Sam snarled out of the side of her mouth, “Not half as terrified as he’s gonna be when I get through with him later!”
Matt tried a small smile, but it had little humor in it and felt more like a grimace. “Well, let’s take a look at the photos and see what he was so excited about losing.”
Matt pulled the file folder out of his jacket and spread the photos on the coffee table in front of him. There were over twenty black and white pictures of Goddard, dressed in leather pants and vest with a silver-bullet-studded collar around his neck, whipping half-naked women who were chained in various seductive poses.
Goddard’s rather small penis was erect and sticking out of his pants.
Shooter shook his head, a sick smile on his face. “I don’t know, Matt. This looks like rather routine porno stuff to me.”
“Yeah, but what about the bloody clothing in his closet?” Matt asked.
“I know a friendly judge,” Clark said. “I think the laboratory evidence Sherry dug up may be enough for us to get a warrant to take a look at his office in the morning.”
Shooter looked at Matt through narrowed eyes. “You know, pal, if it hadn’t been for that night watchman, you’d have been his dinner tonight.”
Matt stared back at him. “Yeah, and I thought you were going to tail him. Where were you when I needed you tonight?”
He smiled. “I did tail him.” Shooter pulled his small notebook from his breast pocket and consulted it. “He left his office at five-fifteen and walked to Methodist Hospital, where he made rounds on his hospital patients. When he finished that at”—he consulted his notebook again—“seven-thirty, he returned to his office building and entered the elevator, which stopped at his office floor.” He put the notebook away. “I decided to wait for him in the lobby, since I couldn’t very well follow him into his office. Of course, I didn’t know you were playing Sam Spade and hiding under his desk.”
“Mike Hammer,” Matt mumbled.
Clark leaned forward. “What?”
“Nothing,” Matt said. “A private joke.”
Sam said, “Well, I cross-checked the computer records of the patients that Goddard had ordered CJD and other blood disease tests on against their autopsies. All of their deaths fit the serial killer’s MO.”
Clark nodded, as if he had expected that. “How about you, Sherry? Did you find any record of property in his name on the city tax rolls?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. Of course, it could be under a false name, but to find it we’d need either the address or the name he’s using.”
“Do you think he’ll disappear now that he knows we’re on to him, Chief?” Matt asked.
Clark rubbed his face, as if he could rub away the fatigue he was feeling. “I don’t know. All he really knows is that his photos are missing. He doesn’t know we’ve made the connection to the serial killings, so it’s anyone’s guess.”
He stood up, getting ready to leave. “I’ll put out an APB on Goddard and hope we get lucky.” He turned to Barbara. “Do you know anything about TJ’s family?”
She thought for a moment. “Yes, she’s mentioned that she has a sister, and her mother and father live in Dallas.”
“Would you mind giving them a call in the morning? I’d like to let them know that she’s in some danger, and that we’re working very hard to find her.”
“Sure, Damon, but why me?”
“Two reasons. You and Shelly, aside from Sam, are her closest friends, and I’d kind of like to keep this out of the department. So far, we’ve been lucky, the media hasn’t stumbled on to what we’re working on. If I go through channels, some newshound is sure to hear about it from one of their sources on the force.”
Shelly and Barbara walked the others to the door. “Chief, I just want you to know that I think TJ is going to be okay. She’s strong and smart, and she can take care of herself.”
Clark reached over and patted Shelly on the arm. “I’m sure she will, Doc.” He glanced at Barbara, then back at Shelly. “But I want you both to realize that we’re up against a very sick and dangerous adversary, and now that he may suspect we’re on to him there’s no telling what he’ll do.” He looked at all of them in turn. “Keep your heads up, and try to stay alert. He might come after any one of us at any time.” He paused, then shook his head, a small smirk on his face. “Good night, everyone, sleep tight.”
As they stepped out into the night, Matt put his arm around Sam’s shoulders. She looked up at him, starlight shining in her eyes, and asked, “Matt, do you think we’ll find TJ in time?”
“I don’t know, babe. I just don’t know.”
Thirty
Hillary James whipped her Mazda Miata into the parking space directly in front of police headquarters, just ahead of a taxi that had stopped and was attempting to back into the opening. When the taxi driver yelled at her out of his window, she showed him her middle finger as she leaned over to get her purse off the floorboard of the car. While bent over, she glanced out of the window and noticed Chief Clark, Sherry Landry, and two other doctors whose names she couldn’t remember leaving the building.
Now that’s strange, she thought, keeping her head down below the level of the window to avoid being seen. Why would a medical examiner’s assistants be walking around with the chief of detectives and one of his officers? She sat there for a moment thinking. Picking up her cell phone, she rang the number of her informer in the department.
“Sergeant Burkhart, can I help you?”
“Buzz, this is Hillary.”
“Hey, babe, long time no see. What can I do ya for?”
Hillary grimaced with distaste at the officer’s familiar tone, though she spoke with a sugary sweetness. “I need a favor, Buzz darlin’.”
“No shit, babe, that’s the only time I ever hear from ya. What is it this time?”
“Well, I’ve noticed that Chief Clark is doing a lot of work with a couple of pathologists lately.” She consulted her notebook. “A Dr. Silver, one of his students, Samantha Scott, and another doctor named Carter.”
“So?”
“Buzz, honey, I need to know what case or cases they’re working on, and what is so important that it has the chief of detectives giving it his personal attention.”
“Why don’t ya just ask him?”
“I did. The schmuck fed me some bull about using the residents in the teaching program at Methodist Hospital to help out until the ME is back, but I don’t believe a word of it.” She hesitated, then in her most seductive voice, “Baby, I smell a rat. Can you help me out . . . please?”
There was silence on the other end of the phone for a moment. “I don’t know, Hillary. It’s pretty risky, sticking my nose in the chief’s business.” Then, slyly, “What do I get out of it?”
Hillary made a face at the phone, but kept her voice smooth as silk. “Honey, if you deliver, and it’s something I can use on the air, we can discuss your payment in person, privately.”
Burkhart’s voice became husky. “Well now, that kind of offer is worth riskin’ my job for. Ya got a deal. If there’s anything going on, I’ll find out and let ya know.”
“Thanks, sweetie. I’ll be seein’ you.” After she hung up, Hillary shuddered. She wondered if she really wanted him to find anything, considering what she would have to pay for it if he did. Of course, nothing like a nice juicy crime to get your face on national television.
Hillary James was born Hortense Janewsky, and because of her tendency to bad skin and buckteeth, she had been called “Horsey Hortense” until the seventh grade. Sometime around her thirteenth birthday, puberty struck her with the force and impact of a thunderbolt. Her skin cleared up, her breasts filled out, and the orthodontist removed her braces all about the same time.
Life suddenly became sweet for young Hortense. The boys quit teasing her and began chasing her, and even the other girls started wanting to hang around her and be her best friend. Hortense loved the attention and soon discovered a magical thing: When
your breasts are large, and your face is pretty, the boys keep coming around no matter how petty or spoiled you act. In fact, she found out, the worse you acted, the better the boys seemed to like it.
By the time Hortense graduated from high school and went off to the University of Houston to study “the performing arts,” she had changed her name to Hillary James and had developed into a spoiled, willful bitch who thought her wish should be everyone’s command.
College changed her little, other than to smooth out some of the rough edges and teach her how to be nice to someone until she had gotten what she wanted.
After graduation, she started as “production assistant” at Channel 10 on the nightly news show. Her first job was off camera and held little chance for promotion, but Hillary quickly used her body and her complete lack of conscience to climb over the careers of the two people ahead of her in the station.
Now, she was the evening news anchor and was hell-bent on getting the attention of the networks and rising to the top of her profession. She made it a practice never to let sensitivity or ethics stand between her and a good story and had actually become adept at ferreting out news items missed by the other journalists.
Hillary had the scent of an important story in her nostrils, and felt sure that something big, and secret, was going on. She was determined to find it.
Thirty-one
Shelly, for once, got out of a noon meeting early at the ME’s office, and thought he’d amble over to Roger Niemann’s office to see if the second set of lab tests had come back from the electron microscopy lab yet.
“Hello, Dr. Silver,” Roger’s secretary said. “Dr. Niemann’s not back from lunch yet, but if you’d care to wait, he should be here any minute.”
“Sure, I’ll just sit in his office and catch up on my reading,” Shelly said.
He walked through the waiting room and into Roger’s private office. He stepped around behind his desk to check Roger’s credenza to see if he had any medical journals he could browse while he waited.
Lying on the credenza was a stack of papers labeled Grant applications.
Interested because Roger had mentioned them the other day, Shelly flipped the first page over. As he read, he began to get a nervous feeling in his gut. Several of the grants concerned Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and possible curative agents, and two were applications concerning the treatment and amelioration of Erythropoietic Uroporphyria, a disease Shelly hadn’t thought of in years and had only rarely seen.
Now why, Shelly thought, when our dead vampire’s tissue showed CJD, didn’t Roger tell me he was working on the same thing? It’s too rare a disease for this to be coincidence.
Shelly quickly rearranged the papers so they wouldn’t appear to have been read and he left the office.
“Sorry, I can’t wait,” he called to the secretary. “I’ll catch up with Roger later.”
“Do you want me to tell him to call you?”
“Naw, it wasn’t important.”
Shelly found himself walking very fast in the hallway, until he forced himself to slow down. After all, they had their man, so why was he getting so excited about Roger’s interest in a rare disease?
He shook his head. Boy, this case is getting you spooked, Shelly, he told himself. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to look up the Erythropoietic Uroporphyria disease and see just why Roger was so interested in it.
* * *
As Damon Clark was returning from lunch with the PC and the mayor, he noticed a man coming out of his office. He called across the room, “Hey, Buzz.”
Startled, the man jumped and dropped the papers he was carrying, then hurriedly bent to pick them up. Damon walked over and stood over him.
When he stood up, the man was sweating and his face was flushed. Damon’s eyes narrowed as he asked, “Anything I can do for you, Sergeant Burkhart?”
“Oh, uh, it’s nothing important, Chief. I just wanted to go over the duty roster with you.”
“Well, come on in and let’s get it over with.” He led Burkhart into his office.
“Buzz, you know I hate this personnel stuff,” said Damon. “That’s why I assigned it to you in the first place.” He sat at his desk. “Well?”
Burkhart reached in his pocket for a handkerchief and, finding none, wiped his sweaty face with his hand. Damon asked him, “Are you all right? You look like you’re coming down with something.”
“Yessir, just a summer cold.” He held up the papers in his hand. “Sir, Landry and Kowolski are listed as being available for assignment, but I haven’t been able to locate either one of them. There’s a couple of gang homicides I need someone to follow up on, and . . .”
Damon swiveled his chair around toward his window, turning his back to Burkhart. “Landry and Kowolski are working on a special assignment for me. Take them off the duty roster until further notice.”
Burkhart stammered, “But . . . but, Sir . . .”
Damon whirled back around and stared at Burkhart through eyes as hard as stones. “Just do it, Buzz. No questions, understand?”
Burkhart flushed and his head snapped back, as if he had been slapped. “Yessir. Right away, sir.” After another glance around the room, he turned and hastened out of the door.
Damon stared after him for a moment, then shook his head and called the duty officer to ask if Shooter had checked in.
“Shooter’s been on station since eight this morning and hasn’t checked in yet, sir,” the duty officer said.
“Have him call me as soon as he comes in,” Damon said.
* * *
Matt’s dad arched an eyebrow. “You want what?”
Matt blushed, knowing he sounded crazy. “Dad, I need you to get your friend, the gunsmith, to make me up some silver bullets. I’d like two dozen thirty-eight caliber and two dozen nine millimeter.”
After thirty years as a Houston cop, Matt thought, his dad probably thought he had heard it all by now. He gave him credit though, he just stared at Matt for a moment, packing his pipe and thinking.
Finally, he stood and said, “Come on, let’s go out on the back porch and discuss this.” He didn’t have to add that he wanted to discuss it out of the hearing of Matt’s mother. He knew Matt’s request, no matter the reason, would cause her to worry.
They sat in the PVC pipe chairs he used as his smoking area on the back patio. After he got the pipe going to his satisfaction, he sat back and crossed his legs. “Am I permitted to ask just why you want these . . . silver bullets, or is it something that I’m to keep my nose out of?”
Matt thought about it for a moment, finally deciding what the hell. He gave him an abbreviated version of the serial killings, their research into the background of the killer, and, with some hesitation, even told him about his clandestine searching of Goddard’s office and the finding of the bloody clothes.
It was a measure of their mutual respect that James Carter didn’t question Matt’s sanity when told of his evening excursion playing Mike Hammer, just grunted once when he told him how terrified he was at the time.
“It goes with the territory, son. If you’re going to track animals, be they four-legged or two-legged, you’re going to have some scary moments when you confront them in their lair.”
His eyes became vacant, and he stared off. “I remember a couple of times . . .” Then he slapped his knee and leaned forward. “But that’s ancient history. Tell me, Matt. Do you really think this creature is supernatural?”
Matt shook his head. “I just don’t know, Dad. If he’s truly over a hundred years old, it just may be that regular bullets can’t kill him. I figure the safest course is to cover all the bases. If the old legends about vampires have any validity, then our best bet is to be prepared. The worst that can happen is that I’ll waste some money on silver bullets when lead would do just as well.”
“Can’t argue with that, son. I’ll call Joe and have him make up your bullets. I assume the thirty-eights are for your policeman friends and the nine millimeters are f
or you?”
Matt reached into his coat and pulled out the 9mm Beretta that his dad had given him as a birthday present when he was a teenager. “I guess all those times you took me to the police firing range with you may finally pay off.”
His dad smiled. “They already paid off. I got to spend a lot of what the experts now call ‘quality time’ with you on those trips.”
In the house, he made the call to his friend, who promised the bullets would be ready by five o’clock.
“He didn’t ask you any questions?” Matt asked.
“No, Joe’s known me long enough to know I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have a reason. He figures it’s his business to fill the order, and my business to know what to order.”
Thirty-two
Darkness was falling before Matt collected the silver bullets and made his way to Shelly’s house. As he was going up the front walk, he ducked instinctively as he heard gunshots behind him. He peeked over his arms from his position facedown on Shelly’s lawn and saw Shooter arrive in his Mustang. He rose to his feet and dusted his pants off as the old car coughed, backfired again, and spit out a cloud of white smoke from the tailpipe when Shooter shut her down.
Matt waited while Shooter got out of the car and approached him. He didn’t look good. His face needed shaving and his eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep and rest. Matt knew he was hurting about TJ, but there was little he could say to comfort him. He looked so bad Matt passed up the chance to razz him about the Mustang needing a tune-up and just walked beside him to the porch.
Barbara Silver greeted them at the door. “Hi, Shooter, Matt. Come on in. Shelly and Sam are in the living room.”
Shelly looked up from some papers on his lap and grimaced. “Jesus, Shooter, you look like hell. Have you had anything to eat today?” He glanced at Matt with raised eyebrows. Matt just shrugged. Shooter was tough. He could handle it. He’d have to.
Shooter collapsed into a chair, running his hand through his hair. “No, I was at the station all day. A couple of beat cops picked up Dr. Goddard at the airport.”
Night Blood Page 24
