Blood & Rust

by S. A. Swiniarski

  Byron heard the slide of metal, and managed to turn just in time to see the blade descending.

  3

  Friday, July 22

  It had gotten to the point where the investigators began numbering the bodies. The newest one, decapitated and left by the B&O tracks in Brooklyn Township on the West Side, was labeled Number Five. It was Five because there was still no official connection to the corpse that washed up on Euclid Beach back in 1934. Officially, Andrassy and his still-unidentified companion were the first two of these murders.

  Number Five was different because it was obvious that the man had met his death on the spot where the body was found. Unlike the others, he lay in the blood spilled by his death. To most everyone in the department, the recurring theme of the railroad tracks made it certain that the murderer was preying on transients that rode the rails. It seemed an obvious conclusion.

  Stefan Ryzard felt it meant something else.

  “As far as I can tell, he hasn’t left his hotel room,” Nuri said. His voice was thin and rattled at the other end of the phone.

  Stefan shook his head. Nuri had followed their quarry to his business meeting in Chicago. He had watched him for nearly a week, reporting back nothing more sinister than meetings with a few congressmen—

  That was sinister enough when Stefan thought about it.

  “Something’s rotten here.” Stefan massaged the part of his leg that still ached.

  “Yes,” Nuri said, “but we’ve been watching him for months. We’ve yet to catch him doing anything.”

  Something rotten. “Are you certain he hasn’t left?”

  “I’ve been watching the room—”

  “Dietrich knows he’s being watched. Maybe he slipped out unobserved.”

  There was a pause, and then Nuri said, “You don’t think I’m doing my job?”

  Stefan tapped the desk with his fingers. “No, that’s not it. But can you get a look inside his hotel room?”

  “Yes, but wouldn’t that be tipping our hand? You know he could order what’s going on from anywhere.”

  Stefan nodded. “I want to know for sure that he’s there. Otherwise I don’t think we have a hand to tip.” Stefan stared at his desk. On the blotter were fountain-pen doodles of fangs and crosses, the words “vampire” and “blood” heavily embellished. “One thing, though,” Stefan added.

  “What?”

  “Go in during daylight.”

  “You want me to break into a hotel room in broad daylight?”

  “It’s safer.”

  Stefan could hear Nuri sigh. “This is more vampire stuff, isn’t it.”

  Damn it, you were there, Stefan thought. You saw everything I did. He wanted to say it, but instead he said, “Just do it that way.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  Nuri hung up the phone and wondered what he was getting into. The Chicago cops didn’t know he was here, and if he got caught breaking into someone’s hotel room, especially someone as wealthy as Eric Dietrich, there would be a lot of explanations to go through.

  Nuri didn’t know how Dietrich could have gotten past him. He had a room on the same floor, positioned where he could watch the exits downstairs, and the door to Dietrich’s room. There were windows, but they were fifteen stories up.

  Nuri checked his gun and slipped out into the hallway.

  He felt oddly out of place here, disconnected from the rest of the world. He walked through a hall emblazoned with garish wallpaper, over deep red carpeting. It was a hallway into another era.

  Dietrich’s door was at the end of the hallway, with the most expensive suites. When Nuri reached it, he knocked just below the gilded numbers. He wanted to be sure that no one was home before he blithely popped the lock. A long minute passed without an answer. Nuri knocked again.

  Again, no answer.

  Maybe Stefan was right, and Dietrich managed to slip out from under him. That worried Nuri. If this time he missed him, how many other times? How long had he thought he’d been watching Dietrich, when he wasn’t?

  He knocked for a third time, and when he received no answer, he began working on the lock. In a few moments, the door swung open on a darkened room. The smell was musty for a hotel room, and it took him a few minutes for his eyes to adjust to the gloom beyond.

  It was a huge suite, and Nuri faced the living area. Two large windows would have looked out over Chicago and to Lake Michigan beyond, but the drapes were closed on them. It even looked as if additional drapes had been added over the hotel’s own, so not even a glimmer of the late evening sun leaked through.

  Nuri had been trying to ignore Stefan’s superstitious fears. Vampires were creatures of myth. But alone, facing these windows, shut against the day, it was hard to deny Stefan his myths....

  Which made no sense, since Nuri himself had seen Dietrich walking abroad in daylight.

  Whatever the case, he didn’t hear or see signs of anyone present. He let the door close behind him as he fumbled for the light switch. The lights came on, but feebly, half the bulbs dead or removed. They gave a weak illumination that was thick with shadows.

  Something was disturbing about this room, something that Nuri couldn’t quite identify. After standing by the door a long time, Nuri thought it could be something in the smell. It was rusty and didn’t belong in a hotel room.

  Nuri slowly walked into the living area, looking over the furniture, the end tables, the additional curtains on the windows. He could see signs that the room had been used; no maid had been here to clean up after the visiting congressmen. The ashtray was dirty and held the stubs of two cigars, and a few crystal glasses sat here and there on the tables.

  Nuri bent over and took a whiff of one of the glasses. There was a strong smell of whiskey, but it wasn’t the odor he was looking for.

  He moved around toward a short hall that led to the bedroom, and across from it, the bathroom. As he stepped into the hall, the smell was worse. He identified it now.

  Blood.

  Nuri swallowed and drew his gun. The smell was stronger near the bathroom, so he slowly opened the door, using the jamb for cover. The smell of blood became more intense as he swept his revolver to cover the small darkened room. The smell was becoming sickening, so Nuri tried to breathe through his mouth as he fumbled for the light switch.

  Above the sink, a light came on.

  There was a mirror above the sink, but it had been covered with a layer of butcher paper. As Nuri’s gaze traveled down it, he saw a few red-brown dots sprinkled across its lower surface. Then he looked at the sink itself.

  The porcelain was covered in blood. From the looks of it, it had once filled the sink. It had dried in patches, but a thick blackish-red liquid still filled the bottom about half an inch deep. On the counter, next to the sink, sat a crystal glass, twin to the whiskey glasses the congressmen had drunk from.

  The inside of the glass was also coated in gore. One side of the rim was smeared with it, inside and outside, as if someone had drunk from it.

  The sight made Nuri ill.

  Nuri pulled out a handkerchief and held it over his nose. He had seen dead bodies before. Most were bloody to one extent or another. This was somehow different. It wasn’t the sight, or even the smell that sickened—it was the thought of what had been done here.

  Nuri stood a long time in the otherwise empty bathroom, staring at the sink. What had happened here?

  Nuri had little chance to reflect, because the door opposite the bathroom flew open. Nuri turned in time to see a shadow fly out of the darkened room beyond. It came straight at him, and he barely had a chance to dive out of its way through the bathroom door.

  He rolled onto his back in the hallway to the living area. The shadow dove on him, and Nuri fired. In the dim light he saw the bullet slam into the gut of Samson Fairfax. The bullet tore through the expensive suite he wore, spattering it with flecks of gore. The wound didn’t bleed.

  Fairfax dove on top of him, his face
distorting as fangs seemed to grow from his jaw. Fairfax grabbed his gun hand in a grip like an iron band, and Nuri could feel the bones in the hand shifting and each finger became a clawed talon.

  Nuri struggled under Fairfax, trying to break free, but all he accomplished was to inch the fight deeper into the room. Fairfax straddled him, his face turning into something demonic, taloned hands drawing blood from Nuri’s wrists.

  It opened its mouth and began leaning its face toward him. The breath was fetid, stinking of carrion. But worse than the smell was the fact that it was cold. Fairfax’s breath held nothing of the heat of life in it.

  Nuri whipped his head around in a panic, but he couldn’t move. He was pinned to the ground. The thing held his wrists so he couldn’t turn his gun—

  His gun.

  Nuri was panicked beyond his disbelief, and he was ready to try anything. His gun was pointing toward the over-draped windows. It was the only chance he had.

  As he felt Fairfax’s lips on his neck, Nuri struggled to aim his revolver, and fired. Four times he shot at the upper-right of the window, where the curtain was anchored. The fourth shot hit something.

  With the crashing of glass, the curtains fell away as their weight tore the rod from the wall. Suddenly, the whole room was washed in the rose light of sunset. The light washed Fairfax and Nuri.

  Fairfax pulled away, and Nuri could see the muscles trying to tear themselves back into human form. He moved fast, faster than Nuri could credit, but he didn’t see where he was going. His eyes were squeezed shut, as if the light was too painful to see.

  Nuri scrambled away, backing toward the center of the light. He stopped and held a gun on Fairfax. It wasn’t necessary. Fairfax was paying little attention to him right now.

  Fairfax had stumbled backward quickly, seeming to attempt a retreat into the safety of the darkened bedroom. But, with his eyes closed, he had slammed into a wall instead. He staggered, as if numb or disoriented, each step seemed more unsteady than the last. All expression was gone from his face, the skin a slack mask, the eyelids no longer bunched up, but drooping over half closed eyes. He waved his hands as if blind, but his arms hit furniture and lamps without his notice.

  The spectacle was even worse than the demonic transformation when he had tried to kill Nuri. In less than a few seconds he seemed to have become little more than an animate corpse, stumbling around blindly.

  Nuri slowly pushed himself to his feet.

  Fairfax stumbled into the room, like an exaggerated silent movie drunk. That was the most disturbing, the silence. Fairfax said nothing, didn’t even seem to breathe. The only sound was from the furniture he toppled. Every step now, he seemed on the verge of falling.

  Nuri was over the panic now. He knew he had to get this man out of the light, somehow the sunlight was killing him. Nuri needed a witness, someone who had seen what was going on.

  Nuri ran up into the center of the room. He held his gun level, and reached out with the other hand. “You need to come with me, Mr. Fairfax.”

  Fairfax didn’t seem to hear him, and he stumbled blindly into his arm. Nuri tried to grab him, but as soon as Fairfax seemed to notice the resistance to his forward movement, he stumbled backward—straight into the window.

  Nuri tried to grab him again, but he was moving too fast, and bullet holes and the wreck of the draperies had weakened the windows already. When Fairfax’s weight fell on it, the windows gave way, spilling Fairfax into the sky.

  Nuri saw him fall the fifteen stories to the street below. The body slammed into a parked sedan with an explosion of glass. He seemed to stop moving long before he hit.

  Nuri watched as a crowd began to circle the car, a few looking up toward him.

  Nuri was certain that this time Samson Fairfax was dead.

  Now all he had to do was figure out how to explain this to the Chicago cops.

  4

  Monday, July 25

  Stefan stood in the corner of Ness’ office. “We’re getting Detective Lapidos back,” Ness told him as he hung up the phone on his desk. “We’re lucky that they weren’t too ornery about it.”

  Stefan exhaled a little in relief. He’d been worried that the Chicago DA might make a stink over Nuri’s presence there.

  “What were you thinking, telling Nuri to break in there?”

  Stefan looked at Ness. Staring at his young boss made him feel that much older. “Another body turned up, and I wanted to be sure that Dietrich was there.”

  “And he wasn’t,” Ness pointed out. “I let you get away with the warehouse, but this is completely out of our jurisdiction. We’re both lucky I know people in Chicago that could smooth over this mess.”

  “But we have him now,” Stefan said. “The blood, the attack on Nuri—”

  “What we have—more precisely, what the Chicago Police have—is Samson Fairfax, already wanted in connection with his wife’s death.”

  “Aren’t they even going to talk to Dietrich?”

  Ness nodded. “Of course they are. But Dietrich wasn’t there, and Fairfax was. Without a witness tying him to anything illegal, the DA won’t lift a finger when he’s got a corpse to hang everything on.”

  Stefan balled his hands into fists and muttered, “How many bodies is it going to take?”

  Ness narrowed his eyes and said, “That’s quite enough. Don’t push things.” He leaned back in his chair. “I know that ever since the warehouse, you’ve had some odd ideas about Dietrich, and I’ve let them by because it’d be hard to replace you.” He glanced at a stack of files piled on the corner of his desk. “But I’m beginning to wonder about your judgment.”

  Stefan had unpleasant memories of Inspector Cody telling him the same thing.

  “I’m thinking about putting you and Nuri back on regular duty.”

  “But what about the Dietrich investigation?”

  “I can put a pair of fresh eyes on it,” Ness said.

  Stefan felt himself sinking. How could he explain Dietrich in a sane manner? How could he tell Ness that no one that replaced him would understand the evil? Stefan tried. “No one else is going to understand what they’re dealing with.”

  “And you do, Stefan? You know everything?” Ness shook his head. “That’s just what I mean. You’re too close to this investigation. Your reports come close to being hysterical. Sometimes they read as if you believe something supernatural is going on here.”

  Stefan swallowed. Something supernatural was going on here, something demonic. What he said was, “I’ve kept myself to what I’ve seen, and what I’ve gotten from witnesses ...”

  “Maybe new eyes will see something else.” He reached over and began shuffling through the files on his desk. “Anyway, I need to do something about this Chicago business. I’ve been trying to deal discipline to the whole department, so I can’t just let it by. You and Detective Lapidos are going on two week’s leave, then you’re being reassigned.”

  “But—”

  “This may only be temporary. But I want you getting some distance from your work. You can’t fly off the handle every time a body shows up.”

  Stefan nodded, “Yes, sir.” His stomach was tied up into a knot of bile; he needed to leave. “Can I go now?”

  Ness nodded, his face already turning toward a file he had pulled off of his desk.

  Stefan really began to hate him. The only reason he saw for being removed from the case was he had come too close to breaking Ness’ precious secrecy. With Nuri’s conflict in the hotel, there was almost certainly some press attention. Press that Ness didn’t orchestrate.

  God forbid that the press might say something unpleasant about Ness and his department. Stefan felt cynical enough as he left that for a while he believed that Ness’ whole departmental cleanup was a public relations gag.

  Stefan was back at his desk putting things away when Nuri called. Stefan picked up the phone, and the first words he heard were, “Stefan, I’ve talked to the coroner, something strange—”

 
“Nuri, you better get back here,” Stefan said. “Ness pulled us off the case.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I guess he didn’t like how we were handling it.”

  There was a long pause and Stefan could almost hear Nuri thinking, you mean how you were handling it.

  “Does he know about this?” Nuri asked, finally.

  “Know about what?”

  “The autopsy on Samson Fairfax.”

  Stefan shook his head, “I thought he fell out a window after you shot him.”

  Nuri sucked in a breath and said, “That’s what I thought, too. But the coroner insists he’s been dead at least a couple of weeks, and that the gunshot and the fall occurred afterwards.”

  Stefan held the phone, unable to say anything.

  “He says there seems to be some sort of chemical preservative contaminating the body. Just like Andrassy’s friend.” Nuri waited for a response, and after a few moments said, “Stefan, are you there?”

  Stefan nodded, as if Nuri could see him. “I’m here, come back. I said we’re off this case.”

  “Okay. Are you sure that you don’t want this followed up? I’d hate to think I’ve gone through all this grilling for nothing. I can probably get a copy of the coroner’s report.

  “It’s over, Nuri,” Stefan said, his voice heavy.

  “If you say so. I’ll get on the first train back.”

  Stefan was about to say good-bye, but instead he told Nuri, “But get a copy of that report before you go. Just in case.”

  “Like I said, if you say so.”

  “Godspeed, Nuri.”

  “Are you all right?” Nuri asked.