Kolchak: The Night Stalker: A Black and Evil Truth (9 page)

CHAPTER 8

FRIDAY, MAY 15, 1970

MORNING

When I got up the next morning I was feeling very shaky but the headache was gone and the runny nose had dried up. I checked with the PD and the sheriff’s office by phone and was rewarded with the information that a beige ’69 Ford LTD hardtop had been reported stolen from the Dunes parking lot at around 8:00 A.M. There was nothing new about the Katz girl and there had been no incidents of violence during the night. It seemed the “vampire” had gone underground.

The deputy I talked to told me that they had also heard that one of the guard dogs at the Dunes had been found dead on the grass near the Dunes clubhouse. It had been discovered by a patrolling security guard around 6:00 A.M. when he’d come out to put the dog away for the day. The dog was dead, with a small amount of blood on the fur of its neck and it was assumed that some vandal had shot it with a small caliber weapon.

Well, that didn’t seem too terribly interesting so I filed it away under miscellaneous and phoned the office. A few of my associates had been in briefly but there was no one in the newsroom right then, and Vincenzo hadn’t arrived yet. I told the switchboard operator I was feeling a little under the weather and would check in at around noon. Meanwhile, I told her what I’d gotten from the PD and sheriff’s office and asked her to give it to Vincenzo when he came in.

I didn’t really like going to work, but I didn’t feel all that sick after my third cup of coffee. So, while trying to decide whether or not to go to the office, I shaved, showered and dressed.

Then an idea came to me and I called the university asking for the humanities department and then for Dr. Kirsten Helms. She finally answered with a gruff “Yes?” and I told her who I was and asked for an appointment. A short pause followed and then she said, “11:30 sharp!” and hung up. That gave me thirty minutes to kill so I stripped down my bedding, grabbed up my laundry and headed for the car and the nearest cleaners I could afford.

Although I hadn’t seen Dr. Helms in nearly five years, and perhaps spoken on the phone with her all of a half-dozen times since I’d taken some adult education courses from her shortly after my arrival in Las Vegas, I still felt somewhat uneasy and awed in her presence. I wasn’t exactly sure what my reception would be.

The administration had banished the humanities section to an outbuilding Harmon, away from the main campus in lieu of projected plans for a new building. But Dr. Helms, through persuasive oratory and general obstinacy, had managed to keep her old office on the ground floor of the original office building.

[Humanities now has its own high rise on Maryland Parkway. J.R. ]

A placard in crudely drawn Old English script on her door proclaimed: Beware --- Der Troll’s Cave. Some disgruntled student had pinned it there five years before, after reading his code number on the term grade sheet beside the letter “F” for failed.

At the moment of our reunion she said, “You’re two minutes late. You’re losing your hair, you are overweight, you drink too much and sleep too little, and while the scope of your writing has increased an infinitesimal degree your writing style is still sloppy and your grammar atrocious.”

I had been right to be apprehensive. She hadn’t changed. She looked a feisty fifty although she admitted to almost seventy and was probably closer to eighty. Beside being unredeemedly autocratic and, in her own way, unorthodox, she was still possessed of the ability to observe the world around her, add two and two together and come to the right conclusion. She had a mind like the proverbial steel trap and, through voracious reading, a staggering knowledge of odd subjects. She spent a major portion of her small amount of free time railing against the administration’s present tendency toward “new” methods of teaching while they, in turn, tried in vain to force her into retirement. I knew, in the end, that they would have their way because (her fine record notwithstanding) time was simply against her. She knew it, too. And it made her more irascible than ever. The administration might have many reasons for trying to unseat her. She had virtually run her department when it had first been formed even though she’d never held the chairmanship, but they could hardly claim seniority as a legitimate cause for retiring her.

I let her sharpen her verbal claws on me for a few minutes and when she paused to pour some coffee from a thermos I seized the opportunity.

“I came here to ask you for some reference material on folk tales, legends, myths, anything at all, as long as it has information on… vampires.”

“Vampires?”

“Yes. I know you’ll probably think I’ve slipped a cog up here,” I said, pointing to my head, “but I think these murders were caused by a lunatic who thinks he’s a vampire. I want to know exactly how the legendary vampire would act under whatever would be normal circumstances for him.”

Well, she had read the papers. “You have convinced yourself that the murder now loose in Las Vegas is a vampire? Since the papers haven’t said how the victims died I surmised they were drained of blood and that the police want it kept confidential until they can find a way of looking brilliant.”

“Uh-huh,” was all I managed to get out. She immediately began rummaging through the massive stacks of books that surrounded her in the tiny cubicle that UNLV instructors are given in accordance with their rand. Her stout figure bobbing, her wisps of spiky, iron-gray hair cutting the air from time to time just under my nose. She began dumping all kinds of volumes, thin ones, fat ones, huge leather-bounds and paperbacks all into a handy cardboard carton.

“Here!” she rasped, depositing the forty pounds of books in my lap. “Everything you need. If there’s anyone in this town who knows mythology, demonology, witchcraft and the like, it is I. Furthermore, I’ll have you know I am something of an amateur criminologist… strictly in the historical sense. There are several good volumes on famous police cases in there. You’ll find them most useful.”

She paused and squinted at me like I was a lab specimen on a slide. “Do you remember your Homer?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer, she launched into the tale of the Cyclops, one of the few things I did remember from the Odyssey:

The cruel brute made no reply but instead jumped up and seized a couple of my men and dashed their heads against the floor as though they’d been puppies. Their brains ran out and soaked the earth. Limb by limb he shredded them to make his meal never pausing till entrails, flesh, marrow and bones were all consumed, while we could do nothing but weep and lift our hands to Zeus in horror at the ghastly sight, paralyzed by our helplessness.

Again she fixed me with the stare I still remembered from my days in her classroom. “Do you remember?” she intoned threateningly.

“Sure. The Cyclops tale from Homer’s Odyssey.”

“And how did Odysseus resolve the situation?”

“Uh… by… by… by using the Cyclops’ lusts against him… and turning his possessions into weapons. He… he had his men fix up a wooden stake to put out the Cyclops’ eye. Then they got him drunk, blinded him and finally, Ulyss… ahem, Odysseus tied his men under the Cyclops’ sheep and used them as escape vehicles out of the giant’s cave, saving the biggest ram for himself.”
“Very good. You haven’t forgotten everything you learned. Though, you’ll never be another Odysseus. A Telemachus, perhaps… with a little effort. I can see you are convinced you alone know how to unravel this little mystery of the four deaths. Oh, I’ve been keeping up with the news. Only decent excitement this dust bowl of inequity has seen in years!

“So go… Lock yourself up and read. Get them back here on Monday. Tuesday at the latest. Refresh your memory on the tales your grandfather told you when you were a boy. At least you’ll be… informed. You’ll probably make a fool of yourself and your efforts may well hinder the police. But if I gave you any advice, you’d be sure not to heed it.

“You are a lazy man, Kolchak, but still there is a part of you that longs for adventure. Well, here’s your chance. It may cost you what few friends you have and probably your job. But you have wasted what little talents you have in his town long enough. Follow it through to the end and then go and write a book.”

Then, as an afterthought, “Better make it a work of fiction. People wouldn’t believe what you seem to believe. Oh, yes, yes, I know. I talk too much. Too much, too loud, and too fast. But I’m an old woman and if I don’t get it said and said quickly, I may never have the chance. Now, I go. It’s almost noon and I have classes.”

As I lugged the books out to my car I ran headlong into Alonzo Reynolds. It was like crashing into a wall of dough. The box hit the ground and the books scattered all over the small stone walkway and onto the grass. I looked around quickly to see if Dr. Helms had seen my clumsiness, and then bent to pick them up. Reynolds began to help me.

“Glad to see you again, Mr. uh…”

“Kolchak.”

“Right on! Hey, are you going to come see the show tonight? We have a free ticket for you.”

“Well, I…” I never got the chance to finish.

“Great! I’ll tell the girls at the door to keep an eye out for you. Take a seat in the second or third row when you come in. And, uh… take off your coat before it starts. We don’t run the cooler during the show. Too much noise.”

He hefted the box and handed it to me, then bounded around the corner, I presumed, in search of his wife.

When I got back to my place I had my first cigar of the day, and checked in by phone with Vincenzo.

“Meyer’s already beat you to it; you’d better talk to him.”

Meyer came on the line. “Hah! Hah! Got you this time, buddy. Our blood-sucking friend struck again last night.”

I could already see the body of another young woman lying crumpled and pale somewhere in the night. Jesus Christ! Another victim?”

“Not one, pal. A whole bunch of them. But, he didn’t kill anyone.”

“He didn’t kill anyone?”

“Naw, but he sure smashed up a few people. He raided County General last night and got away with every goddamn pint of blood in the place. Also…” there was a rustle of paper on the other end of the line, “also he took some needles, intravenous tubes and most of their glucose-water supply. It’s used to give nourishment to those patients who can’t eat. I’ve got most of the information here if you don’t want to wait for the paper to come out. By the way, how’s your cold?”

“Fine, just fine. Give me what you’ve got.”

He started to read. “Violence struck at County General Hospital Friday morning shortly before 1:00 A.M., and in its wake left one registered nurse and two orderlies critically injured.

“Listed in critical condition are orderlies William Benson, with a broken arm, broken collarbone and skull fracture; Oscar Wilson, with a broken back and several internal injuries; and Harriet Wilson, a registered nurse with a concussion, broken ribs and facial lacerations. Nurse Wilson is not related to the orderly.

“The incident occurred during the successful theft of the hospital’s entire supply of blood, whole blood, plasma and nearly all of the available glucose-water supply at hand. Several intravenous needles and tubes were also taken.

“Eyewitness reports from the three injured parties added to a report from the ground-floor nurse at the admission’s desk build up a fairly complete picture.

“According to Las Vegas Police Captain of Detectives Edward Masterson, the assailant entered the hospital’s ground floor through the emergency entrance and proceeded to the admissions desk. There, according to Nurse Roberta Harris, the assailant–described as about six-three to six-four in height, weighing about from one hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventy pounds, with a suntan and gray hair, and a brush moustache, wearing a dark blue or black single-breasted suit, old-fashioned fedora hat, and carrying a large medical bag–told Nurse Harris that he was a Dr. Hampden and that he had a patient en route to the emergency room by private car who had cut himself badly in a fall through a shower door.

“The assailant claimed he wished to check the hospital’s available blood supply in advance as the patient, he asserted, was a rare blood type. He said he wanted to arrange for blood from Parkway Hospital if more of the rare type was necessary.

“The nurse directed him to the nurse on duty in Hematology where the blood is stored and he left in that direction.

“A few minutes later, orderly Oscar Wilson, a former light-heavyweight boxer, discovered the ‘doctor’ busily loading his large bag and a smaller one beside it with containers of blood. He started to question the man who, according to Wilson, simply stood up, turned around, and shoved him against the wall. Wilson got up and tried to restrain the man who again pushed him away very hard this time, and turned back to the bags.

“Wilson then grabbed the man by his coat, spun him around and hit him as hard as he could with a right cross, which, he claims, ‘just bounced off him with no effect.’

“The man then picked up Wilson ‘like so much laundry’ and squeezed Wilson until he fell unconscious with what was later determined by X-rays to be a broken back. He was then thrown into a corner.

“Floor Nurse Harriet Wilson discovered Oscar Wilson slumped unconscious on the floor just as the man picked up the bags and started to leave. She screamed and he set the bags down and grabbed her by the neck. He slapped her face several times, and she says she fainted. Apparently, he threw her on top of the unconscious orderly.