by JE Gurley
“Somebody fell on me like a ton of bricks. Son of a bitch stabbed me in the shoulder.” I looked around the nave. “He could be hiding in any shadow. Let’s find him.” I stood shakily and winced as my bruised ribs sent a spasm of pain shooting through my body.
Lew took one side of the sanctuary and I took the other. The front door was locked and chained. There was no way our phantom had escaped that way. I peered into abandoned nooks and empty alcoves and warily circled columns but found no one. Lew and I met at the door through which we had entered.
“Nothing,” he said with a shrug.
I rubbed my chin, succeeding it getting it dirty as well as bloody. I wiped my hand on my pants. “There are no other doors he could have used. No windows. Where the hell is he?”
“I swear he didn’t use this door, but…” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
I walked back to the apse, slowly, wincing in pain as I massaged my right shoulder. My hand came away wet from blood seeping though my jacket. I pointed to the altar. “I found our missing girls, I think.”
He sniffed, made a dour face and nodded in agreement. “I’ll call it in.”
While Lew walked around searching for a hot spot for his cell phone, I scanned the nave and the corners of the transept, finding no place an assailant could hide. He could have used the shadows to reach the door through which we entered undetected, but he would have to be extremely fleet of foot to do so. Satisfied he was no longer in the building, I turned my attention to the apse.
It was a sickening sight; one that almost brought me to tears. Three bodies lay sprawled on the floor in various degrees of decomposition. The latest victim, Patricia Stewart, looked almost asleep except for her wide-open, staring, unseeing eyes and her unnaturally pale complexion. Her skin seemed loose on her face, her cheeks sunken in. Her savaged neck revealed a ragged wound running laterally from the front of her throat to the nape of her neck, exposing the ghostly white of her cervical vertebrae. The other two bodies had not fared as well. Rodents had been busy gnawing their dead flesh. Flies buzzed around the bodies and maggots writhed in open wounds. Pools of congealed blood mixed with recent rainwater formed vile puddles around the bodies. The stench was powerful, the sight gruesome. As I fought down the urge to throw up, I wondered what kind of person could do this to another human being. I wished I had been able to get off a shot at my assailant, whom I was certain was also our killer. It would save the state the cost of an execution. I realized the DA always wanted to determine why a murderer killed, build a psychological profile for the jury, but that did not concern me. The reasons he killed meant little to the victims and brought no closure to the families. Quick retribution was my motto. There were murderers still on death row I had arrested red-handed ten years earlier when I first made detective, now dragging out execution of their death sentences with endless bogus appeals at tax payer expense. It was not my idea of justice. A quick bullet to the head would solve everybody’s problem.
“They’re on the way,” Lew said, looking down at the bodies.
I stared at him. “You sure you didn’t get a good look at him?”
He glanced away uneasily. I could have attributed it to his revulsion at the sight of the bodies, but I sensed he was holding something back. I persisted.
“What did you see, Lew?”
He exhaled slowly in a sigh. “I don’t know. He was a blur, like a man wearing a gray cape. He was tall.” He held out his hand parallel to the floor a few inches above his head to indicate a height of about seven feet.
I shook my head in disbelief. “You’re saying we’re looking for a caped NBA player or something?”
“I’m not sure what I saw, Tack. He moved like lightning and his angles were all wrong.” He glanced over my shoulder at my back. “You’re wounded.”
I reached back over my shoulder and felt sticky blood between my fingers. “Yeah, I’m bleeding like a stuck pig. It felt like he knifed me with a machete.”
“I never saw him bend over you. He just… stood over you a minute; then ran off when I yelled your name.”
I thought about that a minute. “Maybe he stabbed me when he knocked me down or maybe he had a spear or something long.” I laughed. “Hell, maybe he was a seven-foot tall spear-wielding Watusi warrior with rickets here on a basketball scholarship,” I snapped irritably in my frustration.
Lew shrugged, biting off a nasty retort to my rant. “I don’t know,” he said.
I was angry and I had a right to be, but not at Lew. He had probably saved my life. I was pissed because we had a lot of nothing. We were in the same room as our killer and he had gotten away with no description from either of us. All we knew was that he was tall, fast and deadly. I made the rounds of the room again waiting on forensics to arrive. Stone steps behind the altar descended to a basement. A locked rusty iron gate that looked like no one had opened it in years barred the way. God only knew where the key was. I scoured the floor and found a few indistinguishable footprints but nothing else. I looked back at our easily recognizable tracks in the dust and scratched my head. It didn’t make sense.
“How could this guy get around without leaving prints?” I asked aloud. “How the hell did he get the three bodies in here?”
I glanced up at the roof. My shoulder throbbed and I grew suddenly dizzy when I looked up. There were some sizable holes in the roof but no scaffolding or anything our killer could descend. Considering his prowess on roofs, I considered ropes. I turned to Lew.
“Have forensics check out the roof.”
I stuffed my handkerchief beneath my jacket to staunch the flow of blood and suddenly sat down heavily on the cold stone floor. Lew looked over at me with concern.
“You okay, Tack?”
He started toward me but I waved him off. Even that small movement caused severe pain to shoot down my arm and side. “Go out front and wait on the lab guys. I’ll sit here and rest.”
He glanced around uneasily. “You sure?”
Sitting on the floor seemed the sensible thing to do. A few minutes rest would make a new man of me. “Yeah. I’m fine,” I lied, my mind slipping away from recent events. I felt exhausted. I wanted to do nothing more than lie down and get some sleep. It had been a long day. The room was nice and dark so the sun must have set. The floor was cool and inviting. Before I knew it, I lay curled up on the cold tile floor.
3
I regained consciousness lying on a gurney staring up at the roof of an ambulance. My head throbbed and my mouth tasted like the inside of a dirty sock. A white-jacketed EMT was hanging an intravenous bottle from a hook. He glanced down at me and continued working.
“Where the hell am I?” I groaned, trying to rise to a sitting position and noticed I was not wearing a shirt. I reached back and felt the bandage on my shoulder and the memory of my assailant stabbing me flooded back, along with the pain in my shoulder. My head ached and I felt disoriented. My mouth was dry and I had no idea how much time had passed.
The EMT swung around and looked at me analytically, judging best how to reply. “You were unconscious when your partner found you, Detective. You have a nasty wound in your right shoulder. It’s very infected and you’re running a high fever. You should have had it treated much earlier.”
My confusion deepened. I looked out the rear door. It was daylight, still mid-afternoon. I had been wrong about the sun setting. It had just been me blacking out. I touched my bruised and cut chin and winced. “Earlier? What day is it?”
“Tuesday afternoon, two o’clock,” he said slowly, judging my reaction to his news.
His answer hit me like a punch in the gut. I had been out only half an hour or so. “I was wounded less than an hour ago,” I said incredulously. “How the hell could it be infected this soon?”
He stared at me as if he thought I was lying. I returned his gaze as finally managed to sit up. The nausea sent me reeling but I fought back and slowly got it under control. I eyed the needle he held in his hand for the IV fluid
s.
“You try to shove that thing in me and I’ll ram it up your ass,” I growled.
“You need fluids,” he countered, “stitches, antibiotics, blood. You’re a very sick man,” he argued.
He was probably right, but I needed some answers first. I grabbed my bloody shirt and examined the holes in the back. The blood was still damp so the EMT had not been lying. Gingerly, I put on my shirt, biting down on my lip as a sharp pain shot through my shoulder. Seeing my discomfort, the EMT made a motion to help me but he stopped when he saw the fierce look I shot him. I ignored his protests and crawled out of the ambulance, holding onto the doors until my legs would support my weight, and sought out Lew. He was standing in front of the church speaking with a uniform. He saw me and rushed over.
“What the hell are you doing, Tack? You need to be in the hospital.”
I shook my head and another wave of nausea swept over me. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?” He eyed me suspiciously. “I came back to find you lying on the floor out cold. Your forehead was on fire. You looked like you were dying.”
I touched my forehead. It was hot, burning up with fever. “I feel like I’m dying,” I snapped. “What the hell’s going on with the case?”
He shook his head slowly and pointed to the back of the ambulance. “For God’s sake, Tack, go with the nice man to the hospital and let them sew you up. Get some sleep. I’ll drop by as soon as Munson finishes up.”
I nodded. I didn’t have the energy to protest. I was bone weary and defeated. He made sense. I could do nothing more there. “We let him get away, partner,” I said grimly.
He squared his jaw and looked at me as if I had accused him of incompetence. “The only way out was through the door we came in. There were no footprints but ours. If he gave us the slip, then the bastard had to fly out of there.”
I remembered my words from the night before and sighed. “We’re both punch drunk, partner. Nobody flies but angels and he’s no angel.”
I let the EMT coax me back into the ambulance, but not before bearing mute witness to the gruesome procession as officers brought out the remains of the three no longer missing girls and unceremoniously loaded them into a black county morgue van. I spotted two news vans parked across the street, aerials up and cameras rolling, filming the transfer for the evening news and silently cursed them their lack of civility. I had known in my gut all along the three girls were dead, but seeing the proof loaded like so much cargo and treated like a headline hit me hard and cold deep inside. When you’re searching for a missing person, you always hold out hope, no matter how slim, that they are still alive. You work fast, push the limits and forgo sleep. Now, in the event of the next victim, that impetus will not be there. The case will take on the slow methodical pace of a murder investigation. I clenched my fist until my shoulder throbbed. I vowed silently to find their killer. He left few clues but he had made one glaring error. He had made it personal.
****
The rest of the day and most of the night were a blur of vague images – ER nurses, IV bottles, suturing needles, and bright white florescent lights. The next morning I awoke floating in a sedative haze, groggy and confused. My shoulder itched beneath a thick bandage and gauze pads covered my forehead and chin. I did not feel feverish, but then again I didn’t feel much of anything. An IV drip line disappeared beneath a gauze bandage around my left arm. I tried to rise but found I was strapped down. I felt claustrophobic. I had never liked hospitals very much and liked them even less as a patient.
“Nurse!” I yelled as loudly as I could, which exited my dry throat as more a croak than a demand for attention.
A male nurse walked in scowling. His name badge read ‘Robert Trask, R.N’. “Mr. Hardin, please do not yell. We have other patients on this floor in much worse shape than you.”
“Good,” I barked. “Get this strap off of me and let me up and we’ll all be happier.”
He stood with hands on hips leaning over me as if he was chiding a petulant child in its crib. “You need your rest.”
I spoke quietly, biting back on my anger. “Bob, if you don’t undo these straps, I’m going to rip out your throat and crap down it.”
He backed up step or two, aghast at my threat, and looked at me a moment as if considering my capability of carrying out my threat. Finally, he sighed. “Very well.”
He loosened the straps and helped me to sit up on the edge of the bed. My shoulder throbbed and, though my arm was stiff, I could move it. I just hope I didn’t have to beat anyone to the draw. I held out the IV tube attached to my arm. “What about this?”
The bottle was almost empty, so he disconnected it and removed the butterfly needle from my arm, getting, I believe, a touch of satisfaction as he ripped out a patch of hairs with the tape. I winced but said nothing, allowing him his pound of flesh.
“When can I leave?”
He regained a little of his composure. “When Doctor Liles says you can. Your shoulder wound was deep. It required eighteen stitches. It was also badly infected. You’ll need a series of antibiotics.”
“What did he use on me, anyway? It felt like a machete.”
The nurse cocked his head to one side and looked at me oddly. “He? It wasn’t a knife wound. It looked more like an animal wound, two deep parallel claw marks. You don’t know what attacked you?”
I looked at him slack-jawed. “An animal wound?” I questioned with disbelief.
He nodded. “That’s what it looked like to me and I’ve seen many animal wounds. There was even some organic matter embedded in the wound, which caused the infection.” He wrinkled his brow. “It resembled gray fish scales.”
My head reeled as the room spun like a Tilt-A-Whirl. Those few words, gray fish scales, were as foreboding as a haunted house in a thunderstorm. A sudden chill coursed through me. I shivered and he mistook it for the fever.
“The fever will break if you continue your regimen of antibiotics and get some rest,” he chided. “No heavy lifting.”
I nodded. “Thanks. I’ll have my partner toss the drunks into the back of the squad car for me.”
My banal attempt at humor went over his head. I stood, wobbly at first, but within fifteen minutes, I was dressed. Forensics had picked up my bloody, ripped shirt and my suit coat had taken them to the lab as evidence. The nurse brought me a gray surgical scrub shirt. I would win no fashion awards with my dirty brown slacks and a gray shirt, but at least it got me out of the hospital. After a short battle concerning a wheel chair, which I promptly lost, I was sitting in the waiting room awaiting rescue by Lew. He arrived a short time later, which translated to hours in ER waiting room time.
“You look like shit,” he offered as a greeting as we walked to his SUV.
“Gee thanks, partner, nice of you to notice. I feel like shit, too. What do we know?”
“No fingerprints, no footprints we can use, no fiber evidence – nothing. The girls … they all were probably killed at the scene of the crimes according to forensics.” He paused. “Damn it, Tack, their throats were all slashed to hell and back and their bodies were almost entirely drained of blood. With the church angle and all, do you think we’ve got some kind of religious nut making sacrifices?”
I shook my head, which brought on a repeat bout of dizziness. “No blood on the altar and no religious artifacts around. He chose the church for convenience rather than anything else.” I was guessing but I felt strongly about my hunch. “I think we’ve got a wannabe vampire on the loose.” It was an idea I had been tossing around in my feverish brain all morning. Maybe the drugs had something to do with my mind wandering so far out to left field, but nothing else seemed to make sense to me.
Lew tossed me an astonished glance. “Vampire? You mean like Dracula?”
I nodded. “In his mind anyway.”
Lew countered. “I thought vampires made two tiny puncture wounds in the neck, not slash the neck to the bone.”
“That’s in the mov
ies. In some legends in other cultures, vampires ripped open the neck or even the abdomen and drank blood with their tongues.”
Lew rolled his eyes in disgust. “What the hell kind of books do you read?”
“Oh, I like to watch The Discovery Channel at three a.m. when I can’t sleep,” I shot back. In truth, I had been an avid reader of horror and all things macabre as a teenager. Poe, Lovecraft, Bierce and Stoker were among my favorite authors. A lot of that late night scary stuff stayed with me as an adult.
He changed the subject. “How’s the shoulder?”
I remember what the nurse had said about the cause of the wound. “Hurts like hell. By the way, the doctor said it wasn’t a knife wound.”
Lew raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Yeah, he said it was an animal wound, like claw marks.”
Without a word, Lew pulled his SUV into a parking lot, killed the engine and stared at me. “Claw marks?”
“Claw marks,” I repeated.
“Jesus, Tack. That’s what Munson said about the wounds to the girls’ necks.” He clenched his fist and slammed the steering wheel so hard I thought he might break it. “What the hell is going on?”
I wish I had an answer for him. Instead, I could only offer a guess. “I think we’re dealing with a real whacko who thinks he’s a vampire. Maybe he’s got an animal claw, like an eagle’s talon or something that he uses as a weapon.” A sudden sense of foreboding came over me. “You’re sure you saw a man and not some animal?”
Lew emitted an almost serpentine hiss. “Damn it, Lew, I don’t know what I saw. It moved on two legs, so it wasn’t an animal, but…” His voice trailed off. “What does he do with the blood and don’t tell me the bastard drinks it?”
I had not missed how deftly he had changed the subject, but that bit concerned me too. I had heard of modern day vampires who drank blood, although they didn’t get it from their victim’s throat. They used syringes to withdraw it from willing partners. “We found plenty of blood at the crime scene and at the church. Maybe that’s all of it.”