by Alex Archer
All the women looked remarkably similar.
They could have been cousins, Annja thought. In some cases even sisters.
They had narrow faces and expressive eyes, with clear skin and healthy-looking hair. The hairstyles themselves were all different—some wore their hair long, as Annja did, while others had cut theirs considerably shorter, and one even had a crew cut—but their features were remarkably similar.
Annja knew it was a long shot, but she asked the obvious question anyway.
“Are they related?”
“No.”
She looked up from the photos. “You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. I did the research myself.”
“They all look far too similar for this to be a coincidence,” Annja told him.
Novack nodded. “I agree.”
“What do the police say?”
“They disagree with me.”
“Then you need to go back and try again. Get them to listen to you.”
“I tried. Several times, in fact. Shortly after my last attempt I was brought into the captain’s office and told that I was, without argument, going to announce my retirement for medical reasons.”
That must have been both humiliating and painful.
“But honestly, my forced retirement isn’t what’s got me worried.”
The conversation was starting to feel surreal. “Twenty-three possible killings aren’t enough?”
“No. It’s what the killer’s doing afterward. At least three of the bodies—maybe more—were drained of their blood.”
Annja looked up slowly. “You mean the victims bled out, don’t you?” she asked, just to be sure.
Novack shook his head. “No, I mean drained. As in all of it. If I was the superstitious type I’d say that Báthory had come back from the dead.”
The image of those two unusual wounds on Marta’s leg flashed through Annja’s mind.
“The medical examiner’s report noted that the latest victim had several deep cuts along her torso, from which she could have bled extensively, but she also had two puncture wounds on her inner thigh near the femoral artery.”
The former senior sergeant watched her closely as he asked, “How do you know what the autopsy report says?”
This time it was Annja’s turn to shake her head. “That’s not important right now. Just tell me if any of the other bodies had the same kind of injuries.”
He nodded. “Two that I know of.”
That was all?
“You’re sure there aren’t others? Were the injuries noted in the autopsy reports?”
“I didn’t see those reports—I was already retired by the time these two victims turned up. But I know the injuries were there.”
Annja was skeptical. “How could you if you didn’t see the reports?”
He hesitated, as if reluctant to answer, but finally said, “I sneaked into the morgue and examined the bodies before they were sent off to the undertaker.”
Annja laughed; she couldn’t help it. Apparently she’d found a kindred spirit.
Novack frowned, misunderstanding. “I have a man on the inside who’s been helping me, but he couldn’t get to the reports without being discovered, so I did what I had to do.”
She shook her head. “I’m not criticizing,” she told him. “Far from it. I was laughing because I would have done the exact same thing in your position.”
He didn’t look all that mollified, but at least he let it go.
“Did you see any of the earlier bodies?”
“A few. On the cases I was assigned to, at least. I don’t remember seeing anything like what you described, however. If there had been injuries like that, the medical examiner, Petrova, would have discovered them.”
“Unless he’s part of the cover-up.”
Even as she said it, she knew it couldn’t be that simple. Too many people would have seen those reports. Petrova wouldn’t have been foolish enough to hide the presence of such wounds in the other twenty-two alleged victims only to list them so blatantly on the autopsy report for the twenty-third.
Then a thought occurred to her: perhaps this time he didn’t have a choice.
“Were any of the other victims still alive when they were found?” she asked Novack.
“No.”
Annja felt her pulse quicken. Thanks to her “interference,” the latest victim had been brought to the local hospital before she succumbed to her injuries. Those involved wouldn’t have been able to tuck the situation away under a rug somewhere; too many people were involved at that point, from the doctors and nurses at the hospital to Annja herself.
The autopsy report hadn’t been made public and probably wouldn’t be, not with an active murder investigation under way. Nor had there been any mention of the cause of death at the press conference. Annja only knew about the blood loss and the puncture wounds because she’d broken into Petrova’s office and seen his notes. By naming Csilla as the alleged killer, those involved, be it Petrova or someone else, could keep the facts from coming to light long enough for it not to matter.
Besides being clever, it made a weird, twisted kind of sense.
If everything Novack had said was true.
But Annja wasn’t convinced yet. It was still possible that he’d fabricated all of this as part of some delusional need to remain in the spotlight. Novack might have deliberately picked the so-called “victims” because of how similar they looked to one another. In fact, the idea that Novack might be suffering from his own fabricated delusion actually made more sense than the widespread conspiracy to cover up the murders of twenty-some-odd people.
But something in his story rang true, enough that she wouldn’t be able to walk away without checking it out for herself.
It was only when Novack asked, “What are you thinking?” that Annja realized she’d been silent for a while.
“I’m thinking that you’ve convinced me of the importance of doing some more digging.”
Novack breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God,” he muttered underneath his breath.
“Who else knows about this?” Annja asked, gesturing to the folders.
“Once I was fairly certain there was a pattern, I brought the first ten cases I’d located to my direct superior. He dismissed it out of hand and, as you know, took me off active duty. After that I didn’t see the point in sharing it with anyone except Radecki and, of course, now you.”
“Radecki?”
“Martin Radecki,” Novack qualified. “He’s a junior officer from my old squad. He came to me a few months ago, asked if he could help. He’d heard rumors I was working on something big when I’d been sacked. The other guys laughed at him, but he was willing to dig in and get his hands dirty. He’s the one who’s been getting me some of the information from the crime files. He’s gonna go far, that one.”
Just a handful of people, then.
It wasn’t as bad as Annja had thought.
“I’m going to take a closer look at these files. Where can I reach you when I’m done?”
Novack shook his head. “I’ve been moving around lately. Why don’t I just reach out to you?”
Annja didn’t understand his reluctance, but she decided not to push the issue. “All right,” she said. “Give me a few days and then get in touch.”
His expression was grave as he said, “Don’t take too long. A young woman sits in a jail cell wrongly accused while the real killer still roams free.”
15
This time she answered the phone almost immediately.
“Yes?”
“Sorry to disturb you, but there’s been a development I think you should be aware of.”
“Let me guess. Ms. Creed is continuing to make a nuisance of herself.”
“Yes. She’s been in touch with Novack.”
“So?”
“Novack can still hurt us.”
“Unlikely. No one listens to him, not after what we did to his reputation.”
He gritted hi
s teeth, not liking the direction the call was going. Why couldn’t she see the danger here?
“I believe this Creed woman will listen. If you review the material I sent over, you’ll see that she has the tenacity of an irritated mastiff and...”
“I’ve read it.”
The flat tone of her voice let him know he was on dangerous ground, and he quickly backpedaled.
“My apologies. I didn’t mean to imply that you had not. I was merely concerned for our enterprise.”
“My enterprise,” she corrected, to which he wisely said nothing. At least her tone was less angry.
She was quiet for a moment and then, “What would you suggest?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Eliminate Novack. Cut the head off the snake before it grows any bigger.”
“Do you think that’s necessary?”
“I do. He hasn’t stopped his investigation—we know that. I suspect he isn’t sharing all that he’s uncovered. There’s no telling how much information he’s gathered since leaving the force. At least when he was inside we could control him.”
He winced the moment the comment left his mouth—he’d argued pretty vehemently about leaving Novack as an active duty officer where they could keep an eye on him. His argument hadn’t gone over well, and calling her attention to his stance after all this time wasn’t so smart. Thankfully her mind was on other things.
“I met her today, you know.”
He froze. That was, perhaps, the last thing he’d expected to hear. Had Creed gotten that close already?
“What happened?”
He must have let some of his anxiety creep into his tone because she laughed and said, “Relax. She was in the village, showing those pictures around again, and stumbled upon the collection team. I was on-site at the time and decided to say hello, see what the fuss was about.”
“Do you think she suspects?”
“No. She thinks it’s a genealogical study and nothing more.” She paused, and then said, “She’s quite beautiful, you know.”
Her beauty, or lack thereof, didn’t make a difference to him. It was his job to make certain their operation continued without disruption, and all Creed represented to him was a potential chink in their armor.
“I know you ordered Creed left alone,” he said, “but now there’s been direct contact between them. She has a reputation for uncovering the things others would prefer to keep hidden, and leaving her to continue her investigation could be damaging to us in the long run.”
She was quiet a moment, considering. At last she said, “No, I want Creed left alone. She has some powerful friends who could be a problem for us should they come looking for her.”
“I can make it look like an accident.”
“Yes, I know. You’ve gotten quite good at that over the years.”
He said nothing; those very skills were the reason she paid him so handsomely. No need to brag.
“If and when the time comes, I’ll have you deal with her, but not until I give the word. And don’t think your little stunt the other night went unnoticed. She might not have ended up with Novack if you hadn’t pushed her in that direction.”
He took the rebuke silently, for he knew as well as she did that she was correct. It had been a clumsy operation and he was embarrassed by how it had turned out, but at least next time his people would know not to underestimate Creed. For a cable television host, she had more than a few tricks up her sleeve.
His boss wasn’t quite finished yet, however.
“Besides, after seeing her, I’m wondering if she might be a good fit for our program. I don’t want her harmed until we can determine if that’s the case.”
“I understand.”
“If you think it’s time to deal with Novack once and for all, then go ahead. Just make it clean.”
He smiled. It’s about time...
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll handle Novack.”
He knew just how to do it, too.
16
Back at the hotel, Annja began going through the information Novack had provided, looking for connections between the victims, similarities in methods of death and the like. She needed something the police couldn’t just brush off. Novack had gone through the file numerous times doing exactly what she was doing now, but she did it anyway, because a fresh pair of eyes could sometimes find details that had been previously overlooked.
Annja read each file in turn, taking several pages of notes in the process. Novack had said that Vass was the first victim “the police couldn’t ignore,” and after spending time with the documents he’d provided, she understood why he’d used that phrase. The vast majority of the women had been drifters, runaways, prostitutes—“the dregs of society,” they might have been called in another place and time. Annja preferred to think of them as the less fortunate. “There but for the grace of God go I” came to mind. She became even more determined to get to the bottom of the whole mess. These women were no less deserving of justice than anyone else.
She was going through the causes of death, looking for a pattern of any kind, when her phone rang.
“Hello?”
“What time is it over there anyway?” Doug asked.
Annja glanced at the clock. “One o’clock in the morning.”
“Did I wake you?”
“No.”
Annja heard muttered grumbling on the other end and couldn’t resist a smile. She’d apparently spoiled his attempt at payback.
“Got something for me, Doug?” she asked sweetly, pretending not to have heard his disappointment. Might as well let him save face.
“I’ve had the interns slaving away all day on that task you gave them.”
“Any luck?”
“Yes, though I don’t understand how it plays into your story about the crazy woman who bathed in the blood of virgins. I think...”
“Let me do the thinking, Doug,” Annja said. “Just tell me what you found out.”
He huffed but did as she asked. “The logo is for a company known as Transgenome Industries.”
Annja dragged her laptop over to her and typed in the name. “What do they do?”
“Damned if I know. Way too much science for me to make sense of. Something about DNA sequencing and replication, whatever the heck that is.”
Doug’s forte was marketing, especially to the millennial audience. Anything beyond that was definitely hit or miss. But he’d gotten her what she needed, and she began scanning the news articles that mentioned Transgenome Industries.
“It’s all kinda weird, if you ask me.”
She hadn’t, but she asked anyway, just to keep him happy. “What’s that?”
“TGI’s parent company is Giovanni Industries.”
That made Annja sit up and pay attention. “The cosmetics giant? That Giovanni Industries?”
“The very same. They’re hidden behind a couple dozen shell companies but one of the interns—Denise? Donna? I forget—used to be a finance major and she tore through them like a bull in a china shop. She assures me that at the end of the road is Giovanni Industries.”
Interesting. What the heck did a cosmetics company want with DNA samples from random Slovakian women?
Annja had no idea.
“Anything on Stone?” Annja asked.
“Nada. Nothing. Zilch.”
Annja knew that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Some people were pretty protective of their privacy, and Stone might be one of those types. She could have taken care to keep most information about her off the internet.
If Stone were a US citizen, Annja could check a variety of public records databases for information about her, from the Social Security Administration to the Department of Motor Vehicles. She could call her friend Bart in the Brooklyn Police Department and ask him to find out whether she had a criminal record. Bart could even use his contacts with the IRS to determine whether she was filing federal taxes and from where she was doing so. There was no way a US citizen could avoid that kind
of scrutiny.
On the other hand, if the woman had lied about her identity, Annja could search the web for days on end without finding anything useful.
Given that the rest of the information Stone provided proved suspect, to say the least, Annja expected she’d lied about her identity, too, and Doug’s inability to find anything appeared to bear that out.
“All right. Thanks, Doug. I’ll take it from here.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Annja’s brow furrowed. “Kidding about what?”
“You’re supposed to be working on a story about the vampire chick who bathes with virgins!” Doug said, exasperated. “What’s all this stuff about a cosmetics company?”
Annja sighed. She should have seen this one coming.
“Báthory wasn’t a vampire, nor did she bathe with virgins.”
“But you said...”
“I said she bathed in the blood of virgins,” Annja told him firmly, trying to cut him off before he got too far down that road. “And I don’t know what the genetics firm—note I said ‘the genetics firm,’ not ‘the cosmetics company’—has to do with the killings. I’m working on that.”
Doug was silent a moment.
“The killings?” he asked finally, tentatively.
“Yes, the killings. Why do you think...?”
“Wait. What killings?”
As Doug’s question rang in her ears, Annja realized she’d been so caught up in the events surrounding Csilla’s arrest and the information Novack had given her that she’d forgotten to fill Doug in on everything that had happened.
She did so as quickly and as succinctly as possible.
“So let me get this straight,” Doug said when she was finished. “Someone’s snatching women off the street, killing them and then draining their blood in the very place where the crazy vampire chick did the same thing five hundred years ago and you didn’t tell me about it!”
Annja pulled the phone away from her ear as Doug continued to rant and shout. She waited until he paused to take a breath and then cut in.
