Code 61 (18 page)

He took it from me, and glanced at it. “I've signed these before,” he said. He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket, and signed it with a flourish. “I'll just need a copy…. ”

“No problem,” said Harry. “Machine's in the next room. I'll be right back.”

I looked at our vampire hunter. Or, rather, tracker. “Okay, this is what's happened since we last talked…. ”

Five minutes later, I was through.

“I see,” said Chester. “So, then. Are you willing to concede that you're dealing with a vampire, now?”

“Not even for a second.” I wanted him to be very clear about that. “What I'm dealing with is quite possibly some poor deluded bastard who believes he's a vampire. Nothing more. Because I know vampires really don't exist.”

“As you say,” he said.

I hate it when people do that. “So, what I want from you is this. I want to know how somebody who might think he's a vampire thinks a 'real' vampire behaves. How he's going to act. To convince himself and maybe some others that he's for real.”

“In exchange for which?” asked Chester.

“In exchange for access to some, but not all, of our information. Access to all I can think of that might deal with the vampire stuff, but not with the core case data.”

“Unless I need it?”

“Let me put it this way … If I think we need you to testify as an expert, you get what we got. Fair enough? That way, if you make a significant contribution to the whole investigation, you get the material you want. But you can't talk to the press, and you're locked in as a prosecution witness first.”

He thought for a moment. “Agreed, but I can publish my data afterward? I need to do that.”

I glanced at Harry. “Okay with you?”

“Yep.”

The way he said it, I knew that Harry would renege at the drop of a hat. That was going to have to be between him and Chester.

I told him some of what I knew. He was impressed, in a satisfying sort of way.

“My God, do you realize what you have here? You have a nest. You have a vampire's nest, with a house full of Renfields and blood donors. My God.” He appeared stunned.

“Renffelds?” asked Harry.

“Renffeld was the slave of Dracula,” said Chester.

“Oh sure,” said Harry, with great aplomb. “And there are more of these than you expected?” I think he did it just to needle Chester, but the tracker didn't appear to notice.

“I've been looking for years,” he said. “Years. Never anything like this. Never.”

“Well,” I said, wanting to get back down to business, “I'm really pleased for you. Now, then, we need a little information…. ” I'd been fairly careful, and didn't think it ever occurred to him that he was a suspect. I had to keep it that way, at least until he'd been ruled out. Although it was unstated between us, I knew that Harry felt the same way.

It was also sinking in that this man really, truly believed in vampires. Since he did, just how reliable could his information be? As it turned out, pretty good, if what you wanted was mostly folklore. And that was just what we wanted.

“What is this guy trying to say?” I asked, for openers. “Assuming that he has actually killed…. ”

“Oh, he has, he has,” said Chester.

“Right,” said Harry. “So, what's with the throat injury bit? Post mortem and all.” “Ah,” said Chester. “Are you so certain they've been inflicted after the victim has died?”

Harry and I said, in unison, “Absolutely,” and “Bet your ass.”

“Oh.” Our expert cleared his throat. “Then, possibly, to disguise the true nature of the wound? To obliterate, say, a bite mark?”

He sounded so hopeful.

“Not a chance,” I said. “No bite mark.”

“I think he's doin' it to make people talk about neck or throat injuries,” said Harry. “How about that?”

“He could. I'm not saying that as fact, but, yes, he could.”

Chester warmed to his subject, and I spent about an hour with him and Harry. The upshot was that blood, while significant to a “vampire wannabee” as Harry called him, wasn't in any way a source of nutrition.

“Unlike true vampires, poseurs will consume, maybe, an ounce or less at a time, for the most part,” said Chester. “Daily would be too often. You'd end up with diarrhea and other things if you did more than that. Like a bleeding ulcer will do to you. Sometimes, they might overindulge. But not often.”

That was good to know, but it left me wondering what had happened to much of Edie's blood.

He also said that, at least the more sophisticated of the “poseurs” would dress the part, in a costume reminiscent of the movies.

“Just to convince their following, you know. They'd expect a Dracula, at least now and then.”

“Sure.”

“He'll try to tailor his lifestyle according to that preconception, too. Sometimes for himself, sometimes for his followers or victims.”

Renffelds apparently came in two flavors. The first was just, in his own terminology, somebody who was enthralled by a vampire. The second, according to him, was somebody who was more into the taste of blood itself. More of a participant.

“Those are the 'clinical' Renfields,” he said. “It's a disorder.”

“So,” I asked, “what are these people likely to be like? You know, how will they respond to an investigation?”

Chester laughed for the first time. “They'll not be cooperative, in any real way. They'll protect him from you. They'll tell him everything you say. They'll deny his very existence, for the most part. They'll mislead you at every turn.”

“Hostile, then,” said Harry.

“Yes.”

“What do they see in this guy?” I thought that might help.

“He protects them, for one thing. He's powerful. He avenges them, if necessary. He is deliciously evil. He's immortal. He's sometimes the source of some very intense sexual interactions. Just as often, the modern vampire's the source of some chemical substances. He's completely amoral. He has to be. After all,” he said, confidentially, “he isn't human.”

“Everything your mother warned you about,” said Harry. “Right?”

“Absolutely,” said Chester. “But you have to understand, these Renfields are quite often victims of a previous … person. Their experiences have made them depressed, or at least unhappy. Dependent, but not in an obvious way. Often happens when they're adolescents. Nothing to do with vampires, at that time. Nothing at all, until they meet him. Then he addresses, well, psychological needs.”

Just what I wanted to hear.

“So, like, why do you hunt these people?” asked Harry.

William Chester hesitated for a second or two, then said, “My sister. One of them got to her, years back. She didn't survive.”

“Ya know who it was?” asked Harry. “The one who got her?” Harry wasn't known for his delicacy, but nobody ever seemed to really mind. I could never figure that out.

“No. No, I don't.” Chester leaned forward. “But this one is closer than any I've encountered before.”

It seemed to me that he denied that a little too quickly.

Before I went back across the Mississippi to Iowa, I reiterated the “no interference” provisions to Chester. He was to confine himself to contact with either Harry or me. Period. No approaching our potential witnesses or suspects, or it was curtains.

I left secure in the knowledge that Harry was going to check out every freckle on William Chester's body before he was through. He did strike me as being sincere, but cops learn not to take people at face value. How much actual use he was going to be was another thing altogether.

I got back to the Mansion and found that it had only taken the basement team two hours to finish up. They'd found two suspicious areas that might have been places where blood had been wiped up, but obtained no positive results with leucomalachite green. Leucomalachite green is neat stuff. They mix it with water, sodium perborate, and glacial acetic acid. A drop or two on the test swab, then a couple of drops of hydrogen peroxide, and bingo. If there's blood there, it turns sort of an aqua color instantly. It's used to see if there is any reason to use other testing substances to cover an area. Neat stuff. It also saves you a lot of time if it turns out there's not any blood in your sample.

What we were looking for was, essentially, wipe marks, where somebody had mopped up, or sponged up, or any way removed traces of blood. There just about had to be some trace evidence, because, although Edie apparently hadn't been killed in the tub, she sure as hell had been killed somewhere. The murder site should have been pretty well doused. Then, to move a bloody body from some location to her second-floor bathtub was a process that would very likely leave a trail of at least some blood.

The immediate problem was, the main floor had three types of surface where blood was likely to have been deposited. First, there were large areas of rug or carpet. Second, equally large if not larger areas of polished hardwood flooring. Third, the tiled floor in the kitchen and pantry. Not to mention the wooden mop boards and the painted walls themselves. And furniture, of course, all either polished wood or fabric. Looking for possible wipe marks on surfaces where there are countless swirls and traces from constant wiping and cleaning is less than rewarding. We couldn't even eliminate the wipe marks that had left tiny trails of bubbles. Someone could have used detergent to clean up the mess. You'd have to test just about everything. We would, if necessary, or so we said, hoping that the team on the second floor would turn up something. If it did, we could follow a trail back from the tub to the point of the murder. Right.

TWELVE

Sunday, October 8, 2000
12:16

“Hello? Is anybody here?” came from the front doorway. A woman's voice.

I was on my hands and knees, with a small Mini-Mag flashlight, side-lighting possible wipe marks on the dining room floor. I scrambled to my feet, and headed for the door.

Borman, who'd been in the music room, beat me to the door by seconds.

“Yes?” I heard him say, in a deferential tone.

Her voice got closer as she said, “I own this house. Could you direct me to whomever is in charge?”

“Uh, sure,” said Borman. In two sentences, she'd let him know she was important, and he wasn't. Not bad.

I came around the corner from the dining room, and saw two women in the atrium, beginning to advance past Borman. I could see how Borman had been intimidated. One of the women seemed to be about twenty-five or so, the other I would have guessed at thirty-five, max, if her driver's license data hadn't said she was forty-three. Both were quite fit, slim, with Jessica Hunley about three inches taller than her completely leather-clad young companion. But the remarkable thing was the younger one's hair. It was absolutely metallic-looking, starting with a lemon yellow at her forehead, and sweeping back through lime green, blue, red, and ending in purple. It shimmered iridescently. Arresting, so to speak.

I resolved to be just a bit harder to intimidate than Borman. “Hi. Name's Houseman.” I stuck out my hand. She didn't have much choice, and we shook. Strong. “You must be Jessica Hunley.”

“Yes.”

There was a momentary silence, so I took what advantage I could, and thrust my hand toward the other woman. “Deputy Houseman … ”

“Tatiana Ostransky,” she said. “I'm with Jessica.” Her handshake was cool and firm.

Jessica started the game with me. “Deputy? I would have hoped the sheriff would be here.”

“Two reasons,” I said. “First, I'm the department investigator. Second, Edie was his niece. He has other things to do today.”

That surprised her.

“So, you're the one in charge here?” Nice, wide, absolutely insincere smile.

“You betcha.”

She fixed me with a gaze that told me she knew just exactly what I was up to, and that she thought she could beat me at that game any time she chose. Cool.

I gestured toward the parlor. “If we go in there, I can give you some information.”

I was curious as to why anybody coming to the house wouldn't have been at least announced, if not delayed, by the two reserve officers outside. As we headed in toward the parlor, I saw them coming around the side of the house. Bored, they'd apparently decided to check the perimeter.

In the parlor, nobody sat.

“What,” asked Hunley, “is he doing in the kitchen?” She pointed to the lab tech, who was staring back at her.

As part of my answer, I opened my old leather briefcase, and fished out her copy of the search warrant. I handed it to her, and said, “We're executing a warranted search of this premises. He's one of the lab technicians.”

A search warrant lists the premises with the greatest specificity, and explains very tersely why the place is being tossed. In this instance, the exact wording was “evidence material to a homicide investigation.” Knives were also listed, along with bloodstains.

Jessica Hunley took out a pair of reading glasses from a case at her belt, and read the search warrant over very carefully. She was dressed in loose-fitting olive slacks, made with a microweave fabric, a white jersey turtleneck with the sleeves pushed up, and black leather shoes that appeared to be almost as soft as gloves, that zipped rather than tied. Her brown hair was tied with a white band in a short ponytail. She seemed to be a perfect match for the house. Refined. The glasses made her appear more interesting, if such a thing were possible.

She abruptly removed the glasses, and handed the paper to her companion. “I wasn't told this was a homicide case,” she said. Her tone was completely noncommittal.

“Don't feel bad,” I said. “We weren't, either.”

“Is there a suspect?”

“Yes,” I said. Silence. I wasn't going to tell her who, of course, and apparently she wasn't going to give me the satisfaction of asking.

“So,” she said, changing the unspoken subject, “where is everyone?”

“Well, most of them have been put up in area motels for last night, but they should be allowed back in here sometime this evening, I think.”

“Most of them?”

“Well,” I said, “all but Toby. Toby's in jail.” I do love my job.

Jessica's mouth opened slightly, but before she could say anything, Borman picked that moment to glance out the window and announce that the reserve deputies were now outside. Not his fault, but any immediate reaction I was hoping to get from Jessica was forever lost. I sure would have liked to hear what she was going to say.

Judging from the way Borman was looking at Tatiana of the shimmering hair, I'd say he probably wouldn't have heard Jessica at all.

The main result of Borman's announcement was that all four of us glanced out the window. I checked automatically for Jessica's car. I couldn't see quite all of it, because both reserves were standing around it, but it was the BMW Z8. I'd never seen one before. It struck me that, although completely modern, the car went with Jessica Hunley just as the old Mansion did.

“I'm glad you got here when you did,” I said to Jessica. “We're going to need somebody to unlock the third floor for us.”

“Why? It's only unlocked when I'm here. There couldn't have been anything to do with this … this killing. Not up there.”

“Well, like they say, a lock only keeps an honest man out,” I said. “Let's just agree it's
supposed
to be locked while you're away.”

“Let's say it's supposed to stay locked when I say it is,” she said, and reached into her slacks pocket, and produced a remarkably small cell phone. She dialed, while saying, “I'm calling my attorney…. This is Jessica Hunley. Is he in?” There was a brief pause. “Yes, it's me. I'm at my house above the river,” she said. “There are some local cops here with a search warrant. Get up here now.” She spoke in a near monotone, and if I hadn't been party to what was actually going on, I would have thought her completely unconcerned. She terminated the call and put the phone back in her pocket. She looked at her watch. “He'll be here in ten minutes,” she said. It was a statement of fact, not an estimate.

Well, he either had to be a local or a damned good swimmer. I was anxious to see which of our local attorneys she had so thoroughly wrapped around her finger. “We can wait,” I said. “We have lots to do yet, before we go up to the third.”

She moved to hand the copy of the search warrant back. “No,” I said, “that's yours. We're required by law to either leave it with the owner, or post it on the premises where the owner can easily find it.” As she folded it, I asked, “Do you have the only key to the third floor?”

To my surprise, she said, “I think I'll wait for my attorney to be present before answering more.”

“That's fine,” I said conversationally, “but you really don't need to do that. You're not a suspect here.”

“Anyone,” she said, “can be sued.”

Ah. Right. Absolutely right. I had a feeling that Jessica would qualify as a very deep pocket.

I asked her and Tatiana to please remain in the parlor, and told Borman to stay with them. No complaint from him.

I went to the kitchen, told the lab tech to keep going, and then went up to the second to give them the news.

As I walked down the hall, I saw there were two yellow chalk marks in the blue and red and gold Oriental carpeting. I couldn't see anything particularly different between the areas inside or outside the circles, but I knew they'd found something. All three of them were in the bedroom across the hall from Edie's. By the clothes scattered about, I assumed it was the room of one of the males.

“Hester, got a second?”

“Sure.”

I told her what was happening downstairs.

“Crap.”

“Right,” I said. “You should see Jessica Hunley and her buddy Tatiana.”

“Why?”

“A tad more … oh, sophisticated than we're used to. She drove the Z8.” I grinned. “I think Borman's wondering if he can take Tatiana home as a war bride.”

“Like you're not susceptible, Houseman,” she said, raising one eyebrow.

“Well, Jessica's more my age, but I don't think she bakes.”

“A cookie factory would make a fine dowry,” she said. “Watch yourself.”

Hester was right, of course. “ 'An attractive member of the opposite sex can influence you, without your being aware,' ” I quoted from my Academy days. “Although it never seems to work for me.”

She laughed. “You're hopeless.”

“What did you find here?” I asked.

“Possible stains in the hall, a possible wipe-up stain on the floor beside Edie's tub, and lots of SPF fifty sunscreen, and makeup in the guys' rooms, as well as the gals',” she said with a chuckle. “Really light shades. Some really nice Victorian clothes, and lovely old-fashioned jewelry. Appliqué tattoos. Nice CD players. Not much else. No weapons—not yet, anyway. Nothing to indicate anything sinister at all.” She glanced around. “We have three more rooms to go. There are tons of nooks and crannies…. ”

I told her about my conversation with Chester. She asked if he'd be any real help, and I told her that we'd just have to wait and see.

She'd apparently been in the main kitchen downstairs just before I'd returned.

“You know how many knives there are in a kitchen like that? Knives that could be a murder weapon?”

“Lots, huh?”

“We've seized sixteen or seventeen, so far, to send to the lab. We may never know which knife was used.”

When I got back to the parlor, Tatiana was sitting on a davenport, with her legs pulled up onto the seat, so that her chin was almost resting on her knees. Her arms encircled her leather-clad knees, with the wrists crossed about halfway between her knees and ankles. Everything she owned was pointing at him. The light through the window was doing great things to that hair. She was saying, “ … and you've
really been
in high speed chases?”

I'm not certain what Borman was about to say, but when he saw me, he caught himself and said, “Well, a couple of times.” Between her posture, her shimmering hair, and her feigned interest, he was totally wasted. I honestly think that, if she'd asked to see his service weapon, he would have handed it over. He might have unloaded it first, but he would have done it. I made a mental note to keep those two as far apart as I could.

“We don't encourage chases,” I said. “Of any kind. Too dangerous.” He caught my meaning, I think, but without a bucket of ice water, I was not going to get his undivided attention.

“My attorney will be here in a moment,” said Jessica. She smiled sweetly.