Sanguine Vengeance

by Dias, Jason

  “One-thirty and two-thirty.”

  “Call Eads. Check out the padlock key from evidence. Meet me out back. Six minutes.”

  I grabbed us each a cardboard cup of coffee. Didn’t know how Ay took hers so she got it black. The Crown Victoria rested under the cold blue sky, a thumbnail of frost creeping glacially up the window. I fired up the engine and put the blower on the window. Slid back out and scraped the ice with the tool made for that purpose. By the time I finished, Ay popped out the back door, dangling the key between her fingers. It had a cardboard tab on it now, probably a code number inked on it. Later, it might end up being exhibit F in a trial.

  Except you couldn’t put the dead on trial. So why go through all these motions?

  That thought came up more and more as retirement loomed in my future. As usual, I pushed it aside without an answer.

  We drove to the storage facility. Indoor unit – a small blessing. The check-in desk boasted a bullet-proof window framed in red and green Christmas lights opened onto a tiny office. A red steel door blocked access to the storage units, entry managed by the keypad. A small man sat in the office in a little room with a space heater. He had on a white cotton shirt and a cheap tie. A bad combover completed the picture. “ID?” he said.

  I showed him my badge. Let him stare at it.

  “Warrant?”

  “I don’t need a warrant. Mr. Robbins, is it?” A name plate graced his shirt above the right pocket.

  “Roberts. I can’t let anyone in here without an ID linked to an account, or a warrant.”

  Ay tried the handle on the inner door. Of course it didn’t move.

  “Mr. Roberts, the owner of the account is dead and has no next of kin.” A stretch, but true as far as I knew. We just hadn’t really looked very hard to find one. “Time is a factor. Please open the door.”

  He sighed. Pushed some buttons on the multi-line phone by his left hand – an antique like mine. After a low, whispered conversation with a presumed superior, he toggled a switch on the wall and the door snicked open.

  “Thank you, Mr. Roberts.” If he replied, I didn’t hear it.

  “Three-fourteen,” Ay said, and I thought she meant a time.

  “What?”

  “Locker number.”

  “Oh.” A stairwell waited at the end of a long, nearly featureless hallway. On the right, windows showed the city in winter. To the left, garage-style doors painted orange set into bare white walls. Up four flights of stairs and then back the way we came. Unit 14, directly above the office.

  Ay applied key to lock. The door rolled easily upwards, hardly making a sound. Inside, under fluorescent lights that flickered on automatically, cardboard boxes gathered dust. Probably just the various relics of a downsized life. Ay reached for a box.

  “Gloves,” I said.

  “Right.”

  First box: just junk. Plaques, community service awards, some letters held together with an elastic band. Presumably old; who sends letters anymore? Another had books. Seminary school stuff, probably: Biblical history and interpretations and reading guides.

  “Here’s something.” Ay had a box full of clothes. “Kids’ pajamas here. Shirt and jeans. Boys eights.”

  “Nephews or grandkids or…”

  “You think so?”

  “No. Keep looking.”

  We found two more boxes of children’s clothing. No socks. Underpants, shirts, trousers, even a couple of ball caps, but no socks. And nothing very helpful. Like a ledger with names and dates of victims in it. I took a photo of each outfit and then we put things back as we’d found them.

  “Now what?” Ay said.

  “Pull the techs in here. We’re due at the station. Interviews coming up.”

  Punishment

  “Mrs. Davidson, I know this is difficult. If you can, I need you to look at some photographs of clothing.”

  Davidson: a late-middle-aged woman wearing a white dress printed with tiny pink flowers. She sat in Ay’s chair across the desk from me. Davidson’s eyes stayed on the floor and her hands didn’t know where to rest. She nodded and sobbed into a hankie.

  “Here’s the first outfit. Do you recognize it?” I tried to imagine what it would be like to have a child and miss them.

  “No.”

  I swiped right. “How about this one?”

  Her eyes went big. We’d scored an easy hit. “That’s what Connor had on the day he went missing.”

  I glanced at the beige file to my left. Connor Davidson, age 9, missing two months. “We probably asked already, but do you have a photograph by any chance? Of him in this clothing?”

  She produced her phone in a heartbeat. Scrolling social media. Words fell from her lips in a torrent: “We were going to his cousin’s confirmation. At the big church on the north side. Where the shooting was a few years back. That’s why he was dressed up. Plaid shirt, blue slacks. Did you find his shoes? Where did you find his clothes? Is he OK? Can you tell me he’s OK?”

  I held up a hand to slow her down a little. She showed me a picture. The clothes matched what we’d found in the cardboard box. “Thank you, Mrs. Davidson. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “So tell me something.” The hankie still dabbed at wet eyes. Her lips quivered.

  “I don’t want to comment on an ongoing investigation.” I forestalled objections with that same raised hand. “I can tell you we have no evidence of Connor. Just his clothes. In a situation like this, it isn’t very hopeful. Ma’am, you have to manage your expectations right now. I think the best I can give you is a little closure. In a few days or a couple of weeks, I might be able to tell you a story about what happened to him.”

  Her tears dried up a little. I could see her internal fortitude restoring itself. “You’re right. I know you’re right, Officer.” I kept the wince from my face and refrained from correcting her. “That’s all I want. Closure. That and some justice. Someone who would hurt a child… I want to see them fry.”

  “That’s a normal reaction. In this case I suspect there is at least poetic justice. Again, thanks for your help and I want to be careful not to talk out of turn. Officer Watanabe will show you out.” Ay lurked in the doorway, frown melting off her face as she became useful.

  Davidson stood up and thanked me. I felt a little sour inside, a mixture of shame and too much coffee and no food. Ay returned, interrupting me making notes in the file. Her energy made me look up: she almost bounced.

  “You should take a look at this,” she said.

  “What?”

  “In the lobby.”

  I followed her out, through the security door. In the waiting room, Fox News blared from the flat-screen on the wall. “Donaldson, what have I told you about Fox News?”

  “It’s not news,” he said from behind the security glass.

  “And?”

  “And it creates an impression of political bias. Sorry, I didn’t notice it was on.”

  Blame it on night shift.

  Ay said, “Hey, don’t change it yet. Back it up three minutes.”

  “No DVR here,” Donaldson said.

  “Never mind.” She had her tablet out. It took a minute to find the story on the web. We watched it back in my office. “It was a local break-in. Between national segments.”

  A blonde newscaster sat at a desk with her hands folded in front of her. “A murder spree last night resulted in two dead bodies found in the Memorial neighborhood. Investigators are baffled by the apparent randomness of the victims as well as the means of their death. Both victims were completely drained of blood by an unknown method. The Memorial neighborhood is so called because of its proximity to Memorial Gardens graveyard and mausoleum. Some people are already referring to the murderer as the Memorial Vampire. Police have no suspects at this time.”

  “Shit.”

  “Right,” Ay said. “This will really complicate matters.”

  “There’s a leak.”

  “Not me. Obviously not you. There were a lot of peopl
e at the scenes.”

  “And not all of them police,” I said. Probably no way to track down the source.

  “She said somebody was calling him the Memorial Vampire. Who would that have been?”

  “Standard Fox tactic. Even on local stations. ‘People are saying’ is the sort of vague reference that hides the fact they’re just making it up. When you research it, it’s them saying it on an earlier segment. Then people really are saying it, because they heard it on the news.”

  “Huh.”

  “Which doesn’t leave us any closer to solving things. I hope our next interview isn’t a big news watcher. Or doesn’t put two and two together. For now let’s grab lunch.”

  “I’ll drive,” Ay said.

  We went in her car: an extravagantly clean BMW two-door from 1988. Black exterior, charcoal seats. We sat at the drive-up of a car-hop hamburger place. Hot, greasy food didn’t help my sour stomach.

  “That emo girl. Is she a witness or a suspect?”

  I glanced over in time to see Ay wipe mustard from her lower lip then lick it from her thumb. “Emo?”

  “We used to say goth. But goth went out around year 2000. Well, it split into industrial, classic goth – the vampire look, that is – and emo.”

  Fair enough. Sherlock Holmes would have complained about receiving irrelevant information. Except one could never know in advance what would turn out relevant. “Not much of a suspect. Like she said, twisting people’s heads off their bodies is a big person trick. But at least a witness.”

  “We should get a description out.”

  “Right.” I should have thought of that only I was getting punchy. That’s why you keep good people around. Nobody can run a whole investigation alone. I munched tater tots with one hand and sent an email with the other.

  “How did they suck the blood out?”

  “Huh?”

  “No puncture wounds. No blood on the scene. It must have been done pre-mortem because there’s no sign they were hung upside-down, which you’d need with no heartbeat to pump the blood. But then that would be cause-of-death, and so why break their necks afterwards? But aside from why, how? How did they exsanguinate and where did the blood go?”

  “Vampires aren’t real,” I said.

  She gave me some side-eye. “Of course they aren’t, Dom. It seems like magic because we don’t have an explanation yet. So what’s the explanation?”

  “Waiting on the coroner.”

  She sighed and popped a crinkle-cut French fry into her mouth. “I guess if I want to make detective, I have to learn a little patience and ditch my imagination.”

  She had a point. “You can have an imagination, Ay. You just have to channel it. Stay in your lane. Don’t speculate as to the facts of the case. Gather the facts, then speculate as to who could fit those facts. Use your imagination to trap them into a confession, or into a lie that’s as good as a confession. It’s very creative work, within those parameters.”

  That sigh again. “Yeah. Well, the next parent will be in soon. We ought to head back.”

  “Good news.” I wiped grease from my chin with a napkin while scrolling email with my left hand. “Lab bumped us higher in the DNA queue. We might get results in a timeframe relevant to the investigation.”

  “Seems like we’ll get whatever we need from the parents.”

  “Never hurts to have more certainty.”

  She grunted. We arrived before the next interview. I did paperwork for a few minutes, then Ay brought them in. Mother and father this time. “The Roys,” she said.

  Middle aged couple, Caucasian, both short and portly, dressed in jeans and short sleeves despite the weather. “Please, take a seat,” I said. “Here, have mine.” I stood to the side of the desk and looked down at them. They seemed more distressed than Ms. Davidson. “I know this is hard and I want to thank you both for coming down here. I just need you to look at some pictures of clothing and tell me if you recognize them.”

  Mr. Roy did not seem to recognize any of the photos. He chewed his lip quietly, his brows trembling with emotion. Mrs. Roy pointed to a pair of jeans with a patch over one knee and a Spiderman hoodie. “Those were his,” she said.

  I didn’t correct her use of past tense. “That’s all we needed. Please, take one of my cards and call me if you think of anything else you could tell us that might be useful.”

  “That’s it?” the father said. “We thought you were going to tell us something.”

  “I’m on the verge of doing so, Mr. Roy. This investigation will close soon and then I can give you some information.”

  Mrs. Roy spoke up. “It was the Memorial Vampire, wasn’t it? Did you find his body? That’s why we’re looking at his clothes, isn’t it? Because what the Memorial Vampire does is too horrible.”

  Jesu Christo. Ex used to say that. “That case is not directly related, ma’am. I can assure you if we had a body, we would notify you immediately.”

  The husband resembled a tire with half the air let out. “That’s not exactly a relief, but I’m still glad. We know he’s gone and we know it was probably horrible, but at least it wasn’t like that.”

  “I can’t make this any better for you. All I can do is tell you who did it. And hopefully I can do that soon. Look, turn off the TV. It isn’t going to help you. Just a little more patience now.”

  They left, crying and leaning on one another. I couldn’t imagine trying to deal with what they were going through. Whether they were doing the job of coping well or poorly a psychologist could judge – but not me.

  Things were solidifying. Time to run a verbal report past Burt. I rapped on her door and stepped in her office. She had her phone receiver cradled between one ear and one shoulder while she scribbled on a legal pad. “Uh huh. Uh huh. Right. I’ll keep you posted.” She waved me in and I took a seat in front of her. “Yes, as quickly as possible. Thanks.” She hung up the phone.

  “Trouble?”

  “Captain isn’t happy about the sensational aspects of the case. You got anything for me to make my day better?”

  “Unlikely. This one’s going to get messier. So we have a retired priest and a secretary. They knew each other. Best theory so far: he retired early because of a sex abuse issue; the Church moved him out here to keep him out of the way of an investigation. The secretary knew about it and helped situate him, didn’t tell anyone. Somebody back East – a parent or maybe a grown-up victim – tracked him down. It’s thin, but none of this is random. Cause of death hasn’t come in yet. Pathology can’t tell us anything about how the victims were exsanguinated. Yet. But the first victim was definitely still active. Clothing found in a storage locker has been IDed by parents of two missing boys. The first provided photographic evidence. Whoever killed the Father did us all a favor.”

  “That’s a lot of drama. How much of it can you prove?”

  “The local crimes seem open and shut. Would be good to have bodies. Of course, finding them alive would be better, but isn’t very likely. The New York end of the story will probably stay speculative unless we want to bring in the FBI.”

  “Hold off on that. Shit. The Captain’s going to have a shit-hemorrhage. We don’t need any of this right now.”

  Reason number six hundred never to move any further up the promotional chain. “I’m going to get back to it. I’ll have a stack of paperwork on your desk by five.”

  “Good work. Suspects?”

  “One. I’ll need you to approve a little overtime.”

  “Oh yeah? How come?”

  “One of the ‘sensational aspects of the case:’ she only comes out at night.”

  Burt’s look could have started a fire. “Don’t fuck with me right now, Sanchez.”

  I let myself out.

  Night

  11:52pm, 22o. The Crown Vic idled. Warm air blew over the window. Another cup of coffee kept my hands warm.

  I’d parked behind the Seven-Eleven on Mesa Road. I could see the street and the sidewalk fronting low-rent apa
rtments on both sides. People passing by could see me if they looked hard. Ford had discontinued the Crown Victoria in 2011 but people still remembered when they were every taxi and, more importantly, every cop car in America.

  I watched a drug deal go down in the harsh white light of the gas station. The hood rats thought they were subtle. Nothing like that handshake, though. This neighborhood liked crystal meth.

  I shut off the engine. Ten minutes on, ten off. The coffee cooled in my hands faster than I could stomach it.

  Nothing else to do, tired of my own anxiety, I took the DNA test out of my pocket and unsealed it. Peered at it under the dome light. As expected, totally trivial and hardly illuminating. 43% British, 17% Irish, a trace of Indian, a trace of Slavic. 22% Western European. That wasn’t in our family stories. Someone had left something out. But still short of a revelation.

  More snow. Fat, slow-moving flakes aggregated on cold concrete. Stupid night to be out. I thought of Ay, hopefully warm in her bed with her girlfriend. I could use a nap myself, if not the bedwarmer. A sensible person would give up and go home.

  I turned the engine back on. Ten minutes off, ten on. The cardboard coffee cup held just a little cold sludge.

  A black Pontiac past its prime pulled in by one of the gas pumps. An underdressed white male climbed out.

  My eyes slipped closed. Almost immediately I started to dream, a thick, feverish fantasy about another city by night. An old, stinking city with sewage in the gutters, lamplight reflecting from a rain that did little to clear the night soil.

  There: my witness-cum-suspect stepped into the street from a brick building. Furtive, shivering. She glanced both ways, then darted away to the left. My heart raced. She feared something and I felt every bit of that.

  A tapping sound freed me from the dream. It was her: the emo lady in her curtain-fabric dress of brown, red and gold. “You are looking for me, mais non?”

  A thumb switch lowered the window. “Yeah. I mean, yes, Ma’am. How did you know?”

  “I did not. But now I do.”

  “Door’s open. Hop in the back, OK?”

  She did. The door clunked closed. I turned so I could see her through the wire mesh that divided the front space from the back. She said, “I was expecting you.”