Bite Club

by Hal Bodner

  “No. For once, Pam’s right.”

  Burman glared poisonously.

  “The killer would have no way of telling without drawing blood professionally first. There’s no more sign of that than there is of what he used to get the blood out in the first place. Or at least...” She trailed off in thought and finished her snack. Clive absentmindedly took a handkerchief from his suit pocket, wiped a bit of cream from Becky’s lower lip and, folding it neatly, replaced the bit of cloth in his pocket, fussing with it so that it lay just right.

  “Maybe it’s just some sick asshole who hates gays,” Burman said with some concern. Despite her ongoing battles with the gay press, she considered herself extremely liberal—for a Republican—and, in truth, hadn’t a trace of prejudice in her body. She disliked everyone equally. Any accusation of homophobia was sure to drive her blood pressure through the roof in righteous outrage.

  “Well, I think the gay connection is obvious,” mused Becky. “We have another problem though, something Clive may not have told you about.”

  “Did you have to bring that up?” Clive groaned.

  “What have you been holding out on me, you bastard?” asked Burman with her usual tact.

  “Each of the victims,” Becky began, taking out a Suzy Q this time, “had a chunk of flesh missing from the throat. Peeled off like an old price tag.”

  Burman, who was about to make another snide comment to Clive, stopped, her mouth gaping open like a fish, and slowly turned to face Becky. Swallowing several times and turning a faint shade of green, she finally managed, “That’s sick.”

  “Nevertheless,” Becky continued, “there’s a ragged strip of flesh, three or four inches long, torn from every one of them.” Becky bit lustily into the chocolate cake and creme filling oozed out the opposite end, a bit plopping to the ground, dangerously close to Clive’s highly polished right shoe.

  “Would you stop with the goddamned junk food?” Burman all but shrieked, snatching the cream-filled dainty from Becky’s grasp and thrusting it towards Clive who instinctively held out his hand to receive a crushed mass of chocolate and fluffy whipped chemicals. Clive winced and removed his handkerchief once again.

  Burman managed to get her temper under control. “Sorry,” she snapped and then continued thoughtfully, “Why would anyone do something like that?”

  “Well, before today, I would have said you’d have to ask the killer,” Becky said petulantly, her eyes lustfully fixed on the remains of her stolen cake. “But this time I think I can finally give you an answer.”

  She tore her glance away from the traces of cream and chocolate on Clive’s hand and waddled off toward the van. Clive and Pamela followed her and, as another Suzy Q defiantly appeared, Becky opened the door and climbed in.

  “Take a look at this.” She unzipped the body bag.

  The Asian youth’s lifeless face was still extraordinarily handsome in death. Donning a rubber glove, Becky reached into the bag and tilted the almost severed head to the right, exposing the torn veins and arteries of the throat.

  “See here,” she pointed. “This time, it looks like the killer might have been interrupted.” With the hand holding the cake, she traced an odd looking ragged cut in the dead flesh on the side of the throat. “It looks like he was in the middle of slicing out a hunk of skin. But he didn’t get a chance to finish the job. The good news is, maybe someone saw him? The bad news is we may have something new to worry about.”

  “What?” Clive asked.

  “Here.” Becky indicated two small round wounds, no more than large pin pricks, little red puncture wounds surrounded by puffy white skin, in the middle of the piece of partially excised flesh. She looked at Burman and, as the City Manager began to turn green once again, Becky bit into her treat, smacking her lips loudly for maximum effect.

  “Ah, Christ, she’s makin’ me sick.” Burman turned away, trying to mask gagging noises. “Always with a Twinkie in one hand and a scalpel in the other!”

  Clive looked at Becky blankly.

  “Well, it would explain the missing blood,” Becky offered.

  Realization flooded Clive’s features, followed by a look of shocked disbelief.

  “That’s crazy!” he exclaimed.

  “Maybe so,” Becky replied, re-zipping up the body bag and removing the glove, which she tossed into a corner of the van. “I’m not saying anything for certain. If we find traces of saliva, we’ll be sure.”

  “What the fuck are you two talking about?” asked Burman weakly.

  “What the coroner is trying to tell us, Pam,” said Clive stiffly, “is that somewhere in this town is a lunatic who thinks he’s Count Dracula.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Several hours later, back at the station, the most recent victim had finally been identified and Becky and Clive were poring over the autopsy report. Becky shook her head, sadly.

  “Poor Gary,” she mused.

  Clive looked up sharply. “Friend of yours?”

  “Not really. He was dating someone I know for a while. You know him too—Roger—the blond that answers the phones for the Rent Stabilization Department down at City Hall.”

  Clive grunted affirmatively and went to pour himself a cup of coffee. He returned to his desk and picked up the report once again.

  The victim’s name was Gary Takashi. In life, he’d been a character animator for Walt Disney. His apartment was located on West Knoll Drive, easily within walking distance of the Boys’ Town Gym, where Takashi had last been seen alive.

  Becky sat, staring expectantly at the top of Clive’s head as he perused the document. Suddenly he slammed his fist against the top of his desk in frustration. Becky started with a little jump.

  “If only somebody could find something!” he blurted. “I sent a request in to Sacramento for all known deviants with blood and vampire fetishes,” he confessed sheepishly. “Not that I think you’re right, but we should have something from their computer tomorrow.” He looked back down at the report, glumly.

  “We know the killer is probably very strong. Takashi was a big guy. Did you get a look at the body on that man? My god, his biceps were...” Becky looked at him, amused as he trailed off. “Oh, yeah. Right,” he finished. “We all got a look at him, didn’t we?”

  “We can also assume that the killer doesn’t always pose as a hustler or an easy trick,” Becky said.

  “How do we know that?”

  “Just before I came over here, I called Roger to get the poop on Gary Takashi.”

  “And...?”

  “Roger tells me that after he and Gary broke up, Gary met this guy and they’ve been living together for almost two years.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “From what Roger tells me, and he’s a pretty good judge, they were faithful. Like really faithful.”

  “I’m still lost.”

  “Don’t you see?” said Becky in exasperation with Clive’s obtuseness. “The first one, Balencini, was married. To that horrible woman you interviewed.”

  Clive winced. “Not an experience I’d ever want to repeat. That voice!”

  “The wife had no idea what he was doing. So it’s possible he was looking for a trick. Probable in fact. The same thing with Charlie Copperman. I knew Charlie,” she said distastefully, “Hell, everyone in town knew Charlie. He was always looking for something.”

  Understanding dawned in Clive’s eyes. “The hustler was looking for a john...”

  “As for Lance Blowman,” Becky interrupted. “Even though he had a lover, he was a porn star. Fidelity? Get serious. How come,” she continued, as a thought struck her, “they’re always called porn stars? You’d think that they’d call themselves porn actors, but no. Not them, god forbid. They’re all stars.”

  “Takashi would have had no reason to try and pick anyone up,” Clive mused aloud.

  “Exactly!” Becky beamed, “I asked Roger to check around. To see if he knows anyone who’s slept with Gary in the last six months
. But frankly I trust his judgment. I don’t think he’ll come up with anything.”

  “That only widens the field of suspects,” Clive realized in annoyance. “I was hoping we could limit our focus to hustlers and cruisers.”

  Becky shrugged. “Sorry.” She fixed her gaze keenly on the Captain. “My friend from Philadelphia is coming in tonight.”

  “Oh yeah. The bug-a-boo expert,” said Clive sarcastically. “I skimmed that book you lent me. Becky, this guy is out in left field. You read that one crazy theory of his? Pure horror film.”

  “You mean about certain psychoses being triggered by racial memory? What about it?”

  “I’m no doctor,” said Clive, a vague discomfort stirring in his memory, “but it sounds to me like he’s hinting those critters really exist.”

  “Only archetypally. Carl Jung wrote a book about—”

  Clive held up his hand to stop her from going on. “Forget I said anything. If you really think we’ve got some crazy out there in a black cape, fine.”

  “I think it’s more than that,” Becky continued warily. “Chris’ll be able to tell us what to look for.”

  “Becky, we’ve been friends a long time, so I’m going to give you a little advice,” Clive began. “If and when we catch this guy, we may find he’s got a closet full of tuxedos. We may find crosses and garlic all over his apartment. We may even find that he sleeps in a coffin. But,” he said, sternly, “we are not gonna find some supernatural monster with foot-long fangs.”

  Becky covertly glanced at Clive’s face out of the corner of her eye. His expression was slightly irritated and cautious but not openly hostile.

  “Are you sure about that?” she asked quietly. “When we found the first body, the throat thing got me thinking. That and the lack of blood. How was it done, especially without a struggle? More important—where was it done?”

  Clive felt the glimmer of an uncomfortable idea. “Where was it done?” he repeated. He looked confused. “We always figured it was done somewhere else but...wait a minute.” He grabbed a stack of papers and began riffling through them, finally pulling one out and quickly scanning it.

  “The statements from Takashi’s buddies at the gym say he left around eleven last night. One of them remembers him complaining that the showers were already closed down.” He looked at the first page of Becky’s report and his eyes widened.

  “You couldn’t have made a mistake about the time of death, could you?” he asked hopefully. Becky merely smiled, looking like the cat that ate the cream-filled doughnut.

  “Let me get this straight,” Clive went on. “You’re telling me this guy was kidnapped, killed, taken somewhere else where he was stripped and his blood was almost completely drained, and then brought back to the original crime sight and dumped there—all in less than two hours.”

  “No,” Becky said carefully, “I’m telling you the time between when he was last seen and the time of death was two hours max. And the cause of death was exsanguination—he wasn’t killed first.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Sure. If the killer just happens to have a slab, some restraints, and a blood pump set up somewhere on West Knoll Drive.”

  “We’ll check it out,” said Clive as he reached for the phone.

  “Forget it,” Becky said, as Clive looked at her, uncomprehending. “Although you may want to check the medical supply houses and see if you can track down the pump, but I think you’d be wasting your time.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s the next question I was getting to. Why would anyone remove the skin like that, except to hide something?”

  “Souvenirs,” he shrugged. “Typical with serial killers. Some keep items of clothing, some cut off…er…parts. You know how it is.”

  “Fingers and toes in Tupperware,” she agreed. “Severed genitalia, or maybe even heads in mason jars but… a flap of skin?” She took her head. “I don’t think so. Not….” She searched for the proper word. “Not…stimulating enough. At first I thought maybe it was done to hide that the victims were injected with some kind of sedative, but I couldn’t find any traces in any of the toxicology tests I ran. By the time the third body showed up, I was fairly certain that eventually, we were going to find teeth marks.”

  Clive blinked rapidly for a moment, not certain he’d heard what he thought he’d heard. Then, he exploded. “You’re talking Hammer Films, Becky! Are you crazy?”

  “I know!” she yelled back. “But look at this autopsy report. Third page, second paragraph. Read it.”

  Clive brought his temper under control and, turning the pages of the report, read silently for a minute. He looked up puzzled. “Teeth marks? Unidentified organic substance, similar but not identical to human saliva? This is insane.”

  “I had Ty check the chemical analysis three times. Then I ran it myself.”

  “Goddamn it, Becky! I refuse to believe there’s a gay vampire running around the streets of West Hollywood. Save that kind of crap for the Halloween parade, OK? I’ll stick to the hidden lab theory.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she conceded. “I’m not saying we’ve got Dracula on our hands. But we may be dealing with someone who thinks he’s Dracula.”

  “How do you explain this unidentified saliva?”

  “Oh, it could be dozens of things.” She back-tracked uncomfortably, sensing she’d pushed him as far as he was willing to go. “With Takashi’s throat mostly intact, I’ve got samples directly from the skin. The full tests will take a few days. But I think you should consider talking to my friend. He may be able to give us an idea of what type of lunatic we’re looking for.”

  Clive sat quietly for a long moment, cupping his chin in one hand and staring at her intently. Finally, he sighed and smiled, not unkindly.

  “Look Becky,” he began gently, “This is a criminal investigation, not some opportunity for you to take up with some old crazy boyfriend whose being gay sounds like the least of your problems. The next thing you’ll want me to do is post deputies at Hollywood Memorial.”

  “Don’t be flip,” Becky cautioned. “It might not be a bad idea. What happens if this guy’s really gone around the bend? What better place to catch him than a cemetery?”

  “All right.” Clive gave in. His discomfort had grown as Becky had made point after point. His mind started to drift backward in time...But with effort he returned to the present. “At this point,” he sighed, “I’ll try anything. Call this old flame of yours and ask his opinion. Get him over here if you think he’ll have any ideas. But do it unofficially. I don’t want anyone knowing. I’m not gonna be the laughingstock of the entire department.”

  Becky was delighted.

  “I’m not happy about this,” Clive said sternly. “And if Pamela finds out we did it without telling her, neither one of us is ever going to hear the end of it.”

  “So ask her what she thinks first. No wait, I’ll talk to her. Maybe I can convince her that consulting an expert is her own idea. She doesn’t have to know he flew out at my request.”

  “Good luck.” He turned back to the strange paragraph in the autopsy report. “Vampires!” he said with disgust. “What next?”

  The drive into Los Angeles from Orange County had been grueling. Like most Easterners who had never visited the West Coast, Chris had held the quaint notion that no place in California was more than half an hour’s drive away from Disneyland. Troy, typically Hollywood obsessed as always, had predictably booked him on a non-stop flight from Philadelphia International to Orange County’s John Wayne Airport while very probably expecting all the airline stewards to be costumed as either the Duke… or Dale Evans.

  Upon arriving, he asked directions to West Hollywood and blanched at the answer given to him by the young man in the information booth. Grumbling about having to rent a car when his own had already been shipped out and was waiting for him somewhere on Harper Avenue, a scant sixty miles away, he left the airport and headed north. After two hours on the 405 Fr
eeway in heavy traffic, he was irritated, jet-lagged and more tired than he had been in months. He’d been amazed that at nine-thirty on a weeknight the highway was filled with cars going in both directions, bumper to bumper, alternatively motionless or speeding along at eighty miles an hour.

  California drivers are completely insane, he thought more than once. With no regard for safety, they cut each other off, zipped across multiple lanes of traffic to reach off-ramps and sped up to ninety-five to merge onto the freeway. He was beginning to doubt the likelihood of his reaching West Hollywood in one piece. He watched aghast as a driver missed her turnoff, jammed on her brakes, and backed up against traffic while blithely talking on her cell phone. Trying to avoid being incinerated in a fiery wreck while he struggled to decipher the chicken scratches that Troy had faxed to him as directions, he exited the freeway on something called La Cienega Boulevard, which for the next week, he would pronounce as “La Kanga” when he didn’t simply forget the name altogether and refer to it as “that Australian street”, until some kind soul corrected him.

  He was fairly certain he was on the right road when he passed a sign on a building which Troy had identified as the new Film Institute but which looked to Chris like a Catholic church with attached double-decker tennis courts. Finally, with a sigh of relief, he turned onto Santa Monica Boulevard. He was peering out the window, searching for a sign telling him where to find Harper Avenue, when he had his first experience with a California pedestrian. A bearded young man in a leather skirt and feather boa darted out into the street in the middle of the block and, when Chris screeched to a halt, saucily gave him the finger and sashayed on his way.

  Shaking his head in astonishment, Chris turned north onto Harper and parked in front of a florescent pink, Spanish-style building designed by someone who had obviously never been to either Spain or Mexico. He double-checked the address in disbelief. Sighing, he got out of the car, grabbed his suitcase from the trunk, and trudged up the front stairs to the building.

  Locating the button next to apartment number 113 on the intercom, he pressed it and jumped back with a start as a voice, vaguely reminiscent of Tallulah Bankhead’s but several octaves higher, came blaring out of the speaker.