Vicente shook his head, though. “This is one of the safest towns in Pennsylvania. We’re very proud of that, and we’d like to keep it that way. My men aren’t trained to respond to what happened last night.
We had to download the correct forms to report a death in service because we didn’t have any on hand.
Trooper Caxton, you tell us what to do, okay? You tell us how to keep our people safe and we will listen.”
Caxton sat back in her chair and inhaled deeply. “I haven’t had time to prepare a formal action plan,”
she said.
Vicente raised his hands an inch or two off the desk and then lowered them again. “I’ll take your best off-the-cuff suggestions, too.”
She nodded and thought about it. She was trained for this. She had been training in criminal investigations for a year. “Yeah. Well, we start by looking for where he’s sleeping. Vampires don’t just dislike sunlight. They literally cannot get out of their coffins until the sun goes down. This one doesn’t even have a coffin—he tried stealing one last night, but I screwed up his plan. He can sleep in a barrel or even a Dumpster if he has to, but he needs someplace dark and enclosed. If we can find where he is now, we can pull his heart out and be done without any further violence.”
“Do you think that’s a likely scenario?” Vicente asked, his eyes brightening.
“Unfortunately, no. There are too many places he could be hiding and we don’t have enough manpower to search the entire town today. It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours. The vampire will need blood tonight—he looked emaciated, and they’re worse than junkies, they need blood the way we need oxygen. If—when—he attacks somebody, we need to know about it so we can respond instantly. So we should put out an APB. I can work up an Identi-Kit profile so your people will know what he looks like, but he’s conspicuous enough that people will probably recognize him right away. I need to get the call when that happens.”
“I don’t want to just wait for someone to die before we take action,” Vicente said. “People around here won’t like that.”
“No, of course not.” Caxton licked her lips. Her mouth was getting dry. She’d never done this before, but she was the only one who knew how to fight the monsters. She kept having to remind herself of that.
“Every car we can get on the streets should have two cops in it, and enough firepower to take down the vampire. There’s a state police barracks a few miles from here, and another one in Arendtsville. You can request they send every available unit. We’ll search every shadow, every street corner. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Also, I’d like to open an official investigation, see what we can learn about this guy.” That should have come first, she realized. It should have been her first suggestion. Vicente caught her self-doubt; she could see it in his eyes. She was making mistakes already.
What would Arkeley do? It had been so much easier when he’d been in charge and she’d just followed his orders. She had to remind herself she’d been trained for this.
“There’s somebody I need to talk to, a professor at the college.” She pulled out her notepad and flicked back to the first page. “Professor Geistdoerfer, in the, uh, Civil War Era Studies department.”
“The Running Wolf?” Vicente exclaimed.
“You know him?”
The police chief laughed and then covered his mouth. “I’m an alum of the college. Class of ninety-one.
Everybody there knows him. How is he possibly mixed up in all this?”
“He was the first person to enter the tomb,” Caxton said. When Vicente’s face clouded in confusion, she felt like her heart had stopped for a second. The chief didn’t even know how this had all begun. Briefly she filled him in on Arkeley’s discovery and the investigation she’d made of the cavern and the hundred coffins.
“We’re—we’re not going to see more of these things, are we?” he asked, when she’d finished. His eyes were very wide and his mouth was open. He was scared shitless.
Well, maybe he should be, she decided. Maybe it would keep him on his toes. As long as he didn’t get so scared he stopped functioning. She needed him.
“The hearts were all missing. That means they’re dead. So hopefully we won’t see more than just the one. But that’s more than enough. Can you have someone make an appointment for me with the professor?”
“Yes,” he said, “of course.” He took a pack of gum out of his desk and peeled off a stick. He offered her one, as well, and she took it gladly. “I’ll make sure he sees you right after the press conference.”
Caxton stopped with her stick of gum halfway to her mouth. “Press conference?” she asked.
26.
The Rebs left then, & I began to breathe once more.
Leg by leg, arm by arm, the marksman unwound himself from his perch. He dropped to the ground with the softest of thuds & squatted down next to my hiding place. He was a tall & lanky man like our Commander in Chief, even more so in fact. I guessed him seven feet tall & as thin as a reed. He held out one lined hand & I shook it gratefully.
“Alva Griest,” I whispered.
“Rudolph Storrow of Indiana.” He slung the rifle over his shoulder like a rower shipping an oar. I saw he wore a sawed-off shotgun as well in a holster at his belt, where an officer will keep a pistol; on the other side, where a sword should go, he had an Indian-style hatchet with a long handle, what is sometimes called a Tomahawk. I was terribly glad he was on my side. “Listen, Griest, there are two men comin’ our way on foot, runnin’ the same course you did. They’re tryin’
to be subtle, yet ain’t very good at it. They your’n?”
I nodded. Eben Nudd & German Pete, he meant. “They’re good men,” I swore.
“If they’re dressed in blue, they need no other recommends with me. Just get ’em in here quiet like, will ya, so’s we don’t bring down half of the Army of Northern Virginia with ’em.”
I blushed from pate to soles, but did not waste further time with idle talk. I found my men in the weeds of a nearby field, & brought them to order, & introduced them to our new ally.
—THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST
27.
Glauer drove Caxton back to the hospital—she had some important business there before she could get started organizing the night’s patrols, and she wanted him with her to act as her liaison with the local authorities. They took a patrol cruiser, one of five the department had left, since Caxton had put one of them in the shop. It felt very strange to climb into the passenger seat—a literal shotgun seat, with a Mossberg 500 locked between her knees. A laptop computer mounted between the seats kept jabbing her in the thigh as they took the sharp corners.
There had been a time when she drove Arkeley around, listening to whatever pearls of wisdom he cared to drop. She had tried to learn everything she could from him, thinking that he had planned to make her his successor. Instead he’d just wanted her as bait for the vampires. The tables had turned, it seemed, and she wondered if Arkeley had ever been so uncomfortable in the passenger seat. Not just because of the various bits of hardware poking her, but because for the first time in her life Caxton was in charge.
Vicente and Glauer looked to her to make all the decisions. Caxton had been far more comfortable the night before, chasing a vampire with her life at stake, than she was ordering cops around. What if she screwed up? She had already screwed up, many times. It would probably happen again—and eventually she would screw up enough that people would die. Unless she could take down the vampire first.