"Maybe drugs caused it," he suggested.
"Haven't you seen a copy of the autopsy report?" she asked.
"Oh yes, but I just wondered. Maybe they missed something," he said quickly.
"There are many drugs that deplete vitamins, but nothing would work this fast and everything I know would show up in an analysis. I'm not going to pass myself off as any world-renowned expert on the subject, however. I'm just a family physician, you understand."
"Of course," he said smiling, "but I can appreciate your frustration."
"I mean her parents told me that she was an exercise fanatic. What can I say? It's a real medical mystery. You don't have any other situations like this, do you?" she asked.
"I don't know yet. I'll have to contact the FBI. I hope not," he said.
"Oh, I would have thought you would have done that already," she said.
"Not enough time. This is my first case on a new position and I get this," he said smirking.
"Oh?"
"I moved out of New York City because my wife wanted a quieter, safer environment for our children."
"How old are they?"
"We don't have any yet," he replied, "but my wife's pregnant."
"Do you live here?"
"No. We moved to the Albany area, a small community just outside the city. It's actually more rural than I had expected, but we like the stressless life, a world without all this urban turmoil."
"Normally this is a safe place to live," Terri said. "I grew up here."
"Really? And you returned to practice medicine here. I guess you do like it." She smiled.
"My fiance lives here. He has a successful law practice."
"Oh." He looked impressed.
She thought a moment.
"You're absolutely sure no one noticed anything unusual about her at the club?" Terri asked, still struggling with the effort to understand and free herself of this terrible frustration.
"The bartender claims she was dancing up a storm." Terri shook her head.
"That would just seem to be impossible. I wish I could tell you something that would clear it all up, but I'm more confused than anyone right now."
"I understand. Well, Doctor, thank you," Kent said rising. "I'm certain we'll reach some satisfactory conclusion."
"Well," she said, "nothing is for certain in this world, but people don't die like this."
"No," he said, "they don't."
He said it as if he knew just as much about medicine as she did. He nodded, thanked her again, and left.
She turned slowly and saw Elaine Wolf seated behind the counter. Of course, she had been listening in. Only now she looked sorry about her curiosity. Her eyes were filled with terror.
It gave Terri a chill that she knew she wouldn't shake off until she had made herself a cocktail at home.
THREE
He hadn't slept late this morning because he was fully energized and his every sense was heightened, sharp and clear. Maybe he imagined it, but he thought he had been able to hear the movement of the birds on the branches, their tiny steps on the thin twigs of the birch trees just outside the motel window. All he had to do was concentrate and he homed in so quickly and completely, it was as if he were right beside the birds, his ear against the twig.
When he had opened his eyes and focused on the opening in the window curtains, he had caught sight of a small cloud in the distance, and like a telephoto lens, his eyes had brought the cloud closer, so much closer in fact, that he had felt himself drifting into it the way an airplane drifted through clouds. Then he had thrown back his covers, inhaled deeply, and recognized that he still carried the scent of the woman he had fed upon the night before. Everything about her stuck to him, was in his very skin: the perfume she wore and the scent in her shampoo, especially, and when he had combined that with the memory of how she had tasted, how delicious had been the inside of her mouth, her juices, he sighed and stretched like a newborn baby.
How wonderful it had been to be able to feed on one so healthy, with blood so rich. The memory had stimulated him and had filled him with every kind of natural hunger. Today, he had eaten normally and he now recalled how the thought of bacon and eggs, soft rolls and butter, and steaming hot coffee had made his stomach churn in such anticipation that he had been unable to linger a moment longer in that bed.
He had also wanted to jog, to feel his muscles expand and his heart pound. And he had wished he had another woman beside him to make love to normally. He would take no more from her than he would give to her.
"I promise," he had said aloud, as if there had been a skeptical woman beside him.
Then he had risen from his bed feeling a foot taller as usual and had put on his exercise clothes. When he had first driven into this town, he had noticed the nice park with the jogging track circling it. Faces and names drifted in and out of his memory like leaves carried in the wind. For a moment they were there, and then they were gone and he couldn't recall them no matter how hard he tried or how much he wanted to remember. Yet incidental things, like the park, lingered long enough for him to recall them precisely. Why this would be so, he did not know, but he rarely questioned it. He rarely questioned anything about his life even though he understood he was different from every other human being around him.
He had stepped out of his new motel room and looked about with interest. Because he had come here so late, he had really seen it for the first time this morning -- the scenery, the parking lot, the office, and the pool. He had arrived here in the dark, tired, but fulfilled and eager to pass into a restful sleep. But when he had stepped out and inhaled the clear, cool air, all of his systems went into full gear and he quickly became the wonderful and efficient machine he always knew he was capable of being.
In the park he had appeared to be just another one of them: rosy cheeks, heart pumping, legs moving in stride, his lungs expanding, his blood moving efficiently through his veins bringing oxygen, taking away waste. Of course, he wasn't really just another one of them. They didn't have his capacities and they couldn't reach his sensual heights.
Yet, they would never notice any difference simply by looking at him. If they could, they would be frightened away and he would die of starvation, age instantly.
He didn't know why all this was so and at the moment, he didn't care to think about it. What was important was he knew what things he was supposed to say when he went out on a hunt, and he knew where to go for whatever he wanted; but unlike everyone he met, he had no photographs of family, no relatives to talk to. If they pressed him, he made it up -- invented parents and brothers and sisters. Actually, he drew from his victims.
Lately, much of it was getting jumbled and that worried him a bit. Was he really remembering his own past, or was he dipping into the well of identities he had absorbed in one way or another? One day it occurred to him that he might not exist at all, not in the sense anything else existed. He really had no personal identity. He was a conglomeration, a union of a myriad of DNAs. His body was so infused with the essence of his victims, their corpuscles, their genetics, that maybe he was merely the sum total of his prey. In an ironic sense, they had absorbed him; they had seized and possessed him and not vice versa. He was nothing without them.
Because of this he resented them in the same way an addict might resent the substance of his addiction. He couldn't deny the need, nor could he stop himself from seeking it, but he despised it at the same time.