Bloodless

by Douglas Preston

  “But we don’t have solid information to give them,” said Coldmoon. “Except for the raid on the church of crazy naked blood-drinking Satanists, who have all lawyered up by now.”

  “True. But we have enough to fashion a small bone from, which we can toss them.”

  Coldmoon grunted. “And when is this conference taking place?”

  “Two hours.”

  Coldmoon nearly choked on his coffee. “Two hours?”

  “As I said, the senator wants to get in front of this.”

  Constance peeped over the top of her journal as the two men rose. “In which case, a small bone might not be enough,” she said. “You should perhaps consider a tibia. Or even better, a femur.”

  Coldmoon shot her a glance, but her face was already hidden once again behind the periodical.

  The press conference took place in the parking lot behind the police station, where a temporary stage had been set up and the television news vans with their satellite dishes had room to park. It was obviously a hasty improvisation, but Coldmoon was impressed that Delaplane had been able to put even this together so quickly. A uniformed officer moved some cones aside to let them pass and waved them on to a restricted parking area. Pendergast took out his cell phone once again and dialed.

  “Who are you calling now?” Coldmoon asked.

  “Pickett,” Pendergast said, putting the call on speakerphone. “He wanted me to alert him when we arrived.”

  The phone was picked up by Pickett’s assistant. “He’s on with Senator Drayton at the moment, but he’s been expecting your call. One second, please.”

  A brief silence, and then Coldmoon heard a basso profundo voice with an unpleasant rasp come through the phone’s speaker. “I’m not sure you’re hearing me, Walt. I’ve got that outdoor rally in Savannah coming up awfully soon, and I won’t tolerate any diversions. You need to get this mess cleared up quickly, because—”

  “I beg your pardon?” Coldmoon heard Pendergast interrupt.

  There was a silence. Pickett’s voice came through, slightly breathless. “Agent Pendergast, I can’t take your call now. I’ll call you back.”

  “Yes, sir.” He paused a second. “It seems we might have had a phone malfunction, because I thought for a moment that I heard another voice—”

  “That will do,” Pickett said, his voice tight. And the phone went dead.

  Coldmoon looked at Pendergast, who had a most unusual twinkle of amusement in his eye. “Is that who I think it was? The Georgia senator, reaming out Pickett?”

  “Tragic how some people seem unable to master digital technology,” Pendergast said, not sounding perturbed at all.

  “I don’t know how, but I think you managed that little screw-up,” said Coldmoon.

  “Who, me? Impossible.”

  That Senator Drayton certainly sounded like a first-class asshole. Coldmoon couldn’t help but feel a certain grim satisfaction in knowing that Pickett might himself be on the receiving end of the stick.

  Pendergast was already out of the car and walking across the parking lot, and Coldmoon hurried to join him.

  He mounted the stage behind Pendergast, who took up a position on one side of the podium, with Delaplane, Detective Sheldrake, and a short, red-faced man Coldmoon assumed was the mayor on the other. The press had assembled with less jostling and chaos than Coldmoon expected. Maybe it had something to do with southern gentility. He noticed that the documentary filmmaker, Betts, must somehow have gotten wind of this conference before anyone else, because his team had parked themselves at the very front, staking out the choicest spot while the area behind had gradually filled with other journalists, cameras, and boom mics.

  At eleven o’clock sharp, Delaplane stepped up to the microphone and gave it a few loud taps to silence the crowd. “I am Commander Alanna Delaplane, Savannah PD,” she began, “and I welcome you all to this press conference.”

  She took a deep breath and went on, her powerful voice ringing off the façades of the surrounding buildings. This was one way to handle the press, Coldmoon thought: at high volume. She expressed sympathy for the two victims; assured the public that all resources were being brought to bear; praised the M.E.’s work; welcomed the help of the FBI; thanked the forensic teams and labs working on the case; and burnished the investigation to such a high gloss that it left the assembled press—who were no doubt thirsting for gore and controversy—dispirited, almost as if the case had been solved while their backs were turned. No mention was made of the raid.

  Then the mayor took the podium and praised Commander Delaplane in turn, along with various officials Coldmoon had neither seen nor heard of, for their splendid work on the case. Coldmoon was beginning to feel uneasy with all this self-congratulation: from his own perspective, so far they had jack shit. But the entire press conference seemed to be having an anesthetic effect, turning an inexplicable and frightening situation into something that sounded almost boring. Perhaps that was the intention.

  Finally, the mayor introduced “the highly decorated Special Agent Aloysius X. L. Pendergast of the FBI”—actually pronouncing his first name correctly which, Coldmoon guessed, might be another southern thing—and then stepped aside and yielded the podium.

  Pendergast stepped up to it and spent a few moments surveying the restless crowd with gleaming eyes. As he did so, a hush fell. Coldmoon had to admit his partner had a charismatic aura so magnetic it could quiet even a crowd of reporters—at least temporarily.

  “Honored ladies and gentlemen of the press,” Pendergast began, his honeyed accent thicker than ever, “the FBI is naturally glad to assist Savannah law enforcement in investigating these recent homicides.” He went on, his sonorous tone mesmerizing the crowd without actually imparting any information of note. He finished and stepped back, while Delaplane came forward again to call for questions. A scattering of hands shot up, including Betts’s.

  Delaplane pointed into the crowd. “Ms. O’Reilly, of WTOC?”

  “Do you have any leads?”

  “Yes, we do. I can’t go into them for obvious reasons, but we’re working on several promising avenues of investigation. Mr. Boojum of the Register?”

  “Commander, is there a concern there might be more killings? And, if so, do you have any advice for the public on how to protect themselves?”

  “We’ve quadrupled law enforcement presence in the historic area,” Delaplane said. “I would ask that people not walk downtown alone at night, and please avoid inebriation, which always makes one an easier target.”

  There was quite a bit of snickering among the press over that last piece of advice.

  “Ms. Locatelle of WHAF.”

  “Commander, what about the raid on that church over on Bee Street? Did anything come of that?”

  At this, Delaplane pursed her lips. “If you’re referring to the FBI action, the SPD had nothing to do with that. I’ll turn the floor over to Special Agent Pendergast to, ah, explain.”

  Pendergast stepped forward. “I’m afraid that was a dead end. The rites involved animal blood, not human.”

  “What kind of animals?”

  “Ducks, apparently.”

  There was a rash of snickering at this detail.

  “No connection was found to the current case, and no apparent laws were broken by the, ah, worshippers, and as such their names cannot be released.”

  He stepped back and the commander came forward to handle more questions, pointedly ignoring Betts, who was waving his hand and becoming increasingly agitated when he was not called on. Finally, he simply shouted out a question. “Commander, what do you say to reports that these killings are remarkably similar to the legends of the Savannah Vampire?”

  Delaplane fixed him with a steady eye. “Vampire, did you say?” she asked in a tone one might use to humor a child. “Mister…”

  “Betts. Barclay Betts, anchor for—”

  “Mr. Betts, if you’re asking me if we think these killings are the work of a vampire, the answe
r is…wait for it…no.”

  Another titter rippled through the crowd.

  “However,” Delaplane continued, “it might be the work of a person, or persons, drawn for unhealthy reasons of their own to Savannah…and its legends. The Bee Street raid is a case in point.”

  “How was the blood drained?” Betts continued. “And to what purpose?”

  “We believe a tool called a trocar, similar to a large-bore needle, was inserted into the femoral artery of the leg. As to what purpose, we have no idea yet.”

  When Delaplane tried to move to another questioner, Betts continued. “Is it true that all the blood was sucked out…every drop?”

  She arched her eyebrows and fixed him with a steady gaze. “Every drop was taken. We’re analyzing how it might have been done.” Before Betts could continue, she said: “Mr. Wellstone?”

  Coldmoon saw a handsome figure in an impeccable suit—gray hair at the temples, horn-rimmed glasses, every inch the professor—nod in acknowledgment. “I have a question for Special Agent Pendergast,” he said in a patrician drawl. “Agent Pendergast, I understand you’re one of the FBI’s leading experts on deviant criminal psychology, especially as it involves serial homicide. Do you think the perpetrator is, in fact, a deviant serial killer?”

  Silence fell as the crowd awaited Pendergast’s answer.

  “Serial killer?” Pendergast finally said. “Perhaps. Deviant? Perhaps not.” He paused. “Perhaps what we are seeing is the expression of a certain kind of normative psychology, not deviant so much as a deviation from our expected standards.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Wellstone asked.

  Amen, Coldmoon thought.

  But Pendergast said nothing more, and with that Delaplane concluded the press conference.

  21

  STANDING IN THE MUCK, Commander Alanna Delaplane slapped at a mosquito and cursed under her breath. The dog handler, Boris Strawbridge, was moving ahead of her, his boots squishing along the riverbank as he forced his way through the thick vegetation. Twist, the giant bloodhound he had brought, had the longest tongue Delaplane had ever seen on a dog. The powerful animal’s leash was clipped to a belt around Strawbridge’s waist to keep his hands free for pushing aside vegetation. Behind, she could hear the distant rush of traffic as it crossed the river on the Victory Drive Bridge, but the trees and bushes were so thick she couldn’t see the span. Where they were—along the marshy shores of Sylvan Island—might as well be the damn Amazon jungle for all its impenetrable thickness and whining bugs. The big bloodhound was snuffling about listlessly, more interested in trash that had washed up than any scent connected with the Ellerby homicide.

  The body had to have entered the river somewhere, and while it might have been thrown off the nearby bridge, that seemed unlikely, as the roadway carried Interstate 80 traffic and was almost continuously traveled day and night. Dumping the body would have involved hoisting it over a tall cement guardrail, across a breakdown lane, and over a wall: too much time, too many opportunities to be seen. Delaplane figured the body had been dragged down to the river and left there, and judging from where it was found, it might have been anywhere along this stretch of shore. She wondered how the dog could smell anything above the stench of swamp gas and mud coming up from the river, but Strawbridge hadn’t seemed to think it was a problem.

  Strawbridge abruptly shouted and tried to haul the dog away from something, and Delaplane could see it had gotten into a McDonald’s bag full of rotting french fries and a half-eaten burger.

  “No, no, Twist! Drop it!” Strawbridge yanked on his leash while the dog strained to slop more of the disgusting mess into his mouth. Strawbridge reached over and pulled away the bag, only to have the burger spill out of it, along with a mass of writhing maggots.

  “Keep that damn dog moving,” said Delaplane.

  This was looking more and more like a wasted idea. They had already been down the cemetery side of the river, with no luck, and were approaching the place where the body had originally been found. If they didn’t pick up a scent here, there was no point in going farther, because bodies didn’t float upstream.

  Maybe the dog was no good. In the square, the same dog hadn’t even been able to track the route of Ellerby’s corpse from the spot he was killed—based on where they’d found his finger and bit of scalp—to the nearest street. She supposed the body might have been carried by two people, and thus not left a scent. That itself was a valuable piece of information.

  “Find!” commanded Strawbridge yet again, kicking away the maggoty burger and waving the scent object from Ellerby at the dog’s nose. Ahead the woods gave way to a small grassy marsh with a mud bank. At the far end was where the body had been found by some boaters. That was their stopping point. And thank God, because beyond the little salt marsh rose a junglelike wall of green worse than anything they had gone through so far.

  “We’ll turn around just before those woods,” she said to Sheldrake, who was bringing up the rear.

  “Can’t be soon enough for me,” replied Sheldrake, smacking a bug. She could already see some ugly red welts on his face and neck.

  They emerged from the trees into the marsh, the grass about waist high. A breeze sprang up, sweeping the bugs away and providing some welcome relief from the stifling humidity. And now, finally, Twist latched onto a scent. It was remarkable how finding the trail changed the dog’s entire demeanor; how this ungainly, clumsy animal was suddenly focused, straining at the leash, nose to the ground, eyes keen.

  “Got a scent,” said Strawbridge, pointing out the obvious.

  “Good, good,” Delaplane told him. This was more like it.

  Now Twist was really straining at the leash, pulling Strawbridge along with him. Strawbridge was a small man and Twist a very big dog, so it made a ridiculous sight.

  They moved quickly through the grasses, the breeze continuing to pick up. She could hear Sheldrake, an infamous cannoli eater, wheezing as he jogged behind her, trying to keep up. For the first time, Twist issued a deep baying cry, then another, the mournful sound echoing across the river.

  “He really has something!” said Strawbridge breathlessly as he was dragged along by his own belt.

  They came around the far side, skirting an indentation in the riverbank. A few hundred yards ahead, Delaplane could see the muddy embankment where crime scene investigators had flagged the body’s location.

  The dog was now bounding forward in his eagerness, jerking Strawbridge like a marionette with each lunge. “Easy, Twist!” the handler said, but the dog paid no attention and bayed again: a long, powerful sound from deep within his chest.

  “Twist! Heel! Heel!” Strawbridge grabbed the leash with both hands and pulled. But the dog was clearly in full chase mode, and it was almost comical to see Strawbridge stumbling along behind him, shouting and trying to keep up.

  “Bad dog! Heel! What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  Twist was frantic, baying loudly, slobber flying from his mouth, his footlong tongue swinging with each bark, straining and lunging—pulling Strawbridge toward the dense wall of vegetation just beyond where the body had been found.

  “Come! Sit!”

  No command worked—and a moment later, what Delaplane feared would happen indeed happened. Strawbridge lost his footing and fell in the tall grass, but still the dog struggled forward, dragging him along. Grabbing the leash in both hands once again, Strawbridge unclipped it from his belt and the dog took off like a shot toward the line of trees.

  “Damn him,” Strawbridge spluttered, standing up and brushing himself off as the dog bounded away, baying like mad. “He’s never done that before.”

  A moment later Twist dove into the bushes and then vanished into the woods, his baying becoming muffled.

  “What now?” asked Delaplane, glancing back at Sheldrake huffing and puffing his way through the grass behind them.

  “We follow. I think he’s due for a little refresher training, frankly.”

&nbs
p; “I’ll say.” Delaplane could still hear the baying, fainter now, but at a higher pitch.

  Strawbridge listened for a moment as the barking reached a hysterical timbre. “He’s definitely found something.”

  They started walking and, as they did so, the baying abruptly stopped. Strawbridge paused to listen.

  “Why the silence?”

  Strawbridge shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  A few more minutes of trudging through marsh grass brought them to the edge of the forest. Pushing through a screen of bushes, they entered a dense thicket, light filtering down, the heat suddenly rising along with the insects. Strawbridge took a moment to grab his cell phone.

  “Think he’ll pick up?” Delaplane asked, irritated.

  “Twist has a GPS unit on his collar. This just tells me where he is.” He fiddled with some app on the phone, then set off: naturally, toward the densest part of the forest.

  “This way,” he said.

  “I could sure use someone with a machete,” said Delaplane, pushing through a mass of palmettos. Sheldrake’s only comment was a muttered curse.

  The forest was totally silent. Not even the birds were singing. Strangely, after a few minutes even the insects seemed to vanish as the palmettos gave way to a forest of live oaks, so ancient and draped in moss it was like walking through curtains.

  A good ten minutes of struggle and then Delaplane could see, ahead, a shaft of sunlight penetrating the green gloom—a clearing. Strawbridge hastened his pace. “Twist!” he called, still glancing frequently at his phone. “Funny, it shows he’s right up ahead. Twist! Here, boy!”

  Pushing aside an especially thick screen of moss, they stumbled abruptly out into a small, sandy clearing. Delaplane halted. There was something lying in the sun, almost at their feet. It took her a moment to recognize what it was: the dog’s head and long tongue.