Until the car had arrived in Salem, Massachusetts, Claire hadn’t known that the Bureau had a Special Forensics Unit located there. Jackson hadn’t, either. The nondescript brick building was situated near a Walgreens. According to some last-ditch, furtive net searching on her non-Bureau smartphone, the Walgreens was not too far from the correct location of Gallows Hill (as opposed to the recreational area that was still listed as the actual site). Nineteen people had been hung for witchcraft on Gallows Hill in 1692. Her first thought had been that maybe their secretive little group was going to do some kind of forensics on the bodies of the victims. Learn historical forensics techniques or something like that.
She sure hadn’t thought they were going to learn how to detect vampire activity.
After being welcomed to the SFU by Mark Nash, the Special Agent in Charge, they’d been sent to a classroom with individual, college-style desks in two rows of six. Claire wondered at all the rush, as if there was some pressing need to learn vampire evidence collection as fast as possible—as if the information would spoil if left out too long, like Ms. Hannover’s goddamn turkey.
Told not to eat or drink anything, Claire and Jackson made sure to sit in the first row, dead center. First impressions were everything.
Dr. DeWitt didn’t spend a lot of time on preamble. All he had said was that the Bureau had conclusive evidence that vampires walked among the living; that there had been three attacks from Boston to Portland, Maine; and that it seemed to be the work of an individual vampire, classified, therefore, as a serial killer. And that they were there to get trained in evidence collection so they could figure out his pattern, apprehend him, and process any additional vampire-related crime scenes that presented themselves. Such evidence collection being referred to as VSI. Vampire Scene Investigations.
A vampire. A goddamn vampire. That was pretty much the consensus of the entire class.
“You owe me fifty bucks,” Claire said to Jackson.
“I think vampires count as aliens,” Jackson retorted.
The PowerPoint kept going. They saw another vic with telltale puncture marks. Another pretty girl. Third vic, cute girl again. Same type of holes, luminous with Luminol. They watched a computer simulation of how the fangs must be shaped, how they would enter the body. The closest analogy was a rattlesnake. Which, bleh.
They discussed the process of exsanguination—having all your blood sucked out of you. Dripping. If you lifted vampire prints, they would glow, too. However, there were no prints found at any of the crime scenes, so Claire raised her hand and asked how they knew that prints glowed. DeWitt told her to hold that excellent question. There were theories as to why so much glowing, but that would also wait for when they got into blood chemistry. As well as profiling the perp, who clearly had a thing for beautiful girls.
They were going to stay on-site, the male agents doubling up. Claire, as the only female, would have a room to herself.
“Now we have a body to examine,” DeWitt announced, as he turned off his projector.
He didn’t say which body. There seemed to be an assortment of them—at least three victims. Claire was eager to see any and all of them.
“Before we do, I want each of you to provide a buccal swab,” he went on.
Claire and Jackson traded frowns. Buccal swabs provided personal DNA. Of course they’d both had extensive physicals, bloodwork, and even drug tests for the FBI, but here, now, requesting a swab rang an alarm bell. She also realized why they hadn’t been allowed to eat or drink anything, and why class had begun that night—so their first swabs would be valid control samples. Still, Claire raised her hand.
“The purpose for this, sir?” she asked.
“Health precaution,” he replied. “Since we’re not certain how vampirism is transmitted, we want to monitor the well-being of everyone on the team.”
Transmitted? Her mind ran ahead to the possibility that vampirism might be a communicable virus, and so their vics might contain said virus, that being why the blood glowed purple.
While she pondered that, DeWitt handed a box of swab kits to the agent at the end of Claire’s row. The agent hesitated. There were a few cases before the courts of police officers refusing to comply with requests for DNA samples by their departments. Civil liberties, violation of privacy. Not everyone wanted everything in an accessible database.
But the hesitation was two seconds at best. He took one and passed it on. The next guy did, too.
And then it was her turn. DeWitt was watching her. She grabbed one and handed the box to Jackson, who did the same. All the agents opened them and performed the six swipes inside their cheeks, repeated on the other cheek. They put the swabs in the sterile vials and closed them.
“Last name, first name, please,” DeWitt instructed them. Claire wrote ANDERSON, CLAIRE and Jackson wrote JACKSON, BRIAN and she and he passed them in.
“Now we’ll examine the body,” DeWitt announced.
Everyone rose from their spotless government-issue desks. Note-taking had not been permitted. Nor were cell phones, which had been locked up in a safe until their owners were driven back to their homes. Apparently, everything the agents would be learning would be kept in one place and one place only—their heads. That posed no problem. FBI agents were used to memorizing lots of information and keeping secrets. They knew things that might break civilians, cause widespread panic. Biochemical warfare, terrorist plots, close calls with nuclear power plants. Maybe it was just as well that Peter seemed disinterested in what she did when she wasn’t with him.
Almost as disinterested in what she did when she was with him.
In a little rush of anger, she was glad she wouldn’t be able to tell him about vampires. She hadn’t realized just how angry she was with him. How not fine they actually were.
By tacit agreement, Claire and Jackson scooted directly behind DeWitt as he left the classroom, as close to Source Vampire Data as possible. Other, slower, perhaps less enthusiastic agents queued behind them. Then the thirteen of them walked down a chilly hall, and passed a door with a sign that read HIC LOCUS EST UBI MORS GAUDET SUCCURRERE VITAE. That was the traditional Latin phrase often seen on plaques in autopsy rooms: “This is the place where death rejoices to help those who live.” So one would assume that was where the body was, but they weren’t going in there.
“We’ll get to that later,” DeWitt announced.
He turned a corner and Claire saw two federal marshals standing on either side of a fire door. DeWitt showed them his badge and used a card swipe. Although everyone had been checked in at the main desk when they’d arrived, the marshals studied each ID card as each agent in turn waited at the door.
There was a concrete staircase on the other side of the threshold. After DeWitt, Claire and Jackson started down, Jackson making no effort to conceal how excited he was, like they were going on an amusement park ride. Claire found that she was kind of tense. That was how it often was between them on cases—Jackson all yippi-kai-yai-oh and Claire pondering, speculating, absorbing. She wondered if Peter thought she was a drag because of her reserve. But really, all he liked to do was go to wine tastings and read. He wasn’t exactly Mr. Excitement. That had always been okay with her. Her job was excitement enough.