“ Poor little bastard just couldn't take it any longer without his old friend and partner, Lowenthal. Gamble did his last victim, and then he did himself. Simple, neat and no guesswork. The cops'11 love it. Your bosses will love it. But enough about everybody else, huh?”
He began tugging on the rope looped through a notch hole in the overhead beam and she began to feel herself being dragged toward the position that Kaseem's corpse had occupied only minutes before. Her eyes were wide with horror, the helplessness of her position making her wish for a quick and painless end.
“ Yes, enough about others and the outside world, Jessica,” he continued his devilish taunts. “Let's talk about us… about you and me, and about your blood…”
Otto Boutine knew the city well, having spent a number of years in the Chicago field office himself. He had sped away from Matisak's place toward the crime lab, hoping against hope that he might find Jessica curled up on a cot in an internist's room somewhere there, catching up on her sleep. Along the way, he received a patch-through from Quantico. It was the blood specialist, Robertson, telling him that Jessica had called D.C. in search of him, and that she seemed to be on to something, and had asked him to fly to Chicago tonight.
The news only added to his depression. She'd been trying to get him, and he had been unavailable to her. One of the operatives at the field office had finally come forward with a story about her having telephoned there for Brewer, claiming that the Chicago vampire had telephoned her at the crime lab. It had been this news that had sent them racing to Matisak's place. But now all leads seemed to end in a blind alley. Where on earth could she be? Would they not know until it was too late? Had she been abducted by Matisak?
The radio crackled with static and then a rough voice said into it, “This is Sergeant Iverson, Precinct 13. Seems we got a call through dispatch from your APB-''
“ Dr. Coran!” He was instantly excited. “When?”
“ Well over two hours ago, sir, just before I came on shift. Just happened to be looking back over the log when I saw it.”
Otto was frantic, but he tried to recall where the 13th Precinct fell, somewhere on the North Side. He had had a good friend who worked out of a decoy unit at the 13th, so he knew something of the area. He now pleaded for more information on the call. “Did Dr. Coran leave any word for me?”
“ Negative, sir. Something of a strange call, actually.”
“ Look, do you have it transcribed? Can you read it back?”
“ Sir, we have it on tape. We keep all incoming calls on tape for thirty days before we discard, and-”
“ Well, for Christ's sake, Iverson, play the damned tape.”
“ Coming to you, Inspector Boutine.”
Boutine instantly recognized and reacted to Jessica's voice, although it was going through a maze of relays from a tape not the best of quality to begin with, but it was wonderful to hear her. She was asking questions about an address that led to someone named Hillary Gamble. The name sounded familiar but he couldn't place it.
He listened to the police dispatcher's reply and waded through the ceremonies as she was then speaking to a duty sergeant. The duty sergeant pulled what they had on Gamble.
Otto racked his brain for where he had seen the name before, and then he recalled that it had been in the list of personnel folders he had shared with Brewer at Balue-Stork.
He continued to listen to the tape. Jess asked for a rundown on Gamble. It was given, and Boutine stored the address in his mind for safekeeping. He knew the area, knew that he could be there in five, ten minutes tops. He swung the car completely around, tossing the strobe light overhead as he did so, causing two other cars to collide behind him as he peeled away.
The final remark on the tape was the desk sergeant's explaining how Gamble had been arrested for indecently exposing himself on an occasion of his having called police out on a complaint against a neighbor.
Otto bore down on the neighborhood where Gamble lived. As he did so, he thought of the bizarre triangle that Lowenthal, Matisak and Gamble created. He wondered if they could all have played a part in the killings, or if Jessica had been right about Lowenthal's being an old-fashioned patsy. So how did Gamble figure into it? Hillary Gamble was male. At Balue-Stork, Otto had set his personnel file aside, thinking that a woman working in the mailroom was of no importance to the case. But Hillary was a man, and from the sound of him, a man who could be dangerous.
Otto called the precinct back. “Sergeant Iverson.”
“ Yes, sir?” the sergeant responded militarily.
“ Check your records for any complaints filed against a Matthew Matisak.”
“ Have earlier done so, sir, when the APB was run on him, and sorry to say, but nothing-not so much as a parking ticket.”
Otto was crossing Irving Park Road at Ashland, having come off the Kennedy, headed for Gamble's address.
Brewer's voice broke the static of the radio. “I've got your destination, Otto, and I'm behind you.”?
THIRTY
It was all taking too much time, Matisak thought, and he began to rush things. He lifted the trach tube and turned it to the off position. He placed the tourniquet about her neck, and finally, he kneeled below Jessica Coran's throat. With her eyes wide, the way he liked it at first, he pressed the sharp, beveled edge of the straw into her throat, but she suddenly flailed and writhed. He dropped the spigot as a trickle of blood ran down her soft, white throat, and the glass tubing crackled into jagged pieces.
“ You damnable bitch!” He struck her and went back to the briefcase for a second spigot. This time he held her head so that it was immovable as he quickly jammed the straw into her jugular with the practiced hands of a physician.
She couldn't see it, but she knew that the end of the tube had just filled with her blood. He tightened the tourniquet about her throat, almost choking off her air, and then he opened the spigot.
She smelled him as he moved in closely enough to lower his head below the spigot where he lapped up her blood before it could spill to the floor.
The horror of the moment transfixed her.
She was dying.
Her life was running out of her.
There was no escape.
She was dying the way that Candy Copeland and the others had died: at the hands of a bloodsucking, human lamprey, a Tort 9 monster. She was fast becoming another statistic for the FBI records.
And there were sure to be future victims of this madman, Matisak…
J.T., Boutine, Brewer, all the others, would find Gamble with his head shot off at close range, a suicide note written in blood-perhaps her blood-beside him, and Matisak would be safe from anyone's hounding him, so long as he chose to stay “on the wagon,” or to gain his blood by other means. He could never again safely use the spigot.
But he would kill again, and again, and…
“ Just like milking a cow,” he said in her ear between gurgles and slurps.
She felt the uncaring and dizziness overtaking her; wondered how long she would be conscious. She didn't want to be conscious any longer…
Or was it all a terrible dream? Had the entire long nightmare of the case she had pursued since Wekosha been just that? A long, long nightmare from which she seemed unable to climb?
Was she in fact in Virginia, in her apartment, in her bed, about to wake any moment from the horror? It was a comforting alternative to which her anguished mind resorted moments before passing out.
# # #
Matisak began to enjoy himself too much. He had stopped the flow of her blood, and she had regained a weak consciousness. This excited him.
But he fought the old urges as overwhelming as they were; he must not give in. He must carry through with his plan. There was too great a push on for his capture, and even with Lowenthal's death, too much doubt cast by this woman to let her live. The search for the vampire must end with Gamble's death.
He had planned it down to the smallest detail.
But ther
e was much to do and each moment that Dr. Coran was here meant a moment more that someone could trace her to Gamble's place. He must hurry.
But perhaps he had time for a little indulgence, perhaps a pint.
At least a half pint.
But first he must ready everything. He lined up the jars to within reach. He positioned the briefcase and puttered about with the power tools, readying these.
It was all going so perfectly.
He could hardly believe his luck, and that she had been such a fool. In the end, he thought, they were all fools. And he did the same work as the trap-door spider, taking its prey in through surprise.
“ It was a surprise, wasn't it, Dr. Coran?” he asked, but she wasn't replying. She just hung there upside down, like a sleeping bat.
She was pretty, this one.
# # #
Jessica thought she heard her father's voice telling her how pretty she was. She was eleven years old and somewhat gangly and very awkward. She had been teased by some insensitive lout at the new school on the army base where her father had once more been relocated, and as a child going through a difficult period, relocation was the last thing she needed. She had just gotten settled in at the school in Germany when they'd had to pack everything up for Spain. Her mother's health had started falling off as well, and she would never fully regain her strength. And so her father had been spending more time looking after her.
“ You're the most beautiful girl in that school, Jessie, and when you go back, you've just got to keep telling yourself that. And then you just watch what happens…”
All of her life, her father had been a great morale booster, a great teacher and a wonderful friend. A flood of memories about him, and of her being with him, washed over her. It was her father who had convinced her that she had what it would take to be a medical doctor, and later what it would take to be an FBI woman.
She heard sounds around her that disturbed the memories of her and her father at their summer retreat home where the woods were alive with wind and sunshine and small creatures, and where they hunted deer. She had learned to disembowel and skin the deer at a young age, and her interest in forensic medicine began with her fascination in exploring the inner workings of the deer's body.
She had learned to overcome her initial fears and squeamishness to the point of placing her arm into the carcass up to her elbow in order to come away with the organs in her hand. Later, on many a hunting trip with men in Minnesota, Oregon and Canada, she was always told that she didn't have to watch as they cut open the carcass, hung it from a tree and proceeded to clean it of unwanted parts. More than one man who had become interested in her ran quickly away from her when she had shown them the quickest and most efficient method of disemboweling the creature.
Something dark like a void filled her mind and blotted out these thoughts now, and it sat on her chest like an evil urchin, grinning at her. It was mindless and shapeless and it, like the deer, was cut open, soaking her with blood as the deer did when she reached in to remove its insides. She strained to see what it was and then it coalesced into a form, the form of a woman. She feared going nearer, and yet her mind made the final step toward the form dangling from the tree. It was her.
The shock brought her around, making her moan, and the moan increased her consciousness.
She recalled where she was.
Recalled Gamble.
Recalled Matisak.
Recalled her escape attempt, and its having failed.
She felt her arms tied behind her back, the gag in her mouth. She felt the pressure of the blood in her head and the pain in her ankles from her own weight.
She felt the strange, unusual weight on her throat: the spigot.
She forced herself to remain calm, telling herself she must think… must think… must think…
Jessica knew that Matisak didn't want her to be too conscious, and that he certainly didn't want to have her eyes pinned on him as he carried out his heinous ritual on her. It was, after all, a weakness, an addiction, and even Matisak knew that his drinking blood was an addiction, and addicts only indulged their addictions in private. He didn't like to be watched at this stage of his killing act, and not wishing her eyes to be put out by his scalpel, she held them closed against the nightmare. She thought of the mistakes she had made; how her mistakes had led her into this trap; how she had broken with FBI procedure in coming here alone; how she had gotten Kaseem killed, and how she had helped that bastard, Matisak.
Too late for regrets… too late, her mind told her. Or was it her father's voice? Sounded like Dad, something he'd say. She drew on the comforting thought and clung to it. It was all she had.
Within very close range of her she heard Matisak drinking her blood from a mason jar.
Some of your blood, he had written in the letter. And now he had it.
He had been clever, like a champion chess player, making his move only after a feint, using his pawns-Gamble and Lowenthal-wisely. She had been checkmated; he had won her as his final prize, a prize he meant to squeeze blood from. And like a predatory animal, he had stalked her without her knowing just how close he had crept on silent feet, to pounce when she least expected it. He held her body now with the same reverence a tiger gives its life-giving prey. She had become the slain deer and her precious life was being stripped from her by the predator. She brought up the sheer power of the hatred she held for this monster, Matisak. She drew on her hatred for strength.
Her eyes still shut against him and his awful proceedings, she heard gas escape from him. He was burping after draining a jar of her blood. He would be coming back for more… and more… and more… until there was no more.
She tried to concentrate on her father, recalling his kind features, his loving manner, but his face coalesced into that of Otto Boutine. She clung to Otto's image.
Meanwhile, around her she half heard the killer stacking up the instruments that fulfilled his sick desires. She heard the rattle of bottles and the movement of heavy tools. She fought back the fear.
“ Fight, Jessie. Fight and hang on,” she heard her father's voice from deep within. Her father had taught her to stand up for herself, to be tough and independent; how to hunt and trap, but he had never foreseen the day when she would be in the trap.
She struggled just the same, fighting against hope to regain the strength she would need to slow Matisak down.
She forced her eyes open to the horror before her. Gamble's body still lay where it had fallen in a pool of purple blood, discolored by the lack of light. Matisak was prancing ponylike about the small, crowded space, very much pleased with himself. He was now crouching over his brown valise, staring into two vials of semen; it must not be Gamble's semen. In order for his ruse to work, Teach must use some anonymous supply, likely stolen from a sperm bank. This time, he must even leave the vial along with his tools and case, to further implicate Gamble.
His back to her, she curled her body forward at the waist, and being double-jointed, she brought her tied hands from her back to her front. At the same instant, he sensed her movement, stood and rushed at her, fearing she intended to snatch out the spigot, to destroy a second one, allowing herself to bleed to death very messily in the bargain. She saw his charge, and with her extended fists, she madly and blindly struck out at him, creating of her fists a deadly weapon, as she had been taught at the academy.
The doubled-up fists caught Matisak in the temple, knocking him off balance, his weight grazing her as he lost his footing, tripping over Gamble. This caused her entire body to sway within inches of the gun he had used in killing Gamble, which was left now on a coffee table.
She reached for the gun, but it was just beyond her fingers. She swayed her body with as much power as she could muster, her hand extended toward the gun. Matisak kicked out at the table at the same instant her hand wrapped around the gun. She had it in her grasp. The gun slipped but she caught it by the trigger guard and held on, dangling upside down.
She heard M
atisak scrambling about the floor, suddenly afraid of her, but he could not be seen. Did he have another gun? A knife? She tugged with one hand at the gag in her mouth while keeping the gun pointed ahead. As she half freed the gag, she realized that he was coming up from behind her, about to pounce. She swiveled, bringing the gun around and firing, missing him but sending him diving away into the darkness again.
She saw the scalpel gleaming in the night beside the briefcase. Where was he?
She opened fire, exploding the jar of blood she saw on a nearby end table, a jar of her blood.
“ Damn you!” shouted Matisak, and she fired at the sound of his voice, missing him. She tugged at what remained of the gag, freeing herself of it.
“ The sh-shots will bring police, Matisak! You bastard. You'd better run while you have the chance. Go on, run! Run!” Her voice was filled with venom and hatred and the wise use of her academy training which taught that intimidation was half the contest in a confrontation. “Go on, run!”
He did run, and she fired at the black shadow as it pounced on her, ripping the gun from her. She knew he was shot, but not fatally.
She screamed as loudly as she could nonstop, trying desperately to alert someone outside the house, but even the gunshots seemed to have been ignored.
Matisak fell back from her, the gun now in his possession. He brandished the gun in her direction as if he would pull the trigger, but he failed to do so. A quick end would be welcomed, and it would be out of keeping with the vampire's modus operandi. She taunted him to shoot, saying, “Go ahead, shoot! Shoot, you bastard! Kill me, damn you! Kill me!”
But the shot did not come. Matisak stumbled, losing his balance once more, weakened by the shock of the gunshot to his side, staring at his own blood and trembling to see it running from himself.
Matisak passed out.?
THIRTY-ONE
Using her teeth, Jessica tore at the rope holding her in bondage, knowing she hadn't fatally shot Matisak, and that her time was limited. She struggled with her bonds, animal fear motivating her. Unable to get her hands free, she curled toward her ankles where the feeling had gone dead in her feet. She tried to get her weight off the rope, remembering that so long as there was a dead weight on the knot he used, there was no way to free it.
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