“ Still, Chief, don't you think we should get people in Wekosha, you know, to sniff around? More than one killer's been caught putting flowers on the grave of his victim,” said Byrnes.
“ Sure… sure,” said Otto. “You want to coordinate with Milwaukee on that?”
“ Will do,” replied Byrnes.
“ I just keep remembering the Koontz case,” said Boutine.
There was a communal moan.
Otto went on. “We had the guy living alone, a possible orphan, uneducated, without a job or ties in the community, remember?”
Everyone remembered but Otto said it anyway. “He was the son of the town minister; had children and a wife and mother-in-law; was the town's most well liked, well known appliance store owner, which gave him an annual income of forty thousand plus a year. He taught Sunday school and played on the softball team, never touched a drop of alcohol and attended church regularly.” His crimes, in fact, were an “act” of faith. It was a reminder that profiling was far more art than science, despite probability statistics.
“ If we could pinpoint where he lived, go at this in a proactive sense,” began Schultz. “Put the press to work for us.”
Byrnes objected. “That could backfire. A guy that's this nuts could kill himself.”
“ Better him than another of his victims,” said O'Rourke coldly.
“ And so he's buried with what he knows, like how many others he killed,” finished Byrnes.
The proactive technique meant utilizing the press, feeding them information selectively, the end result to smoke out the killer, taunt him, and hope that he might be foolish enough to give something of himself away. It was a deadly kind of cat-and-mouse game, a bit like Russian roulette. “We can't use the press unless we know the guy's jumpy,” said Boutine. “So far, he seems quite cool.”
“ How cool would he be if we put out a diagram of the kind of devices he uses in his hometown paper?” asked O'Rourke, who seemed to favor the proactive method.
“ Along with the fact he drives a gray van with lettering along the side,” added Schultz. “And then we leak the fact we've got some of his DNA left at the scene. Don't know about you, but that'd make me kind of jumpy.”
“ Add to the list that we suspect he's some sort of a traveling pervert-salesman who combs the Midwest, possibly selling to hospitals,” said O'Rourke.
“ Call him a fag because he didn't rape the victim, some insults like that. Call him impotent, that kind of thing,” said Byrnes. “Yeah, maybe it would smoke him. Maybe he'd respond to insults.”
“ Maybe, maybe not,” said Otto.
“ It's worth a shot,” said Schultz.
“ You want to coordinate that, then, Schultz, all the big midwestern papers get the story. Do something with the victims' families in all three cases, try to draw the bastard back to the victim psychologically. Although with this guy, I have my doubts he's going to feel the least sympathetic to the families. But start there and if that gets no results, go with the insults. Remember to stress no bylines on the damned stories. We don't want this psycho going after a reporter.”
Otto took a deep breath before going on, pausing for everyone's complete attention. “I talked with a man in my office who claimed to be a goddamned vampire expert, who says he can help stalk this 'thing,' as he called it.”
There was some muffled laughter.
“ A real loon but the guy's not only the Exalted Emperor of something called the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Vampires and Werewolves in North America, he's a legitimate biologist with the Corning Corporation in Upstate New York.”
This drew a few more laughs and remarks.
“ Guy flew here as soon as he read about the case, insisted on seeing me and me alone-”
“ You were alone with this guy?” asked O'Rourke.
“ He insisted on seeing the evidence, everything we have. Of course, I showed him the door. You know how much store I put in these wackos and fringe guys, even if it is more than a goddamned weekend hobby for the man.”
“ So, we got 'em coming out of the woodwork,” said Schultz.
“ All the same, the Exalted One did say something that made sense. What sets this killer apart is his very real instinctual drives, such as his unquenchable taste for human blood. I don't go along with all the crap about superhuman gifts or reanimated beings, but this monster has an acquired taste for blood, whether that's due to some physiological need, a psychosexual need, or a combination of the two, that's what we must determine. What makes this bastard tick.”
“ Well, from all we've researched on the subject, and there's damned little to go on, boss,” began Byrnes. “You've got to figure this guy is working out some twisted sexual fantasy. What is it they say: one man's garbage is another man's treasure? In sex, it's similar; what one man gags over, say menstrual blood, another man is turned on by.”
“ Blood turns this bastard on for sure,” added Jessica who had calmly listened to the discussion.
“ But only eighty or ninety percent of known blood drinkers also perform deviant sex acts on their victims,” O'Rourke interjected.
“ But even the other ten percent are in it for some twisted psychosexual perversion,” countered Otto, “albeit so bloody sick that the sexual nature of the crime is overtly unapparent. I think our creep is totally screwed in the head and has, for whatever reasons, gotten blood and semen and sex and murder all balled up into one.”
“ So he gets sexual pleasure from drinking the blood,” said Jessica.
“ His ultimate gratification, yes.”
The others considered this in a moment of silence.
“ Maybe that's your lead, Schultz,” suggested Byrnes.
“ What lead?” asked Schultz.
“ For your story. Plaster it across the headline that the bastard we're after gets his rocks off by pouring blood down his pants.”
“ Intimate that he's unable to please a woman,” added O'Rourke.
“ Intimate hell,” replied Byrnes. “Call him a faggot vampire.”
“ Byrnes may be on the right track,” said Schultz. “If this thing is to work, we have to piss the bloodsucker off.” Schultz pursed his lips, nodded and tapped a pencil before him, considering his next move. Jessica, searching the features of everyone around the room, realized that all of them were considering their next steps very carefully. None moreso than Otto.?
SIXTEEN
He knew that he suffered from two rare diseases, both of which made him angry and both of which made him a blood-drinker. He had read all there was to read on his conditions. He knew that his adrenal cortex was steadily atrophying, and that only cortisone helped. It was a hormone that regulated the electrolyte balance between sodium and potassium in the body. An imbalance caused progressive fatigue, weight loss and eventual death. At one time Addison's disease was fatal, but now you took cortisone to replace the body's supply. But the damnable cortisone caused weird fatty deposits in his back, turning him into a kind of Quasimodo, bending him over. It showed up in his buttocks and his cheeks as well, giving him a John Kennedy or Jim Belushi appearance about the face. He had gone to a doctor friend who had X-rayed his pituitary gland at the base of his skull, the gland that controlled the adrenals. The pituitary was shriveled, the adrenals tiny. The disease had done its work, marking him both inside and out.
Other symptoms were anxiety, depression and an acute sensitivity to cold.
Blood, he reasoned, helped to hold the disease in check, as it warmed him both physically and spiritually.
Blood also helped combat his second disorder, porphyria, called by some the vampire disease, in which large amounts of white blood corpuscles were wildly manufactured in the bone marrow, leaving red corpuscles in short supply. The bone marrow defect led to a lack of heme, a pigment in the blood's oxygen carrying cells as well, and this gave him a pallor. Occult historians believed that porphyries attacked and drank the blood of others in a desperate attempt to get healthy hemoglobin i
nto their systems. Nonsense, he thought. If that were the only reason he killed, he could stop tomorrow, go into a clinic and get all the hemoglobin he required-and he had done exactly that on more than one occasion. He knew a lot of doctors. He went to them whenever he could. He liked to watch them work, and, for the most part, he liked them.
A key symptom of his disorder was a sensitivity to sunlight, which caused scabs, scarring and sores over his skin. His gums, too, had receded as a result of the disease, exposing his teeth to such a degree that they appeared to the casual observer to be fangs.
Some people had cancer. Some were afflicted with other debilitating diseases. He counted himself lucky. His diseases could be held in check, both by cortisone, which was in plentiful and cheap supply, and by blood.
He had earlier packed the van, before the sun had come up. He had clients to see in Indiana, up and down the state, and he might get over to Ohio and down to Kentucky, if he could manage it. On the company car phone, he kept in touch, but the range wasn't as far-reaching as he and his van. He placed his heavy cases into the van, his samples, all the various brochures and catalogues provided by the company. He then stocked the rear of the van with his own, private goods, the items necessary for taking the blood from another Candy or another Renee. All he needed now was opportunity, and he would help opportunity along, knowing that it would present itself somewhere in Indiana tonight.
It was midmoming when he pulled from the driveway, waving to a few neighbors who, retired, had nothing to do beyond tending to crabgrass and their tomato plants. Somewhere a dog barked.
He pulled from the little subdivision of houses onto the main road, then took Interstate 294 in its wide arch around the sprawling city. He wanted to find a good place in Indiana to post his letter to Dr. Jessica Coran and eventually mailed it from the small post office in Hammond. People stared at him with his hat and sunglasses on, since it had become overcast. He got back into the dark interior of his van and hid behind the black-tinted windows. From there he watched a young woman pull up, get out of her car and go into the post office. She was, to him, a bucket of blood. Everyone walking before his gaze was a bucket of blood. But young girls were prettier buckets. He stayed long enough to watch the girl exit, get into her car to leave. He fell in behind her, fantasizing about doing her.
But he had a schedule to keep, and he knew that schedules could be checked, and so when the red Firebird ahead of him turned off onto a residential street, he kept pace with the traffic going back toward the interstate and Indianapolis.
At least the letter got off.
He switched on his cassette player and listened to the Blue Danube to combat the jackhammers and noise of busy Hammond. Hammond was bustling with sound and pollution and he hurried to the interstate. But he was careful not to go through any yellow lights, to lane-change or to cut anyone off. He certainly didn't want to be placed in Hammond, Indiana, by some stupid traffic ticket on the same day that a certain letter was mailed to the FBI's premier forensics investigator. If he was going to play games with the authorities, rub their faces in their helplessness against him, he meant to do it right.
On the seat alongside him was his brown leather briefcase. Inside the case were his special blood-tapping tools. Behind his chair was his cooler, stocked with empty jars anxious to be refilled.
Dr. Grubber was waiting for him, and following that a new client in the Indianapolis area.
The sunlight had not been harsh or glaring when he got out of the van to post the letter, and yet it still had hurt his sensitive skin and eyes; it'd bring the sores and scabs if he was not careful. Dr. Leonard Grubber would supply him with more of his concoction of proteins and carbohydrates which the man claimed was the best single source of relief from porphyria as well as Addison's disease. Grubber had been seeing to his needs since he met the man his first day on the Indiana run. Grubber was fascinated by his case and wanted to do a case study. It took a long time for the confidences and assurances to be bonded, but now he saw Grubber as a harmless medicine man who wanted to conduct his experiments. It was a trade-off, a kind of symbiotic relationship. He'd give Grubber the use of his body for study, if Grubber provided him with the medications he required to hold the diseases that ravished his body in check.
Grubber was, in fact, the closest thing he had to a friend.
Grubber's records were interesting. He had picked them up once and read about himself. Grubber had not been able to get the research and his paper published in any medical journals yet, but he kept trying.
He found his way back to the interstate and pulled into traffic. If he made good time, maybe he'd get lucky later on this evening.
Late in the day at Quantico, Teresa O'Rourke claimed that the killer lived in or around the Chicago area. This pinpointing of residence was important for several reasons, and despite her methods, everyone wanted to believe she was accurate. This would narrow the focus considerably. Records could be more easily checked, DMVs, registrations of all sorts. The Chicago FBI field offices were very professional, very good. Everyone was elated when O'Rourke demonstrated how she had arrived at Chicago. She had taken a radial scanner and had drawn circumferences of twenty, thirty, forty, fifty and one hundred miles from the kill sites, and all of them at the one-hundred-mile range intersected at or near Chicago.
It was late, however, and other than contact the bureau offices in Chicago, there was little else they could do tonight. Besides, everyone had plans to be at the wake for Marilyn Boutine. The meeting broke up with everyone having a job to do. Byrnes was to be a catcher-in-the-rye back at Wekosha, digging deeper into the life of one Candy Copeland, and to keep a watch on her haunts for anyone who might have known her. He would even go so far as to place a recording device on her headstone, he had said.
Schultz was to work with the newspapers in an attempt to stir the killer to some foolish action that might reveal more of his identity.
O'Rourke was to fly to Chicago to give the bureau there the details of the P.P. team's work, and to share the forensics information amassed against the killer.
Boutine and Jessica would remain in Quantico to coordinate any further “troop movements.” Everyone was feeling hopeful; everyone was sure that the noose was tightening, but everyone also feared the next telephone call from some law enforcement agency in need of FBI assistance on a Tort 9.
# # #
The phone call came while they were at the wake. People started disappearing early, Boutine telling them that he understood and would soon follow. Jessica stayed on with Boutine until he himself decided to put an abrupt and early end to the wake. There was too much at stake. News had come in from Zion, Illinois, of the discovery of a mutilation murder that fit the M.O. of their Tort 9 killer. Otto had put it out on every wire, and everyone in a law enforcement position in the nation, and particularly the Midwest, was watching, and while they'd had some sixty maybes, this one sounded like a certainty, down to the near spotless condition of a white to beige rug over which dangled the body from its heels from a chandelier cord. The chandelier had been torn down and cast into a heap in a corner. “I'll fly out tonight, Otto. No need for you to go,” she told him.
“ How're you going to get on without me?”
“ Our Chicago guy's have it. They'll be there.”
He looked back at the open casket, into the face of his dead wife, nodding. “Thanks, Jess, for being here for me. Can you arrange a flight and-”
' 'Leave it to me. You just see to what you must here, and I'll see you when I get back.”
She quickly made her way back to her place, packed and made the necessary calls. She'd be on a transport within the hour, military again. She had hoped to be able to avoid the uncomfortable military transport for the plusher Lears of the FBI, but these were all in use.
At the airfield she had another uncomfortable shock. Both Kaseem and Forsythe. They'd gotten the word on the Zion killing, and they had orders to proceed there themselves, and they had booked the same transp
ort. She gnashed her teeth and managed a catlike grin when Kaseem extended his hand and said, “Looks as if we will be working together again.”
“ What is your interest in this case. Dr. Kaseem?”
Kaseem's eyes gave him away. He did hold some secret. The black orbs flashed for a millisecond, and Forsythe became uncomfortable and worked toward finding a seat.
“ There is something more to your interest in these vampire killings than you've told me, isn't there? Isn't there?”
“ It's a long story.”
“ We have a long flight ahead.”
He took a deep breath. “All right, we'll talk.”
During the flight, Kaseem painted a bizarre picture of a young medical technician in the marines who had a taste for blood. When caught at his peculiar addiction, the marine was removed from all medical areas, given other work to do. Stationed in West Germany in 1976, at the age of eighteen, still a private, a man named Davie Rosnich had successfully eluded military and civilian police after mur-dering a bunk mate in a bizarre fashion deep in a wooded area far from the base. Rosnich had convinced the other man that he was interested in him sexually, had convinced him to furlough the weekend with him and had then rendered him helpless, and finally took from the other man all of his blood.
“ To this day, Rosnich has eluded capture,” finished Captain Kaseem. “I… I was the man called in to examine the body. When I heard about your vampire killer in Wisconsin, I naturally became interested, and when I contacted my superiors, they contacted Leamy, and Leamy asked us in.”
“ Asked you in, I rather doubt.”
“ All right, so Leamy owed a favor. Nonetheless, we're here, and at least now you have a suspect.”
“ You should have told us about this suspect a long time ago.”
“ We did.”
“ Through whom?”
“ I am not at liberty to say.”
“ God damn you, Kaseem, you'd better get at liberty to say, or I'm calling your bloody superiors and Chief Leamy and anyone else I must! Now, who?”
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