Code 61

by Donald Harstad

  “Are you really serious about this vampire stuff, Carl?” Borman seemed so sincere sometimes it was almost painful.

  “Yes. And your lips are sealed. Right?”

  “Oh, sure. Right.”

  “One slip on this can cost a job. I'm serious.”

  He seemed to listen well. I hoped so. I got on the phone again.

  Mike Dittman, the county attorney, was a little surprised that we'd bothered a district court judge in the wee hours of the morning, but was even more startled that we'd started the search and then gone to bed. I reassured him that we had people doing stuff on the property all night.

  “Are you sure we can do that?” He was asking me.

  “Yep. Judge agreed we could, said you'd probably be able to find the applicable citations before the suppression hearing.” Judge Winterman had a fine sense of humor. Well, I thought so, anyway.

  Lamar just wanted me to know that he'd told his sister that it was not a suicide.

  “That's fine, Lamar.”

  “You know what she said?”

  That had to be rhetorical, but I answered anyway. “No … ”

  “She said, 'I bet it was that Finn bitch.' Just like that.”

  “No shit?” Our girl Huck? Hard to believe.

  “That's what she said. Anything to it?”

  “Not as far as I know, Lamar, but I'll sure as hell check.”

  “Oh, Carl … you just might want to think about a statement for the press. We can't expect them to stay dumb forever.”

  Not even on a Sunday.

  My plate, as they say, was filling up. And we hadn't even gotten back to the Mansion yet.

  Hester had disappointing news. Anything regarding the incident in Walworth County was in their confidential records section, and wouldn't be available until tomorrow. Wisconsin BCA's weekend answering service was a State Radio dispatcher, who had no access to records, either. He offered to contact an agent, and have one go into their records section, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to find one with the proper credentials to get to their records on a Sunday.

  “For 'credentials,' substitute keys,” said Hester. “We wouldn't be able to get them, either, unless it was really urgent. I told him to try, but not to call out the director, or anything.”

  We met the lab crew as they pulled in the department's parking lot. Specialist Christopher Barnes, of blood-spatter fame, would meet us at the scene.

  We arrived at the Mansion at 09:38, let the two officers who had spent the night go home, and logged ourselves in. It was to be a daunting task, as there were six rooms on the second floor, seven on the main floor, and an unknown number on the third. Not to mention the basement.

  Chris Barnes was waiting for us. He was the best blood-spatter pattern analyzer in the Midwest, at least as far as we were concerned. He was also easy to work with, and eager to explain any aspect of his art.

  We started in the basement. It was enormous, with vaulted ceilings and seven separate and distinct chambers. The pillars were brick, with a concrete floor, concrete walls, and plastered ceilings. It was just about the cleanest basement I'd ever seen, with just a little debris in the fruit cellar, and some empty bags of salts near the water conditioner. But even those bags were neatly folded and stacked.

  The oil furnace was quite large, converted from a coal burner, complete with a big boiler and very complex piping. One of the techs started there, checking for any traces of burned materials. Borman stayed with him, to assist in recording, preserving, or photographing any evidence that was discovered.

  A lab tech named Grothler and I drew the main floor by default, as Hester, Chris Barnes, and the chief lab technician were going to do the second floor. Hester had started out as a laboratory technician years ago, and since we felt the most likely area where we'd locate trace (as in blood) evidence was the second floor, the most experienced people got that job.

  I hadn't been there more than a minute, it seemed, when the phone rang. It was Harry.

  “You can run, Houseman, but you can't hide. How about meeting with us right now?”

  “Sure, Harry. Where?”

  “My office. Quieter.”

  I told Hester, and she decided to remain with the search team. I got in my car, and headed over to Conception County. It was clouding up, I noticed, as I crossed the mile long bridge spans to the Wisconsin side. Cooler, too. Rain wasn't too far off. And there, I thought to myself, go the beautiful leaves.

  It really was quiet in Harry's office. I mentioned it as I sat down.

  “I told everybody to get the fuck out onto the streets,” said Harry.

  I looked at William Chester. “Harry has great administrative skills,” I said.

  He nodded, but didn't answer.

  “Carl,” rumbled Harry, “you wanna tell Mr. Chester here what you told me?”

  “Might as well. But, first, Mr. Chester, you have to understand something. I'm going to ask you to sign a form, promising not to reveal anything that's discussed here. Under severe penalty.” With that, I opened my attaché case and withdrew one of our standard forms. I passed it over to him. “Please read that carefully.”

  He took it from me, and glanced at it. “I've signed these before,” he said. He pulled a pen from his shirt pocket, and signed it with a flourish. “I'll just need a copy…. ”

  “No problem,” said Harry. “Machine's in the next room. I'll be right back.”

  I looked at our vampire hunter. Or, rather, tracker. “Okay, this is what's happened since we last talked…. ”

  Five minutes later, I was through.

  “I see,” said Chester. “So, then. Are you willing to concede that you're dealing with a vampire, now?”

  “Not even for a second.” I wanted him to be very clear about that. “What I'm dealing with is quite possibly some poor deluded bastard who believes he's a vampire. Nothing more. Because I know vampires really don't exist.”

  “As you say,” he said.

  I hate it when people do that. “So, what I want from you is this. I want to know how somebody who might think he's a vampire thinks a 'real' vampire behaves. How he's going to act. To convince himself and maybe some others that he's for real.”

  “In exchange for which?” asked Chester.

  “In exchange for access to some, but not all, of our information. Access to all I can think of that might deal with the vampire stuff, but not with the core case data.”

  “Unless I need it?”

  “Let me put it this way … If I think we need you to testify as an expert, you get what we got. Fair enough? That way, if you make a significant contribution to the whole investigation, you get the material you want. But you can't talk to the press, and you're locked in as a prosecution witness first.”

  He thought for a moment. “Agreed, but I can publish my data afterward? I need to do that.”

  I glanced at Harry. “Okay with you?”

  “Yep.”

  The way he said it, I knew that Harry would renege at the drop of a hat. That was going to have to be between him and Chester.

  I told him some of what I knew. He was impressed, in a satisfying sort of way.

  “My God, do you realize what you have here? You have a nest. You have a vampire's nest, with a house full of Renfields and blood donors. My God.” He appeared stunned.

  “Renffelds?” asked Harry.

  “Renffeld was the slave of Dracula,” said Chester.

  “Oh sure,” said Harry, with great aplomb. “And there are more of these than you expected?” I think he did it just to needle Chester, but the tracker didn't appear to notice.

  “I've been looking for years,” he said. “Years. Never anything like this. Never.”

  “Well,” I said, wanting to get back down to business, “I'm really pleased for you. Now, then, we need a little information…. ” I'd been fairly careful, and didn't think it ever occurred to him that he was a suspect. I had to keep it that way, at least until he'd been ruled out. Although it was unsta
ted between us, I knew that Harry felt the same way.

  It was also sinking in that this man really, truly believed in vampires. Since he did, just how reliable could his information be? As it turned out, pretty good, if what you wanted was mostly folklore. And that was just what we wanted.

  “What is this guy trying to say?” I asked, for openers. “Assuming that he has actually killed…. ”

  “Oh, he has, he has,” said Chester.

  “Right,” said Harry. “So, what's with the throat injury bit? Post mortem and all.” “Ah,” said Chester. “Are you so certain they've been inflicted after the victim has died?”

  Harry and I said, in unison, “Absolutely,” and “Bet your ass.”

  “Oh.” Our expert cleared his throat. “Then, possibly, to disguise the true nature of the wound? To obliterate, say, a bite mark?”

  He sounded so hopeful.

  “Not a chance,” I said. “No bite mark.”

  “I think he's doin' it to make people talk about neck or throat injuries,” said Harry. “How about that?”

  “He could. I'm not saying that as fact, but, yes, he could.”

  Chester warmed to his subject, and I spent about an hour with him and Harry. The upshot was that blood, while significant to a “vampire wannabee” as Harry called him, wasn't in any way a source of nutrition.

  “Unlike true vampires, poseurs will consume, maybe, an ounce or less at a time, for the most part,” said Chester. “Daily would be too often. You'd end up with diarrhea and other things if you did more than that. Like a bleeding ulcer will do to you. Sometimes, they might overindulge. But not often.”

  That was good to know, but it left me wondering what had happened to much of Edie's blood.

  He also said that, at least the more sophisticated of the “poseurs” would dress the part, in a costume reminiscent of the movies.

  “Just to convince their following, you know. They'd expect a Dracula, at least now and then.”

  “Sure.”

  “He'll try to tailor his lifestyle according to that preconception, too. Sometimes for himself, sometimes for his followers or victims.”

  Renffelds apparently came in two flavors. The first was just, in his own terminology, somebody who was enthralled by a vampire. The second, according to him, was somebody who was more into the taste of blood itself. More of a participant.

  “Those are the 'clinical' Renfields,” he said. “It's a disorder.”

  “So,” I asked, “what are these people likely to be like? You know, how will they respond to an investigation?”

  Chester laughed for the first time. “They'll not be cooperative, in any real way. They'll protect him from you. They'll tell him everything you say. They'll deny his very existence, for the most part. They'll mislead you at every turn.”

  “Hostile, then,” said Harry.

  “Yes.”

  “What do they see in this guy?” I thought that might help.

  “He protects them, for one thing. He's powerful. He avenges them, if necessary. He is deliciously evil. He's immortal. He's sometimes the source of some very intense sexual interactions. Just as often, the modern vampire's the source of some chemical substances. He's completely amoral. He has to be. After all,” he said, confidentially, “he isn't human.”

  “Everything your mother warned you about,” said Harry. “Right?”

  “Absolutely,” said Chester. “But you have to understand, these Renfields are quite often victims of a previous … person. Their experiences have made them depressed, or at least unhappy. Dependent, but not in an obvious way. Often happens when they're adolescents. Nothing to do with vampires, at that time. Nothing at all, until they meet him. Then he addresses, well, psychological needs.”

  Just what I wanted to hear.

  “So, like, why do you hunt these people?” asked Harry.

  William Chester hesitated for a second or two, then said, “My sister. One of them got to her, years back. She didn't survive.”

  “Ya know who it was?” asked Harry. “The one who got her?” Harry wasn't known for his delicacy, but nobody ever seemed to really mind. I could never figure that out.

  “No. No, I don't.” Chester leaned forward. “But this one is closer than any I've encountered before.”

  It seemed to me that he denied that a little too quickly.

  Before I went back across the Mississippi to Iowa, I reiterated the “no interference” provisions to Chester. He was to confine himself to contact with either Harry or me. Period. No approaching our potential witnesses or suspects, or it was curtains.

  I left secure in the knowledge that Harry was going to check out every freckle on William Chester's body before he was through. He did strike me as being sincere, but cops learn not to take people at face value. How much actual use he was going to be was another thing altogether.

  I got back to the Mansion and found that it had only taken the basement team two hours to finish up. They'd found two suspicious areas that might have been places where blood had been wiped up, but obtained no positive results with leucomalachite green. Leucomalachite green is neat stuff. They mix it with water, sodium perborate, and glacial acetic acid. A drop or two on the test swab, then a couple of drops of hydrogen peroxide, and bingo. If there's blood there, it turns sort of an aqua color instantly. It's used to see if there is any reason to use other testing substances to cover an area. Neat stuff. It also saves you a lot of time if it turns out there's not any blood in your sample.

  What we were looking for was, essentially, wipe marks, where somebody had mopped up, or sponged up, or any way removed traces of blood. There just about had to be some trace evidence, because, although Edie apparently hadn't been killed in the tub, she sure as hell had been killed somewhere. The murder site should have been pretty well doused. Then, to move a bloody body from some location to her second-floor bathtub was a process that would very likely leave a trail of at least some blood.

  The immediate problem was, the main floor had three types of surface where blood was likely to have been deposited. First, there were large areas of rug or carpet. Second, equally large if not larger areas of polished hardwood flooring. Third, the tiled floor in the kitchen and pantry. Not to mention the wooden mop boards and the painted walls themselves. And furniture, of course, all either polished wood or fabric. Looking for possible wipe marks on surfaces where there are countless swirls and traces from constant wiping and cleaning is less than rewarding. We couldn't even eliminate the wipe marks that had left tiny trails of bubbles. Someone could have used detergent to clean up the mess. You'd have to test just about everything. We would, if necessary, or so we said, hoping that the team on the second floor would turn up something. If it did, we could follow a trail back from the tub to the point of the murder. Right.

  TWELVE

  Sunday, October 8, 2000

  12:16

  “Hello? Is anybody here?” came from the front doorway. A woman's voice.

  I was on my hands and knees, with a small Mini-Mag flashlight, side-lighting possible wipe marks on the dining room floor. I scrambled to my feet, and headed for the door.

  Borman, who'd been in the music room, beat me to the door by seconds.

  “Yes?” I heard him say, in a deferential tone.

  Her voice got closer as she said, “I own this house. Could you direct me to whomever is in charge?”

  “Uh, sure,” said Borman. In two sentences, she'd let him know she was important, and he wasn't. Not bad.

  I came around the corner from the dining room, and saw two women in the atrium, beginning to advance past Borman. I could see how Borman had been intimidated. One of the women seemed to be about twenty-five or so, the other I would have guessed at thirty-five, max, if her driver's license data hadn't said she was forty-three. Both were quite fit, slim, with Jessica Hunley about three inches taller than her completely leather-clad young companion. But the remarkable thing was the younger one's hair. It was absolutely metallic-looking, sta
rting with a lemon yellow at her forehead, and sweeping back through lime green, blue, red, and ending in purple. It shimmered iridescently. Arresting, so to speak.

  I resolved to be just a bit harder to intimidate than Borman. “Hi. Name's Houseman.” I stuck out my hand. She didn't have much choice, and we shook. Strong. “You must be Jessica Hunley.”

  “Yes.”

  There was a momentary silence, so I took what advantage I could, and thrust my hand toward the other woman. “Deputy Houseman … ”

  “Tatiana Ostransky,” she said. “I'm with Jessica.” Her handshake was cool and firm.

  Jessica started the game with me. “Deputy? I would have hoped the sheriff would be here.”

  “Two reasons,” I said. “First, I'm the department investigator. Second, Edie was his niece. He has other things to do today.”

  That surprised her.

  “So, you're the one in charge here?” Nice, wide, absolutely insincere smile.

  “You betcha.”

  She fixed me with a gaze that told me she knew just exactly what I was up to, and that she thought she could beat me at that game any time she chose. Cool.

  I gestured toward the parlor. “If we go in there, I can give you some information.”

  I was curious as to why anybody coming to the house wouldn't have been at least announced, if not delayed, by the two reserve officers outside. As we headed in toward the parlor, I saw them coming around the side of the house. Bored, they'd apparently decided to check the perimeter.

  In the parlor, nobody sat.

  “What,” asked Hunley, “is he doing in the kitchen?” She pointed to the lab tech, who was staring back at her.

  As part of my answer, I opened my old leather briefcase, and fished out her copy of the search warrant. I handed it to her, and said, “We're executing a warranted search of this premises. He's one of the lab technicians.”