The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

by Grady Hendrix

  “Oh, Patricia,” Grace said, in a disappointed voice.

  “I saw him with a young girl,” Patricia said, forging ahead. “In the back of his van in the woods at Six Mile. That girl has been taken from her mother by Social Services because of the mark they found on her inner thigh, a bruise with a puncture mark over her femoral artery, like what street drug users call a track mark from injecting. Grace, Bennett said Mrs. Savage had the same kind of mark on her inner thigh when she went to the hospital.”

  “That was confidential information,” Grace said.

  “You told it to me,” Patricia said.

  “Because she had bitten your ear,” Grace said. “I thought you should know she was an IV drug user. I didn’t mean for you to broadcast it all over the Village.”

  This wasn’t going the way she wanted. Patricia had spent hours putting this story together, going through all the true crime books they’d read together, practicing how to lay out the facts. She needed to stop bickering with Grace and stick to her notes.

  “When James Harris got here he had a bag in his house with eighty-five thousand dollars in it,” Patricia said, talking fast. “The first afternoon I met him I helped him open his bank account because he didn’t have ID. But he must have a driver’s license, so why didn’t he want to show it at the bank? Because maybe he’s wanted for something. Maybe he’s done this somewhere before. Also, Mrs. Greene copied down a partial license plate number of a van in Six Mile that shouldn’t have been there, and it turned out to be his license plate. And I think I was the last person to see Francine before she disappeared, and she was going into his house.”

  None of their expressions had changed and she’d used up all her facts.

  “His story changes about where he’s from,” she tried. “Nothing about him adds up.”

  She saw her friendships die, right there in front of her. She could see it clearly. They’d say they believed her, and end the book club meeting awkwardly. First, there would be the unreturned phone calls, the excuses to go talk to someone else when they ran into each other at parties, the canceled invitations for Korey or Blue to spend the night. One by one, they’d turn their backs.

  “Patricia,” Grace said. “I warned you when you came to see me. I begged you not to make a fool out of yourself.”

  “I know what I saw, Grace,” Patricia said, although she felt less and less sure.

  Patricia felt herself losing control of the conversation. She tried to find a place to put her frozen fruit salad plate, but the coffee table was crowded with a bowl of marble roses, glass pyramids of various sizes, two brass gamecocks frozen in combat, and a stack of oversize books with titles like Blessings. She decided to just hold it in her hand and focus on the person she thought she could best sway. If one of them would believe her, the rest would follow.

  “Maryellen,” she said. “You just called Ann Rule a dope because if the evidence says your best friend talks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and drives the same car as a duck, then he’s probably a duck.”

  “There’s a difference between a compelling chain of evidence and accusing someone of a crime based on a bunch of coincidences,” Maryellen said. “So let me get your evidence straight. Mrs. Greene says there may or may not be a man in the woods molesting the children of Six Mile.”

  “Giving them drugs,” Patricia corrected.

  “Okay, giving them drugs,” Maryellen said. “Mrs. Greene may or may not have seen a van with the license plate number, but not even the full number, of James Harris’s van which no longer belongs to James Harris because he sold it to someone else.”

  “I don’t know what happened to it,” Patricia said.

  “Putting the van aside,” Maryellen continued, “you want us to believe that the simple fact he went out to Six Mile, even though he wasn’t there at the time anyone died or anything happened, means he’s somehow involved in something?”

  “I saw him out there,” Patricia said. “I saw him doing something to a little girl in the back of his van. I. Saw. Him.”

  No one said anything.

  “What did you see him do?” Slick asked.

  “I went out to visit one of the children who seemed sick,” Patricia said. “Mrs. Greene went with me. The little girl was missing from her bedroom. We went looking for her in the woods, and I saw his white van. He was in the back with the child. He was…” She barely hesitated. “…injecting her with something. The doctor said she had a track mark on her leg.”

  “Then why don’t you tell the police?” Slick asked.

  “I did!” Patricia said, louder than she meant. “They couldn’t find the van, they couldn’t find him, and they think the mother gave her daughter the drugs. Or her boyfriend.”

  “So why aren’t they looking at the boyfriend more closely?” Maryellen asked.

  “Because she doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Patricia said, trying to keep calm.

  Maryellen gave a shrug.

  “This just goes to show that the North Charleston police and the Mt. Pleasant police have very different standards.”

  “It’s not a joke!” Patricia shouted.

  Her voice echoed harshly in the cramped living room. Slick jumped, Grace’s spine stiffened, Maryellen winced.

  “Do we have any more wine?” Kitty asked.

  “I’m so sorry,” Slick said. “I think it’s all gone.”

  “A child is being hurt,” Patricia said. “Don’t any of you care?”

  “Of course we care,” Kitty said. “But we’re a book club, not the police. What are we supposed to do?”

  “We’re the only ones who’ve noticed something might be wrong,” Patricia said.

  “You, not us,” Grace said. “Don’t lump me in with your foolishness.”

  “Ed would laugh this right out of court,” Maryellen said.

  “The police wrote me off,” Patricia said. “I need your help to go to them again. I need y’all to think through this with me, to help me put it together. Maryellen, you know how the police work. Kitty, you were in Six Mile. You saw how it was. Tell them.”

  “I mean,” Kitty said, trying to help, “something wasn’t right out there. Everyone was on edge. We almost got jumped by a street gang. But accusing one of our neighbors of being a drug dealer…”

  “Here’s how I see it,” Patricia said. “In Six Mile, they think that someone is doing something to the children, giving them something that makes them go crazy and hurt themselves. Now over here in the Old Village, we’ve had Mrs. Savage go crazy and attack me. And then there’s Francine. I saw her go into his house, and then she disappeared. She may have stumbled on his drugs, or his money, or something, and he had to get rid of her. But everything is connected through him. It’s all happening around him. How many coincidences do you need before you wake up?”

  “Patricia,” Grace said, speaking slowly. “If you could hear yourself you’d feel terribly embarrassed.”

  “What if I’m right?” Patricia said. “And he’s out there giving drugs to these children and we’re too scared of being embarrassed to do anything? It could be our children. Think about how many young women would still be alive today if people hadn’t taken Ted Bundy at face value and started asking questions earlier. Think if Ann Rule had put the pieces together sooner. How many lives could she have saved? I mean, you have to agree, something strange is going on here.”

  “No, we don’t,” Grace said.

  “Something strange is going on,” Patricia continued. “Children in first grade are killing themselves. I got attacked in my own yard. Mrs. Savage has the same mark on her body Destiny Taylor did. Francine is missing. In every book we read, no one ever thought anything bad was happening until it was too late. This is where we live, it’s where our children live, it’s our home. Don’t you want to do absolutely everything you can to keep it safe?”

  Anot
her silence stretched out, and then Kitty spoke.

  “What if she’s right?”

  “Excuse me?” Grace asked.

  “We’ve all known Patricia forever,” Kitty said. “If she says she saw him in the back of his van doing something to a young girl, I believe her. I mean, come on, one thing I’ve learned from all these books: it pays to be paranoid.”

  Grace stood up. “I value our friendship, Patricia,” she said. “And I am ready to be your friend when you come back to your senses. But anyone catering to this delusion is not being helpful.”

  Slick stood up and went to her bookcase filled with titles like Satan, You Can’t Have My Children and pulled out a Bible. She flipped to a passage and read it out loud:

  “‘There are those whose teeth are swords, whose fangs are knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, the needy from among mankind. The leech has two daughters: Give and Give. Three things are never satisfied; four never say, “Enough.”’ Proverbs 30:15.”

  She turned more pages, then read, “Ephesians 6:12, ‘For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.’”

  Then she looked at them all with a wide smile on her face.

  “I knew my test would come,” she said. “I knew that one day my Lord would set me against Satan, and try my faith in a battle against his snares, and this is just so exciting, Patricia.”

  “Are you putting us on?” Maryellen asked.

  “Satan wants our children,” Slick said. “We have to believe the righteous and smite the wicked. Patricia is righteous because she is my friend. If she says James Harris is among the wicked, then it is our Christian duty to smite him.

  “The only thing smited is your brains,” Maryellen said, turning to Grace. “But she’s not wrong.”

  Grace said, “Pardon?”

  “New Jersey was the kind of place where no one watched out for each other,” Maryellen said. “Our neighbors were nice but they would never write down the license plate number of a strange car. They would never tell you they saw a stranger watching your house. There are a lot of things that are different down here, but not once do I regret living in a community where we keep an eye out for each other. Let’s see if we can make a more convincing argument than Patricia, and if so, I’ll run it by Ed. If Ed thinks it holds up, then maybe we’ve done some good.”

  Patricia felt a wave of gratitude toward her.

  “I will not be a part of some kind of lynch mob,” Grace said.

  “We’re not a lynch mob, we’re a book club,” Kitty said. “We’ve always been there for each other. This is where Patricia is now? It’s kind of weird, but okay. We’d do the same for you.”

  “If that situation ever occurs,” Grace said, “don’t.”

  And she walked out of Slick’s house.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning Patricia had just decided to clean the den closet before doing more research on vampires when the phone rang. She answered.

  “Patricia. It’s Grace Cavanaugh.”

  “I’m so sorry about what happened at book club,” Patricia said, who hadn’t realized until this moment how desperately she wanted to hear Grace’s voice. “I won’t talk about it with you anymore if you don’t want me to.”

  “I found his van,” Grace said.

  The change to another page was so fast Patricia couldn’t follow.

  “What van?” she asked.

  “James Harris’s,” Grace said. “You see, I remembered that in Silence of the Lambs that man hides his car containing a head in a mini-storage unit. And I remembered that I’ve known you for almost seven years and I should afford you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Thank you,” Patricia said.

  “The only mini-storage establishment in Mt. Pleasant is Pak Rat over on Highway 17,” Grace continued. “They spell pack wrong because they think it’s cute. It’s not. Bennett knows Carl, the man who runs it. So I called Carl’s wife, Zenia, last night, I’m not sure you’ve ever met her but we’re both in handbell choir. I told her what I was looking for and she was happy to call over and see what she could find and it turns out there is a James Harris who rents a unit, and the attendant said he’d seen him going in and out of it a few times in a white van. He saw him in it last week. So he still owns it.”

  “Grace,” Patricia said. “That’s wonderful news.”

  “Not if he’s hurting children,” Grace said.

  “No, of course not,” Patricia said, feeling chastised and triumphant at the same time.

  “If you really think this man is up to no good,” Grace said, “you need more than this before we go to Ed. We don’t want to go off half-cocked.”

  “Don’t worry, Grace,” Patricia said. “When we go off, we’ll be fully cocked.”

  PSYCHO

  August 1993

  CHAPTER 20

  “But I said you could spend the night with Laurie,” Patricia told Korey.

  “Well, now I changed my mind,” Korey said.

  She stood in the doorway to Patricia’s bathroom while Patricia finished doing her makeup. Korey had come home from soccer camp and increased Patricia’s stress exponentially. It was hard enough to make sure Blue was always somewhere safe after dark, but Korey hung around the house aimlessly, watching TV for hours, and then she’d get a phone call and suddenly need to borrow the car to go see her friends in the middle of the night. Except for tonight, when Patricia actually wanted her out of the house.

  “I’m hosting book club,” Patricia said. “You haven’t seen Laurie since you got back from camp.”

  One of the reasons they were having it at her house was because she’d exerted gentle pressure on Carter to take Blue out for supper at Quincy’s Steak House and then to a movie (they decided on something called So I Married an Axe Murderer). Korey was supposed to be spending the night downtown.

  “She canceled,” Korey said. “Her parents are getting divorced and her dad wants to spend quality time. That skirt’s too tight.”

  “I haven’t decided what I’m wearing yet,” Patricia said, even though her skirt was definitely not too tight. “If you have to be home you need to stay in your room.”

  “What if I have to go to the bathroom?” Korey asked. “Can I leave my room then, Mother? Most parents would think it was great that their child wanted to spend more time with them.”

  “I’m only asking you to stay upstairs,” Patricia said.

  “What if I want to watch TV?” Korey asked.

  “Then go to Laurie Gibson’s.”

  Korey slouched off and Patricia changed her skirt because it felt tight, and then she finished her makeup and sprayed her hair. She wasn’t going to put out anything to eat, but she’d made coffee and put it in a thermal jug in case the police wanted some. What if they wanted decaf? She didn’t have any and worried that might affect their mood.

  She felt tense. Before this summer she had never interacted with the police, and now she felt like that was all she did. They made her nervous, but if she could get through tonight, James Harris would no longer be her problem. All she had to do was convince the police that he was a drug dealer, they’d start looking into his affairs, and all his secrets would come spilling out. And she wasn’t doing it alone; she had her book club.

  Patricia wondered what they would have said if she told them that she thought James Harris was a vampire. Or something like that. She wasn’t sure of the exact terminology, but that would do until a better name came along. How else to explain that thing coming out of his face? How else to explain his aversion to going out in sunlight, his insistence on being invited inside, the fact that the marks on the children and on Mrs. Savage all looked like bites?

  When she’d trie
d to perform CPR on him he had looked sick and weak and at least ten years older. When she saw him the following week he’d positively glowed with health. What had happened in between? Francine had gone missing. Had he eaten her? Sucked her blood? He’d certainly done something.

  When she got rid of her prejudices and considered the facts, vampire was the theory that fit best. Fortunately, she’d never have to say it out loud to anyone because this was just about finished. She didn’t care how they ran him out of town, she just wanted him gone.

  She went downstairs and jumped when she saw Kitty waving at her through the window by the front door. Slick stood behind her.

  “I know we’re a half hour early,” Kitty said as Patricia let them in. “But I couldn’t sit around at home doing nothing.”

  Slick had dressed conservatively in a knee-length navy skirt and a white blouse with a blue batik vest over it. Kitty, on the other hand, had apparently lost her mind right before she got dressed. She wore a red blouse bedazzled with red rhinestones and a huge floral skirt. Looking at her made Patricia’s eyes hurt.

  Patricia put them in the den, then went to make sure Korey had her bedroom door closed, then checked the driveway, and walked back into the den just as Maryellen opened the front door.

  “Yoo-hoo? Am I too early?” Maryellen called.

  “We’re in the kitchen,” Patricia hollered.

  “Ed went to pick up the detectives,” Maryellen said, coming in and putting her purse on the den table. She took two business cards out of her day planner. “Detective Claude D. Cannon and Detective Gene Bussell. He says Gene is from Georgia but Claude is local and they’re both good. They’ll listen to us. He can’t promise how they’ll react, but they’ll listen.”

  They each examined the cards for lack of anything else to do.

  Grace walked into the den.

  “The door was open,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind?”

  “Do you want some coffee?” Patricia asked.

  “No, thank you,” Grace said. “Bennett is at a heart association dinner. He won’t be back until late.”