“Yes. A musket ball was an early form of ammunition used for loading muskets. Musket balls were generally made from lead and were of a diameter considerably larger than today's modern rifles. From what my father told me after I called and asked him, the musket ball became obsolete after the middle of the nineteenth century due to its inaccuracy. This is a rifled musket ball and its composition indicates that it’s from that era. My father is kind of a historical nut.”
“What the fuck?” Kenny was still going off about this strange new fact and I couldn’t really blame him. I was having trouble with it myself.
“What about the holes in the neck? It is our one connections; all the victims have the same kind of holes in the neck.”
“I’m not ready yet to say for certain, but I’m sure the holes are tied to the blood loss somehow. One more thing, Anderson. I’ve run all the prints through AFIS—still no hits.” AFIS is the Automated Fingerprint Identification System used by all branches of the government.
“What the fuck…” I heard Kenny mutter again under his breath as he stood behind me.
“Thank you, Doc. Please let me know if you come across anything more that could help. And, Doc—are you alright? You look a little… flustered today.”
“No, I’m fine. But thank you for your concern, Detective. I’ll be okay.”
Kenny and I stood there silently for a great while before Dr. Colleens returned to her work. We had heard some strange conclusions in that building over the last few years, but this was a first. Never before had we come across such mounting and odd historically-charged evidence.
“Come on, Tim. We need to hit the streets.”
Chapter 7
11:05 a.m., November 23
The top-floor hotel room of the Warwick was dark and smelled of blood. The two lifeless men had begun their journey into death and Fabiana stood over them, wishing she could venture out into the light of the day and hunt down the vampire that sent these killers to her door. She could, she supposed, and she knew that it was possible, but she refused to go through the pain and discomfort of direct contact with the sun. She preferred the shelter of the night.
His death would come soon enough, she told herself.
The sun was almost at its full height above the city and glowed off the glass windows of the skyscrapers that cluttered downtown like blades of grass in an overgrown field. Fabiana, as powerful as she was beautiful, attempted to sense where the slayers might have come from. She reached out with the strength of her mind and endeavored to follow the scent of the two men. She sat at a small wooden table and didn’t get up, barely moving. Her thoughts were unrestrained as she reached out mentally with the full power and capability of her awareness.
Closing her eyes, she could suddenly see high over the city. Reflections danced in between massive skyscrapers and hordes of people who now populated the streets swarmed like ants rushing to gather food for the coming winter. The sky was light blue and grey as the fall fought for its right over the failing summer. People walked the streets unaware of the vampires sleeping throughout their city, scattered throughout warehouses, tombs, and hotels. Her thoughts brought her high overhead. It was as if she was one of the white seagulls soaring through the clouds, waltzing on the wind, peaceful and content with everything.
The downtown streets filled with impatient cars and Metro buses pushed their way forward to their destinations. It took only a few moments for Fabiana to catch the scent of the men. She could almost see the path they had traveled to get to the hotel. They left their stench on everything, as if leaving a trail of bread crumbs to find their way home. They were clumsy and lumbering. They had lazily made their way to the hotel and no immortal would have been so careless as to leave such an obvious trail of humanity behind them.
Fabiana could sense that it was the underground of Pike Place Market that was to be her destination after sunset tonight. It would be some time before the sun would set and she began to think back to an age just before she had been taken in the darkness. Being able to see the sky through her mind was thrilling for her, but she missed the time long ago when she could feel the sunlight on her face. Some day, Fabiana hoped that she would be able to see the sun again. Like when she was a little girl, running through the fields of her home in Hispania, playing with the friend of her father’s that she had loved so much.
252
Chapter 8
11:30 a.m., November 23
The FTA office at the police headquarters was a small one, a white tiled room, lowly lit by a struggling light bulb on the ceiling. A stainless steel sink sat next to the door, slowly dripping water onto the metal. Its thunk, thunk could be heard down the hall and was a constant reminder to Devin how he had been hidden away back there, like so many bottles of the chemicals that the police could not understand or probably even spell correctly, for that matter.
Devin Sanderson worked hunched over a keyboard, his right hand fluttering at the keys as he held a Coke in the left. Old, sticky rings of Coke cans long gone now stained the tabletop, reminding everyone of his caffeine habit. Two different computer monitors sat before him, displaying computer codes as he typed away. Racks of computer disks were in stacks all around the room like leaning Towers of Pisa, and at any moment they threatened to come crashing down.
Devin was just a kid, no more than twenty, and I’m pretty sure he was a virgin. He was a thin boy with greasy skin that was covered in zits. He wore big, thick glasses that never seemed to stay on the bridge of his nose. He was constantly pushing them back into place. He had only been with us a short while, but he was some kind of prodigy. He had graduated high school by the time he was fifteen, which is when he got a scholarship to MIT. Then he moved to Wisconsin and interned with the FTA. How he ended up here in Seattle, he has never said, nor has anyone ever told me.
As Kenny and I entered the room, he was staring out his office window that overlooked the reception area of the police headquarters. Things were up in the air that morning and we really hoped this kid could help us out. He turned his chair slightly so that he could look at us. He pushed up on the brim of his MIT ball cap and gave me a nod, the kind of greeting I had been given a hundred times by street kids. It was just his way of relaxing a tense situation. I knew that, but try explaining that to my partner. That is why the kid pretended to be busy, enthralled with his work, just as we walked in. Kenny wasn’t buying it one bit.
Devin spun around back to his computer before he spoke to us, as if we were not worth his time. However, I seriously doubted that was how he meant it. He was acting nonchalant, but I surmised that the kid was actually terrified that we were standing somewhat menacingly behind him. I’m sure that, to him, we felt like two large bulls that could smell his fear.
“What can I do for you guys?”
The boy finally spoke without making eye contact.
“Devin, we have something for you,” I told him.
“Oh good. And it’s not even my birthday,” he said, still without looking at us. I looked over at Kenny as he stiffened his jaw, clenched his fist, and took one aggressive step towards Devin.
“Boy, if you don’t turn around and look at us you will never see another birthday again,” Kenny threatened.
At that, Devin whipped his head around with an apologetic look on his face—a look definitely mixed with fear. At that point, he would have done anything for Kenny if it kept him from getting killed. I held out the tape for him and he stared at it for a minute, as if he was afraid to take it from me.
“Just take it. It won’t bite,” I said.
“What do you have?”
“Evidence from the multiple homicides this morning.”
He pressed his lips together and gave me an approving nod as he took hold of the evidence. He spun back in his chair and popped the VHS tape into a VCR that he seemed to be using as a bookend on a shelf in the corner of the room. Code books and technical manuals were stacked there, held in place by the bulky VCR. As he pushed the tape in, the
old machine hummed to life, glowing with two green lights that indicated it still worked. One of his computer monitors suddenly switched over to video and the grainy image started playing for us. Devin leaned forward in his chair and rubbed his chin as if that would help him concentrate.
“Is this the part of the video you need me to work on?”
“Yes. What we need seems to be out of the camera’s line of sight, but I was hoping maybe you could work your magic on the background and pull something out.”
“Let me see,” he said, as he began to type.
“If I crop this section of the glass of this building here, all we have is the reflection,” he stated, as if he was talking to himself. I watched as he drew a square with his cursor around the paused image of the video. Then he cut all the foreground out so all I could see was the window of Westlake Center’s shopping mall.
“Okay, now I need to enhance and resize.” He continued to talk his way through the process. A very grainy image was looking at us on the screen but I really could not tell what it was.
“Is that the best we can do?” I asked.
“No, I can wash the tape itself with a solution and try to clean this up, but it’s going to take a while. Can you guys come back later?”
“Yeah, okay. Let’s leave him to it, Tim.”
I felt reluctant to leave but there was nothing that I could do and I knew it. Then Kenny’s cell went off, as if that was our cue to take our leave. Kenny had his phone on speaker and the voices filled the small cramped room. Kenny was always in the habit of not having private conversations with me standing next to him and tended to include me. Almost immediately the call did not sound like it was going well.
“Detective Johnson, this is Officer Dan Page, Third District. Sorry to disturb you, sir.”
“No problem. What’s up, Officer Page?”
“I’m here with your uncle, sir,” the officer told him.
“Excuse me?”
That was the last thing Kenny was expecting the cop to tell him.
“I’m fine, Kenny! This cop just pinched me for nothing!” a voice yelled from the background.
“We’re at the Locks. I think he could use a ride home,” the officer said quietly.
“Wait… is he hurt? Is he okay?” Kenny asked.
“He’s a little bit confused and disoriented, that’s all.”
Then it seemed his uncle grabbed the phone from the officer and got on the line to talk to Kenny.
“Kenny, I’m fine. I just took a bus to see Luke James. I mentioned him to you before. We were in the 82 together, remember?” Kenny’s uncle was an old war hero from the Korean War.
“Yeah, I remember, old man.”
“Well, the asshole up and passed away on me!” his uncle told him. “They had the funeral three weeks ago. Nobody even told me! I took a walk to clear my head, and… well, I… I got turned around.”
“Listen… Old man, I’m coming to get you, okay?”
“But you’re working,” his uncle insisted, not liking the fact that he was putting his nephew out.
“That’s okay. Just put me back on with the cop,” my partner told him. After a moment, the officer got back on the phone and Kenny said, “I’m on my way, Page.”
“Everything alright, man?” I asked as he got off the phone and I knew we were going to be running out.
“I need to pick up the old man.”
“Alright, let’s go,” I said, giving Kenny a reassuring glance.
252
Chapter 9
11:35 a.m., November 23
Devin watched as the two large detectives ran out of the room and shut the door behind them. He fell back into his chair and took a long cleansing breath of relief. Those two always made him nervous and reminded him of his father, and he had never really understood him either. His father had wanted a son who was a jock, not some nerd that would spend all day stuck up in his room in front of a computer screen reading code for hours. Even when he had graduated from MIT with honors, his father was not all that impressed with him.
Maybe someday Devin would do something really spectacular and the old man would like him, but it was doubtful. His father was a retired Air Force 0-6 colonel who was anything but understanding of his son. He wanted to raise a boy like he had been, someone that would follow in his footsteps and defend his country. A boy that would join the Air Force or maybe even the Army or, if things got really bad, God help us, he could have joined the Navy. His dad would have been okay with that.
But Devin never did any of those things. Devin was a nerd, a geek, someone his Dad never wanted for a son. He loved Devin, of course, but only because he had to. Devin was his son, but he would never really be happy with him. Even though his wife, Devin’s mother, had tried for years to get him to like the boy, it never worked. Still, Devin tried his best to make him happy. It was all he had really ever wanted—his father to be proud of him. After all, he worked in law enforcement. He wasn’t a cop like his father had told him to be, but he did his part, he was helping the police. Every member of law enforcement is important, be it forensic pathologist, computer analyst, or police officers themselves. He had explained all this to his father but it didn’t ever really matter.
Devin began to have labored breathing, his chest wheezing and whining. He reached into one of the desk drawers and pulled out an asthma inhaler. With a deep breath and a push of the pump, the mist was propelled into his lungs. He closed his eyes and tried to calm down. His heart was beating faster and faster and the words of his father ran through his mind, Grow a pair and be a fucking man for once in your weak little existence. His father would say that during his breathing problems as a kid, and it never really helped; it didn’t help now. Devin closed his eyes and could hear the loud clicking of the second hand on the wall clock behind him as he slowly began to calm himself.
Devin ejected the tape from the VCR, placed it on a stainless steel tray, and pulled out a brown bottle from under the sink that was at the back of the room. It was a 32-ounce bottle and its faded label read Isopropyl Alcohol Propionate. He pulled a cotton swab from his desk and slowly began the painstaking process of cleaning the VHS tape.
252
Chapter 10
12:55 p.m., November 23
A while later, Kenny and I were in my truck with his uncle heading back to his house. I said very little—I could see that Kenny was worried about his uncle and I was worried for Kenny. He was taking on a lot for his uncle. I knew Uncle Hank belonged in a home, and Kenny knew it too.
“You sure you’re all right?” Kenny asked.
“Will you stop asking me that? I just got lost. You never got lost? Just because I’m maturing, people think I’m going senile.”
“Alright, okay. I’m just asking,” Kenny said, backing off of him.
“Remember when I taught you how to box? You thought I was too old then too.”
“I tell you, you had the best left cross I had ever seen! I could never get that one right.”
“Well, your right uppercut could flatten me every time,” Hank said.
“Glad you’re here, old man.”
“Well, don’t worry—if you ever need some alone time with some young thing, I’ll make myself gone,” his uncle said with a wink. I couldn’t help but give a little chuckle. Kenny glared at me for it.
“Uncle, I’m fine. I really don’t have anyone right now, but I can take care of my own love life.”
“I don’t think so,” Hank replied, smirking.
I gave another little laugh—I couldn’t hold it in—and Kenny shot me another dirty look.
252
Chapter 11
4:30 p.m., November 23
All FBI agents are asses and Jack Mitchell was no exception.
Tall and slender, he seemed to overpower any space he was in, but he always looked tired, as if he was coming down with a cold. His handsome face was tense, his black hair a mess, and he dressed like any other agent—in a basic black suit, white
shirt, and blue tie. He wore a cheap Sportline watch and his platinum wedding ring.
Jack knew that he had made a big mistake with his wife. He had acted like an ass but there was little that he could do about it now. His guilt was mounting inside him. He loved her very much but he also appreciated the attention he received from other women. It probably had something to do with his upbringing. He always felt like he had not gotten enough attention from the women in his life since he had been raised by his grandmother, who was old and distant from him. When he would turn his keen intellect on himself he didn’t always like what he saw, but he would not change his attitude for anything.
He would never cheat on his wife but he liked to flirt with the opposite sex. That was a fact that his wife was more than a little aware of; they had had more than a few conversations about it over the years. Jack knew he should call her, but what could he say to ease her mind? He still could not return home and she would not feel content until he walked through the doorway of their house in Washington D.C.
She was a good woman and as loyal as a German Shepherd. Jack knew that always. Even early on in their relationship, when he was still in college at George Washington, she adored him. She had always been good at showing Jack that she was well sought after in those early days, when her youth and vitality were “ripe for the picking,” as he used to call it. But his wife had always sent those men that came calling packing without so much as a glance. She had always only loved Jack, and that was common knowledge.
Why then could Jack not show her the same kindness and respect while he was away? Not even Jack had an answer for that one.
Jack’s cell phone began to beep. He pulled it from his pocket and looked at it. He had a text message.
Agent Mitchell. When you get to the scene in Oregon, look behind the dumpster. There is something there for you. User319.
Jack was confused by this message. Who was this person, this User319? And why was he helping Jack?
The Blood Born Tales (Book 1): Blood Collector Page 5