by A. D. Ryan
“What did he want?” David asked, taking his coffee from me.
“He, uh, wanted to talk,” I told him honestly, turning around and leading the way to where David left the car.
“About?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. He never got the chance to say.” Before David could question me further, I continued. “You ready to go?”
Mrs. Turner was a little nervous to talk to David and me when we showed up on her doorstep. Thankfully, David convinced her that this was just a routine follow-up, and that we only wanted to look around and double check a few details. After giving her consent, she invited us into her home and offered us both some tea while we asked our questions.
Mrs. Turner’s home was full of pictures and memories of a happy childhood, and while her daughter didn’t live here anymore, it was obvious that she had a good upbringing. David sat on the sofa across from Mrs. Turner while I walked around, examining pictures for…something. I knew that the chances of finding anything that could tell us more about the murder were slim to non-existent, but it was my job to search for them regardless.
“Mrs. Turner,” David began.
“Betty, please,” she interrupted, correcting him as politely as possible. Her voice wavered a bit, but the last few days hadn’t been easy, and she likely didn’t even realize it.
Been there. Done that.
“Betty,” he amended. “Sorry.” A brief pause. “I know our colleague, Detective O’Malley, came out to see you the other day, but we just wanted to double check a few things with you, if you don’t mind. Maybe take a look inside Samantha’s apartment.”
“I thought the police had free access to her apartment during the investigation?”
I turned around and offered Mrs. Turner a warm smile. “We do, but I’d prefer to have your permission. Keep you informed.”
Her eyes glistened with gratitude, her smile widening as she placed a hand over her heart. “Thank you. And I don’t mind at all, as long as you think it’ll help find the man who…who…” Her strangled sob filled the room, and my heart clenched. I empathized with her completely, because not too long ago, I had been where she was now.
Out of respect, we waited for Mrs. Turner’s ability to answer our questions. I crossed the room and sat next to David on the couch, waiting for her to gather her composure. She apologized—which wasn’t necessary—and asked what it was that we wanted to know. We started by asking about the day Samantha died. Apparently, she had been out celebrating a big win for the law firm she interned for. Her mother and sisters had joined her and a few of her colleagues for dinner and drinks before they went home for the night while Samantha and her friends went to a new club they’d heard about. That was the last she’d heard from her.
After learning that, the usual questions were asked: What was the name of this club? Did Samantha have any enemies? A scorned lover? Coworkers who were jealous of her promotion? Turned out, her life was damned near perfect and everyone loved her. As for the club, the mother had no idea, so we’d have to make sure to ask anyone she associated with, if O’Malley hadn’t already done so. I’d have to be sure to ask about his progress back at the precinct.
My heart went out to this woman, because I knew what it was like to lose someone close to you. When I thought back to just after Bobby died, I regretted showing up here like this. Having been through repeated police interviews regarding Bobby’s lifestyle choices, I knew how counter-productive this was to Mrs. Turner’s need to move past this event. She was grieving, and the last thing she needed was to be reminded about her daughter’s death. And worse, that we were no closer to solving her case.
Even though the thought of putting her through this made me a little queasy, what she didn’t realize was that unless we found the person responsible for her daughter’s death, she’d likely never find closure. Based on my own personal experience, that is.
After speaking with Mrs. Turner for just over an hour, I realized there was nothing more to learn that O’Malley didn’t already report. I felt bad for taking up even more of Mrs. Turner’s time and being no further ahead, and while any information she was able to give us was appreciated, it wasn’t what I was hoping for. Honestly, I couldn’t really be sure what I was looking for other than a flashing neon sign pointing us in the right direction.
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Turner,” I said as she walked us to the door.
“Any time, dear,” she replied, her voice soft and uneven. “If there’s anything else I can do, please, just let me know.”
“We’ll be sure to do that,” I promised, reaching out and giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.
Once we were back in the car, David and I talked about what little we learned, and how it was all information that O’Malley already had. I really hoped we found something at the victim’s apartment, otherwise I feared this case would never be solved.
When we arrived, we found a written notice from the police department was stuck on Miss Turner’s third-floor apartment door, and the superintendent had to let us in. The minute the door opened, I was met with the most unpleasant smell I’d ever experienced. It was so pungent that I gagged slightly before tucking my nose into the crook of my elbow.
“What’s wrong?” David asked, stepping into the room behind me.
Trying not to inhale too deeply, I turned to find him unfazed by whatever the cause of the god-awful stench was. “Are you kidding? You don’t smell that?”
David sniffed the air, and then shook his head. “It’s a little musty, I guess.”
Shocked, my mouth fell open slightly, and my arm dropped to my side. I instantly regretted the reflexive action, because not only could I smell it now, but it infiltrated my mouth. I could taste the foulness on my tongue. It coated it like oil, and I couldn’t shake it as it worked its way into every part of me, making my skin crawl and prickle all over. It was unsettling.
“It’s not just musty,” I informed him, inhaling just a little this time to see if I could further identify what it might be. A wave of nausea rolled in my stomach, but I fought it down. Along with the overpowering smell, I picked up subtle hints of jasmine—the victim’s fragrance of choice, perhaps?—and something almost…chemical. I sniffed again, recognizing that the air still held trace amounts of luminol. This made sense given that, while I was holed up in the hospital, O’Malley conducted a thorough check of the apartment, spraying it on every surface imaginable. I looked around the main living space and took another step in, the smell only slightly more potent.
David saw how repulsed I was, because he watched me, concern written all over his face. “Are you sure, sweetheart? I don’t smell anything.”
Even though the smell was almost too much to bear, I knew I had to find a way to put up with it because I had a job to do. “It must just be me,” I mumbled, moving toward the coffee table to look at the scattered mail there. There was nothing out of the ordinary—bills, flyers, various business cards to several companies and one black one with a Phoenix address—so I moved on to the kitchen after bagging it all. Just in case.
David remained two steps behind me, and the instant we were in the kitchen, he groaned. “Well, I guess we found the source of the smell,” he said, pointing toward the fruit bowl on the counter. In it were a couple of bananas, three apples, and an orange—all of which were more than a little overripe. Sure enough, they smelled horrible, but they only added to the increasingly foul combination of aromas in the apartment. They weren’t the source.
As I continued to make my way through the apartment, I found everything in pristine order—living room clean, dishes done, fridge and cupboards stocked, bed made—there was no sign of any struggle, which usually meant the murder never happened here. The lack of any of her missing blood suggested this also.
In her bedroom, I was overwhelmed by the potency of the smell again, and I fought the urge to wretch. My entire body broke out in a sweat, and I trembled when, out of nowhere, I made the connection: death. The apart
ment smelled like death.
When David entered the room behind me, I turned to him with watering eyes. “You still don’t smell that?” He shook his head. “Seriously? David, it smells like somebody died in here.”
“O’Malley and the CSU went over this place with a fine-toothed comb, Brooke. There’s nothing here that suggests this is our primary,” he reminded me. His expression changed from confusion to sympathy, and he placed a hand on my cheek, his brow furrowing with worry. “Sweetheart, you’re burning up again. Maybe you’re overworked and tired and it’s throwing your senses off?”
He was probably right. It seemed a little odd, but, then again, nothing about this past week really screamed “normal” for me. Instead of leaving right away, I was able to convince David that we should finish looking around, but it wound up to be a wasted effort. There was nothing here that hadn’t already been documented, and I only grew more and more frustrated.
It wasn’t like I expected O’Malley’s work to only be sub-par—my father wouldn’t allow for any of that in his precinct—but I was hoping that I’d be able to find…I don’t know, something. Why was there no evidence that would give us an idea about what happened to her? Honestly, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that if it hadn’t been for finding her body, it might appear like this was all some kind of sick joke. That Samantha Turner could very well just be on vacation.
But she wasn’t. We did find her body, and the only thing I’d been able to dig up on this investigation were more questions.
What exactly were we dealing with?
Chapter ten | cravings
After conducting my own search of each victims’ home—or in the case of our tourist, his hotel—David and I headed back to the precinct. It had been a couple days since the last attack, and it seemed like everyone was just waiting with baited breath for it to happen. It bothered me, because that meant we were basically waiting for another body to drop in our laps since we had nothing to help us predict his next move. Another body that would probably leave us with as much information as we had now. None.
Our behavioral analysts had been called in, but they were unable to tell us anything conclusive. They said the suspect could just be lying low, waiting to make his next move, calculating. Their other theory was that he’d moved onto another town.
Wouldn’t that be just fantastic? The Scottsdale PD letting a lunatic slip through their fingers so he could move onto the next unsuspecting city. Yeah, that was just what we needed.
In all of our searching, we were unable to find anything that could tie the four murders together, aside from the C.O.D. I was beyond frustrated at this point and unable to think of anything else this whole time. The way this case consumed me was borderline obsessive-compulsive.
Every single one of the autopsy reports came back inconclusive. We knew each one of them died of exsanguination, and Dr. Hobbes seemed to think that the blood was drained from their bodies through the wounds on their necks since there were no other points of entry. Going with this theory—because it was the only one we had—she checked the wounds to figure out what the murder weapon could have been. When she found DNA, it was the most excited I’d been in as long as I could remember. Unfortunately, the DNA results showed nothing useful. It was neither human nor any animal we could identify, and they were all from different sources. My first thought was that maybe they were attacked by the same wolf I was that night, but that didn’t explain the lack of blood in their bodies.
Truthfully, every second that passed and disproved one of our current theories frustrated us more and more. Some of the guys tried to lighten the mood by joking about how the victims were probably closet fetishists. Even though they were just goofing around, the suggestion intrigued me, and I didn’t treat it as a joke. I treated it as a possible lead. They tried to laugh me off, but I pressed on, wondering what kind of fetishes could get these people killed.
One word out of Keaton’s mouth, and I was sorry I even asked: Vampires.
I tried to let it go, but something about it niggled at me for the rest of the afternoon. In fact, the more I obsessed about it, the more I started to think it kind of made sense. Not so much that they were killed by a real vampire—because that would be ridiculous—but there was something deep in the pit of my stomach that told me to go with it. Call it instinct, but I realized that the only real evidence we had to go by suggested this could be a possibility. They were missing most of their blood, after all.
Going with the flow, I decided to do a little Internet search at home that night, and it turned out that this was an actual thing. Apparently blood-sharing was something these people practiced. Gross. People even had dental work done to give themselves fangs, and they called their groups “covens.” The more I dug into this secret lifestyle, the more information I uprooted, and the more disturbed I grew. David was the only one I told about my unconventional investigation, and while he thought I was crazy at first, he started to see that this was a very real possibility with every article I read aloud. True, we never found anything that would tie our victims to this lifestyle, but it was possible that they kept it hidden from their families, friends, and colleagues for fear of being ridiculed and shunned.
When I thought about how they all could have kept this secret from their families, my mind wandered to Bobby. If it turned out to be some illicit underground activity involving a bunch of wannabe-vampires, was I going to be able to accept that maybe my brother had been delving into the same waters? And, if he was, how did I miss the signs?
I decided to deal with that when I got to it, because I couldn’t have that clouding my judgment—not until I knew for sure that this was what actually happened.
My research told me that there were a few underground night clubs (literally) that catered to this lifestyle in Scottsdale alone, and while we couldn’t find any ties to them in any of our victims’ financial records, my gut told me we had to follow this lead. The feeling I had about this potential lead was unsettling. While used to having moments of clarity that lead me in the right direction, this felt almost…I don’t know…angry? No…it was more than that. It was vengeful. The only explanation I came up with for the unexpected emotion was that Bobby’s own murder was clouding my thoughts, and I wanted vengeance for him—I had for so long—and the thought that I could get it after all this time made me deliriously happy.
After gathering all of my information, I needed to take it to my team and, more importantly, the captain so we could plot our next course of action. I was unsure how he would react to this, and quite frankly, I was a little afraid he would tell me I wasted my time. I mean, his new detective’s first case, and she goes off on a tangent, spewing nonsense about vampires? It was certifiable, and if anyone was going to tell me that, it would be him.
“You ready?” David asked as we entered the precinct the next morning.
“No,” I quipped. “He’s going to think I’m crazy.”
David laughed. “He’s not.” Pausing, he considered his response. “Well, maybe a little,” he teased.
His laughter was contagious, and I elbowed his side. “You’re not funny.”
“Then stop laughing.” Stopping just outside the briefing room, David took my hand. “Look, I’ll admit that it sounded a little out there at first, but I think it fits. In some weird way, your theory fits… Plus, it’s the only one we’ve got right now.”
“Still,” I argued, “I don’t think he’ll accept it right away.”
Releasing my hand, David reached out and turned the doorknob. “Only one way to find out.”
My heart hammered in my chest as we entered the briefing room, not only because I was nervous to present my plan of action to our team and my father, but because a surge of adrenaline was rushing through me. That part of me that so desperately wanted to pursue this lead in the first place was excited to be following through.
My nerves took over as I stood at the front of the room. All eyes were on me, and my mouth dried out. I
swallowed thickly, looking from David, to Dad, to the rest of the detectives here to listen to me. After taking a deep breath, I decided to bite the bullet and just begin.
“So, I know it’s been tough this past week, and we appreciate everything you all have done to try and solve this case,” I said, my voice shaking in the beginning, but steadying as I carried on. “While we haven’t been able to find much of anything that can tell us what happened to any of the victims, I think I’ve stumbled onto a potential lead, thanks to Detective Keaton.”
Keaton’s head shot up, and he looked somewhat surprised. “Really?”
Smiling, I nodded, my confidence rising. “Now, I have to admit, that when I first heard it, I took it as the joke it was intended to be, but the more I looked into it, the more I realized he might be onto something.” I opened the folder in my hand and grabbed a few of the pictures I pulled from my online research. “I know this is pretty outside the box, but I believe that we might be dealing with a coven of self-proclaimed vampires.” Almost every detective looked at me like I just admitted to seeing Elvis flying on the back of a winged purple elephant, and I rushed to elaborate.
“I know how it sounds,” I assured them, “but with no other leads, we really don’t have anything to lose.” A low rumble moved through the crowd as they spoke. They all talked below a whisper, and I was pretty sure I shouldn’t have been able to hear them, but I heard things like “is she fucking serious?” and “she’s lost her damn mind” floating around. Normally, hearing that sort of thing would shake my confidence, but it didn’t. Somewhere deep down, it was like I knew this was the right path to follow.