"What, then?"
"My daughter. I want... I want you to turn my daughter."
Christine's admitted to me that she'd been concealing the symptoms – the weakness, night sweats, joint pain – for as long as she could. She didn't want to be a bother, she said – meaning, I guess, that she saw I was half-crazy with grief and she didn't want to push me the rest of the way. And I guess she also thought that some of it was just her body's way of dealing with the shock of Rita's death.
But when the lumps appeared in her armpits, she'd realized that something more serious was going on. By then, of course, it was too late.
The docs did everything the book says – radiation, chemo, even some experimental medicines. Then one day her primary physician took me into that little room they have at the hospital, just off the intensive care unit. As soon as I sat down, I figured this was the room where doctors give you the Bad News. I was right, too.
I'd suspended my off-hours search for Rita's killer when Christine was hospitalized. But the night they gave me the Bad News, I went back to it. If possible, I pushed even harder than before – and it paid off.
That's how I find myself kneeling over a vampire and telling him that he's going to buy continued existence by making my only child a bloodsucking leech just like him.
I bring Christine home a few days later, promising the hospital people that I'll arrange for twenty-four-hour nursing care. I tell them that I'll make sure she gets everything she needs.
And then, one night, when the painkillers have pushed her to edge of unconsciousness, I tell the night nurse she can go home early. Then I get in touch with Anton Kinski again.
He doesn't have to ask my permission to enter the house. He's been there before.
Even now, I'm not sure if what happened next was the right thing to do, or the worst idea I ever had.
Pittston's only about twenty minutes' drive from Scranton, so I gave Karl the short version of the story, but it contained all the essentials.
When I was done, he turned in his seat and looked at me. "Stan – Jeez – I'm sorry, man, I didn't–"
"Forget it, Karl," I said. "You didn't know and now you do, and there's nothing else to say about it. Besides, it's time to go to work."
We had reached the crime scene.
Pittston's a town of about nine thousand, midway between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. It's got more hills than any other town I've ever seen. I hear San Francisco's worse, but I've got no desire to find out – they can keep their vamp mayor, as far as I'm concerned.
The city's in Luzerne County, not Lackawanna, which explains why Lacey Brennan got the call from the State Police and I didn't. Besides, Lacey's got a much cuter ass than I do.
• • • •
We parked behind a Pittston PD cruiser that looked like it had a lot of miles on it. I could see yellow crime scene tape fencing off a white duplex with green trim. The place had seen better days. A couple of shingles were gone from the roof, and the paint was peeling in several places. As soon as we were out of the car, Lacey came strolling over, a notebook in her hand and a frown on her heartshaped face.
"Good evening, as Bela Lugosi used to say," she said to me, then nodded at my partner. "Karl."
"Whatever chance this had of being a good evening went down the tubes hours ago," I said. "You wanna fill us in?"
"I might be able to do better than that, and get you inside for a look," she said. "The Crime Lab guys have been and gone."
As we walked toward the house Lacey said, "Family's name is Dwyer. They've got the upstairs."
"Who's ROS?" I asked her. I wanted to know who the Ranking Officer on Scene was because I wasn't going in that house without permission. Lacey couldn't give it, because this wasn't her case, or her jurisdiction. The last thing I wanted was some Statie calling McGuire to complain that I'd violated procedure.
"Twardzik," she said flatly.
There was silence for three or four paces.
"Of course it is," I said. "Why should God start taking pity on me now?"
I followed her through the small crowd of milling cops and technicians to where the Ranking Officer on Scene was chewing on a couple of guys in plain clothes. Even from the rear, Lieutenant Michael Twardzik was easy to spot. He was the only one around in a State Police uniform who barely topped 5'5". That's the minimum height requirement, and I swear the little bastard must've worn lifts in his shoes when he applied for the academy. His case of short man complex isn't much worse than, say, Napoleon's.
"And if either of you fail to turn in your Fives in a timely manner again," Twardzik growled, "you'll be packing up for your transfer to Altoona before end of shift. Understand me?"
He didn't wait for an answer. "Dismissed."
Every big organization has its version of Siberia – the place they send you when you fuck up not quite bad enough to be fired. In the Army, it used to be the Aleutian Islands off Alaska. With the FBI, it's Omaha, for some reason. And the Pennsylvania State Police's designated version of Purgatory is Altoona. I wouldn't argue the choice – I've been to Altoona.
I let Lacey take the lead as we came up behind Twardzik. "Lieutenant?" Even in that one word, I could tell that she'd made her voice softer, a little more feminine. This surprised me some, since Lacey's normally a "fuck you if you can't take a joke" kind of gal. She must really want us to see the inside of that duplex. "Would it be okay with you if I give these officers a look at the crime scene?"
div> Twardzik turned, squinting against the flashing lights from the police cruisers. "Which – oh, these officers."
Years ago, before I joined the Scranton PD, I thought I wanted to be a Statie. So I took the exam for admission to their academy. Something like two hundred and thirty guys (it was all guys, back then) took it that year, and I scored fourteenth. Each new class is capped at a hundred, no exceptions, and the test score is what they go by.
Before you can even take the exam, they check to make sure you have a high school diploma and a clean record, and you've got to pass the physical fitness test. So if your score is in the top hundred, you're in, and if not, sorry, Charlie. And they only let you take it once.
The scores are public record, which is how I know my rank – as well as Twardzik's, which was one-ohone. When I decided not to go (that's pretty rare, I guess), everybody below me moved up one. And that's how Twardzik got into the academy. He owes his career to the fact that I gave up my place in line.
No wonder the little bastard hates me – even though I've never once mentioned it to him.
Twardzik gave me the kind of look you'd give a particularly scuzzy-looking panhandler. "You're a long way from your playpen, Markowski. What'd you do – take a wrong turn on your way to the whorehouse?"
"Patronizing prostitutes is illegal, Lieutenant," I said evenly. No way was he getting a rise out of me. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction – or the excuse.
"I asked these detectives to come down from Scranton, Lieutenant," Lacey said hastily. "It looks like this homicide has some similarities with others that we're currently investigating."
Twardzik looked at Lacey. "Last I checked, WilkesBarre and Scranton were some distance apart, not to mention being in different jurisdictions. How is it you two are investigating homicides together? Has a law enforcement romance blossomed?"
That was when I wanted to hit him. But before I could say anything, Lacey got in with "I'm sorry, Lieutenant, I was being unclear. I meant that each of us is investigating separate homicides that seem to have similarities with each other, as well as with the case you have here. I thought it might help both investigations to move forward if these officers had a chance to view this crime scene."
Twardzik looked at me, then back at her, taking his time. I was pretty sure I knew what was going through his mind. If he denied permission, and Lacey and I each sent separate complaints to his Troop Commander, Twardzik would have to give a reason why he'd done it – and it would have to be a better one than his desire to see
me in Hell with my back broken.
"Yeah, all right, go on," he said to me, making a head gesture toward the house. "The sooner you do, the quicker you'll be out of my sight." Then he turned away, probably looking for a stray dog he could kick.
• • • •
We followed Lacey up the creaking steps that led to the second floor apartment. "Snotty little fuck," she said quietly, but with a lot of feeling. "It should come as no surprise that he's got a tiny cock, too."
"And you would know that, how?" I kept my voice casual, as if the answer wouldn't matter.
"I'm friends with his ex-wife, Stan. Jeez, how did you think I'd know?"
I didn't say anything, but felt my shoulders lose some tension I hadn't even known was there.
The steps brought us to a small landing in front of a simple wooden door that had plastic numbers "443B" glued to it. The doorway was spanned by a big yellow X of crime scene tape, which Lacey started o remove.
"Careful now," Karl said. Even though he was behind me, I could hear the grin in his voice. "Wouldn't want to upset the lieutenant."
"Are you kidding?" Lacey said. "I'm gonna put that back exactly the way I found it. Shit, I was tempted to take a picture, to make sure I get it right."
Once the tape was down, she opened the unlocked door and led us into the living room. I stepped to the side to make room for Karl's bulk and almost knocked over a knick-knack shelf full of little ceramic leprechauns. There'd be hell to pay if I broke any of them.
The furniture and drapes were old, but well caredfor. The floral wallpaper wasn't peeling anywhere, although nails stuck out from it in several parts of the room. The rug we stood on was threadbare in a few places, but it was as clean as you could expect with cops tramping all over it.
The Dwyers didn't have a lot, but they seemed to take pride in what they had. I was betting that Mrs. Dwyer vacuumed every week – probably on Saturday morning, just like my mom had done. On one wall, occupying a place of honor, was a framed faded portrait of JFK that looked like it had been clipped from a magazine. The one in our house had been from Life, I remembered.
A short hallway branched from the living room, with a door on each side and a bathroom at the end. One room had its door open, lights burning inside. Lacey led us there saying, "Mom, Dad, and two boys. Dennis is at Penn State, the other one, James, dropped out of high school a little over a year ago. Junior year."
"That must've been when he was turned," I said. "Which came first, I wonder?"
"Was he out to the parents?" Karl asked.
"Dunno," Lacey said, "but, Christ, he'd have to be."
Pretty hard to explain to Mom and Dad that you weren't going outside in daylight any more, and that midnight mass at Christmas was off your schedule for good. Sunday dinner would never be the same, either. They must've known their kid was a vamp. I felt sorry for them.
The bedroom looked like it would make a good set for a remake of I Was a Teenage Vampire. The walls were covered with posters of rock stars, although I didn't recognize most of them. Discarded clothes covered the furniture, and the floor was littered with CDs, DVDs, and magazines. The room's two windows had close-fitting boards nailed over both of them, which were covered with black plastic from garbage bags. The edges of the bags were heavily taped around the edges, to make sure no speck of sunlight would sneak in. That was the only unusual thing about the room – unless you counted the bloody corpse on the bed.
The wooden stake must have been very sharp – it looked like it had gone right through the kid's body, pinning him to the mattress like some kind of bug in a museum exhibit. James Dwyer had been wearing white briefs and a gray T-shirt with "Question Authority" printed on the front. Probably what he wore to bed when he'd been sleeping at night, not all that long ago.
The heart contains a lot of blood, so I wasn't surprised at the gore that half-covered the body and bed, and spattered the nearby wall. I'd seen staked vampires before.
"Here's the reason my buddy called me, and why I got in touch with you guys," Lacey said, walking over to the body. She pushed bloody blond hair away from James Dwyer's forehead, and there they were: three of the same kind of symbols that we'd been encountering on corpses lately. In fact, these looked kind of familiar.
I reached into my jacket pocket for my notebook. Even though the case files contained plenty of photos from each of the dead vamp crime scenes, I had still made cies by hand of the symbols that had been carved into each of the victims.
First vic – three symbols. Check. Second vic – three symbols, but different from the first set. Check. Third one – three symbols found on the guy in Wilkes-Barre. Check. Same weird alphabet, but different from the other two. Then James Dwyer, right in front of me. Three symbols. Check. Except...
"Lacey, lift the kid's hair again, will you? Karl, take a close look at these."
Karl stepped closed and leaned in close. Then he straightened up. "They look similar to the ones we been seeing," he said. "Not surprising."
"No," I said, "but here's something that is." I showed him my notebook. "See?" Each of the first three vics had a different set of these fucking arcane symbols carved on him. But James, here–"
"–has got the same markings as the first vic." Karl's forehead wrinkled. "So, maybe this fucking ritual, whatever it is, requires some kind of repetition, only… Fuck, I dunno."
Lacey was looking at me. "There's something else that doesn't fit," she said. "Now that you mention it. The M.O."
"All the M.O.s have been different," Karl said. "I mean, that's part of the pattern, haina?"
"I think maybe I see what she's getting at," I said to him. "It's not weird enough."
She nodded slowly. "Yeah, exactly. My guy had been done by a silver garrote, and in your two, the perp used–"
"Charcoal bullets and a silver-coated blade," I said. "Wooden stake through the heart, it's, I dunno, too conventional."
"Okay, I'm with you now," Karl said, "but it still doesn't tell us shit. We don't know why the perp would all of a sudden start using the tried-and-true method of killing a vamp, but we don't know why the fucker's doing anything he does."
"Yeah, but I wonder..." I let my voice trail off. "Look, we should get out of here so the coroner can take the body away. They're probably waiting for us."
As we shuffled back out the door, I said, "Besides, there's something I wanna look at in the car."
"What's that?" Karl asked.
"My laptop."
Karl was just slipping into the passenger side as I reached under my seat for the slim laptop computer. I heard the rear door open and close as Lacey scrambled into the back seat.
I opened up my computer, logged on, then passed it to Karl. "Here," I said. "You're better at this stuff than I am."
"What stuff?" Karl asked.
"Searching the Internet."
"Ah, hell. It's not all that hard to find porn." He glanced over his shoulder at Lacey. "Not that I would know."
"If not, you're the only guy in the world who doesn't," Lacey murmured.
"So what am I looking for, Stan?" Karl said.
"Images of the symbols that were carved into the first victim."
He looked at me. "Scranton PD never released that information. Neither did Wilkes-Barre."
"No, they didn't," I said. "But it's funny how much confidential stuff gets on the Internet without being officially released. I want to know if somebody outside law enforcement could've known what those symbols looked like."
Lacey leaned over the front seat. I could feel warm breath on the back of my neck. "You're thinking copycat?"
"Maybe," I said. "It would sure explain a few things that don't otherwise make much sense."
Despite his modesty, Karl was good at nding stuff online besides porn. His fingers were flying over the keyboard, and I could hear him swearing softly as his search efforts came up empty, one after another. Then he stopped, stared at the screen, and said, "Jesus fucking Christ on a goddamn bicycle."
"What?" I asked, although I thought I knew the answer.
"This," Karl said, and turned the screen to face me.
And there they were.
The website described the photo as showing "Actual Occult Symbols Carved into Murder Victim in Scranton PA!!!" The idiot who put it up there explained that this was somehow a sign of the oncoming Apocalypse.
Whoever he was, I hoped he was wrong.
"How the fuck did some asshole get hold of these?" Lacey said from the back seat.
"Lots of possible ways," I said. "Somebody at the coroner's office, a guy doing night shift at the morgue, the funeral home people – could've been anyone. Almost everybody's got a cell phone these days, and almost every one of those has a built-in camera."
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