by Anne Rice
David took a hasty sip of the fresh cup as the waiter went away, and then reached into the pocket of his coat. He placed in my hand a little bundle of thin sheets of paper. "These are newspaper stories of the murders. Read them carefully. Tell me anything that comes to your mind."
The first story, "Vampire Murder in Midtown," enraged me beyond words. I noted the wanton destruction which David had described. Had to be clumsiness, to smash the furniture so stupidly. And the theft-how silly in the extreme. As for my poor agent, his neck had been broken as he'd been drained of his blood. More clumsiness.
"It's a wonder he can use the power of flight at all," I said angrily. "Yet here, he went through the wall on the thirtieth floor." "That doesn't mean he can use the power over really great distances," David replied.
"But how then did he get from New York to Bal Harbour in one night, and more significantly, why? If he is using commercial aircraft, why go to Bal Harbour instead of Boston? Or Los Angeles, or Paris, for heaven's sakes. Think of the high stakes for him were he to rob a great museum, an immense bank? Santo Domingo I don't understand. Even if he has mastered the power of flight, it can't be easy for him. So why on earth would he go there? Is he merely trying to scatter the kills so that no one will put together all the cases?"
"No," said David. "If he really wanted secrecy, he wouldn't operate in this spectacular style. He's blundering. He's behaving as if he's intoxicated!"
"Yes. And it does feel that way in the beginning, truly it does. You're overcome by the effect of your heightened senses."
"Is it possible that he is traveling through the air and merely striking wherever the winds carry him?" David asked. "That there is no pattern at all?"
I was considering the question as I read the other reports slowly, frustrated that I could not scan them as I would have done with my vampire eyes. Yes, more clumsiness, more stupidity. Human bodies crushed by "a heavy instrument," which was of course simply his fist.
"He likes to break glass, doesn't he?" I said. "He likes to surprise his victims. He must enjoy their fear. He leaves no witnesses. He steals everything of obvious value. And none of it is very valuable at all. How I hate him. And yet... I have done things as terrible myself."
I remembered the villain's conversations with me. How I had failed to see through his gentlemanly manner! But David's early descriptions of him, of his stupidity, and his selfdestructiveness, also came back. And his clumsiness, how could I ever forget that?
"No," I said, finally. "I don't believe he can cover these distances. You have no idea how terrifying this power of flight can be. It's twenty times more terrifying than out-of-body travel. All of us loathe it. Even the roar of the wind induces a helplessness, a dangerous abandon, so to speak."
I paused. We know this flight in our dreams, perhaps because we knew it in some celestial realm beyond this earth before we were ever born. But we can't conceive of it as earthly creatures, and only I could know how it had damaged and torn my heart and soul.
"Go on, Lestat. I'm listening. I understand."
I gave a little sigh. "I learnt this power only because I was in the grip of one who was fearless," I said, "for whom it was nothing. There are those of us who never use this power. No. I can't believe he's mastered it. He's traveling by some other means and then taking to the air only when the prey is near at hand."
"Yes, that would seem to square with the evidence, if only we knew-"
He was suddenly distracted. An elderly hotel clerk had just appeared in the distant doorway. He came towards us with maddening slowness, a genial kindly man with a large envelope in his hand.
At once David brought a bill out of his pocket, and held it in readiness.
"Fax, sir, just in."
"Ah, thank you so much."
He tore open the envelope.
"Ah, here we are. News wire via Miami. A hilltop villa on the island of Curacao.
Probable time early yesterday evening, not discovered till four a.m. Five persons found dead."
"Curacao! Where the hell is that?"
"This is even more baffling. Curacao is a Dutch island-very far south in the Caribbean. Now, that really makes no sense at all."
We scanned the story together. Once again robbery was apparently the motive. The thief had come crashing through a skylight, and had demolished the contents of two rooms. The entire family had been killed. Indeed, the sheer viciousness of the crime had left the island in the grip of terror. There had been two bloodless corpses, one that of a small child. "Surely the devil isn't simply moving south!" "Even in the Caribbean there are far more interesting places," said David. "Why, he's overlooked the entire coast of Central America. Come, I want to get a map. Let's have a look at this pattern flat out. I spied a little travel agent in the lobby. He's bound to have some maps for us. We'll take everything back to your rooms."
The agent was most obliging, an elderly bald-headed fellow with a soft cultured voice, who groped about in the clutter of his desk for several maps. Cura9ao? Yes, he had a brochure or two on the place. Not a very interesting island, as the Caribbean islands go.
"Why do people go there?" I asked. "Well, in the main they don't," he confessed, rubbing the top of his bald head. "Except for the cruise ships, of course. They've been stopping there again these last few years. Yes, here." He placed a little folder in my hand for a small ship called the Crown of the Seas, very pretty in the picture, which meandered all through the islands, its final stop Curacao before it started home.
"Cruise ships!" I whispered, staring at the picture. My eyes moved to the giant posters of ships which lined the office walls. "Why, he had pictures of ships all over his house in Georgetown," I said. "David, that's it. He's on some sort of ship! Don't you remember what you told me. His father worked for some shipping company. He himself said something about wanting to sail to America aboard a great ship."
"My God," David said. "You may be right. New York, Bal Harbour ..." He looked at the agent. "Do cruise ships stop at Bal Harbour?"
"Port Everglades," said the agent. "Right near it. But not very many start from New York."
"What about Santo Domingo?" I asked. "Do they stop there?"
"Yes, that's a regular port all right. They all vary their itineraries. What sort of ship do you have in mind?"
Quickly David jotted down the various points and the nights upon which the attacks had happened, without an explanation, of course.
But then he looked crestfallen.
"No," he said, "I can see it's impossible, myself. What cruise ship could possibly make the journey from Florida all the way to Curacao in three nights?"
"Well, there is one," said the agent, "and as a matter of fact, she sailed from New York this last Wednesday night. It's the flagship of the Cunard Line, the Queen Elizabeth 2."
"That's it," I said. "The Queen Elizabeth 2. David, it was the very ship he mentioned to me. You said his father-"
"But I thought the QE2 makes the transatlantic crossing," said David.
"Not in winter," said the agent, agreeably. "She's in the Caribbean until March. And she's probably the fastest ship sailing any sea anywhere. She can do twenty-eight knots. But here, we can check the itinerary right now."
He went into another seemingly hopeless search through the papers on his desk, and at last produced a large handsomely printed brochure, opening it and flattening it with his right hand.
"Yes, left New York Wednesday. She docked at Port Everglades Friday morning, sailed before midnight, then on to Curaçao, where she arrived yesterday morning at five a.m. But she didn't stop in the Dominican Republic, I'm afraid, can't help you there."
"Never mind that, she passed it!" David said. "She passed the Dominican Republic the very next night! Look at the map. That's it, of course. Oh, the little fool. He all but told you himself, Lestat, with all his mad obsessive chatter! He's on board the QE2, the ship which mattered so much to his father, the ship upon which the old man spent his life."
We tha
nked the agent profusely for the maps and brochures, then headed for the taxis out front.
"Oh, it's so bloody typical of him!" David said as the car carried us towards my apartment. "Everything is symbolic with this madman. And he himself was fired from the QE2 amid scandal and disgrace. I told you this, remember? Oh, you were so right. It's all a matter of obsession, and the little demon gave you the clue himself."
"Yes. Oh, definitely yes. And the Talamasca wouldn't send him to America on the Queen Elizabeth 2. He never forgave you for that."
"I hate him," David whispered, with a heat that amazed me even given the circumstances in which we were involved.
"But it isn't really so foolish, David," I said. "It's devilishly clever, don't you see? Yes, he tipped his hand to me in Georgetown, chattering away about it, and we can lay that down to his self-destructiveness, but I don't think he expected me to figure it out. And frankly,
if you hadn't laid out the news stories for me of the other murders, maybe I never would have thought of it on my own."
"Possibly. I think he wants to be caught."
"No, David. He's hiding. From you, from me, and from the others. Oh, he's very smart. Here we have this beastly sorcerer, capable of cloaking himself entirely, and where does he conceal himself-amid a whole teeming little world of mortals in the womb of a fast- moving ship. Look at this itinerary! Why, every night she's sailing. Only by day does she remain hi port."
"Have it your way," said David, "but I prefer to think of him as an idiot! And we're going to catch him! Now you told me you gave him a passport, did you not?"
"Clarence Oddbody was the name. But surely he didn't use it."
"We'll soon find out. My suspicion is that he boarded in New York in the usual way. It would have been crucial to him to be received with all due pomp and consideration-to book the finest suite and go parading up to the top deck, with stewards bowing to him. Those suites on the Signal Deck are enormous. No problem whatsoever for him to have a large trunk for his daylight hiding place. No cabin steward would trouble such a thing."
We had come around again to my building. He pulled out some bills to pay the driver, and up the stairs we went.
As soon as we reached the apartment, we sat down with the printed itinerary and the news stories and worked out a schedule of how the killings had been done.
It was plain the beast had struck my agent in New York only hours before the ship sailed. He'd had plenty of time to board before eleven p.m. The murder near Bal Harbour had been committed only hours before the ship docked. Obviously he covered a small distance by the power of flight, returning to his cabin or other hiding place before the sun rose.
For the Santo Domingo murder, he had left the ship for perhaps an hour, and then caught up with her on her journey south. Again, these distances were nothing. He did not even need preternatural sight to spot the giant Queen Elizabeth 2 steaming across the open sea. The murders on Curasao had taken place only a little while after the ship sailed. He'd probably caught up with the ship within less than an hour, laden with his loot.
The ship was now on her way north again. She had docked at La Guaira, on the coast of Venezuela, only two hours ago. If he struck tonight in Caracas or its environs, we knew we had him for certain. But we had no intention of waiting for further proof.
"All right, let's think this out," I said. "Dare we board this vessel ourselves?" "Of course, we must."
"Then we should have fake passports for this. We may leave behind a great deal of confusion. David Talbot mustn't be implicated. And I can't use the passport he gave me. Why, I don't know where that passport is. Perhaps still in the town house in Georgetown. God knows why he used his own name on it, probably to get me in trouble first time I went through customs."
"Absolutely right. I can take care of the documents before we leave New Orleans. Now, we can't get to Caracas before the ship leaves at five o'clock. No. We'll have to board her in Grenada tomorrow. We'll have until five p.m. Very likely there are cabins available. There are always last-minute cancellations, sometimes even deaths. In fact, on a ship as expensive as the QE2 there are always deaths. Undoubtedly James knows this. He can feed anytime he wishes if he takes the proper care."
"But why? Why deaths on the QE2?"
"Elderly passengers," David said. "It's a fact of cruise life. The QE2 has a large hospital for emergencies. This is a floating world, a ship of this size. But no matter. Our investigators will clarify everything. I'll get them on it at once. We can easily make Grenada from New Orleans, and we have time to prepare for what we must do.
"Now, Lestat, let's consider this in detail. Suppose we confront this fiend right before sunup. And suppose we send him right straight back into this mortal body, and cannot control him after that. We need a hiding place for you... a third cabin, booked under a name which is in no way connected with either one of us."
"Yes, something deep in the center of the ship, on one of the lower decks. Not the very lowest. That would be too obvious. Something in the middle, I should think."
"But how fast can you travel? Can you make it within seconds to a lower deck?"
"Without question. Don't even worry about such a thing. An inside cabin, that's important, and one large enough to include a trunk. Well, the trunk isn't really essential, not if I've fitted a lock to the door beforehand, but the trunk would be a fine idea."
"Ah, I see it. I see it all. I see now what we must do. You rest, drink your coffee, take a shower, do whatever you wish. I'm going in the next room and make the calls I must make. This is Talamasca, and you must leave me alone."
"You're not serious," I said. "I want to hear what you're-"
"You'll do as I say. Oh, and find someone to care for that beautiful canine. We can't take him with us! That's patently absurd. And a dog of such character mustn't be neglected."
Off he hurried, closing me out of the bedroom, so that he might make all these exciting little calls alone.
"And just when I was beginning to enjoy this," I said.
I sped off to find Mojo, who was sleeping in the cold wet roof garden as if it were the most normal thing in the world. I took him down with me to the old woman on the first floor. Of all t my tenants she was the most agreeable, and could certainly use a couple of hundred dollars for boarding a gentle dog.
At the mere suggestion, she was beside herself with joy. Mojo could use the courtyard behind the building, and she needed the money and the company, and wasn't I a nice young man? Just as nice as my cousin, Monsieur de Lioncourt, who was like a guardian angel to her, never bothering to cash the checks she gave him for her rent.
I went back up to the apartment, and discovered that David was still at work, and refusing to let me listen. I was told to make coffee, which of course I didn't know how to make. I drank the old coffee and called Paris.
My agent answered the phone. He was just in the process of sending me the status report I'd requested. All was going well. There had been no further assaults from the mysterious thief. Indeed the last had occurred on Friday evening. Perhaps the fellow had given up.
An enormous sum of money was waiting for me now at my New Orleans bank.
I repeated all my cautions to the man, and told him that I would call soon again.
Friday evening. That meant James had tried his last assault before the Queen Elizabeth 2 left the States. He had no means while at sea to consider his computer thievery. And surely he had no intention of hurting my Paris agent. That is, if James was still content with his little vacation on the Queen Elizabeth 2. There was nothing to stop him from jumping ship whenever he pleased.
I went into the computer again and tried to access the accounts of Lestan Gregor, the alias who had wired the twenty million to the Georgetown bank. Just as I suspected. Lestan Gregor still existed but he was virtually penniless. Bank balance zero. The twenty million wired to Georgetown for the use of Raglan James had indeed reverted back to Mr. Gregor at Friday noon, and then been immediately withdrawn fr
om his account. The transaction assuring this withdrawal had been set up the preceding night. By one p.m. on Friday, the money was gone on some untraceable path. The whole story was there, embedded in various numerical codes and general bank gibberish, which any fool could see.
And surely there was a fool staring at this computer screen right now.
The little beast had warned me that he could steal through computers. No doubt he'd wheedled information from the people at the Georgetown bank, or raped their unsuspecting minds with his telepathy, to gain the codes and numbers he required.
Whatever the case he had a fortune at his disposal which had once been my fortune. I hated him all the more. I hated him for killing my man in New York. I hated him for smashing all the furniture when he did it, and for stealing everything else in the office. I hated him for his pettiness and his intellect, his crude-ness and his nerve.
I sat drinking the old coffee, and thinking about what lay ahead.
Of course I understood what James had done, stupid though it seemed. From the very first I'd known that his stealing had to do with some profound hunger in his soul. And this Queen Elizabeth 2 had been the world of his father, the world from which he, caught in an act of thievery, had been cast out.
Oh, yes, cast out, the way the others had cast me out. And how eager he must have been to return to it with his new power and his new wealth. He'd probably planned it down to the very hour, as soon as we'd agreed upon a date for the switch. No doubt if I had put him off, he would have picked up the ship at some later harbour. As it was, he was able to begin his journey only a short distance from Georgetown, and strike my mortal agent before the ship sailed.
Ah, the way he'd sat in that grimly lighted little Georgetown kitchen, staring again and again at his watch. I mean, this watch.
At last David emerged from the bedroom, notebook in hand. Everything had been arranged.
"There is no Clarence Oddbody on the Queen Elizabeth 2, but a mysterious young Englishman named Jason Hamilton booked the lavish Queen Victoria Suite only two days before the ship sailed from New York. For the moment we must assume that this is our man. We'll have more information about him before we reach Grenada. Our investigators are already at work.