by Owen, Kelli
And it reminded him of another case with the same missing pattern—making it a pattern after all. He stood and walked to the board at the back of the open room, past the other desks, officers and detectives, and dodging the occasional chair pushed out and left in the aisle as the owner vacated the building. He looked over the board and considered the other cases hanging on the wall like paint samples a finicky homeowner couldn’t decide on—some would come down almost immediately, others would stay awhile longer.
“There.” He looked at the red dry-erase note, the color indicating a dead end, and looked to the name assigned to it.
“Of course.” He huffed under his breath and turned, scanning the room.
He strode to Detective Pattee’s desk. “Hey, lemme look at your file on the trailer park death—the Winter case.”
Pattee looked up at Connor, his expression one of suspicion, “Why? You planning on dumping something on me?” He flipped through the backburner pile on his desk and pulled a thin file free.
“I think it might be connected to the case I landed last week. I’ll take it if it does.”
“No shit? Here. Take it.” He held the file out. “And change the name on that board. Good luck.” The lilt attached to the wishful phrase dripped with sarcasm heavy enough to negate the sentiment.
As Connor took the file, Pattee splayed his fingers in a hands-off gesture, obviously glad to be rid of it. In one smooth motion, he then moved his hands in an exaggerated sweep around to the back of his head where he laced his fingers and leaned into the cradle created there. His chair creaked and Connor hoped for a moment he would lose his balance and fall straight backward.
“Thanks.” Connor left the other detective and returned to his desk.
Connor had learned through years on the job and hours of research—both on his own and by attending FBI profiling lectures—serial killers tended to have a reason. They had a method, if not a signature, and often staged the scene when they were done, or worse, posed the body for police.
He flipped through the Winter file and scanned for similarities. They were both killed in their homes, with significant blood loss through the jugular region, but nothing else. Nothing. Their killer hadn’t taken anything obvious, hadn’t left anything for the cops, and hadn’t posed the bodies—nothing. However, in both cases, the doors to the homes had been left open and the neighborhood animals had torn at the bodies before either victim had been reported missing or anything noted as suspicious. Nature had conveniently trashed the crime scene.
What’s this guy hiding?
His case victim, Smith, had been unemployed, single, no living family members, no one to come forward to claim him or call him friend. The Winter file had been similar—but rather than unemployed, he had been on medical leave.
Why?
Connor flipped through the pages and found Winter had recently been part of a clinical trial group. The living room where he had been found dead was “overly gory” according to the first officer on the scene. The autopsy report noted Coumadin in the blood stream, but no other drugs—street or prescription—were found in the screening panels.
Rogers’ handwriting explained further: “this would have thinned the blood and allowed him to bleed out faster, blood spilled at the scene would have spread farther and looked like more than it was, due to the anticoagulant properties.”
There was an asterisk on the body outline page where various wounds were marked, specifically next to the indication of a wound on the victim’s neck. Connor was unprepared for the significance of the seemingly scrawled and forgotten note: NOT TEETH.
“The wound appears to be a single puncture mark, made by an instrument at least three inches long to explain the internal perforation damage to both the thyroid and trachea. It is unlikely, if not impossible, to have achieved this damage with the much shorter suggested weapon of canines, either animal or humanoid, naturally or with dental extensions. No human or lamian saliva was found on or near the wound. The weapon in question created a uniform entrance wound in the form of a clean initial puncture. Then the flesh was stretched abruptly rather than torn as it tapered to a thickness of about an eighth of an inch. Width, length and lack of trace evidence would suggest a metallic weapon, such as an orbitoclast, or perhaps a common ice pick.”
Connor froze. He squinted his eyes and his gaze danced over the words without focusing on anything in particular, as he thought through various details of the file. He flipped to the newly added coroner’s report in his own file and noted it too had a stretched puncture wound of approximately an eighth of an inch.
Winter and Smith had something in common after all. Neither was killed by a lamian.
At least not one using their teeth.
He closed both files, intent on taking them downstairs to Rogers. Perhaps they’d been too far removed. Perhaps an assistant had worked on one. For whatever reason, the cases hadn’t been tied together yet and Connor felt that was a huge mistake. If Rogers saw them together and agreed, maybe then Connor could get some extra manpower. Catch the killer. Close the cases.
“Hey Connor, your kid’s here.”
He blinked free from his thoughts and looked up to see Tamara walking through the room toward his desk with an irritated look. He glanced at the clock.
“Oooh.” He stood, files in hand and gave her a one-armed hug. “Sorry, hon.”
“Whatever. The station is halfway to home, so I figured I’d walk this far.”
“I need to go downstairs. Can you hang here and do your homework for a bit?”
She looked around the room, discomfort obvious on her face.
Connor followed her gaze. He saw several of the officers watching her with a sideways stare. His daughter. Accusations and judgment openly twisted the expressions aimed at her. The lamian.
“Um… they don’t really like me anymore do they?”
He watched her flinch as if a shiver had run through her.
“I’ll just go to the lounge.”
He nodded, agreeing with her assessment and plan. “Thanks, hon. And again, sorry. Mom will be back on her regular schedule soon.” He leaned forward, kissed her forehead, and took the lead out of the room. Looking back over his shoulder, he whispered. “If they annoy you, kick ’em.”
Her light giggle made him feel better about her, but not his coworkers.
— TWELVE —
Parking at an awkward angle, too far from the curb, Henry rushed to his front door and almost broke the key off in the lock as he frantically pushed to get inside. He’d taken a vacation day and scheduled his appointment for 11:00 in the morning, believing the streets would be clear and he wouldn’t waste precious time on the road. He hadn’t expected the pre-lunch-hour traffic when he’d finished, and his eagerness for the next step had nearly caused him to pull over on the quiet stretch between Riverside and Springfield. Finally breaking past the people who didn’t know how to pack a lunch or had scheduled their meetings over menus, he’d sped the remaining distance home.
The excitement-induced saliva ran free in his mouth and mixed with the slight taste of copper as he accidentally bit his lip. The plastic runner inside the front door, a leftover from when his mother had been alive, was sprinkled in dirt and scattered with shoes. He had no time to follow a dead woman’s rules today, and didn’t bother to take his shoes off at the door. He made his way to the bathroom and eagerly tore open the white paper bag he’d been given at the dentist’s office.
Reaching in, while he swallowed spit, blood, and years of desire, he retrieved the box. He gasped and held it away from the sink, suddenly imagining a horrible accident. He pulled the drain stopper upward to plug the sink, to prevent a mistake his psyche couldn’t afford, and laid a clean washcloth in the bottom of the porcelain to be on the safe side. He exhaled loudly with puffed cheeks and returned his attention to the box. He
opened it gently and sighed.
Getting vampire teeth was not a new thing. The fad had been around long before the lamians crawled out of the pages of legends and into the streets, before the Treaty and society’s attempt to accept them. People had been getting veneers when vampires still belonged to Hollywood and Bram Stoker disciples. Humans had been sharpening their natural teeth to points when New Orleans and Transylvania were romanticized destinations for parties and role-playing. They paid for wicked little dagger-sharp caps instead of braces when the underground phenomena rose in popularity based on a desire to be the fabled creature of the night. People had been making their standard, run-of-the-mill canines into the spectacular, the mythical, when it had been only a subculture. Now they were a genuine race, a breed of humanoid, the dentists didn’t flinch. They were used to the craze, the fad, and the fanatics who came with it all—whether their desire was to mimic vampires, werewolves, or something as mundane as a tiger’s bite. Now the professionals simply asked if you really were a lamian so they could mark your chart before they took a mold of your teeth.
Acceptable or not, commonplace or not, it was still expensive—especially if you wanted good, high-quality implants or caps. And, as an elective procedure, Henry’s dental insurance wouldn’t cover any of the costs. He had wanted them since he secured steady work at the school. But his expenses and paycheck didn’t allow for frivolous fangs, as the dental receptionist had called them, raising her judgmental eyebrow in a high, overly plucked arch, as she did so. Saving would have taken him years on his meager salary, even with his yearly two percent raise.
But the universe hurt him to help him.
His mother’s death had been unexpected, the pancreatic cancer already well into stage four when they had discovered it. The doctors could do nothing to cure it and concentrated on treating her pain, treating what they called her end-of-life comfort. Henry had been heartbroken, as he lost the only parent who cared about him—the only person in his life he cared about.
However, her brief fight and quick death had left him with more than emptiness inside him. It had left Henry with a mortgage-free home to move back into and the ability to say good-bye to the cost of rent. It had come with enough insurance money to cover the medical bills her healthcare plan didn’t pay for and the funeral. And with the help of his paltry seven hundred dollars in savings, there had been enough left from the policy to give him the frivolous dental expense of his dreams.
The box in Henry’s hand held his very own—cast to perfectly fit his teeth—vampire fangs.
Fangs, he thought. I finally have fangs.
He touched the tip of one, sitting in its foam cutout meant to keep it secure during travel. It was sharp. Not sharp enough to slice, but more than enough to puncture. He looked up to the mirror. He could see the excitement in his face. His eyes were wet with joy. His smile was genuine, broad, and—
Oh God.
Henry closed the box carefully and put it on the closed lid of the toilet. He frantically grabbed his toothbrush and paste.
I need a clean surface.
He remembered how the dentist had cleaned his mouth when he’d reset the tooth Henry had pulled the previous year—the second time Henry had tried to make his biology change on a whim by removing his own teeth. Henry had yanked the human tooth, desperate to force a reality that was not his own, and proudly brought it to his dentist. He had declared, “See? I’ll get a new one now. A vampire tooth.”
The dentist had looked at him with pity. “No, Henry. The x-ray shows nothing there. You know that. We talked about this when you lost your tooth last time. You’re not a lamian, son. But it’s okay. You saved this, so we can put it back for you. Again.”
Having the tooth re-socketed had been more painful than pulling it out. Henry had to sit there and listen to the dentist drone on about how he could give him fake teeth, but it wouldn’t change his DNA, wouldn’t make him lamian. The dentist said it was a good thing. Said having a deficiency of any kind was more of a pain than a blessing, even if Henry thought it was a romantic notion.
The mental anguish and embarrassment of having your dentist know your deepest desires but stop them from happening and then chide you like a little boy, was too much for Henry. He changed dentists immediately. He was more careful about what he said and did around medical professionals after that. But he remembered the way the dentist had scrubbed his mouth and disinfected everything before replacing the very human tooth Henry had pulled out. Henry mimicked the dentist’s thoroughness as he shook free from the painful memory.
Henry scrubbed his teeth until the toothpaste no longer foamed. He spit repeatedly, noticing the slight red tint in the last few blobs of spittle and watered-down foam. Finally happy with the results, or at least satisfied enough to continue, he rinsed his mouth and put the toothbrush down. Picking up the box again, he felt the warmth of tears building.
His father had been at the funeral, but he hadn’t come to the house afterward. The man hadn’t needed or wanted any of his ex-wife’s belongings, and his new wife—his shiny new vampire wife—was waiting at home for him. Henry remembered when his parents divorced his sophomore year, not long after the first time Henry had a tooth replaced. He remembered how his mother tried to say they had simply grown apart. But his father had remarried as soon as the ink dried on the divorce papers, and Henry knew something deeper was going on.
Then he met her.
He knew instantly, but he asked with the innocence of a child, and she smiled wide and nodded. Yes, she was lamian. It hadn’t dawned on Henry then how she would outlive his father by a full lifetime. He’d been too busy twisting her genetics into a self-appointed rejection by his father.
The man who had told Henry when the dentist reset his tooth, “Henry, you’re just a human. It’s okay.”
The same man who had left his very human family, for a vampire.
Henry became enamored with his new stepmother, and he asked her many questions during his visitation weekends with his father. Too many questions, apparently, as she started having weekends away and functions to attend whenever Henry was scheduled to visit. He tried asking his father, but he caught on too late—neither of them wanted to talk about it.
“Henry stop, just stop. Be okay with what you are.”
Okay? No, Henry could not just be okay with it. He wanted to be a vampire more than anything. They were real. Not fantasy. And he wanted to be one of them. As an already emotional teen, Henry pushed the topic with his father in all the wrong ways. Eventually, his father stopped coming to collect him. Always busy. Always promising next weekend.
But Henry knew. He felt the pain deep inside as it made a home there. His father had cast him aside for a vampire. He remembered the apologetic look on his father’s face at the funeral, but no words were offered to back it up. The man had walked away from Henry years before, and had visited long enough to see his mother put in the ground. Henry hadn’t heard a single peep from the man in the year since.
Henry looked back to the box in his hand and carefully opened it again. Slowly, deliberately, he revealed the contents as if a spotlight were about to shine on them. He couldn’t remember ever being this happy and nervous at the same time. He imagined it was what people often felt in a relationship, perhaps at their wedding, or when having a baby. This was his crowning moment. The moment he would no longer be just a human.
He carefully removed a cap and fit it over his tooth, checked and double-checked them both to make sure he had the right one for the right tooth. He licked his natural teeth repeatedly, feeling for the last time how they felt. He looked over the instructions for application, removal, and cleaning. Satisfied he understood, acknowledging they were supposed to be temporarily worn—held in place with denture cream each morning—Henry crumpled up the instructions and dropped them into the small white trash can by the sink.
He grinned
with delight as he reached for the permanent dental glue he’d found online.
— THIRTEEN —
Madison had told her mother she wanted to walk home, under the guise of enjoying the weather before fall kicked in and she couldn’t enjoy it. Her mother, who only picked her up when she specifically asked or the weather suggested it, hadn’t even questioned the request. Madison had always been athletic—cheerleading in junior high, dance class when she was younger, and currently debating whether or not to join the volleyball team this year—so her mother encouraged it, but with a strangely distant look. As if she wasn’t truly listening.
When Madison turned to start her walk home—after waving off Brenna and Tristan’s offer of a ride, which she declined based on no one wanting to be that third wheel—she noticed the janitor wasn’t in his regular perch. Instead, Dillon stood there, watching. He watched her specifically, rather than the crowd at large as the janitor did. She found it just as creepy, if not more so, and wondered what he could possibly be up to.
She’d thought about him and his behavior lately as she walked home, which made the trek go much faster than it would have otherwise. Dillon had been there a lot lately, in her peripheral vision. Never really part of what she was doing, but there—be it in study hall, out front after school, or standing by the water fountain near her locker when she knew his locker was the other direction. She wasn’t bothered by him or his presence, even if Brenna would have surely had something to say if she had noticed him. It was more a curiosity thing. And a strange comfort.
No, that’s not it.
She tried to remember if they’d ever had classes together before this year’s Study Hall and Social Studies. If there had ever been an occasion to be partners in a project or have a conversation of any sort. Outside of group play in kindergarten, she could think of nothing tied to school. Though, the image of him being upset and walking near the fountain in the park came and went from her mind, but she couldn’t place when that had been and couldn’t actually remember ever seeing him there. She could think of nothing else and was confused by the strange way she felt okay about him, without even really knowing him.
