by Phil Malone
“I said nothing about slaughtering them. We are vampires, not monsters. Truthfully, it is not even necessary for us to kill the humans when we drink from them. We could take two or three pints and allow the human to recover. We could take smaller amounts from multiple donors. Even if we wanted to, Congressman, there are not enough of us to kill them all.”
“What if no one wants to volunteer to be our dinner? They might not want to risk it.”
“From what I have observed of human degeneracy over the past century, that seems unlikely. They crave new experiences. Remember the woman you ate tonight. Did you feel the way her body relaxed in your grasp? Did you hear her sigh as your fangs bit into her neck? The humans experience a vampire bite as pleasure. It is a natural reaction, one that makes it easier for us to feed. Pay close attention next time, and you will begin to understand.”
Sanger remembered the woman he had killed less than an hour before. The need to drink her blood had driven him, but he couldn’t deny that it made him feel powerful to know she had died in his arms. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“But we need not rely solely on willing victims. There are some humans who could be safely removed from society, for the benefit of all. Those who are dangerous, unstable, unhealthy." Napoleon gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “Not every human would understand or agree, of course, but their voices would diminish over time as their society continued to prosper.”
Luckily, no journalists heard Napoleon make such an utterance. They would have crucified him. “Never underestimate the mulish stubbornness of the people. They’re not used to having some unaccountable authority act as judge, jury, and executioner. I’m afraid they would fight.”
“It was just a thought. One we need not act on, should the humans refuse to allow it." Napoleon smiled, stood, and came around the front of his desk. He clapped a cold hand on Sanger’s shoulder.
“This is why I need your help,” he said. “The human perspective is fresher in your memory than my own. Aid me in crafting these laws. Build the society you have always wanted, yet could never implement through routine legislation. Together, I truly believe we can achieve this dream.”
There were innumerable policies Sanger had always wanted to enact. Lofty goals that, in his mind, always resulted in more prosperity and widespread contentment. None of them seemed important to him at the moment.
He could hitch his wagon to Napoleon’s star and pursue old dreams. It would help if he could get the measure of some other vampires. His maker might be an outlier. A council meeting in the near future would reveal everything.
If only he wasn’t so famished, the clouds would part and Sanger would clearly see the path ahead. At the moment, though, he just hungered for more human blood.
CHAPTER SEVEN
They woke Kolka rudely a few hours later. Fitz used his foot to tip Kolka’s chair back, not quite far enough to knock him over backwards. Kolka woke with a start, flailing his arms, and finished toppling over on his own. The office erupted in laughter, Fitz, the captain, several other homicide detectives and clerks amusing themselves at Kolka’s expense.
He grumbled as he picked himself up off the floor. “This better be good.”
“No sweat,” Fitz chuckled. “I’ve just been doing your job for you all day. He dropped Lucado’s folder on the desk, thickened with extra paperwork. Then he fished his own notebook from his pocket, no doubt with all the new information duplicated therein.
Kolka righted his chair and heaved himself back into it. He squared up in front of the folder and started flipping through the pages. He found transcripts of the call to the East Haven police department, Lucado’s records from the state including bank statements, and summaries from the tech department of what they found on Lucado’s computer and the video footage from inside the morgue. They even included a DVD with the footage burned onto it.
He barely listened as Fitz prattled on, narrating information that Kolka could clearly see for himself. He’d already watched the footage, and it turned out Lucado was telling the truth. He leaned close to the wounds on the corpse, but kept his hands at a remove and never actually touched anything.
“Is it illegal to put on a lab coat and walk around in a hospital if you don’t work there?” Kolka asked.
“Turns out no, not in Virginia. We can still hold him for another day if you want, but he may not be of any real value to the investigation.”
“So you’re not buying into his conspiracy about the one armed man who killed his wife?”
“One armed… what?”
“You need a better sense of humor, Fitz. Knocking me over while I’m dozing is low comedy.”
“Everyone else thought that was funny. Anyway, I’m inclined to trust East Haven’s version of events. What they say makes sense.”
“More sense than some mystery man drinking his wife’s blood, for sure. Okay, I’ll talk to him. Let me get my head on straight, first.”
His first stop was the restroom. Kolka lightened the load on his bladder before going to the sink. He ran cold water, splashing a little in his face, rubbing his eyes. After napping through the middle of the day, he always felt a little slow witted. He wanted a clear head if he decided to rid his investigation of Lucado.
Whoever brought the old man something to eat had removed his handcuffs at the same time. Kolka found him pacing around the room, one hand following the wall to brace him whenever he put weight on his weak leg. The remains of a fast food meal cluttered up the table. A greasy paper bag and sandwich wrapper, an empty carton of french fries, a styrofoam cup with a straw sticking out the top. That, and a few used, wadded up paper napkins.
“Having a nice stroll?” Kolka asked, as he entered the room with the folder in his hands.
“I have to move around, or my leg stiffens up and the pain is intolerable. It’s been hours, detective." The reproachful tone in Lucado’s voice was unmistakable.
“I’m really sorry about that. It takes time to collate all this information.”
“Fast food upsets my digestion. Gives me gas.”
“You don’t say. Why don’t we sit down? Unless you need to use the restroom…?”
“They gave me a bathroom break, thank you." Lucado eased himself back into his chair, no small feat when it was wedged between the table and the wall.
Kolka sat across from him. “You lied to me, Mr. Lucado,” he began, just to gauge Lucado’s reaction. The old man mostly looked confused. “You’re not licensed as a private investigator, not here, nor in Connecticut.”
“I said I wasn’t licensed.”
“Only after you claimed to be one in the first place. In fact, I checked up on your financials. Turns out the only income you have is the disability checks you get from the government.”
“Well, yes… but I was still genuinely investigating your serial killer. I had to know if these victims died the same way my wife did.”
Kolka gave a dismissive wave of his hand. “As lies go, I’ve heard crazier. I’m inclined to let that one slide. Especially since the evidence our tech guys pulled off your laptop corroborates the story you told me earlier. Hell, they didn’t even find any porno on there. It was the least incriminating pull off a hard drive I’ve ever seen.”
“I have nothing to hide, detective. I never even requested a lawyer, you’ll notice.”
“And your cooperation has been very much appreciated, I assure you." He flipped some pages in the folder, found the disk, and flourished it for Lucado to see. “I did get a chance to review the security footage from the morgue. Good news on that front. You weren’t lying when you said you never touched the body. I think that will square us on any chain of custody issues.”
“Good. I never meant to endanger any potential prosecutions. I just thought they would be unlikely.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
Lucado hesitated. His fingers fidgeted, tapping restlessly against the tabletop. “Please don’t take this personally, detective. It’s not an asp
ersion on your skills as an investigator. I just never thought there would be an arrest.”
“Sounds exactly like an aspersion on my skills.”
“It really isn’t. Remember, the man who killed my wife got away with it. I just thought, if this were the same man, or another like him, the same thing might happen again.”
Kolka put the disk down. He closed the folder. “Mr. Lucado… Mario. Your wife wasn’t murdered. We got the police report on that incident from the East Haven police department. She was killed by a dog, not a man.”
“They believe that. They even got a forensic expert to say it was true. It’s just not so. The truth was something they weren’t prepared to accept, detective, so they made up a story that sounded plausible.”
“Do you hear yourself? Police see crazier shit than anything you can imagine. They don’t need to make up stories.”
“And yet they did.”
“Why? Because the killer drank your wife’s blood? Even if that were true, he wouldn’t be the first psychopath to do that.”
“Because he wasn’t human.”
“Right. Because he was a dog.”
Lucado threw up his hands in exasperation. “No, detective. Because he was a vampire!”
Slowly, deliberately, Kolka closed the file folder. He stared at Lucado, eyebrow raised.
The old man slumped in his chair. “I don’t expect you to believe me,” he said.
“That’s a relief.”
“Why should you? The police in East Haven didn’t. They saw the mess the creature made of her throat and the remaining blood and decided it must have been a dog. They never listened to a word I said.”
“Maybe they thought a vampire wouldn’t have left so much blood.”
“There are eight pints in the human body, more or less. I couldn’t drink that much in one sitting, detective. Could you?”
Kolka gave him a wry smile. “No, I guess not.”
“No human could move as fast as that creature did. Nor could any dog. When I took it by surprise, it leapt at me faster than I could blink. It threw me down the stairs, then vanished into the shadows. Does their police report tell you all that?”
“It records your claim that there was an attacker. Never mentions the word ‘vampire’ though. The investigator speculated that you tripped and fell down the stairs either as the dog ran away, or because you were in such a hurry to get to the phone. They even had an expert determine that the bite marks on your wife’s neck were, in fact, from a dog.”
“Did they send you photographs?”
“Yeah, but I’m no expert on that sort of thing. Just looks like a bloody mess to me." Kolka hesitated. “Sorry, by the way. I’m sure it sucks, losing your wife, no matter how it happened.”
Absently, Lucado scratched the stubble peppering his chin while gazing off into thin air. “It’s fine if you don’t believe me. I expect nothing less. It happened twenty-five years ago, so the trail is long cold. It’s just… I still dream about it sometimes.”
“So, you thought our serial killer might be your guy? Drinking the blood of his victims?”
“I thought the killer was a vampire, yes, though not necessarily the same vampire. Now, I think it’s likelier that the killer was influenced by vampires, rather than actually being one.”
“Only if he’s watched too many horror movies. No offense.”
Lucado shrugged. He leaned back in his chair and glanced towards the door, like a man used to being disbelieved, and waiting to be dismissed.
Kolka decided not to disappoint him. He pushed his chair back and stood. “You’re free to go, Mario. We moved your car here from the hospital, for your convenience. I’ll have someone retrieve your keys and your laptop.”
With difficulty, Lucado rose to his feet as well. “Thank you, detective,” he said.
Privately, Kolka doubted Lucado would stop looking into the serial killings. The crazy old man was probably harmless, and hopefully incapable of actually finding the killer, but Kolka felt sorry for him. Better to leave him with something, just in case.
He dug his wallet out of his pants and extracted a business card, handing it to Lucado. “Here. This has my work number and my cell. Call me if there’s an emergency. Only if there’s an emergency. I’d much rather have you just go back to Connecticut, to be honest, but it’s a free country.”
Lucado took the card as Kolka knocked on the door. “I will. I hope I don’t need it.”
“Same here. Stay out of trouble, Mario. I don’t want to see you back here again.”
As soon as someone opened the door for them, Kolka found another officer to retrieve Lucado’s belongings and take him to his car in the parking garage. He watched the old man until the elevator doors closed on him.
Fitz found him still standing in the hallway, looking troubled. “Don’t tell me you’re starting to buy into his story.”
“No,” Kolka replied. “I just can’t quite figure him out. Except for the vampire thing, he doesn’t seem crazy at all. I didn’t bother to tell him that the examiner on his wife’s case ruled the origin of the bite marks indeterminate.”
“He decided it was a dog, in the end.”
“‘Intercanine distance is consistent with the upper jaw of an adult male human.’ It was the shape of the jaw that threw the guy off.”
“Yeah, he decided it was a small dog. With a jaw size close to what a person has.”
Kolka turned to Fitz. “How do you confuse a small dog with a person?”
“It was a traumatic event. He was frightened, stressed out, whatever. The mind plays tricks on you in situations like that. He’s an old guy, give him a break.”
“He wasn’t old twenty-five years ago when it happened.”
Fitz shrugged. “Still. It is the most reasonable explanation. And they didn’t find any other evidence of another person being there.”
“Why would a small dog attack a grown woman? They didn’t find any rabies in the saliva sample.”
“Chihuahuas are vicious little beasts. It was probably one of those. Didn’t they say something about the saliva sample getting corrupted?”
“There were DNA markers in it that they didn’t recognize,” Kolka said as he flipped to the relevant page in the coroner’s report. “They thought it got corrupted somehow, but they never say with what.”
“If they’d gotten a clean sample, I bet they would have found evidence of rabies.”
“I don’t know, Fitz. Rabies doesn’t just disappear because somebody’s sandwich dripped into the petri dish, or whatever. They never figured out how the dog got in, either." Kolka started walking back to his desk, with Fitz right on his heels. “It’s just weird, is all.”
“Hey, you said it yourself. It’s all in his imagination. He even admitted that he dreams about it. Think about how the event must have changed every time he replays it in his head. By now, he’s forgotten the difference between what really happened and the way it happens when he remembers it.”
The detective bureau was quiet. Their captain had somebody in his office, the door closed to give them privacy. Kolka tossed Lucado’s file onto his desk and sat down. Fitz still hovered nearby, looking for something to do. The kid needed to catch a call, Kolka thought. Something would come along sooner or later.
He imagined how it must be for Lucado, trying to sleep with memories of his wife’s death tormenting him. Of course the memories would be worse than the reality, embellished over time, gradually driving him crazy.
He just didn’t seem crazy, was all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Like nothing had ever happened, Melody Sanger’s father turned up out of the blue. She was only half asleep when a car’s headlights blazed briefly outside her bedroom window, in the driveway below. The lights flicked off, plunging her room into blackness again. Melody glanced at the clock. It was past three in the morning.
She sat up, heart pounding, wondering who would be turning up on their doorstep at this time of night. Careful to mak
e no noise, she crept to her door, put her ear against it, and listened. She could hear her mother stirring as well, the muted sound of a bedroom door opening and someone’s bare feet padding along the carpet.
A key turned in the lock and the front door opened. Melody heard her mother say something, and recognized her father’s muffled voice in reply. Ever so gently, she eased her bedroom door open and slipped into the hallway.
They were downstairs, but she could hear them arguing. She spared a quick glance towards her brother’s closed door. He didn’t seem to be stirring. She could tell the argument between her parents was heated, but they weren’t raising their voices.
She stole down the stairs on the balls of her bare feet. Soundlessly, she approached the kitchen where her parents stood, careful to stay out of sight.
“That horrible woman from the Washington Post called,” Melody heard her mother say. “That gossip columnist they have on the politics beat. She asked me pointblank if you have a girlfriend.”
“The nerve of that woman!”
“For someone who was gone for two days, you don’t seem to be taking this very seriously.”
“Well, I’ve got more important things to do than carry on with a girlfriend. We’re working on an entirely new political strategy right now.”
“Who is? I called your chief of staff and he had no idea where you were.”
“I’ll bring in my staff when the time is right. For now, we want to keep things close. The opposition will be scrambling to mount a response if they don’t know what’s coming.”
“I’m sick of all these martial metaphors, Damien.”
“That’s what you’re upset about?”
“You could have been dead in a ditch somewhere!”
Melody heard her dad sigh. It was the same sigh of resignation he always gave when he grew bored of the argument and decided to let his wife win. “You’re right,” he said. “I should have called. I lost track of time.”
“For two days, you lost track of time?”
