Once bitten

by Stephen Leather

  I was printing it out when the phone rang. It was De'Ath calling, wanting to know how I was getting on.

  "Just finished," I said, and held the receiver by the side of the laser printer so that he could hear for himself. "How's the investigation?"

  "Which one?" he said, though he knew full that I wouldn't be asking about Henry Kipp, Esq.

  "The girl," I said.

  "Yeah, the girl," he said. "To be honest, Doc, it ain't going so well."

  "I thought you said it was open and shut."

  "Yeah, didn't I just? We got the report back from Forensic and it was his blood on her face and hands, no doubt about it. But there was no blood on her clothes. Yet he was covered in it. He'd been stabbed in the chest and slashed about the throat, there should have been red stuff all over her.

  And there's still no sign of a murder weapon."

  "What's her story?"

  "Now she's saying that she found him in the alley and was trying to give him the kiss of life.

  Can you believe that? Blood streaming from his throat and she's trying to give him the kiss of life!"

  "Who was the guy?"

  "Still waiting to hear from the bag 'em and tag 'em boys. They're gonna take his prints and run them through the computer. Look, Doc, I wanna see her report as soon as possible."

  "No sweat, but I don't think it's going to be of much help. She's not a crazy, far from it."

  "Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Can you bring it round?"

  "Half an hour, is that OK?"

  De'Ath groaned. "Oh, man, can't you come round now? Look, I tell you what, we've just got a warrant to go round and check out her place, why don't you meet us there. Any time after ten,

  OK?"

  I agreed eagerly, too eagerly maybe, but I was intrigued by the girl and I thought that a visit to her home might provide some sort of insight that I wouldn't get from simply talking to her. I finished the printing, put on a tie and was outside her apartment block by ten-thirty.

  It was a four-storey modern block on North Alta-Vista, close to Sunset Boulevard, and I realised, fairly close to where she'd been discovered kneeling over the body. I recognised De'Ath's car parked outside and I walked up the stairs rather than taking the lift to prove to myself that I was in good condition. I was out of breath when I reached the top floor so I stood in the hallway until I felt better and then rang the bell. De'Ath's partner, Dennis Filbin, a bulky Irishman with a drinker's nose, opened the door, grunted, and let me in.

  "Don't touch anything," he growled. He was wearing polythene gloves and so was De'Ath who came out of the bedroom with a worried look on his face.

  "Don't touch anything," said De'Ath.

  "I already told him," said Filbin.

  "He already told me," I said. "You found anything?"

  "Make-up, a teddy bear, closets full of clothes. She don't appear to have no bad habits." He sounded disappointed.

  "You sound disappointed," I said. "Mind if I look around?"

  "Help yourself. Just don't touch anything."

  "Can I have a pair of gloves?" I asked him.

  "If you don't touch anything, you won't need gloves," De'Ath snarled. "Have you got the report?"

  "I've got both – Kipp and her." I handed them to him and looked around as he and Filbin read through the reports. The apartment was small: a lounge with a small kitchenette leading off it, and a bedroom with space for a double bed, a dressing table and little else. Her clothes were in closets which were built in to the wall opposite the bed and I used a pencil to push one of the doors open.

  There were lots of clothes hanging up: dresses, jackets, skirts, blouses, mostly cheap and cheerful stuff, the kind you'd expect to find in any young girl's bedroom. There were three framed posters on the wall, all of them movie posters: Total Recall, Gone With The Wind, and Bambi. Eclectic taste, no doubt about it. There was a fluffy toy rabbit on the dressing table, and a black and white photograph in an antique gilt frame. I bent down to look at the picture, it was of a young man sitting in a director's chair, obviously taken on a film set because in the background were cameras and lights and a tangle of thick, black wires. The man was in his early twenties, clean shaven with his hair swept back, black and glistening as if it had been oiled. He was looking over one shoulder and smiling as if he knew the photograph would end up in a girl's bedroom. It was a movie star smile, gleaming teeth and sincere eyes. On the back of the chair was the name of the film. Lilac Time. And below those words was a name – Greig Turner. It was an old photograph, and the cameras in the background seemed to belong to the golden age of movie-making, maybe before sound, even. To the right of the picture, adjusting one of the lights on a massive tripod, was a man dressed in baggy trousers and checked shirt wearing a cap like Jimmy Cagney used to wear in his old gangster movies. I wondered if Terry was a movie buff who liked to collect momentoes of old movies, but apart from the three framed prints and the photograph there were no other collectibles around. Perhaps the man in the photograph was a relative. Father perhaps? No, that couldn't be right because her name was Ferriman. Unless she'd changed it. If the man was in his twenties and the picture had been taken, say, in the 1930s, then he'd be in his eighties now. Grandfather perhaps?

  "Whatchya looking at?" asked De'Ath's voice from behind me. I straightened up. My spine clicked as I did. It had started to do that a lot recently. Arthritis setting in, I bet.

  "The photograph," I said. "A relation, maybe?"

  "Yeah, maybe. We've about finished here, you'll have to make tracks."

  "OK, give me a minute or two will you?"

  The bed was covered with a thick peach-coloured quilt and only one pillow had an indentation in it and for some reason I felt pleasantly pleased that Terry Ferriman appeared to sleep alone. I followed De'Ath back into the lounge. There was a small television set, a hi-fi, a three-seater black leather sofa and a matching easy chair. The carpet was short-piled, grey and featureless and the walls were white and bare. No pictures, no photographs. There were some books and CDs on black metal shelves which ran the full length of one wall and there were black blinds over the two windows. The blinds were down but open so that lines of sunlight cut through the room and drew bright oblongs on the floor. There was a black metal and smoked glass coffee table in front of the sofa and on top of it were a couple of fashion magazines. De'Ath was right, there was nothing there. No blood-stained knife, no pile of bloody clothes, no manuals on how to be a successful murderer. I could see why he was so disappointed.

  The kitchenette was white and spotless and looked as if it had never been used. There was a cooker, a microwave, a small fridge-freezer and a double stainless steel sink. There was a scrubbed wood knife rack in which were slotted black-handled knifes, a toaster, and an electric kettle.

  Everything was gleaming. Pristine. As if she'd never cooked there.

  De'Ath saw me looking at the clean, white surfaces. "Looks like she eats out a lot," he said.

  "There's only wine and some fizzy water in the fridge."

  "Nothing unusual about that," I said. "You'll find precious little to eat in my fridge." Funny how I kept wanting to make excuses for her. "Nice place," I said.

  "Yeah, compact," he said. "Bit small for me, but I guess a girl on her own would be quite happy here."

  "Samuel, you know there's a knife missing from the rack?"

  "Yeah," he said. "We noticed that."

  "No toothpicks," said Filbin as he came out of the bathroom.

  "Toothpicks?" I said.

  "We found a toothpick stuck in the shoelaces of the victim," explained Filbin. "And there weren't any in his pockets. Could be from the perp."

  They took me out into the hall and Filbin locked the door. While we waited for the elevator I asked De'Ath where he was going next.

  "Office," he said. "We're still waiting for the report on the victim. And I want another talk with the girl."

  The elevator arrived and we got in. "Can I come back with you?" I asked.

&
nbsp; De'Ath raised his eyebrows. "You seem to be taking more interest than usual in this case, Doc," he said.

  I shrugged. "She intrigues me."

  "Man, I am disgusted," De'Ath guffawed. "You must be old enough to be her father." He laughed and Filbin laughed with him.

  "Come on, Samuel. She's only ten years younger than I am."

  Filbin shook his head in disbelief. "It must have been a rough ten years," he said. Their laughing intensified and I was relieved when the doors hissed open and we went out into the sunshine.

  "Anyway, God forbid I should split up this laughing policemen act, but is it OK for me to go back to the station with you?"

  "Didn't you come in the Batmobile?" asked De'Ath.

  I sighed. "Yes, I meant that I'll follow you back." I pointed to my car. "I'm parked there."

  Filbin used his hand to shade his eyes from the sun. "Nice car," he said. "English, is it?"

  "Yeah. Though an American helped design it. That's why it's got fins."

  Filbin nodded appreciatively, then frowned. "What's that hanging from the aerial? It looks like a bat!"

  The Autopsy There were no free parking spaces in the precinct car park so I left the Alpine on the road. Most of the cops knew who I was so I reckoned I was unlikely to get a ticket. De'Ath and Filbin were at their desks by the time I reached the Homicide office. More than thirty detectives worked out of the big open-plan office, and all the desks were grouped in twos so that partners could sit facing each and answer each other's phones and steal each other's sandwiches. They worked a three-shift system and spent most of the time out on the streets which meant that there were never more than half a dozen detectives actually in the office at any one time.

  Filbin was talking into one of the phones, to Forensic by the sound of it.

  De'Ath saw me listening. "Forensic said they've sent her clothes back," he explained. "Said they're clean and there's no point in hanging on to them."

  "What are you going to do next?" I asked.

  "Ask her about the knife that's missing from the set in her kitchen. Ask her what she was doing in the alley. You know, Doc, police-type questions, just like you see on the television."

  Filbin slammed down the phone. "Jerk," he said.

  "That's no way to talk to Jamie D. Beaverbrook, world renowned vampire hunter," admonished De'Ath.

  "I didn't mean this jerk," said Filbin. "I meant those guys in Forensic. Had her clothes arrived?

  Don't forget to sign for them. Don't forget to send back the paperwork. Teaching their grandmothers to suck eggs."

  There was a blue file on Filbin's desk and I could see a colour photograph peeping out. He saw me looking and pushed it across the desk at me. "Scene of crime pics," he said. "Not for the faint hearted."

  "Mind if I look?" I said, more to keep De'Ath happy than anything else. He sometimes got a bit ratty if I took liberties.

  Both men nodded. I pulled up a chair and sat down. There were a dozen or so glossy photographs, each twelve inches by ten inches. Some were close-ups of the victim's face. He seemed to be about forty years old, his hair in a military-looking crew cut, his eyes blank and staring. There was a savage cut in his throat reaching from his windpipe up to his right ear. Other photographs showed his blood-soaked chest, though it was difficult to see where the knife had gone in.

  One of the phones rang and De'Ath picked it up.

  The victim was wearing a suit, not the grey one I'd seen in the dream but a brown and yellow checked one. He was wearing a red tie and there was a matching red handkerchief sprouting out of his top pocket. Both were the same colour as the blood over his neck and chest. I flicked through the photographs, knowing what I was looking for but not wanting to admit it to myself. One of the pictures was a full length shot of the body. I could see the brown shoes and I scrutinised the socks.

  They were red. They were not black with white triangles. I sighed and sat back in the chair.

  De'Ath replaced the receiver. "Coroner's office," he said to Filbin. "Autopsy'll go ahead this afternoon. I'm going to have a chat with young Miss Ferriman. Can you hit the phones and nail down a supplier of the those knife sets. What was the brand? Dick, wasn't it?"

  Filbin nodded. "Yeah, Dick. Some German company."

  "OK, you know what we want. Number of sets sold in the LA area, and we want a set so that we can identify the one that was missing from her kitchen." De'Ath looked at me. "You still here?" he asked.

  "No I'm a hologram," I answered. "I left an hour ago."

  A uniformed sergeant came banging through the door, a large plastic bag in one hand. He dropped the bag on Filbin's desk and thrust a clipboard under the Irish detective's nose.

  "You've gotta sign for these," he rasped.

  "What is it, my laundry?" asked Filbin.

  "Don't piss me about, Filbin. They're Ferriman's clothes, from Forensic. Just sign your name.

  You can manage joined-up writing, can't you?"

  Filbin sighed and took a pen off his desk and scrawled on the clipboard while I reached for the bag. Inside there was a white t-shirt, a pair of black high-heeled boots, white briefs and bra, a black miniskirt, and a black leather motorcycle jacket. I took out the jacket and held it up. There was nothing unusual about it, you saw ones just like it every time you walked down the street, big collar, lots of zips, belt around the bottom. You know the sort. The sort she was wearing in the dream.

  The sergeant with the clipboard walked away. Over his shoulder he shouted "by the way, Doc, you know the Batmobile's got a ticket?"

  "This isn't a boutique," said De'Ath and he took the jacket off me and pushed it back into the bag.

  "What are you going to do with them?" I asked.

  "She's not been charged yet, so she's free to wear her own clothes," he said. He swung the bag off the desk and took it with him to the interview rooms. As he went through the double doors, Captain Canonico came barrelling into the Homicide office like a frigate under full steam.

  "Beaverbrook, got your crucifix and stake with you?" he bellowed.

  "Morning Captain," I said, my heart heavy.

  He charged over to where I was sitting, put his hands on the desk and loomed over me like a storm about to break. "Have I got a scumball for you," he said. "We pulled him in about half an hour ago. He killed two small boys last night. Tortured them with a soldering iron. And then bit their peckers off. Can you believe that? Bit them clean off and swallowed them. Said it would boost his potency. You know what I'd do to someone like him, Beaverbrook? I'd hack off his balls with a blunt hacksaw and lock him away for life. That's what I'd do. But you, Beaverbrook, maybe you'll think he's just a bit disturbed and that we should put him in a nice hospital somewhere and let him take woodwork classes and go for long walks in the fresh air. Anyway, he's in room C, why don't you go and get inside his head."

  He pushed himself up off the desk and leered at me. "And the Batmobile's got a ticket again," he said, before heading off towards his office.

  "He's still got it in for you, hasn't he?" asked Filbin, as he picked up the phone and began to dial.

  I didn't reply, just grabbed my briefcase and headed for the interview rooms.

  I was in room C for the best part of two hours and I felt sick when I came out. Sick and dirty and tainted. The man was insane, no doubt about it and the program labelled him as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, and I knew that Captain Canonico would not take the news kindly. I sympathised with him. I hated child-killers more than any other type of murderer, hated them with a vengeance. If I'd had my way I'd quite happily give the bastard a bimedial leucotomy there and then with a broken bottle, but that's not the way the American justice system works. There were times when I hated the job, and hated even more the people it brought me into contact with.

  There's no excuse for killing children. None. I went straight to my office and drew up the report and put it in a file and then dropped it into the internal mailing system because I didn't want to be around when Ca
nonico got hold of it.

  He'd never forgiven me for what happened a few years back when I was on one of my first cases. The Teen Killers, they called them, two nasty pieces of work who'd ended up in a cell together at San Quentin, both of them serving time for rape. They spent several years telling each other stories of rapes they'd committed and planning what they'd do when they got out. They came up with this great idea, that they'd buy a large van and use it to kidnap and rape girls, but to make it a bit more exciting they'd go out with the intention of getting girls of every age between thirteen and nineteen. It was a sort of game. A contest. A full set, nothing less would do. Their names were Ed Vincent and Ronnie Bryant but after the third rape the media began calling them The Teen Killers. It was Vincent's idea that the girls should be buggered as well as being raped, and it was Bryant's idea to fit up a video camera and lights in the back of the van so that they could film what they did to the girls. It was never really known which one of them decided that the girls should be strangled with their own underwear because when they eventually came to trial they both blamed each other.

  Vincent was the smarter of the two, he had an IQ of 154, and in court Bryant said that he fallen under his influence and that it was all Vincent's doing. They got caught after the fifth murder. The MO had been the same in each case, the naked bodies were discovered by the side of a freeway with a number written on their back in lipstick. The number was the age of the girl. Within a year of them both being released they'd killed a thirteen-year-old, a fifteen-year-old, a seventeen-yearold, an eighteen-year-old and a nineteen-year-old. They'd almost got the set, Vincent told me, and he seemed more upset at missing out on his target than the fact that he was facing the death penalty.