Maybe he hadn't read the manual, after all.
"Witches don't wear magic like body armor," I said, "and they can't use it instantly, like karate. Working magic takes preparation."
"Remember that guy, Kulick, a few months ago?" Karl asked. "He was a wizard, and a good one. But he was taken by surprise – and you saw what happened to him."
George Kulick had died hard, although it had taken a while for his spirit to move on to the Great Beyond, whatever that was. Personally, I hoped the bastard was roasting in Hell.
"But they can do defensive spells, can't they?" Scanlon said.
"Sure, if they have a reason to." I glanced toward the charred figure tied to the tree. "And if it turns out that this vic is a witch, too, I bet every practitioner in town is going to have a defensive spell in place within a few hours of getting the news."
"Which means this one should be the last," Scanlon said. "They'll be ready for him, next time."
"They fucking well better be," I said.
Homer Jordan lumbered over. He nodded to Karl and me but spoke to Scanlon. "Well, I pronounced her, Lieutenant, which shouldn't come as a surprise. Cause of death's pretty obvious, too – but I'll check the internal organs to see if she was poisoned or drugged, first."
"What about T.O.D.?" Scanlon asked.
Homer shrugged his big shoulders. "Time of death's a bitch with burn victims, Lieutenant. I'll do the best I can."
"The guy who called it in said he could see flames," I said.
"The time of the call is probably a good indication of when she died, give or take a few minutes."
"That's good to know, thanks," Homer said. "I'll check the police report." He looked around at the dark trees. "Good thing we've had a lot of rain lately. Otherwise, the motherfucker could've started a forest fire, on top of everything else."
As Homer walked away, one of the uniforms came over and said, "Since the doc's done with the crispy critter, can we cut her loose, now, Lieutenant? The ambulance guys wanna get out of here."
Scanlon was in the cop's face faster than a Marine Corps drill sergeant. He didn't raise his voice, but I could hear every word he said, from fifteen feet away.
"You're talking about a woman who died in a horror and agony that your dim little brain can't begin to comprehend, and that you should pray to God you never have to learn about first-hand. But if I ever hear you refer to any burn victim as a 'crispy critter' again, I will personally tear that badge off your chest and make you eat it. Do you understand me?"
Even in the uncertain light, I thought I could see the cop's face start to perspire. "Jeez, Lieutenant, I was only–"
Scanlon's voice could have frozen Lake Scranton. "I asked you if you understood me."
"Yes, sir. I understand, sir."
"Then cut the victim down, and help the EMTs get her on the stretcher."
"Yes, sir."
Scanlon walked back to Karl and me, shaking his head. I didn't say anything – I figured he'd said it all.
"I guess your squad and mine will both be investigating this, from different angles," Scanlon said. "It would be a good thing to keep each other current on any progress – informally, of course."
"I agree, Lieutenant." Informally meant we'd avoid official paperwork and the interdepartmental rivalries that sometimes went along with it. It's like the CIA and FBI – they're supposed to share information, but they don't, always. And when that happens, sometimes people die.
I glanced over toward the tree, and saw the EMTs gently lowering the burned body onto the stretcher. "We probably oughta get going," I said to Karl.
I wanted to get on the path before the EMTs did. Otherwise, we'd have to follow them, and their macabre burden, all the way to the parking lot. It would slow us down, and would mean another ten minutes or so of inhaling that sickly-sweet odor from the burned corpse. I'd smelled enough of that for one night – or a lifetime, for that matter.
As I followed Karl and his vamp-vision through the dark, he said, over his shoulder, "Wonder if she has a family?"
"Probably," I said. "Most people do." Whoever the victim's survivors were, I was glad it wasn't my job to inform them of her death, and how it had happened. "We'll probably have an ID in a day or two."
"Even with the way she was burned?"
"Somebody'll report her missing, most likely – just like the other one, Mrs, uh–"
"Allerdyce," Karl said. "Brenda Allerdyce."
"Once Homer has a name to work with, he won't have much problem confirming her identity. Then we can go to work. Just like real detectives."
"Looking for stuff they had in common, all that."
"Yeah, but we'll start with finding out whether they knew each other. The ultimate common factor."
"Maybe Rachel can help out with that," he said. "Once she gets back."
"Assuming she's not still mad at us," I said.
"What do you mean us, kimosabe? I'm not the one who asked her to do the fucking necromancy."
We were kidding around, a little – we both knew that Rachel Proctor didn't hold a grudge against either of us. Although I wouldn't blame her if she did, in my case.
Last summer, I'd prevailed upon Rachel to conduct a necromancy so I could talk to the spirit of a murder victim. She'd agreed, against her better judgment. Turned out her judgment was right on the money, because things had gone very wrong. But she said she didn't blame me for any of it, and even gave me some of the credit for later getting her out of the mess that I'd gotten her into in the first place. Nice lady, that Rachel.
As we reached the gate I saw that the media had arrived in force, although the uniforms were keeping them behind a barrier of crime scene tape that split the parking lot in two. It looked like the four local networks had each sent a camera crew, and a couple of print reporters for the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre papers had shown up, too.
As soon as they saw us, a couple of mini-spotlights came on, along with the red lights atop the video cameras. The reporters were all yelling questions at us, but Karl and I just squinted against the glare and kept walking. If I made any statements without prior authorization, McGuire would disembowel me with a spoon. Anyway, I don't like journalists, much. I know they're just doing their jobs – but then, you could probably say the same thing for the guards at Bergen-Belsen.
As I started the car, Karl said, "About two hours to sunrise," which meant two hours before he had to be back inside his apartment's bedroom, in a sleeping bag with a blanket over it.
"Still time to accomplish a couple of things which might actually prove helpful. I'm gonna call Doc Watson and leave a message on his machine. See if he can spare us some time tomorrow night."
Terence K. Watson, MD, had been born in the Mississippi delta, the heart of blues country. That's where the nickname came from, although Doc says he can't even carry a tune in the shower. But he's a good psychiatrist, and he's been helpful to us in the past.
"You mentioned a couple of things," Karl said. "What's the other one?"
"I want to talk to those two Feebies."
Thorwald and Greer were set up in the squad's break room. It isn't much – a Mister Coffee that nobody every cleans, a small urn with hot water for the tea drinkers, a beat-up table, and some chairs. There's a small refrigerator that nobody ever uses, although Karl's been talking about keeping a bottle of O-positive in there, just for laughs.
The two Feds were looking through a pile of our old case files, although I couldn't figure what they thought they'd find. As we walked in, I said, "Got a minute?"
Greer glanced at his partner, then said, "Sure," with a little gesture toward the vacant chairs. We sat down, and I noticed that Karl was staring at Thorwald. Maybe he was considering her as a possible volunteer blood donor. She might've read his mind because she returned the stare and said to him, "You're undead, aren't you?"
I guess Greer wasn't as sharp as his partner, because he looked at Thorwald in surprise, then transferred the look to Karl. The surprised expr
ession quickly turned into some thing wary. Maybe he thought Karl was going to jump across the table and go for his jugular. I figured Greer didn't have much experience with vampires – maybe neither of them did.
Karl just nodded at Thorwald's question. There was a time when he would've tried to charm her with a smile, but nowadays his fangs tend to spoil the effect. He usually keeps them covered around strangers.
"I didn't know that the Scranton PD was recruiting vampires," Thorwald said. She didn't have Greer's leery expression, but didn't look like she was about to ask Karl to the Sadie Hawkins Day dance, either.
"They're not, far as I know," Karl said. "I was a cop before I was a vamp." He said it as if he was discussing tomorrow's weather.
"He was… changed… in the line of duty," I said.
Karl nodded and added, "It's a long story," meaning one he wasn't interested in telling now, if ever.
"I wanted to ask you about these videos," I said.
"What about 'em?" Greer asked.
"You said there were four, so far," I said.
Greer shrugged. "Yeah. So?"
"So how do you know there's only been four?"
There was a battery-powered clock on the wall near us, and I heard it tick seven times before Thorwald said, "You've got a point, Sergeant. There could be more of these atrocities than the four we have copies of. But our agents nationwide have been pushing their contacts and informants pretty hard, especially now that they know what to look for."
She took a sip of what looked like cold coffee, and I gave her credit for not grimacing, even though it probably tasted like battery acid.
"My best estimate is that there are only four, so far," she said. "But I won't discount the possibility that there are others out there."
"And there'll probably be more soon," Greer said. "Unless we find these fuckers first."
"You've seen all four of them," I said.
Thorwald made a face that would have gone well with the cold coffee. "Several times each," she said. "It doesn't get any easier with repetition." Maybe she wasn't quite the hard-bitten Feebie that she acted like.
"Were all of them filmed in the same place?" I asked.
"We think so," she said. "Although the lights are focused on the protective circle, there are some shots, pans mostly, that give a quick glimpse of one of the walls."
"Red brick," Greer said. "We took screen caps from each video and compared them for the same basic shot in each one – a head-on view of the victim in his chair before the fun begins. The configurations of the bricks in the background are identical. That means–"
Karl interrupted him. "It means that the camera angle is exactly the same each time. It has to be. And if the camera hasn't been moved from one murder to the next, that's another point in favor of the location being the same each time."
I let my gaze drift toward the coffee maker and thought about pouring myself a cup, but fortunately sanity prevailed. Instead, I looked back at Thorwald. "That doesn't necessarily mean the killing ground is in Scranton."
"That's true, technically," Thorwald said.
"Yeah, but…" Karl said, and let his voice trail off.
"But," she said, "the only vic that we have an ID for is from here. This Hudzinski guy. We've got screen caps of all the victims' faces, enlarged and enhanced. We've sent them to all the field offices. None of the agents there recognized anybody, and we can hardly expect them to go door to door in their local areas, asking 'Do you recognize any of these people?' Not exactly an optimum use of Bureau resources."
She actually said that – "optimum use of Bureau resources" – and with a straight face, too.
Karl leaned forward in his chair. "You're talking about eight vics minimum – two per video, right?
"So what?" Greer asked.
"So they can't all be local," Karl said. "This is Scranton, not New York. Eight guys go missing over the course of–" He looked at Thorwald. "–what, a year?"
"We figure it's been going on about ten months," she said.
"Eight guys in ten months," Karl said. "Uh-uh. Not in Scranton. That many missing person reports is gonna get somebody's attention downstairs, eventually. And we'd have heard about it by now, too."
"Unless the guys were homeless," Greer said. "It's getting so that serial killers like homeless people almost as much as they target hookers."
I thought about that for a moment, then said, "No, can't be – not all eight of 'em, anyway. Scranton's not that big a town. The homeless population isn't large. I'm talking about people living in packing crates and under bridges, shit like that."
"Anyway," Karl said, "nobody around here, no matter how bad off they are, is gonna start living under a bridge."
"How come?" Greer asked him.
"Trolls," Karl said.
"Let's get back to the matter at hand," Thorwald said. "The victims represent one of the points of contact between the killers and the… public, for lack of a better term. Once we identify a victim, we can work backwards, like with any other kidnapping case. Search the vic's home for any intel about where he was supposed to be the day he disappeared, try to find out who he'd been seen with before he went missing – the usual routine."
"Scranton's not the only legal jurisdiction around here," I said. "There's lots of small towns and townships – not to mention Wilkes-Barre, which is only twenty minutes away. Some guy gets grabbed in one of those places, and the missing persons report won't pass through Scranton PD."
"You FBI guys keep track of all that info, don't you?" Karl said.
"Yeah, all police and sheriff's departments nationwide send their crime stats to Washington," Thorwald said. "The Bureau publishes the compilation every year in the Uniform Crime Report."
"That's what I thought," I said. "So, maybe ET should phone home."
She shook her head. "There's a time lag between when the raw data reaches the Bureau and when it's collated."
"How big a time lag?"
"Put it this way," she said. "The Uniform Crime Report for two years ago was just published last month."
"Shit," I said.
"Yeah, but wait a second," Karl said. He looked at me. "Don't the Staties get copied on all missing persons reports from local departments?"
"That's a damn good question." I turned to the Feebies. "Think you can get an answer for us, like maybe tomorrow?"
"Hey," Greer said, "we're not here to do your–"
Thorwald stopped him by putting her hand on his knee. I wondered if it gave him a thrill. It would've given me one. "Sergeant Markowski probably means that the people in Harrisburg will respond more readily to a request from the Bureau than one emanating from the Scranton PD." She raised an eyebrow at me. "Yes?"
"Couldn't have put it better myself," I said. I glanced at my watch. "Sorry to cut this short, but our shift's over, and we need to get out of here at least a half-hour before six."
As Karl and I stood up, Greer said, "Didn't take you for a clock watcher, Markowski. I heard you were a real noseto-the-grindstone kind of guy."
I didn't say anything, since arguing with assholes is a waste of time, but I saw that Thorwald was looking at me thoughtfully. "What happens at six?" she asked.
"Sunrise."
As we walked toward the parking lot, Karl asked me, "Do you suppose there's a special course at the FBI Academy called 'How to Be a Federal Douche Bag'?"
"Wouldn't surprise me," I said. "And if there is, I'm betting that Greer aced it. Probably the only 'A' he ever earned." I reached into a pocket for my keys. "His partner's not too bad, though. For a Feebie."
Karl looked at me. "You think she's hot?"
"I didn't say that. I just meant that she doesn't seem to be a revolving asshole like her buddy."
"Revolving?"
"From whatever angle the object is viewed," I said.
"She likes you, though," Karl said.
"Yeah, right," I said. "And where did that revelation come from, O wise man?"
"Her heartbe
at. It speeded up a little every time she talked to you."
I didn't bother to ask him how he knew that. He'd just say, "It's a vamp thing – you wouldn't understand."
"I probably just remind her of her ex-husband," I said. "And not in a good way, either."
He shrugged. "Believe what you want."
"Think you could use some vampire Influence on Greer, maybe get him to stop being such a prick?"
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