The Blood Detail (Vigil)

by Arvin Loudermilk

  I tugged on the hem of my shirt and pulled it down over my hips. I was suddenly aware of how I looked, dressed like a civilian in jeans and a pale blue tee, and about to meet a ranking officer.

  “Do you have an idea why Jessup’s so interested in me?” I asked.

  “Let’s wait on that,” Douglas said. “That’s what the Captain wants to speak to you about. I think it would be best if we left that to him.”

  I had no problem with that, but this Captain sure was taking his sweet-ass time. Racine had been gone five minutes, and then ten. I was getting fidgety, and Douglass was having less and less to say to me, which was pissing me off. He delayed the answer to every question I brought up. It was just like the van ride over here, dull and tedious, capped by the distinct feeling I was being lead around by nose.

  A minute later, Racine and a scrawny Latino fellow with balding hair and a pencil-thin mustache emerged from the corner office and strode in our direction. Douglass stood up behind his desk, so I did the same. Racine entered the room with his boss and introduced us. “Captain Ricardo Castellano…this is Officer Grace Kimble.”

  I extended my hand so it could be shook, but Castellano waved me off.

  “Your wrists are hurt,” he said, stepping sideways. “There’s no need for pleasantries.” He sauntered over to the windowed wall and leaned back against it. “Please, everyone—sit.”

  We all did. But he stayed standing.

  “Officer Kimble,” he said. “I had you brought in here this morning to see if you were willing to work with us. This suspect we’re currently pursuing seems to have developed an interest in you, and I would like to take advantage of that. I know Mac has already gone over what it is we do in our hidden little corner of the force, but if hard work and a bit of danger doesn’t scare you off, I would like to have you deployed over here under my personal purview.”

  I liked the guy at once. He was direct and to the point, unlike his two helper monkeys. Alas, a significant obstacle remained. “I’m on leave, sir. I cannot work inside the department in any fashion. I am not even sure I’m allowed to be here now, discussing an open case.”

  He smiled at me. “Your suspension we can get around. But I want to make sure you understand the risks. I’m asking you to play bait for a very nasty fellow. If you say no, I will understand. But I also need to remind you that Jessup will be following you either way. If you agree to do things our way, you will be far safer than if you don’t.”

  “So, you’re telling me I have no choice.”

  “You always have a choice. Didn’t I say I would understand if you said no?”

  I sat back and crossed my legs. It was a girlie power move, but an effective one. “Phrase it however you like,” I said. “But I don’t think I had a choice the second Douglass shared your crackpot vampire theory with me. Because I now know what’s going around here, and can use it against you, despite the boilerplate waiver I just signed. I have the sinking feeling that means I’m stuck, and I have no choice in this matter whatsoever.” I paused and took a sip of my coffee. “Sorry, sir. But that’s just the way I see things.”

  “Told ya,” Racine said to Castellano. “You didn’t believe me. She’s got one hell of a mouth on her.”

  The big boss shot him a look, one that told him to keep his own trap shut. He then returned his attention to me. “You are not stuck, Officer. But, I can see why you would interpret it in such a way. Is there anything I can do to reassure you—to make certain this alliance comes to fruition? I know you have aspirations. This assignment could be an excellent stepping stone for you. You succeed on a big task force, even a crackpot one, and you will make detective only that much faster.”

  I became as still as I could, digging in. “Look,” I said. “I’m inclined to help out, but I’ve got no clue about what’s really going on here. I’ve heard there’s Fed involvement, and now I hear wild speculation about vampires running around the streets of LA, killing indiscriminately. Before I agree to anything, I needed to know a whole lot more.”

  Castellano gnawed on his lower lip, considering what I’d said. His counteroffer came swiftly. “I’ll have a quiet space set up for you. You’ll be given full access to our two latest cases, and the background on this one. Will that amount of information work for you?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, that’ll work fine.”

  Need to Know

  Three case files were waiting for me in the bullpen conference room, collected in sienna brown folders, spread out side by side across the hard Formica table. I shuffled to my left and closed the blinds, which opened out into the bullpen proper, and took a seat behind my reading material. I started with the first folder, flipping it open and sliding the other two out of the way.

  The case number was BG-0001301. It pertained to one James Parsons, a local slaughterhouse owner, and an apparent not-so upstanding member of the walking undead. The Detail, as it was referred to in the typewritten report, caught wind of his odiousness through a surprise admission during a balls-out Robbery-Homicide interrogation.

  Detective Terrence Koi had been working a series of gangland disappearances, which everyone, including the families, naturally assumed were murders. During questioning, one of the prime suspects gave up his gang’s latest body disposal method, along with his personal complicity in the killings. It seemed that sometime in the previous eighteen months word had gotten around that a certain slaughterhouse was willing to get rid of human remains at no charge, just as long as the bodies were fresh. The suspect’s compatriots saw an opportunity, and went a little wild with the gangland retribution, taking out a sizable chunk of the opposition. The murderous twit Koi had in custody had become scared for his own safety, not because of his fellow gang members, but from the strange behavior of the friendly-neighborhood slaughterhouse owner. According to the gang-banger, the man had threatening eyes and blood in his mouth. He was quite certain “this dude” had been eating the bodies they had brought to him.

  Being a Saturday, a non-work day at the slaughterhouse, the wrath of the LAPD descended upon the Westside home of James Parsons. Surprised by the sudden appearance of the authorities, Mr. Parsons, a paunchy, balding bachelor, decided to burn his house down and make an escape through a tunnel he’d dug from his garage to a house three doors down which he also owned, under an assumed name. A swift call to the fire department kept the blaze from getting too out of hand, but by the time the investigating officers discovered the tunnel and the other house, Parsons was in the wind. The Detail got involved because of what was found in this other house—bedrooms filled with bodies, all in the process of being drained of their blood. These peculiarities were flagged, and the Detail was given jurisdiction over the case—although the report did not say who or what had determined this, only that a handoff had happened, without incident.

  Bethany Ganna and Erik Brancawitz were the group detectives assigned. They worked cooperatively with Koi and his partner, staking out the slaughterhouse, which Parsons returned to like a moronic salmon seven days later. They cornered him in the basement of the building and he again attempted to set the location ablaze, this time to no avail. To subdue the super strong Parsons, Ganna and Brancawitz excused Koi’s team and utilized newly issued veterinary-style tranquilizing rifles, tagging the struggling man in the neck and the chest. It took four more direct hits to his torso to bring Parsons down. As he fought the sleep effects of the high-dosage narcotic, the suspect broke through several walls along the ground floor of his business.

  Following the description of the somewhat dramatic apprehension, the remainder of the case notes had been redacted with a black marker pen. The lines were fresh, too. The pages had a half-chemical, half-licorice smell about them, which only meant one thing—I was only allowed to know so much, even though loose ends remained. What happened to Parsons after his detention? What did Robbery-Homicide know about the true nature of this man they’d begun to refer to as ‘The Bleeder’? I pondered the possibility of such crimes and associat
ions existing, and yet somehow the Detail remained a relatively unknown organization. The chances of that happening seemed remote to me, but I had been in the dark until Jessup, so these people obviously knew how to cover their tracks. I went to the next file.

  Case BG-0001304 had been a homegrown Detail extravaganza from the beginning. Douglass and Racine worked this one, prompted by an informant they referred to in their report as FANCYPANTS—always typed out in full capital letters. FANCYPANTS had called in from a Pasadena pay phone on March the twelfth and informed Racine of a rogue fellow night owl who had left the Underground and was trolling vulnerable high schools for blood. The name the informant gave them was Delilah Theressi, and she was operating in and around the city of Glendale, the last this person had heard. His description of her was red-headed, beautiful, and voluptuous. The informant then claimed he had his own people out looking for her, but she’d be hard to detect in the vicinity of a high school due to how young she looked herself—fifteen or sixteen was the best approximation he could give. Racine pressed him on this particular matter, insisting on knowing Theressi’s actual age. FANCYPANTS did not know that for sure, but he had been aware of Theressi since the 20s, but had only become close to her in the last couple of decades. Racine made special note of this, suggesting that the informant might have an emotional attachment to the woman, and it’d be preferable if the Detail caught up with her first. That last bit ended up being wishful thinking on his part. It took six months before the Detail received any kind of hit on this young/old woman. From everything I read in the report, they’d pressed hard too, going as far as checking the backgrounds of student transfers from every valley high school. But Theressi was too sly for that. Why actually attend school when you could just pretend to?

  Since she had left the Underground, Theressi had become friendly with a group of post-pubescent teenage boys. In exchange for daily doses of bloodletting, which she couched as a hot and kinky fetish, Theressi would have intercourse with each of the eight friends until they’d worn themselves out. They came back often, and brought additional willing victims. This adorable little scam came to a screeching halt when a parent discovered a deep puncture mark on her son’s neck and phoned the police, telling them that some young slut had been drinking her boy’s blood like it was going out of style. The reported assault went straight to the Detail. Douglass and Racine met the boy in question, and when he could not remember the girl’s exact address, he agreed to take them to the place he kept calling her parents’ apartment. On their way to the location, and free of Mommy’s influence, the boy explained to the detectives how sweet the girl was. All the boys liked her, a lot. She treated them as something special. “It was true love,” he said. “Real love.” I restrained my urge to vomit, and kept reading.

  The detectives and the boy arrived and made the apartment right away—it was on the second story, two doors from the end. Racine got out to watch over the place while Douglass took the kid home. When he got back, a Tactical team was in place. They all agreed it was safest to move in immediately because school was still in session and Theressi would most likely be on her own. They went door to door and removed everyone from the surrounding apartments, just to be safe. The Tac team went in from the front.

  The apartment was dark, and at first there was no sign of the suspect. But as they were moving to the first bedroom, a “stunningly attractive redhead” strolled out into the hall wearing only a pair of yellow panties. This distracted the officers just long enough for her to pounce, ping-ponging along the side of the wall and killing two of the men outright, and knocking another two unconscious. She raced into the living room where Racine and Douglass were waiting for her, their tranquilizer rifles in position to fire. She was quick according to their notations, the quickest of the subjects they’d ever encountered. She dodged every shot and bounced off the ceiling, coming down in a crouch on top of Douglass. She was about to tear into him when Racine came up from behind and shot her twice in the back with the tranqs. She swung wildly and knocked him down, pulling out the needles and resetting her rage on him. Douglass took no chances, scrambling onto his haunches and pulling out his traditional sidearm. He gave her one last warning, and when she did not respond—and with his partner’s life in danger—he pulled the trigger, shooting her in the temple. She fell over, DOA. Like before, this was the end of the report, the remainder of the pages blacked out. I was fine with it, though. I’d read enough.

  In the third folder I found the Danny Ray Jessup file, up to date enough to include a few rough notes on his failed attempt to break in through my garage door. The initial tip-off about Jessup also sprang from the informant FANCYPANTS. He called in the same manner, but from an alternative Pasadena location. This time out, he came off as extremely concerned about Jessup, whom he described as the most “ancient” resident of the Underground and a giant man with one hell of a temper. Sometimes Jessup responded to young women, FANCYPANTS said, as a way to help subdue him. He liked blondes in particular. Despite what the informant calls a gentle southern drawl, no one in this Underground wanted anything to do with Jessup, primarily because of the way he took care of himself—which was not at all. The informant was convinced that the constant isolation is what pushed the guy over the edge, and that is something he had been warning Douglass and Racine about it. He said one more thing: “Sooner or later, we all lose it.” The statement struck me as important, although I couldn’t have explained why. The rest of the information pertained to searches, all of which were useless until Angie and I stumbled across the murder of Kara Tia Manning. Reading her name felt like a blow from a sledgehammer. All the time I had spent thinking about her, this was the first time I had read or been given her actual name. I had been isolated from the case right off, so there is no way I could have known. According to the file, her identity still hadn’t been released to the public.

  I closed everything up. I knew what I was going to do. I’d known before I had asked to be allowed into the loop. But when you had the kind of leverage I had, it’d be stupid not to do some due diligence first.

  I pushed my chair back and exited the conference room, leaving the files where they were. A middle-aged receptionist was positioned nearby, a pleasant woman who had escorted me in. I told her I was done with the files and she could retrieve them. I then asked her if Captain Castellano was in his office. She said that he was, so I thanked her and tromped my way over to his door. When I got there, I could see him through the glass. His head was buried in his computer screen, which meant I needed to knock first. He looked up when I did, and motioned me in.

  “Not exactly light reading, was it?” he said as I made my way toward him.

  I brought myself to a stop a few inches from the lip of his desk, clicking my heels and locking my hands behind my back. “Let me say this, sir. I’m still unconvinced that these people are vampires, not in any mythological sense. But they are dangerous, that’s indisputable. And they need to be brought down. In the two cases I was privy to, I have to say, you people did a decent job doing that.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “I don’t give praise easily.”

  “I wouldn’t imagine that you would.” His eyes squinted. “Do you have any other questions?”

  “Several. Let’s start with how long the Detail has been in operation?”

  “Five years. I have been in command the entire time.”

  “And how long have the Feds been involved?”

  “Sixteen months. They came to us and provided this building. Before that, we had a couple of smallish offices in Santa Monica.” I was suspicious about any and all Federal involvement, and I think Castellano could tell because he attempted to cover right away. “I’ve been told they assist us only because we have a mutual interest. But that said, I don’t hear much from Washington most of the time. We only have one liaison officer on site. His name is Special Agent Jerome Parker. If you stick around and help us out, I’m sure you’ll be meeting him. He’s pleasant enou
gh.” Castellano held out his hands and did a little half-shrug. “He hasn’t pissed me off so far.”

  He was trying to win me over, and he kind of had.

  “This question may seem strange,” I said. “But are you aware of who I really am?”

  “Yes. You are Grant McMartin’s long-lost daughter. Special Agent Parker informed me of this fact a few hours ago. I was just scanning through a few of your father’s many public exploits. My condolences on your loss, by the way.”

  “Thank you. But right now I’m more concerned about what the FBI thinks about my presence on this case. Before I came west, I was definitely persona non grata with my father and his minions.”

  Castellano leaned forward so nonchalantly, his limbs could have been made of rubber. “I personally I have heard no objection to your participation,” he said. “And I wouldn’t give a damn if I had. This is my team, and I pick my own players.”

  I could tell he believed what he was saying, but you cannot give the Feds an inch. And after accepting the building we were in, and whatever other fancy toys they’d provided, the Captain had already given up quite a bit.

  “One last thing,” I said. “If my assistance is significant in any way, I’d like to be kept on here full time.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem,” Castellano said, tapping his finger energetically. “So, does that mean you’re in?”

  I could feel the pain in my wrist flare up, but that wasn’t about to stop me. “You bet. I’m most definitely in.”

  Alone

  I spent the rest of the day sleeping on a couch.

  I awoke sometime after five. Douglass was shaking me, gibbering on and on about how we needed to get our butts into gear before the sun went down. Forgoing the impulse to slap the shit out of him, I sat up, scratched the skin beneath my bra strap, and yawned.