by David Salkin
“He gonna’ work the case with me?” asked Captain Ammiano. “Says he will.”
“Okay, send him up,” he grumbled.
“What about the chicks downstairs? They got the whole Sisterhood
Union down there. They say they ain’t leaving until they talk to the Chief!” Captain Ammiano laughed. “The Chief, huh?” He let the chair bring him back up to vertical and stood up. “Guess they’ll have to settle.”
Ammiano and Ruiz walked down the stairs together, the stairwell filled with smoking cops who couldn’t smoke ‘inside the building’. They traveled down through the blue haze into the first floor hallway, which was buzzing with activity. Midtown Manhattan was a busy place, and the Precinct was always hopping. Sgt. Ruiz led his captain to a group of five women in rather interesting attire ranging from a black leather miniskirt that showed thigh highs with a white corset top, to a very torn pair of pink sweats that said “Juicy” on the back, in between holes that showed a red thong, with matching braless tank top.
As soon as they spotted Sgt Ruiz again with a man in an officer’s uniform, they descended on him like sharks to chopped tuna. “Juicy” was obviously the spokeswoman for the group.
“You the Chief?” she barked as they approached.
“I am Captain Patrick Ammiano, head of this precinct. I understand one of your ‘associates’ went missing four days ago?”
“That’s right! And I went to missing persons and did a hundred pages of bullshit and nobody did anything since. They didn’t even look for Tiffany!” The others began chiming in, all at once.
“Okay, listen,” said the Captain, raising his hands to quiet the women, “Let’s relax and get some statements and see if we can find your friend, okay?”
That led to everyone talking at once again, and Sergeant Ruiz shouted a “Shut up!”, then followed it with a, “Please!” He had the group follow him down another hallway and sit on a bench, then, one at a time, give statements to himself and Captain Ammiano. When the last one was finished, she gave her cell number to the captain who gave her his card, and told her he’d contact her in a few days and to contact him if they heard anything or thought of anything that might be useful.
When they left, Captain Ammiano called Lt. Alexander into the room with him and Ruiz.
“Okay, best I can tell, a hooker named Tiffany, whose real name nobody seems to know, left Donavan’s Pub off Columbus Circle around two in the morning with a white guy that no one can describe. Medium build, medium height, medium eyes, medium hair…nobody noticed anything. The one chick that was with Tiffany, named…” he checked his notes, “named Star, she says the guy looked clean cut, and was maybe 35 or 40, and in good shape. That’s it.”
“Bartender remember anything?” asked the lieutenant.
“Nothing. Place was crowded. Usually remembers people by what they drink—this guy comes up blank.”
“Great. So we have a hooker with no real name. A suspect with no real description. Any other solid leads?” asked the LT.
“Nope,” replied the captain. “But since you wanted to open a case file on her—she’s all yours. Sergeant Ruiz will be more than happy to help you out with her. Personally, I am fishing for two weeks—you guys have fun.” With that, Captain Ammiano got up and left, leaving Sgt. Ruiz and Lieutenant Alexander sitting at the bare metal table with a few papers for their newly opened case file.
“What are we supposed to do with this?” asked Roy. “We have nothing to work with. Nobody else to talk to. This is a dead end, LT.”
“She might be, but she might also be connected to the other four missing hookers I have shoved in a file in my office. These girls have all gone missing without a trace. If they were somebody important, we’d be all over it—but nobody gives a shit because they’re hookin’. We could have a serial killer out there, Roy, but any time I use that word, people look at me like I have three heads. I am not being hysterical or paranoid or any of the other bullshit comments I have heard about this—I am being professional. We’ve got somebody out there whacking young girls and it’s about time we started acting like investigators.”
Roy made a scowl, then leaned back and said, “Okay, boss. You’re right. We should look at them as a possible series of attacks that have some connection. You have files on all the other ones?”
“I have very incomplete files on them. Same problems as with this case—no real names for most of them. No real backgrounds, no witnesses, no nothing. And I’ve only got the missing girls in our precinct. Now that Pat has given me a green light, I am going to contact the other precincts and start using some computer time to see what else I come up with.”
“Can’t we just use the supercomputer and have all the pictures of everyone with last known addresses up in like thirty seconds?” asked Roy.
“What are you talking about?” asked the lieutenant.
“You know—like the one on CSI. They get all the information they need in under a minute. Why don’t we have one of those?”
Joe sat back, realizing that Roy was messing with him. “Very nice, Roy. Just for that,
you can do the backgrounds. Shouldn’t take you more than a minute…”
Lieutenant Alexander got up and left, throwing his file at Roy, who shook his head and mumbled, like there was any doubt who was actually gonna’ do all of the work…
Six
VWX
Adam’s Apartment
Adam returned to his apartment while it was still dark outside and closed the door behind him. He walked across the fairly empty loft towards his bed, undressing as he walked. He hung his clothes back up in the closet and laid down, nude, on his bed. He still felt very warm from his large blood meal, and was quite content. He lay on his back, and stared at the ceiling, thinking about his very long afterlife.
He had learned quickly, although somewhat reluctantly, what was required to survive. The few words that the creature had spoken had been a small clue. It had lived “on the fringe of the battlefields”, finding blood meals easily, and disappearing without raising suspicion. With thousands of dead bodies, who would ever question a few more?
For several years after becoming what he was now, he had stayed in
• 34 • uniform. He changed sides whenever the thought suited him, becoming bored with one place or another after a while. No longer having friends or family he dared be around, lest he get hungry, he had no ties to any one place in particular. His parents and younger brothers would have been told about his presumed death at Jena, along with twenty-five thousand of his countrymen, and he was free to simply “disappear”.
He had learned to control his appetite, feeding once every three days. On occasion, “the animal would get out”, and he would go on a small rampage, sometimes drinking several victims at once. During these times, he would sometimes eat the flesh of some of his victims, making himself quite sick in the process. The blood meals were all that he needed to survive, and in fact, more than that would lead to vomiting up anything that was solid. Still, he missed “eating”, and when he was lost in his animal frenzy, he would get carried away and end up making himself sick the way a drinker might go on a binge.
Now, two hundred years later, he was much more in control, and in fact, had become quite the connoisseur of blood. In his earlier years, he would eat any living mammal he could get his hands on. And while any mammal could sustain him and keep him alive, they equated to drinking wine from a box, and he had developed quite expensive taste over the years.
With his heightened senses, he had learned to “experience” blood the way a wine connoisseur appreciates the finest wines. His favorite, no doubt, was the blood of women who were experiencing sexual ecstasy, since they would release hormones, pheromones, endorphins, and even adrenaline. They also reminded him of being human, and provided female company, even if it didn’t last long. While most of his human “feelings” had left him along with his soul, he did still feel lonely on occasion. Being physically with a woman was nostal
gic, and he thoroughly enjoyed smelling and tasting the subtle differences in his prey.
Sometimes, when he had gone four or five days without eating, for various inconvenient reasons, he would pick a larger male—preferably one in good physical shape. The large, muscular males had less body fat, a taste he loathed, and they provided extra adrenaline when they fought back. Adam had somehow become much stronger after he had “died”, and no human was a match for him—especially once his razor sharp claws and teeth had come out. More than one “tough guy” had frozen in fear when Adam’s teeth grew out of his mouth. He could smell fear as easily as he could smell blood, and he enjoyed every second of it. He frequently tortured or killed his victims slowly, not out of malice or sadism, but rather because of the huge array of chemicals humans released when they were in agony, or fighting for their lives. The taste of a hyperventilating human with over-oxygenated blood—ahhh, it was like the finest champagne.
Adam’s mind wandered, and he recalled a runner he had eaten in central park some years ago. The man had been an athlete, and his blood was so heavily oxygenated that he could practically taste the “fizz” on his tongue when he drank the man’s blood. That meal had been so delicious he had gone slowly, keeping the poor man alive for almost an hour. He had snapped various bones in the man’s hands to keep the adrenaline and endorphins pumping, watching the man’s tormented face with great interest as he occasionally sipped the fine blood from his carotid artery. He had almost felt pity for a fleeting moment—a brief flirtation with some humanity left within him, but it was quickly suppressed with a long slurp of blood. In the end, he had left the man’s body completely drained, and was so full, he didn’t feed again for four days. The man’s body was never found, having been shoved into an ancient sewer pipe. Adam’s rapture lasted for days.
Adam looked at the ceiling, lost in his thoughts, traveling over the years and visiting the many places in his mind. Sometimes, after a large meal, he would “sleep” like this for two days or more, enjoying the scenery in his head. Adam, while he was still Olmer Bartha, had traveled west through Europe, following the armies, until he reached Western France. It was while there, several years after the Napoleonic Wars had ended, that he had learned about Prussian mercenaries traveling to America to fight in the Union Army in the “War Between the States”. He was intrigued. The war would provide him with a food source, and he would have a chance to discover a new world. Why not?
Olmer joined a group of Prussians, boarded a large boat, and sailed west. Of course, by the time the boat arrived in New York City, most of the Prussian mercenaries had “disappeared”, and Olmer had to sneak off of the ship to avoid questions at the port. He joined a New York regiment, and spent the next three years gorging himself across the American countryside. Places like Gettysburg, Fredericksburg and Antietam had provided so much food, he would occasionally leave his unit to feed for weeks, and then rejoin a unit somewhere else. After Appomattox, he returned to New York, and enjoyed life in the big city. Meals were plentiful, as were sights of interest and places to live without raising suspicion.
By the 1940’s Olmer had changed his name to Adam Priest. He found this private joke to be most entertaining, naming himself after “the first human”, and picking a last name to mock a church that spoke of God and Heaven and Hell. How would they explain him? Certainly, Satan had not spoken to him directly, and he had done nothing to bring this situation upon himself. So why him? Where was God? In over two hundred years of contemplation, he was no closer to any answer.
The new “Adam Priest” enlisted in the Army in 1942, went to Africa and then Europe, and ate his way to Berlin. He stayed there for a few years after the war, happy to hear a version of his old native tongue which came right back to him, but soon wanted to be back in America. He returned to America, and toured across the country for almost thirty years before returning to New York. No other city had the exciting night life, which made feeding so much easier. The huge population and wide variety of ethnicities offered a veritable “buffet”— it was like eating in a new country every night!
Adam decided New York City would be home for a long while, and money was never a problem, having steadily built his personal wealth from the wallets of his food. Adam found hunting easier at night, since he could see quite easily in the dark and his pray could not. While “vampire legends” claimed sunlight would burn him, it did not. He was as comfortable in the daylight as he was in the evening. The only thing he had to be careful about was being outside during the day when he hadn’t eaten for a few days. When he was getting hungry, his skin would get quite pale and his eyes would get very light and silvery. While it didn’t physically “bother” him, it did make his appearance quite bizarre, and he preferred to avoid attracting attention to himself.
When Adam was “full”, his eyes were blue, as they had been in life. How many times had some woman leaned in close, flirting with unknown death, to whisper, “You have the most beautiful eyes” to him? They had seen those same eyes go wild as their own lives were sucked from their bodies.
Prior to 9-11, Adam found it quite easy to change his apartment every year or two as he moved around the city. He never stayed anyplace too long, afraid to be noticed by neighbors. After 9-11, renters began requiring identification and personal information that Adam was uncomfortable supplying. Because of this, he found an apartment in a nice part of the city, in midtown near Central Park, settled in, and stayed put.
Seven
VWX
Mid-Town Precinct
Sgt. Ruiz was sitting in his tiny office, on hold again. He had been on the phone on and off for three days trying to work the investigation into the missing Prostitute known only as “Tiffany”. Fingerprints would have identified her easily, since she had been arrested for solicitation once before, but they were still waiting for Tiffany’s “girls” to come back and go through log books of women that had been arrested for prostitution. They had left a message for “Star” to come back in, but she hadn’t shown up yet. Obviously, she had a very busy schedule.
The voice finally came back on the phone again. “Hey, sorry, Roy— you still there?” asked a female voice.
“Yeah, but I think I need to shave again,” he said sarcastically.
• 40 • “Yeah, well, I think I may have something for you. I am transferring you to Detective Tim Rosetto’s line. If he doesn’t answer, you’ll go to his voice mail. One of my guys down here told me that Tim is working a similar case. Good luck. Please hold.” She put him back on hold, and transferred Roy to Tim’s line. He expected a voice mail message, but Detective Rosetto picked up right away.
“Detective Rosetto here,” he said quickly. He sounded like he was being interrupted.
“Detective Rosetto, this is Sergeant Roy Ruiz, Midtown. I’m working on a possible homicide. We have a Jane Doe, goes by Tiffany, officially listed as ‘missing’, but she was a working girl, and her friends are convinced she got waxed. I understand you are working some missing hookers?”
“Hey, Roy. Yeah, me and my partner have been working a couple of missing persons, and in the process have come up with a huge fucking pile of missing hookers. I know we lose a few in this city every month, but I think it’s a lot more than we think it is.”
“How many files you have open?” asked Roy.
“Okay, listen—this is under wraps, okay? I mentioned serial killer to my boss and he went ape-shit on me, capiche?”
Roy smiled. “Yeah, same reaction over here. Everyone is afraid of the New York Post headline. Whatcha’ got?”
“Unofficially, Roy…almost forty. And I am pretty sure I am only scratching the surface.”
“Forty?” Roy’s jaw dropped. “How many years you go back?”
“Not years. Months. Fifteen months. It’s not once a month, it’s like once every week or two. They’re from all over the city. I am doing exactly the same thing you are doing—calling around to other precincts to see who is doing what. You are the first guy o
ther than me to follow up.” “You have time for a cup of joe? I’ll even buy.”
“Not today—I’m jammed. You working tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Want me to come down there, or you want to come uptown?”
“You’re buying! I’m coming uptown. I love the Starbucks by the Mandarin. Be there at eight?”
“You got it. I’ll be in uniform.”
“Done. I’m plain clothes. Look for an extremely handsome Italian stallion.” He hung up.
· · ·
Roy was buried in papers dating back almost two years when his phone rang. It was Lieutenant Alexander. “Hey Roy—it’s Joe. Come downstairs. You’re gonna do some real cop work today.”
“I
am doing real cop work. I’m up to my ass in this missing persons shit that’s not a serial killer, but makes people disappear every few days…got a lead from a detective in the sixth.”
“Sixth? Isn’t that the Village?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay—good. In the meantime, we have an actual body. Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Yeah. You didn’t eat yet did you?”
“No. Why?” he asked warily.
“’Cause I don’t want you puking on my good shoes. Come on down. I’m double parked in front.”
“Double parked in front of a precinct? You got balls. I bet you get a ticket.” He hung up, closed the files, and headed downstairs.
Eight
VWX
Crime Scene: Warehouse on 61st
R
oy had hopped into the car with Joe and they sped through the streets with their magnetic light stuck to the roof of their unmarked car. “You were there already?” asked Roy.
“Yeah.”
“And I take it, it’s nasty?”
“Yeah.”
“So why are you making me look at it? You pissed off at me or
