He looked at me.
“Do you have anything else to do?” he asked.
“Not this minute. Where would I find some wolfsbane?”
“On the Internet, where else? The entire world is on the Internet, didn’t you know?”
“Any Web site?”
“Google wolfsbane, you’ll find it. You could check the health-food store.”
“I’ll let you know if it works against vampires,” I said.
“Is there one hereabouts?”
“Some say.”
“Well, well, well,” Sweeter said. “Vampires don’t like dogwoods, either. Christ was executed on a dogwood.”
“You see why I stop to talk to you?”
He looked at me. His glasses flicked light at me as he returned to his work.
The temperature turned twelve degrees at 9:37 P.M., one minute before I saw the vampire in the graveyard. I knew the time because I checked it on my Timex Expedition watch. It has a glow feature. I knew the temperature rang down at twelve because I used my night-vision glasses to check the tiny L.L. Bean thermometer on the zipper of my parka. I sat against Caleb Potter’s headstone without much else to do. My haunches had frozen and my back felt the thick click of cold dropping into my spine. And I was bored, because after sitting up for six nights in a row, the vampire hadn’t shown.
Until now.
You could not film it better. He came from the south end of the graveyard, moving slowly through fog and mist, headstone to headstone. Without the night-vision glasses, I wouldn’t have spotted him. He wore black. No surprise there. But I hadn’t been quite prepared for the precision of his movement, the graceful way he glided through the mist.
I reached in my pocket. Garlic, wolfsbane, a small crucifix. I took out my cell phone and called Wally.
“He’s here,” I said softly.
Then I turned it off.
Alone in a cemetery with a vampire. I had to smile.
I watched. I sat in the old part of the cemetery, up where the founding families had been buried. That section had been built on a small rise. From Caleb Potter’s grave I could watch most of the newer portion of the cemetery. The newer sections had a dozen mausoleums, attractive, I figured, to the living dead.
I felt pretty good, pretty smart watching him — until he disappeared.
Just like that.
I stood. He hadn’t moved behind a mausoleum, nor had he slid down behind a gravestone. From all appearances he had been walking along and had suddenly vanished. I couldn’t help admiring him. It had been a neat trick.
But when you have eliminated all other possibilities, whatever remains must be the truth. He wasn’t a vampire. He hadn’t flown or turned invisible. That meant he had slipped into a hiding place. The fog and mist had made it more convincing than it would have been on a clear night. I pushed up the glasses. They didn’t help much in the fog.
I drew my revolver and walked down the hill toward the spot where he had disappeared. I wondered if I needed silver bullets. If he didn’t go up, he had to have gone down, I figured. I looked back at Caleb Potter’s gravestone to calculate distance and line. When I arrived at the spot where I had last seen him, I stopped. I used my flashlight and searched the ground. It took a few minutes. Next to a clump of winterberry I saw the trapdoor. The vampire had done a good job with it. He had covered the lid with sod and had placed the hole back among the plants so that no one strolling through the cemetery would step on the trapdoor. He could disappear quickly and he could reappear when he liked. It would freak kids out to see him suddenly materialize in the cemetery when no one had seen him coming. Maybe Wolf walked kids nearby, escorted them to a fixed point, and then the vampire would appear magically.
I was still admiring his work when he suddenly snorkeled a periscope out of a breathing hole. Again, a pretty slick feature. He could scan the area to make sure no one was around. He probably told himself that he was smarter than anyone else and no one could catch him. The periscope scanned slowly in a circle.
I put my hand over the periscope lens.
I resisted the impulse to say peekaboo.
Out on Millcross Road, I heard Wally arrive in the department Cherokee.
I pulled some wolfsbane out of my pocket. Garlic, too. I pushed the periscope back in, then dropped the wolfsbane in and the garlic. I stepped on the trapdoor.
“Wally,” I yelled, “bring the wooden stake and the holy water.”
The vampire started yelling under my feet.
Two days later Wally gave me the report. The vampire’s hideout had been an old refrigerator, enlarged at the foot and head with two plastic boxes. It had been tight, but he had been able to go inside, fish out whatever he needed, then tuck it into his jacket. He had three flashlights, a PVC air stack, and a blanket. He could sleep in there to hide out. Maybe it made him feel like a vampire.
He also had a small pharmacy.
“Did you watch a lot of vampire movies as a kid?” Wally asked.
He sat next to my desk in the rolling chair. He liked the rolling chair because he could push back and glide to his desk. He delivered the report by sliding to me.
“As many as I could.”
“I always thought they were stupid,” Wally said. “All that hypnosis. The bats in the eyes.”
“The vampire could control Frankenstein. That’s something.”
“But didn’t the wolfman kill the vampire?”
“In Abbott and Costello. Real vampires would never let that happen.”
Wally looked at me.
“You meeting the vampire’s parents?”
I nodded.
“You think they can get him to admit selling the stuff to the Adelar kid?”
“Doubt it.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“You never know until you know.”
“Is that Zen?”
“If it’s not, it should be.”
The vampire didn’t look great in orange. His Concord State Prison jumpsuit sagged around him. His pointed teeth looked merely old and decayed. When he sat down across the table from us, his mother reached for his hand. He let her hold it. She was a gray woman who wore a gray raincoat and brown slacks. She wore Merrells on her feet. She made no sound when she walked. She reminded me of smoke.
“You have to stop all this nonsense,” his father said. “No more of this vampire crap.”
His dad wore plaid. Plaid coat, plaid shirt, plaid hat. He looked like a Scottish potato. He was no taller than his son, but twice as broad.
“My lawyer said not to say anything,” the vampire said.
“You don’t have to,” I said. “But you could help yourself. Tell us who supplies you, who else is selling things. All you need to do today is agree in principle. Then we can talk about the details later.”
“Alan,” his mother said, “you listen to Chief Poulchuk.”
“I can’t squeal on other people. It wouldn’t be good for my health. I’ll tell you this much, though. Ricky Adelar helped himself to whatever drugs he took. He used to sell the stuff all the time. One of my competitors.”
His dad blew air between his lips. His mom kept the vampire’s hand in hers. She looked at my expression to see if her son’s confession had any impact on me.
“Interesting,” I said.
“So he got a little nutty from the stuff and he had to blame someone. So he blamed me,” the vampire said.
“Might make sense,” I said.
“Put me out of business and cover things with his parents.”
“Got it,” I said.
I stood. Mom and Dad remained seated.
“What was that shit you threw down at me?” the vampire said. “Into the hole, I mean.”
“Wolfsbane.”
“Thought so.”
“And garlic.”
“Cut it out,” his dad said. “Just cut it out.”