“Time,” she said, as they waited at a stoplight, “is going to be our enemy here.” Gettysburg’s roads had been laid out for carriage traffic in the nineteenth century, back when it was a market town, before the Battle. The roads had not been widened since—they couldn’t be, since that would mean moving or demolishing historical buildings. As a result, and with two million tourists coming through every year, the quaint little town of seventy-five hundred people saw some pretty heavy gridlock. She sighed and wondered if it would be faster to get out and walk. To pass the time she looked at Glauer and asked him,
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?” It was one of the questions state troopers used to get to know each other, nothing more.
Glauer looked back at her as if she’d asked how, when, where, and with whom he had lost his virginity.
She squirmed in her seat, wishing she could take her question back. After a second, though, he shrugged and looked forward through the windshield again. “About ten years ago, some coed, some girl up at the college, took a header off the top of Pennsylvania Hall. It’s supposed to be haunted—maybe she was running away from a ghost. Maybe she was just high on acid.” He shrugged again. “I got called in to tape off the scene, keep the other kids away. I had to be there all day with her until they could get an ambulance in there to take her out.”
“Was she pretty well splattered?” Caxton asked.
He flinched and shook his head. “Not so bad. There was a little blood, but she was lying on her side almost like she’d just lain down and taken a nap. Her face was turned away from me. That was why I didn’t notice the birds at first. They were all over her, pigeons, crows, starlings. I eventually decided to shoo them away, even though I felt like an idiot doing it. I would have done it sooner if I’d realized they’d come for her eyes.”
Good one, Caxton thought. In the barracks of Troop T, the highway patrol, that would have gotten the man a couple of high fives and maybe a free beer. She started to smile and opened her mouth to congratulate him, but when she looked over again he was shivering. She’d stirred up a memory in Glauer that he would have preferred not to visit again. Shit, she thought. In Troop T they had seen worse things almost every day. Traffic fatalities could be bad, really bad, especially when it rained. They had developed a thick skin about it, used gallows humor to cover up how much it shook them. Apparently when you were a cop in a town with zero homicides you didn’t have to grow calluses on your heart.
They arrived at the hospital a few minutes later. Glauer led her down the stairs and to the morgue, where Garrity’s wife was already waiting for them. She sat in an orange plastic chair in a waiting room on the far side of the autopsy suite. She had a kerchief around her hair and wore sunglasses, probably to hide how puffy her eyes had become with weeping. A forgotten Styrofoam cup of coffee rested on the seat next to her.
Caxton held her breath before she walked into the waiting room and promised herself that this time she would get it right. She had to be sensitive and understanding, but she couldn’t let those things stop her getting what she needed.
They didn’t have a course in how to do this at the academy. Maybe they should have. She walked in and crouched down next to the woman and offered her hands. “Hi,” she said, and studied the other woman’s face. She had sandy hair and thin lips and she might have been thirty or forty; Caxton couldn’t say. She had that same pasty complexion that grief gives everyone, a pallor that sadness brings. “I’m Laura Caxton. I work for the state police. I was with your husband last night,” she said. “I want you to know I’m very, very sorry for what happened.”
“Thank you,” the woman said. She squeezed Caxton’s hands and then let them go. “The doctor here said you had called him and that I couldn’t take Brad’s body until I’d spoken with you. Is there some kind of form to fill out?”
Caxton shot a glance at Glauer. The local cop stood by the door as if he were guarding it. His eyes did not meet hers. Supposedly he had already told Garrity’s widow why they had come. Clearly he hadn’t been specific enough.
“Your husband was killed by a vampire,” Caxton said. “There’s a possibility—I’m not really sure how to say this.”
The woman pulled the sunglasses off her face. Her eyes were bloodshot, but they showed far more composure than Caxton had expected. “Why don’t you just say it, and we’ll worry about my feelings later?”
Caxton nodded and looked down at her shoes. She had to force herself to meet the woman’s gaze.
“Vampires have a certain power over their victims. They can call them back from death. It’s not—it’s not something you would want to happen. They come back corrupted, with their souls damaged. They become slaves of the vampire. I’m sure your husband was a strong man, a good man—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the woman finally said. Her hands were shaking, but her eyes blazed. “What is it that you want? Will you just tell me?”
Caxton bit her lip. “Until we cremate his body, he can be forced to come back and serve the vampire.
We have to burn him, all of him. It’s the only way.”
The widow’s face turned deathly white. She stared up at Glauer and Caxton waited for her to say something. She didn’t.
“It’s the only way,” Caxton repeated. “I understand there may be religious reasons you may not want to do this, but—”
“Bullshit,” the widow said.
“Helena, she’s not making this up,” Glauer said.
The woman’s name was Helena. Why hadn’t Caxton even asked? Her cheeks burned, but she knew she had to get the permission before she could move on. “If you’ll just say the word, we’ll take care of all the details.”
“Mike, this woman is talking about—about—” Helena Garrity stood up suddenly, so suddenly she swayed from side to side. She rushed over to Glauer, who pulled her into a bear hug. She nearly disappeared into the broad expanse of his jacket.
“Shh,” Glauer said, stroking her hair. The woman collapsed against his chest. “Just say yes.”
The woman shook her head against Glauer’s chest, but then said yes. Caxton produced the proper form and the woman signed on the appropriate line. A doctor came in and started talking to the widow in low tones. He took the form and shoved it in his pocket.
Glauer led Caxton back upstairs. He didn’t speak until they were in the parking lot. He put on a pair of mirrored sunglasses, then, and looked away, toward the road. “You’re not really a people person,” he suggested.
“I’m a cop,” she replied.
He looked almost surprised. “You think those are two different things?”
She kept her mouth shut all the way to their next stop—a meeting room at the back of a church. Chief Vicente was there waiting for them, standing at a podium with one of his patrolmen on either side of him.
They should have been out searching for the vampire’s body, she thought, but she supposed he had his reasons for doing this instead.
Vicente wanted a press conference. A half-dozen reporters from the Gettysburg Times and other papers around Adams County sat in uncomfortable-looking chairs, while a lone TV crew had set up in the corner, their cables and battery packs in a pile on the floor. They had a pair of floodlights trained on the podium and it looked pretty hot up there. Caxton lingered at the back of the room. The reporters looked back at her, ignoring the chief as he read a prepared statement.
“The state police in Harrisburg have been good enough to provide us with an expert in just this kind of crime,” Vicente said, and raised one hand to gesture at her. He wanted her to come up and say something, she realized. “I’d like to introduce you to Laura Caxton. Thank you.” He waved at her again.