Not really my type,” Hayes lied.

      “I see…Have you identified her?”

      “No, not yet. I’ve sent her drawing to my old police partner in Brooklyn, and no matches to any missing persons reports.”

      “Fax me her sketch as soon as you can,” she said; then impatiently, “Anything else?”

      “I have an idea on how to flush them out,” he said. “I’d like to have my staff send her sketch to motels around the country. I have a good idea of the type they’ve been staying at, and we could target them offering a reward to anyone who spots her and contacts us. In a month we could have full coverage. It wouldn’t take long after that.”

      “That is an excellent idea.” Her voice had softened back to its earlier sing-songish lilt. “I knew there was a reason I hired you other than simply your rugged good looks.”

      Hayes found himself blushing. “There is a downside,” he said. “We could end up being flooded with false identifications. It could be expensive tracking them all down.”

      “Expense isn’t an issue. It sounds well worth doing. Bravo, Donald, I am quite impressed.”

      She must’ve put the phone down. He could hear her clapping on her end. Then the light tinkling of her laughter.

      Hayes’ blush deepened. He also felt himself hardening between his legs. It was amazing the effect her voice could have on him—more powerful than a handful of Viagra. He was grateful more than ever that he had that tattooed and pierced freak of a waitress waiting for him.

      “We could also get her sketch in newspapers across the country and offer a reward for information. It would be expensive, but we’d probably find her in a week or less—”

      “No, Donald, your other idea sounds more than adequate. Newspapers would draw too much attention. But I am very pleased with your progress. Very much so. Please do continue to keep me informed.”

      She hung up.

      Hayes let loose with a loud exhalation, then shook his head smiling grimly to himself. He wished he had some idea where
Jim
and his girlfriend had gone off to next.
M
ore than ever he wanted to find the sonofabitch and be done with the case. He checked his watch and sighed heavily. It was nine-ten. Almost four hours before that waitress would be off duty. He got back in his car and drove the two miles to the murder site. Before leaving his car he took the safety off his 9 mm and slipped the sap under his belt so he’d have easy access to it. He walked back into the alley hoping to come across someone who might’ve seen something the night Devon Wilkerson was killed. He waited patiently without any luck until quarter to one, then headed off to his date. 
 

Chapter 4
 

      
M
etcalf’s private lab was reminiscent of some nightmarish scene from the
Island of Dr.
M
oreau
, and like
M
oreau’s laboratory, was a place of pain and abomination. For
M
etcalf, the lab served dual purposes; it helped him gain insights into the effects of the virus, and it acted as a deterrent to the other vampires in the compound from thinking about challenging his authority. The test subjects were all infected with the vampire virus. Some were originally brought in as “cattle” and had the misfortune of being chosen for this capacity—which was a fate far worse than being milked until illness or anemia set in; others were members of the compound who needed to be made examples of. All of the test subjects had their arms and lower halves removed; which made them appear like grotesque doll-like creatures. Some were pinned to their tables by spikes through their shoulders, others were chained along the walls. All of them were in the midst of experiments that would’ve made even the infamous Joseph
M
engelev cringe in horror.

      
M
etcalf strolled casually around his lab examining his experiments. Those that were capable of screaming out fought hard to hold their tongues; they knew their situations, however horrific, could be made worse.
M
oans escaped from a few of them, whimpers from a few others, but most kept quiet.
M
etcalf stopped at a table where a test subject had reached six months without being fed. The subject had shriveled to the point of looking more like a prune than anything that could’ve ever been human. Its eyes appeared dead, its mouth gaping open.
M
etcalf pulled the spikes out from its shoulders and carried it to a scale. Only thirty-four pounds. Before the experiment was started, the subject had weighed more than double that.
M
etcalf brought it back to its table and pounded the spikes back where they’d been. Not even a whimper.
M
etcalf had doubts whether it was still alive. If it were dead it would be the first time that he witnessed a vampire dying due to starvation. Using an eyedropper,
M
etcalf squeezed a drop of human blood into the thing’s gaping mouth. A sucking sound came from it.

      “Still alive, huh?”
M
etcalf noted.

      He squeezed the remaining blood from the eyedropper into the gaping hole. The glaze over the vampire’s eyes faded and a flicker of life shone in them.
M
etcalf slowly fed it an ounce of blood, and as he did so, the vampire plumped out like a raisin that had been dropped in water. It stirred slightly, its tongue pushing out, then choking noises rattled from its throat as it pleaded for more blood.
M
etcalf continued to feed it blood until it was restored to its former condition. Four ounces of blood had brought the vampire fully back. The vampire lay with its chest heaving sucking in oxygen.
M
etcalf scribbled notes on a clipboard that hung on the edge of the table.

      “Please, no more…I’m begging…end it…please…end it…” the vampire forced out, its voice not much more than a hoarse whisper.

      
M
etcalf looked up and made a shushing noise to the vampire before moving on to check on other experiments. Although some of the vampires were made into these “guinea pigs” to teach the others in the compound a lesson,
M
etcalf took no sadistic pleasure in what he did, but neither did he feel the slightest hint of remorse. As far as he was concerned, these creatures didn’t even rate as lab mice, and he felt the same compassion towards them that a scientist might towards bacteria that was being examined under a microscope. These experiments allowed
M
etcalf to understand the virus at a more practical level, and that was all that mattered to him.

      Smiling, he thought about how he could write a book on the subject…

      Hell, make it a set of encyclopedias…

      Early on he discovered that vampires could be killed fairly easily, at least easily for him, by cutting off their heads. Other than that method, which few other vampires had the strength to do without very sharp blades, they were damn hard to kill. Like goddamn cockroaches. Suffocating them, whether by drowning, gassing or simply sealing off a vampire’s nose and mouth, didn’t kill them; it only caused them to slip into a comatose state until oxygen became available.
M
etcalf had kept experiments submerged for months in tanks of water only to have them revive within seconds of being removed, and showing no discernable damage from their oxygen deprivation. He could burn them to death, but only after he had bought a cremation oven and was able to get the temperature to 2100 degrees Fahrenheit. Cooking a vampire long enough in a microwave oven also did the trick, but again, like requiring a cremation oven, it was impractical. The virus created a kind of super-immunity to lethal viral infections: Ebola, bubonic plague, hantavirus, and all the other viruses
M
etcalf exposed his test subjects to had little effect. Neither did exposure to deadly bacteria like meningitis or anthrax, nor any of the poisons that
M
etcalf had so far injected into their blood systems. Ingesting poison caused the same short-term violent reactions that ingesting any food would cause, but nothing more than that.

      
M
etcalf stopped in front of one of his test subjects. Two days earlier he had injected the vampire with an ounce of venom from an Australian Brown Snake, which was enough to kill over ten thousand people. Outside of being somewhat dried out, the vampire looked no worse for wear.

      “Would you like to be fed?”
M
etcalf asked it.

      The vampire nodded glumly and
M
etcalf squeezed an ounce of blood into its mouth. After that ounce, the vampire appeared the same as before the snake venom injection.
M
etcalf scribbled notes on the clipboard next to the test subject. Over the course of a year,
M
etcalf had injected snake and spider venom, arsenic, cyanide, formaldehyde, ammonia, and numerous other poisons into this subject, all with little if any damage. As with viruses and bacterial exposure, poison seemed to have no real effect against the super-immunity caused by the vampire virus.

      “You are a monster. A monster,” drifted in from behind him, a seemingly disembodied voice, barely a whisper. “You will burn in the fires of damnation. What you are doing to us will be done to you a million times over.”

      
M
etcalf strained to hear where the voice was coming from and followed it to one of his vivisection experiments.
M
ildly disappointed, he understood why the test subject dared to speak out. It had nothing left to lose, or little, anyway.
M
etcalf had months earlier cut the vampire open and spread the skin apart so its insides were exposed, and over time had removed most of its organs. Spleen, liver, kidneys, esophagus and stomach were gone. Not much was really left other than its heart and one of its lungs.

      The vampire’s jaundiced eyes held steady on
M
etcalf’s.

      “You think you are a God?” it asked, its voice haltering, ghostlike. “You are nothing. Less than dirt, that’s what you are. Some day there will be justice and you will suffer worse than you’ve made all of us suffer.”

      “That may be true,”
M
etcalf said. “But you know something, I don’t believe I asked for your opinion.”

      
M
etcalf reached into the vampire’s chest and squeezed its heart in his fist. A sick gurgling noise escaped the vampire’s lips and its eyes rolled up into its sockets.
M
etcalf decided to alter his experiment. He took a loose spike and drove it into the vampire’s heart. Unlike the supernatural myth associated with a vampire, a spike through the heart didn’t kill it. The virus would cause the damaged heart to regenerate its tissue as it tried to heal itself. From personal experience
M
etcalf knew the pain would be excruciating. If the spike were removed, the heart would completely regenerate in seconds and be as healthy as before the injury, but with the spike in the way the newly generated tissue would wrap itself around the metal in a fruitless attempt for recovery. No, one spike through the heart wouldn’t kill a vampire, but maybe more than one would. Overtime
M
etcalf would discover how many it took, but he planned to stretch this experiment out and make it last years. He watched while the vampire writhed in agony, its mouth twisting as it tried to scream but in too much pain for any noise to escape. Satisfied that his point had been made to the other “guinea pigs”, he turned to the room and addressed them, asking if any of them had any other comments they’d like to share.