Doug went to Pauline and took the grocery bags from her, placing them on the counter. “It’s just until the knacker gets here. Dodie’s calling him now.”
Pauline, a short, thick African-American woman with long salt-and-pepper braids, dropped her large purse on the seat of a kitchen chair and draped the dry cleaning over the back of it. She stepped closer. “Anyone we know?”
Doug shook his head. “We don’t recognize him. But he has the same brand as the last one.”
“Lord, help us.” Pauline shook her head and walked to the counter where Doug had deposited the groceries. Nearby, Dodie was talking to someone on the kitchen phone. Pauline looked over at Dodie. “Mrs. D, you tell that lazy-ass knacker man to pick this body up PDQ. You hear me?” She looked back down at the dead undead. “Gives me the willies, no matter how many times I’ve seen it before.”
Dodie hung up the phone. “Not to worry, Pauline. Jesús said he’d be here before noon. He was coming here anyway with a delivery.”
“What’s a knacker?” Madison asked. “Some sort of vampire undertaker?”
Pauline and Dodie both glanced at Doug, the two women letting him know he could field the delicate question.
“It’s an old English term,” Doug explained. “A knacker picked up old animals, particularly farm animals, who were dead or too worn out to work, then rendered them or sold them to factories who processed them.”
“Ewww.” Madison looked down at the body. “Guess vampires aren’t very sentimental about their dead.”
Pauline started putting away the groceries. “Don’t let Jesús hear you calling him a knacker. He’ll box your ears. He prefers handyman.” Pauline looked over at Madison. “Jesús is also the one who delivers the animal blood for the vampires who drink it. That’s what he’ll be delivering when he drops by.”
Like a broken record, Madison’s brain was still stuck on the knacker part and on Samuel’s comment about God forsaking the undead. “So Jesus comes and takes away the dead vampires. Would that be considered ironic or fitting?”
“And don’t you go letting Jesús hear you calling him Jesus, neither,” Pauline shot over her shoulder. “He’ll box your ears twice for that. It’s always Jesús.”
Doug chuckled. “Listen to Pauline, Madison, and save yourself some grief.”
Dodie knelt down to look at the body again. “Well, if Jesús doesn’t get here soon, there may be no reason for him to show.”
The others directed their attention down at the body. There, before their eyes, it was already starting to shrivel like a balloon with a slow leak.
Doug knelt down next to Dodie. “He must have been a fairly old vampire.”
“How can you tell?” Madison asked, not sure she wanted to get a closer look. “Do you count his rings like on a tree stump?”
Dodie shot Madison a frown for her flippancy. “No, but just as older vampires heal quicker, their bodies also decompose quicker upon death.” She looked back down, her voice softer. “It’s as if the earth is calling them home from too long a trip.”
Doug left the room and returned with a sketchpad and pencil from his art supplies. Doug had a small office off the den where he also dabbled in painting and drawing. He moved a chair to a good vantage point near the feet of the dead vampire and began sketching the quickly shriveling face.
“Great idea, Doug.” Dodie stood just behind her husband and watched his sketch develop.
“Can’t you just take a photo?” asked Madison.
“You see any photos of vampires around here?” Pauline gave Madison a pointed look with the question. “There’s a reason for that.”
“While we can be photographed, we generally don’t come out very well in photography,” explained Dodie. “Sometimes not at all. It’s another one of those odd mysteries. The sketch will allow us to capture details.”
Madison shook her head, wishing the vampires had come with a printed manual. Learning on the job was exhausting. “Okay, so from the way he’s disappearing, can you tell how old a vampire he is?”
Dodie cocked her head to one side and considered the vampire on the ground. “He’s definitely not as old as Samuel.”
“That’s for sure,” added Doug. “I once saw a two-thousand-year-old vampire die. He was dust in a matter of minutes. I’d say this one is a few hundred years old.”
Madison looked down at the body. The face was quickly resembling a dried apple doll. The torso and limbs were drying, the skin beginning to cling to the skeleton like plastic wrap covering leftovers. But still Madison was stumped. “Then why wasn’t he decomposing in the pool? He looked normal when you pulled him out.”
Doug continued perfecting his sketch. “Because water preserves our bodies. They don’t even have to be submerged, just wet.”
The information caused a chain reaction in Madison’s brain. “That means whoever did this wanted to make sure the body was found, no matter how long it took.”
“Most definitely,” Doug said, not looking up from his drawing. “It was probably dumped right after we went to bed this morning, and it would have kept until we got up this evening.”
“But what if it had been found by someone who didn’t know about you?” Madison shuddered at the thought of an outsider calling the police to report a pool death. “If it is this Annabelle, she’s determined to cause you trouble, isn’t she?”
Dodie’s jaw tightened. “Sure looks that way to me.”
A knock at the back door made them all jump. Instinctively, Madison moved to block the body from the view of anyone coming through the door.
Pauline looked out through the sheer curtain at the door’s window. “It’s the knacker,” announced the housekeeper, unlatching and opening the back door.
Everyone sighed in relief. The Dedhams seldom had random visitors, but until the body was gone, they would all be on edge.
A short, stout middle-aged man with bandy legs and light brown skin was let into the kitchen by Pauline. He was dressed in old jeans, a dirty knit work shirt, and heavy work boots. As he entered the house, he removed a beat-up ball cap to display thinning black hair peppered with gray and a broad face lined by the sun. He reminded Madison of a hobbit who’d become a day laborer.
“Jesús,” Pauline said to the man, “this here’s Madison. She lives with the Dedhams.”
Jesús gave her a crooked smile of small, uneven teeth. “Ah, I hear much about the fair Madison already.”
Madison wasn’t sure if being known was a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, it made her uncomfortable. “You have?”
The small man nodded. “You did much to help Mr. Samuel and the others a few months ago. We’re all very grateful.” His voice had an upbeat, friendly tone to it.
When Madison looked puzzled, Jesús offered, “If the vampiro fall, we all fall. All our businesses.”
“He’s right about that,” Pauline added with a jerk of her head.
Madison had learned that there was a very tight community of the living who served the vampires in various ways—as housekeepers, hairdressers, lawyers, drivers, and even some who provided fresh blood. Whatever services the vampires needed to continue their way of life but could not provide for themselves was outsourced to those amongst the living who vowed silence in return for extra-large paychecks. When Madison had agreed to work for the council, she had joined their ranks.
In an awkward gesture, Madison held out her right hand to Jesús, who took it between both of his work-worn hands and pumped it firmly. Done with the formalities, Jesús smiled at the Dedhams and walked over to study the body.
After crossing himself, Jesús pronounced, “Easy job.” He turned back to the door. “Be right back.”
When Jesús returned, he was carrying a large cooler. He placed it on the counter. “Here’s your order.”
Pulling a kitchen-size plastic garbage bag from his back pocket, Jesús squatted down next to the decomposing body and went to work. After slipping on work gloves, he ran his hands up and d
own the limbs, testing their brittleness. Starting with the long legs, he began dismembering the corpse by snapping the body apart at the joints as if breaking kindling.
When Doug and Dodie went into the other room, Madison looked at Pauline with raised eyebrows.
“Would you want to watch,” the housekeeper replied, “knowing that’s what’s gonna happen to you one day?”
Madison shivered. “It is really creepy.”
While Jesús worked at breaking up the dead vampire, Pauline unpacked the various containers of animal blood from the cooler. She handed several to Madison. “Here, put these in the freezer.” Pauline read the label on one container and set it aside. “I’ll keep this one out for their supper tonight. It’s wild boar’s blood—a particular favorite of Mr. D’s. Might make them feel better.” Pauline handed Madison the boar’s blood, instructing her to place it in the refrigerator. The last several containers went into the freezer along with the first bunch.
When Jesús was done, the body of the once large and bulky vampire had been reduced to the size of two days’ worth of kitchen garbage. “At the rate he was going,” the knacker noted, “this bag will be filled with nothing but dust by early tomorrow.”
Madison couldn’t stop her morbid curiosity. “What will you do with him … with the dust?”
“Depends on whose it is,” the odd little man explained. “If friends of the deceased request it, I return it once it’s fully decomposed. Otherwise, I scatter it in my garden, in the woods, or sometimes in the ocean. I return it to nature, where it belongs.”
When Jesús was done and gone, the Dedhams returned to the kitchen hand in hand. “If you don’t need us,” Doug told Madison and Pauline, “we’re going back to bed.” He looked pointedly at Madison. “And you, young lady, should be heading to school. You’re not late already, are you?”
Madison glanced at the clock on the wall. If she skipped her shower, she’d make it. “No, I’m good.”
“You want something to eat first?” Pauline asked the Dedhams. “Jesús brought some fresh boar’s blood.”
Doug looked at his wife. Dodie shook her head slowly. It was clear that the Dedhams were truly dead on their feet. “No, thank you, Pauline,” Doug said for them both.
“Madison,” Doug said, turning to her just before he disappeared into the next room. “Please leave Samuel a message about what happened here today. I’m sure he’ll be wanting to discuss it later tonight.”
“Should someone wake him?” Madison asked. “I can call Hyun to do it.”
“No, let him sleep. There’s nothing anyone can do right now, and I doubt any more bodies will show up in broad daylight.” Doug ran a hand through his silver hair. “If it’s another vampire doing this, as we suspect, he is—”
“She,” Dodie corrected.
Doug glanced at Dodie. “He or she will be tucked in for the day.”
“What about Notchey? Should I tell him?”
“Vampires killing vampires is out of his jurisdiction.” Doug shrugged in reconsideration. “But if he has the time to give it some thought, run it by him. Never know, he might see something we’re missing. And it sure wouldn’t hurt to give him a heads-up.”
SIX
Anyone know this vampire?” Samuel asked the members of the council seated around the Dedhams’ dining table.
Before leaving for her class, Madison had taken Doug’s sketch, scanned it, and sent it to Samuel in an e-mail. As soon as he saw the e-mail, he forwarded the likeness off to the other council members with a request to meet at the Dedhams’ promptly at ten o’clock. Before the council meeting, Madison had printed off enlargements to pass around the table, hoping the larger picture might jar some memories.
Madison attended some council meetings to record certain information, but not all. Tonight she was asked to sit in and take notes. Even Notchey was asked to attend.
When Madison called Notchey to tell him what had happened that morning, he’d invited her out to dinner. They had gone to Gladstone’s in Malibu. While there, Notchey received a text message from Samuel asking him to attend the special council meeting.
“How convenient,” Notchey said, showing Madison the message. “I have to take you back home anyway.”
“What would happen,” Madison asked quietly over their appetizer of crispy calamari, “if the police were called in and found a dead vampire?”
Notchey tilted back his bottle of Guinness and took a long drink before answering. “Hard to say. At first, I’m sure they would think it was just a hoax, or that it was the body of one of those vampirism cult followers with the fake fangs. Of course, the autopsy would be revealing, not to mention interesting.”
“What if the body started decomposing right before their eyes?”
“That really spooked you, didn’t it?”
Madison shuddered. “Yes. It was like watching one of those nature shows where they speed up time so you can see in minutes what happens over years.” She took a drink of her soda. “Have you ever seen a vampire die?”
Notchey remained silent, taking a couple of short nips off his beer bottle while he stared out the window at the darkness that was the Pacific Ocean. Madison’s curiosity rose like a thermometer in the desert. It was obviously a question the cop wasn’t ready to answer in an instant. She had a choice: drop the question or press. She pressed.
“Well, have you?”
“Yes, I have.” He continued staring out at the waves.
“Did it scare you? Or are you too tough a cop to let a silly thing like instant mummification throw you off?”
“Cops are people, Madison.” He turned away from the window and faced her again. “Even though we see some pretty horrible stuff, I’m sure a corpse disintegrating on fast forward would scare anyone shitless, including a seasoned cop.” He dipped a calamari ring into the sauce and popped it into his mouth, thinking while he chewed. “After, I’m not sure what would happen.” He ate another piece of calamari, this time a fried cluster of tiny tentacles. “Although I’m sure if the media got ahold of it, the Dedhams’ property would be overrun with reporters, most of whom would be making up shit about either some religious miracle or evidence of the devil at work. It would have to be sold as one or the other so the public could understand it.”
“But what about the police investigation?”
Notchey laughed, not a happy laugh but one of wry speculation. “That would be a mess, no doubt about it. And I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be the guy filing the report.”
There would be no police report. There was no body. The only thing the dead vampire had left behind was an image for Doug’s sketch and nightmare fodder for Madison.
When their entrees arrived, Madison wasn’t thinking about her grilled shrimp. On her mind was the kiss from yesterday. Notchey hadn’t said anything about it. When he had asked her to dinner, she’d wondered if he’d thrown out the invitation to give them a chance to talk. So far, it seemed all he wanted was company for dinner. She wondered if she should say something or just keep her mouth shut. She’d had only two relationships in her life. One had started in her last year of high school and had ended a few years later. The other had been shortly after she arrived in Los Angeles. Both had ended badly. The guy from high school had developed a serious drug problem. The one in LA had turned out to be married. For all of his personal torment, Mike Notchey seemed to be a stand-up kind of guy. Someone dependable, though elusive and filled with secrets. And he wasn’t a vampire. Whatever attraction she felt for him, she was sure it was mutual. Or was it? Her track record and background left her doubting any feelings about anything and anyone.
“Mike,” she started, pushing a shrimp around her plate with her fork.
He shoveled a piece of salmon into his mouth and chewed, giving her his attention.
She went tongue-tied, wondering how to broach the subject without sounding like a needy, clinging vine. She continued playing with her food.
Notchey pointed his fork at Madiso
n’s plate. “Don’t you think that shrimp’s been through enough without you bullying him?”
She put her fork down and looked at him. After giving her a quick shrug, Notchey went back to eating, returning his attention to the damage he was doing to his own food. Madison picked up the fork again and speared the shrimp, this time stuffing it into her mouth.
“He was a big guy,” Doug told the council as they looked over the picture. “Tall and well built, with blond hair just past his jaw line. His beard was darker than his hair, like a dark gold. Difficult to say how old he appeared. His face was very rugged, so he could have been anywhere from his late thirties to mid-forties, maybe even older.”
No one around the table claimed to know the vampire in the sketch. They looked from one to the other, shrugging.
“There was nothing to give you a clue as to where he might have been from?” The question came from Stacie Neroni.
“He was naked, just like Keleta.” Doug answered. “But he did have the same brand at the small of his back.”
“What does the brand specifically look like again?” This time the question came from Kate Thornton.
“A hexagon with an eye in the middle,” answered Dodie. Although not on the council, she was allowed to attend since she was a witness. Jerry Lerma, Kate’s beater husband, was shut up in the den, waiting for her.
“It looks just like this.” Turning around, Doug gave the council the same show he’d given Notchey and Madison the day they’d fished Keleta out of the pool. Colin and Isabella were the only council members not at the meeting, but Eddie Gonzales, Kate, and Stacie all took a closer look. “This is the brand Annabelle Fogle gave me shortly before she turned me.”
“Are you sure that’s the same brand Keleta and the vampire from this morning had?” Stacie moved closer to Doug’s back and squinted, as if burning the brand from Doug’s skin into her memory.
“Exactly the same,” assured Dodie. She turned to Madison, who nodded in agreement. “Why?”
Stacie resumed her place at the table. “Where’s Colin? Does he know about the brand?”
Baited Blood Page 5