“I’d give a month’s pay to find that out myself.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and silently gestured for permission to smoke. When Scofield nodded his okay, McGraw lit one. He looked over at Clark. “How about that, Damon? How could you let this get out?”
Matt noted that Damon’s face was covered with a light sheen of sweat, though his expression was as cool as ever. He shrugged. “I’ve explained that. She must have an informant in my department. I don’t know who it is yet, but I’ll find out.”
Scofield looked at his watch. “Speaking of that bitch, I wonder where she is.”
Matt cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, but Hillary James was at the warehouse when we found Dr. O’Reilley. She must have followed Officer Sherry Landry and me when we went there from the tax office.”
Scofield leaned back, his face pale. “Just what we need . . . full TV coverage of one of the victims of this maniac.”
His secretary stuck her head in the door. “Mr. Scofield, the reporters in the outer office are getting rather . . . impatient.”
“Please tell them it will just be a few more minutes.”
He turned his attention back to McGraw. “Okay, John, it’s decision time. How much do we tell the press?”
McGraw stuck his finger in his collar, loosening it and stretching his neck. “Tom, as Damon says, we have a leak in the department. I don’t think we can afford to stonewall this; the risk is simply too great.”
“You’re right. I’d rather face the heat now than get caught in a lie later.” He stood and faced the window with his hands in his pockets, watching the rivulets of rain course down the pane. “I’ll state that we have under investigation the fact that there may be a serial killer operating in and around Houston, and that his signature is the cutting of the victims’ throats.” He turned and pointed a well-manicured finger at McGraw and Clark. “But I want no mention of cannibalism or drinking blood or that the code name for him is the ‘vampire killer.’ Christ, they’re going to go crazy as it is.”
McGraw looked at Clark, ignoring Sam and Matt. “We’ll have to be deliberately vague as to the number of suspected victims. If asked, I’ll simply state that we’re keeping that as a confidential fact so as not to endanger our prosecution of the killer. That is, if Officer Landry manages to capture him at the warehouse.”
Damon took a cigarette out of his gold case and lit it, letting the smoke trail from his nostrils. “Of course, we might get lucky and Sherry might kill the bastard. That would solve most of our publicity problems.”
Scofield took a brush from his middle desk drawer and smoothed back his thinning hair, asking, “Have you got plenty of backup for this . . .” He leaned forward and glanced at Damon’s report on his desk. “Officer Landry?”
“Yessir,” answered Clark. “But we have to be careful. If I rush a bunch of extra troops over there now, it might alert him to our presence and spook him. If he runs, there’s no telling if, or when, we’ll pick up his trail again.”
McGraw said, “I just hope you know what you’re doin’, letting a female officer go after him.”
Damon started to explain, “I didn’t exactly have a choice, Chief. She tracked him and found the hostage and was on the scene. It would have been too dangerous to try and replace her without him finding out. Besides, Sherry’s one of the best detectives on the force. I have complete confidence in her.”
They all jumped as Scofield’s phone rang. He picked it up and almost shouted, “Yes?”
He scowled and handed the phone to Damon. “It’s for you, an Officer Kowolski. Some kind of emergency.”
Damon hesitated, then reached slowly for the phone, as if it were a snake. “Yes?” After a moment, his eyes widened and his face blanched. “Oh no! Secure the scene and I’ll be right there.”
When he looked up, his face was tortured and his eyes were wet. “The bastard got Sherry and two of my patrolmen. Shooter says it looks like a slaughterhouse in there.”
Scofield said, “What about that Hillary James, the reporter?”
“Don’t ask,” said Damon as he hurried from the office, with Matt and Sam close behind.
As Matt turned to close the door, he saw Scofield looking at McGraw with a haunted expression on his face as he told his secretary to send the reporters in.
* * *
Damon screeched to a stop with the hood of his car against the yellow crime scene tape. He flashed his badge and they brushed past two shotgun-wielding patrolmen guarding the door. Matt was temporarily blinded by the flash of the lab men’s cameras. The popping of the flashbulbs and the bluish flashes of light gave the warehouse an odd, surrealistic atmosphere, like an old film noir about vampires—only this was no movie.
Shooter was waiting for them just inside the door. Matt saw two attendants closing the zipper on a black body bag. Damon walked over and put his hand on the shoulder of one of the attendants, leaned over, and unzipped the bag enough to reveal the remains of the patrolman that had been killed.
Feeling guilty at the relief he felt, Matt followed as Damon and Shooter and Sam continued down the corridor. A detective, whose badge identified him as Sergeant Buzz Burkhart, was sitting on a stool with his face in his hands, a blood-splattered sheet at his feet.
“Buzz, any sign of Sherry . . .” Damon began, but stopped when Burkhart looked up with red-rimmed, tear-filled eyes. Shooter slowly stepped over to the sheet and started to pull the corner back.
Burkhart, voice raspy with grief, said, “You don’t want to do that, Shooter. It’d be better . . .” he started, but clamped his lips together and dropped his eyes at the look of fury on Shooter’s face.
Shooter unfolded a corner of the sheet, and Damon gasped as he saw what was left of Sherry. Matt squeezed his eyes shut and took deep breaths through his mouth to keep from throwing up. The blood drained from Sam’s face, but she knelt and began to examine Sherry’s wounds. After a moment, Matt forced himself to look again, vowing to remember Sherry as she had been, not as she was now. Damon knelt and gently caressed her hair as Sam lowered the sheet back into place.
Damon noticed Sherry’s revolver lying next to the body and took a pencil from his pocket and inserted it in the barrel. He sniffed and noted the smell of cordite. Flipping the cylinder open, he saw that all six chambers had been fired. He replaced the pistol and stood, his attention drawn to a corner where more lab men were taking pictures.
Stepping carefully to avoid the already congealing pools of blood around Sherry’s body, they approached the far corner of the building. A uniformed patrolman was standing, watching the lab men, a horrified expression on his face. Shooter grabbed him by the shoulder and whirled him around. “Any sign of the son of a bitch who did this?”
The patrolman gulped twice, answering in a strangled voice, “No, sir. These three are all we found so far.”
Matt glanced at Hillary James’s body lying spread-eagled in the corner, then turned away, his mind having absorbed as much horror as it could at one time.
As the photographer snapped another picture and Sam bent over the body, Matt noticed a reflection of the flashbulb off something underneath the couch near where Sherry lay. He pointed it out to Shooter, who got down on hands and knees and peered under the couch.
After a moment, he looked back over his shoulder and said, “It looks like a minicamera.” With a grunt, he leaned over and fished it out from under the couch, pointing out that it had Hillary James’s name engraved on the side of it.
Although the tape was long finished, the red light on the front of the camera was still on, indicating that it had been recording during whatever had taken place there.
Shooter took a plastic bag from the case of the lab men and placed the camera inside. When Sam stood and indicated she was finished with her examination of Hillary James, they walked back to where Sherry lay. Shooter squatted and placed his hand on hers under the sheet. “Sherry, you were a helluva cop, and I’ll never forget you!”
/>
As they walked out of the warehouse without looking back, Matt thought to himself that he had never seen such a look of desolation as he saw on Shooter’s face. God help the man, or thing, that had caused him to feel this way.
Thirty-nine
I checked into a downtown flophouse after the confrontation at the warehouse, both to give my body time to heal itself from the gunshot wounds and because I was concerned that the search for me would lead to my nearby ship. I didn’t know how much, or how little, the police knew about my hiding places. Their finding of the warehouse surprised me, for I thought I’d covered my tracks well.
My bloody clothes attracted little attention in that neighborhood. The unshaven desk clerk merely shook his head and grunted as he handed me a towel and a key to my room.
Although I was confident of my ability to escape, I didn’t want to draw any additional attention to my special abilities unless I had to. So far, there were only a few that knew, or suspected, that I was of the Vampyri race, and they wouldn’t be believed without definite proof. No one who had seen my transformation had lived to tell about it.
After darkness fell, with my wounds completely healed and my strength back to normal, I returned to the area of my ship. Creeping through the darkness, I peered around a corner, noting that there were only two guards at the entrance to the warehouse. Probing with my mind, I found their attention directed inward without any suspicion regarding the Nightrunner. Silent as a shadow, I glided past the guards and slipped aboard the ship without being noticed. Once in my stateroom, I began to strip off my stained and smelly clothing.
The fury was like a living being inside me. I leaned over the sink, my hands becoming claws that indented, then tore the porcelain like so much tissue paper. As I started to involuntarily transform, I used all my strength to fight the rage, controlling the impulse to find my mate and destroy everyone who had conspired to take her from me. After all, I reasoned after I had regained control of my emotions, the Transformation Ceremony had made her mine for eternity. I felt certain she would return to me as soon as she was able to escape from her captors.
I walked to my stateroom window and stared out at the oily, black water of the Houston ship channel as it roiled and moved slowly past my ship. There were some things I needed to do, sooner rather than later, while I waited for Tabitha to return to me.
Word of my recent killings was sure to come to the attention of the Vampyre Council. If my slaughter of Quan hadn’t already enraged them enough to take retribution on me, this latest episode surely would. It was time to take matters into my own hands.
I went to a trunk at the foot of my bed and took out a Confederate sword I’d kept from my days as an officer during the Civil War. Slipping on a long overcoat, I secreted the sword under my arm and slipped off the boat. Getting past the guards was child’s play, and I walked down Port Avenue until I came to a seaman’s bar.
Using my Mercedes was too much of a risk now that the authorities knew of my identity, so I waited in the shadows until a drunken patron of the bar stumbled to the parking lot and opened his car door.
One blow to the back of his head put him out for the evening. I dragged his body into the rear of the lot, took his keys, and left the area in his car. I drove toward the Warwick Hotel. My date with destiny approached.
I didn’t know what security devices Jacqueline De La Fontaine might have fixed to her rooms, so when I reached the top floor by way of the stairs, I slipped out the hallway window onto the ledge that ran around the exterior of the building.
I made my way to her bedroom window and peered in, clamping down tight on my mental thoughts so as to give them no warning of my presence. The curtains were open and I could see activity in the bed. Evidently, she was entertaining her two young boy-toys in a most imaginative way. I leaned back against the wall and waited. From the energy they were expending, I suspected they would not be at it for long.
Within thirty minutes, the grunting and growling from the bedroom ceased, followed moments later by deep, steady breathing.
I transformed, letting images of Fontaine’s ripe body trigger the change. Once I was ready, I used a claw to pry the window open and jumped noiselessly into the room, my sword out and ready.
The smell of sex was heavy in the air, making my heart beat fast and my penis start to engorge. Moving as silently as fog, I slipped into the main room of the suite to see if any others were present. The rooms were vacant.
Back in the bedroom, I stood beside the bed, wondering for a moment if I was prepared for what I was about to do. Finally, I understood I had no choice. It was either them, or me.
I slipped out of my clothes and stood there a moment, naked. With a quick double motion, I severed the heads of the two young men lying next to Fontaine. Other than a slight snick as the cervical vertebrae were sliced in half, there was no sound.
Their spurting blood further inflamed my desires and awoke the Hunger within me. As I growled deep in my throat, Jacqueline stirred on the bed, reaching out for her friends as she awoke.
I flicked on the bedside lamp and she screamed as she saw her hand covered with blood.
With a mighty heave, I jerked the covers off her bed, leaving her lying there naked in a pool of her lovers’ blood, their sightless eyes staring at eternity.
One leap and I was upon her. Fear, and the smell of blood, caused her to begin to transform, but I was far ahead of her. I jerked her legs apart and rammed my penis into her, driving her head against the headboard of the bed and making her scream again, this time in pain and terror.
As I pumped and jammed myself into her writhing body, I looked deep into her fear and lust-filled eyes.
“Enjoy this, Jacqueline, your last pleasure in this life!”
As I ejaculated, I grabbed her chin and twisted her face upward, exposing her neck. I opened my mouth as wide as I could and descended on her, tearing her throat open and severing her head from her body. The blood pumped from her carotid arteries like a fountain into my open mouth.
When the blood slowed and finally stopped, I realized, with a shudder, that this was the first time in two hundred years I’d fed without remorse or guilt.
After a shower, I dressed and left by the front door, hoping that, without a head, the body of the Vampyre Council would die.
Forty
The cells under the microscope moved lazily, as if dancing to a tune only they could hear. Matt straightened, stretched, and rubbed his eyes. The cells were beginning to blur and become indistinct. He had been working for almost twenty hours straight, trying to solve the mystery of TJ’s continued failure to respond to treatment. He grabbed his notes and reread them once again, hoping to find something he might have missed.
He jerked in surprise as a pair of hands began kneading the muscles of his shoulders, relaxing as he recognized Sam’s soft voice. “Matt, you’ve got to take a break. Working until you collapse isn’t going to do TJ any good.”
Matt leaned back and sighed. “You’re right, Sam, but she’s dying, and I can’t rest until I find out why.”
She stepped around from behind his chair and bent over the microscope, continuing to talk as she looked at the swirling, gyrating cells. “Back in the dark ages, when I was in medical school, whenever I got stuck with a particularly elusive diagnosis, I would stop my reading and present the case to my roommate as if I were before a committee at the hospital.” She straightened and leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms and peering at him as she continued. “Often, just the recital of the facts, and my explanation to her of what they meant, would trigger some unconscious mechanism in my mind that would put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and I would realize where I had gone wrong.”
Matt smiled, realizing the same trick had worked for him on more than one occasion in his student days. “Okay, Sam. Let’s go.” He groaned as he stood and took a minute to straighten up. He looked at her and smirked as he stretched. “It’s hell to get old.”
S
he shook her head. “Getting old is not so bad, not when you consider the alternative.”
Just what he needed to hear. Sam not only thought he was old, but decrepit as well.
She led him to the cafeteria, where they got their coffee and sat at a table across from each other. “Okay, now tell me what is going on. I know that you’ve done all the normal things to help her recover, and she hasn’t responded. Why not? Do the other doctors working on her have any idea?” she asked.
Matt tasted the coffee, blowing on it to cool it off a little before taking a drink. “They’re as baffled as I am. You’d think that between an internist, an infectious disease specialist, and an emergency room doc, we’d be able to come up with some insight as to why she’s not getting better.” As he talked, Sam ran her hands through her hair, making it wild, then patting it back in place.
“It’s just that it seems relatively simple,” Matt continued, going over the lab values and physical findings in his mind as he spoke. “TJ’s initial tests revealed several abnormalities. She had a spiking temperature, usually indicative of either a bacterial or viral infection. Her first CBC showed a white blood cell count of nineteen hundred. As you know, the usual count is around seventy-five hundred, with higher counts usually indicating bacterial infection and lower counts indicating viral infections.”
Sam interrupted. “So, she has fever and a low white blood cell count. Did you treat her for a viral infection?”
He held up his hand. “Just a minute, let me finish telling you what the tests showed; then we’ll get into therapy.”
“Oh, sorry. Go on.”
“The CBC also showed a severe anemia; her hemoglobin was only six and her hematocrit was only eighteen. Levels that low in someone previously healthy indicate either acute blood loss or destruction of the red blood cells by infection. The remainder of her tests were relatively normal, showing only a mild dehydration but nothing serious.” He sat back and indicated he was ready for questions.
Sam thought for a moment, reviewing in her mind what Matt had said. Although usually not involved in premortem diagnosis and treatment, she had absorbed a large amount of medical knowledge during her eight years of training. “Matt, I know that you transfused her and I suspect you began intravenous antivirals for the viral infection.”
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