by Phil Malone
Still, if Lucado could get him closer to the serial killer without mentioning vampires, maybe he would be worth listening to one more time. “You think you’d be willing to drive him over here?”
Colin Wright arrived from Winchester shortly before sundown. He had Mario Lucado in handcuffs. Kolka directed him toward the same interrogation room they’d used a few days earlier.
Normally, he would be gathering his things and heading home for the night. He’d had enough blood for the day, enough of his mind racing in endless circles, going nowhere. Lucado was just one more string to chase.
Already, the old man looked nervous. He had the shifty-eyed bearing of a guilty man. Kolka had seen it countless times before. By now, it was second nature to pick up on these subconscious cues from the suspects he dealt with. Most of them did a miserable job hiding their guilt.
He sat down across from Lucado. This time, he carried no case file with him, or anything whatsoever. He folded his hands in his lap and stared at the suspect for a moment. “Well, Mario, here we are again. Only this time, we have a serious charge, don’t we?”
“I thought you brought me here to find out what I discovered about the serial killer.”
“First, why don’t you tell me what you were doing in that house before you burned it down?”
Lucado looked like he’d been stung. He drew his hands back from the table with a metallic scrape as the handcuffs dragged along the surface. His hands dropped into his lap, and he slouched in his chair. The bushy salt and pepper eyebrows furrowed. “Maybe I should ask for a lawyer,” he grumbled.
“Okay, that was harsh. Just a flat accusation like that. Just tell me this much. Are they going to find any bodies in that house?”
“Of course not.”
“Glad to hear it. That’s one less thing for you to worry about.”
“They burn like we do until they die, and then their bodies get utterly consumed in the fire. There’s nothing to find now but ashes.”
“Damn it, Mario." Kolka stood up from the table. “How can I believe anything else after you say a thing like that?" He stormed to the door and pounded on it.
“Help me, Detective. Let me out.”
The door opened and Kolka joined Wright and Fitz in the hallway.
“I know who the killer is!” Lucado shouted, before the door closed and cut off anything else he might say.
Once Kolka explained to Wright about the vampires, the small town lawman was at a bit of a loss. “I’ve still got him on the arson charge. Basically, this was just a wasted trip, right?”
“It depends,” Kolka shrugged. “Even if a defense attorney couldn’t wriggle him out from under that charge, there’s the question of an insanity plea. He doesn’t seem crazy, I know, but the things he believes are. What we need is legal advice.”
At shortly past sundown, there was still time to find an assistant district attorney in the building, working late. Fitz had already gone in search of one. To Kolka’s relief, he returned quickly.
Lana Betancourt came with him, as tenacious and exacting a prosecutor as Kolka knew. She also came with a knee length skirt and silk, button up shirt that she wielded in the courtroom like a weapon to keep defense attorneys distracted, off guard. Fitz leaned close to her, the two of them already deep in conversation. The junior detective would certainly brag about that later on.
When Lana saw Kolka, she raised her eyebrow. “What’s this about vampires?”
Kolka introduced her to their visitor from Winchester, who struggled to keep his gaze from roaming up and down her body. “Detective Wright has a pretty good chance of making an arson charge stick. I don’t think it would take much pressure to get Mr. Lucado to crack.”
“That’s correct, ma’am,” Wright put in, his eyes snapping onto hers. “Once I track Mr. Lucado’s financial activity since his arrival in Virginia, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts I’ll find him purchasing some kind of accelerant I can tie to the crime scene. We’ll search his car, too, see what else we can come up with.”
Lana nodded and turned back to Kolka. “Does he really know who our serial killer is?”
Fitz spoke up before Kolka had a chance. “Yeah,” he grinned. “Vampires.”
“That’s what he thought at first,” Kolka said. He smacked the back of his hand across Fitz’s shoulder for speaking out of turn. “By the time we brought him in, he had changed his mind. I don’t know what he thinks now. I don’t much care. He’s an attention seeker, just trying to insinuate himself into a high profile case.”
“Uh huh. Sounds reasonable. Why did he burn down the house in Winchester?”
It made Kolka cringe to say it, but for once Fitz didn’t speak up, and neither did Wright. “Vampires, apparently.”
“Then you’ve got a real problem. No judge is going to listen to him give that defense without immediately packing him off to the Old Dominion Sanitarium. If you think this guy belongs in prison, you need to establish that he’s mentally competent enough to stand trial. Has he been formally charged?”
“Yes ma’am, we did that in Winchester,” Wright told her.
“Has he refused counsel?”
“No ma’am, he just made it clear it was his priority to speak to Detective Kolka here before any other considerations.”
“If he doesn’t have a lawyer, find him a public defender. In the meantime, if I were you, I’d take him to Old Dominion now. Tonight. Go ahead and get an evaluation. If he’s fit to stand trial, great, you can proceed. If not, well, we can deal with that when the time comes.”
“I can take him,” Wright said. “I’ll drop him off on my way home.”
Fitz checked the time on his phone. “You mind if I ride over there with you? I want to talk to whatever head shrinker they assign to his case.”
“You can if you want. I’m not planning to come back this way, though.”
“That’s fine, I can get a different ride back." He held up his phone. “There’s an app for that.”
Kolka and Lana watched them stroll back towards the interrogation rooms. Lana sidled a few steps closer, her arms crossed. “What if he really does know something about the killer? Long shot, I know, but what if?”
The others disappeared into the room. They’d bring the old man out momentarily, and Kolka had no desire to face him. He shook his head and turned to leave. “I’d have to be beyond desperate to ask Mario Lucado for help.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Damien Sanger and his wife Dawn had suffered through hard times in their relationship. His political campaigns were always a strain, a time when he wasn’t around much. At times, he suspected her of mistrusting him. He caught her glancing at him from the corner of her eye, then looking away when he turned in her direction. She probably wondered just how much he kept secret from her.
It had been years since she surprised her husband. They had a routine, and Dawn seldom deviated from it. So she was the last thing he wanted to see when she greeted him, apprehensive, and told him Melody had caught a man breaking into their house.
He was just home from the council meeting, climbing out of the cool, dark rear seat of Napoleon’s limo. Hugo remained behind the wheel, all silent courtesy. As soon as the car door opened, a blaze of morning sunlight struck him. Sanger flinched, squeezed his eyes shut. The light pierced his eyelids anyway, bringing on the throb of a headache just beneath his scalp.
Dawn didn’t even wait for him to make it inside, but met him on the front walk. He barely saw her coming as he shaded his eyes with his hand. He felt exhausted, desiring only sleep. Instead, he would have to get changed, clean up, and head to the Capitol. He could sleep in his office there, he knew, but first he’d have to get rid of his wife.
“There was a man in our house last night,” Dawn said when he got close enough. She had something in her hand, a long, sharpened piece of wood.
“What man?" He breezed past her, focused on getting inside the front door. It was too bright to stand around outside. He kept a pair
of sunglasses in the glove box of his car, but he was starting to realize that he should carry some around with him constantly.
“I don’t know what man!" Dawn was frantic. She followed him into the house. “Melody saw him. He knocked her over and ran away. He could have killed our little girl, Damien!”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s shaken up. Still terrified. She didn’t want to go to school today.”
Sanger grunted. “Are you sure she didn’t just want to skip?”
His wife grabbed him by the sleeve, pulling him around to face her. She shoved the piece of wood into his hands. “Whoever he was, he dropped this. I don’t even know what the hell it is.”
It had a meticulously carved pattern of iron age weapons etched into its surface. Each blade was painted in hues of red, orange, and brown. One end was thick enough to get a good, firm grip. The other slimmed to a vicious, smoke hardened point. Despite the short time he’d been a vampire, Sanger knew a stake when he saw one.
He turned it over in his hands. There was a name carved into the handle. A vampire’s name, one he’d met only days before. Bleda.
“I know this stake,” Napoleon said that night, when Sanger brought the weapon to him. “I have an extensive collection of them.”
He beckoned, and Sanger followed. They entered a room he hadn’t been in before. A trophy room, with glass cases full of stakes like the one left behind in Sanger’s house. All similar, but each with its own individual design.
Napoleon made a quick survey of the cases. “Here,” he said, pointing. There was a blank space, where a display stand stood empty amidst all the stakes around it. “This is one of mine. Someone stole it.”
Frowning, he opened the case and placed the stake back where it belonged. “I had the first of these made decades ago, by a craftsman I met in New Mexico when I had the opportunity to wander the country as a free agent. Years later, after my list of vampire acquaintances grew, I returned for more.”
“But,” Sanger started, almost at a loss for words. He couldn’t care less when or how Napoleon acquired the stakes. “But it has Bleda’s name on it. I just met him at the first council meeting. He came in with Caligula, remember? He was at the meeting last night, too. Why would Bleda break into my house or threaten my family?”
“Who ever said he did? As you say, we saw him last night. We vampires have many skills, but none of us has mastered the art of being in two different locations at the same time.”
“I know what it looks like when someone is sending you a message,” Sanger said. He stabbed his finger in the stake’s direction. “That was a message. I’m just not sure what it means.”
“It means someone violated the sanctity of my home. Someone stole the stake in the first place." He closed the case. “As for this message, I am not entirely certain this is meant to be a warning. I perceive it as a threat.”
“From Bleda? Does this have something to do with the proposal?”
Frowning, Napoleon wiped a silk cloth against the glass case, though there were no fingerprints to mar it. “Possibly. He works for Caligula, and you saw him dismiss my program wholesale.”
“I have plenty of experience with underling trying to curry favor with their bosses." Sanger stared at the stake, as if urging the inanimate object to make a confession of guilt. “Do you know what Bleda does in his spare time? Where does he go? Who does he hang out with?”
“I have never felt the need to pry into his personal business. Do you suspect him of having an accomplice?”
“In light of this, it wouldn’t hurt to find out.”
“As you wish,” Napoleon said. “I shall make some inquiries.”
“Why do you have a bunch of stakes with the names of certain vampires, anyway?”
Napoleon led the way back out of the room. He closed the door firmly behind him. “They are obstacles, all of them. They stand opposed to my magnum opus. Bleda is an investigator, a sheriff appointed by Caligula. By all accounts, he works within the letter of our law. Nevertheless, he always finds a means of accomplishing whatever Caligula wants.”
Sanger nodded toward the closed doorway. “You think he would harm my family just to derail us?”
“How would he even know about your family? The two of you only met a few nights ago, and as I recall, you never even spoke, did you?”
“No,” Sanger admitted. “Still, what was it doing in my house? Whoever he was, he must have been the same person who broke in here.”
“Probably, yes. But I do not intend to raise the issue at the meeting tonight. If any of them are responsible, let them wonder what we know. Watch them. I shall do the same. Let us see if any of them act suspicious.”
“If they’re watching my house, they’ll know something is up. I ordered police protection.”
Napoleon shook his head. “Police. I see. Well, if your intruder was a vampire, I hope for your sake he makes no plans to return. What could the police do to stop him?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Edgar Sallow didn’t consider himself a handsome man. It wasn’t for a lack of trying, necessarily; it was just the way he was born. He tried to grow his hair long, like a rock star, but the longer it got, the greasier it became. When it started thinning, that didn’t help matters either.
No matter what he ate or how active he was, his body always remained slightly flabby. He wasn’t tall. A few of his teeth were crooked. Above all, his eyes had an unfriendly glint, and a way of making people feel uncomfortable.
None of this bothered him for the usual reasons. He never really felt the need for romantic companionship, and he failed to understand the rest of the human race for its preoccupation with such things. He had a different compulsion, one he indulged only rarely. But to do so, he needed to get close to people. That wasn’t easy when his appearance usually put them off.
People don’t trust an ugly man who looks at them funny.
For the first few nights after becoming a vampire, Sallow subsisted off reheated blood from his last murder. It galled him to share the blood that he drained to feed Dagobert. It tasted stale, and there wasn’t enough to go around. Even though he drank more than he allowed Dagobert to have, his appetite never felt satisfied.
After a few days of that, he decided he wanted something fresh.
His usual method of hunting involved slipping GHB or Rohypnol into some loner’s drink, waiting until they grew increasingly incapacitated, and then taking them somewhere private to work. It didn’t always succeed; sometimes the setting was just too public with too many witnesses, or someone else would intervene. With years of practice, though, he’d gotten pretty good at selecting the right victim in the right location.
The latest choice was a middle-aged woman eating alone at a fast food restaurant, minutes before closing time, who made no attempt at frivolous conversation with the cashier or anyone else. Her fingers were bare, no wedding ring in sight. She ate at a leisurely pace, giving Sallow the impression that no one was waiting for her at home.
Before the cashier could close up her register, Sallow bought a soda that was the same size as the lone woman’s. He took it to a booth where he could watch her, where she wouldn’t be able to see him without turning around.
While he waited, he tipped the drug into his drink and stirred it around with a straw. His moment came when she finished eating and went back to the soda dispenser for one last refill.
Soda poured into her cup, a spray of carbonated fizz haloed around it like a curtain of mist around a waterfall. Sallow watched tiny, individual bubbles rise and burst in the air. He had all the time in the world.
As the woman fumbled for a new lid, Sallow swapped her cup with his own. Everything about the woman seemed slow and clumsy. She was oblivious.
By the time she turned back to replace her lid, Sallow had returned her original cup, then exchanged them again, simply because he could do it that quickly. In the meantime, he pretended to pull a few paper napkins from a dispenser, just in cas
e she noticed him from the corner of her eye.
Since he’d been watching her from the moment she arrived, Sallow already knew which car was hers. He left while she gathered her things, crouched beside her rear passenger side car door, and forced the lock with a screwdriver.
He’d been breaking into cars since he was a teenager, but it was easier than ever with the strength and speed of a vampire. To keep the interior car light from coming on, Sallow popped off the plastic translucent cover and removed the bulb, tossing it out onto the pavement before easing the door shut. He worked fast. When he replaced the cover, it showed no signs of tampering.
Then he curled up in the footwell behind the passenger seat, waiting, growing bored before she even made it out of the restaurant.
In the darkness, she never noticed him. She tapped at the roof light that didn’t come on, then shrugged and climbed behind the wheel. It took her a moment to situate herself. She rested her purse in the passenger seat and wedged her drink into a cup holder.
Moments passed. She turned the key in the ignition, but didn’t start moving. Instead, she played with the radio dials until landing on a station that played soft contemporary music. Achingly slow, she dragged the seatbelt across her body and buckled it with a click. Only then, finally, did she reverse out of her parking space and amble around the restaurant towards the road.
For Sallow, the drive passed uneventfully. He could see the woman from where he sat, could even see the side of her face. But because she saw no movement in her peripheral vision, she never glanced in his direction.
As she drove, she took the occasional sip from her soda. Sallow hoped she wouldn’t fall asleep behind the wheel and cause an accident. Aside from a few tremendous yawns, his luck held.
