For the first time ever we split the loot five ways rather than four. Reckoned Terence deserved his share. Granted, he was the one who got us into a very nasty hole. But we couldn’t help being impressed by the way he got us out of it. None of it’s wasted, you know, Work Experience.
Vampire Slaver Murdered in Key West
by Michael Haskins
Michael Haskins debuted in EQMM’s Department of First Stories in 2007, and since then he has had two novels published; a third is on his publisher’s list for the summer of 2012. All of the novels feature the central character of his stories, Mad Mick Murphy, a sometime reporter who lives on a boat in scenic Key West. In reviewing the second novel, Free Range Institution, Booklist said, “...its generous use of the Key West setting will appeal to readers who like local color.” Such readers also won’t want to miss the up-coming Car Wash Blues (Five Star).
That was the double-decked, 48-point headline of the daily Key West Citizen and probably a few other newspapers in South Florida the following day. It was a little misleading, but it did its job because stories on vampires and murders sell newspapers.
When Monroe County sheriff’s Deputy Harry Sawyer rocked my sailboat, Fenian Bastard, and called my name, it was four in the morning and I didn’t know about the murder. When you live on a boat and someone is trying to wake you that early it usually means you’re sinking so you react fast; good news doesn’t come knocking at four A.M.
I was outside in seconds. “What?” I yelled. It took a minute in the dark to realize it was Harry, because he was out of uniform.
“Mick, you didn’t answer the phone,” he said as if that explained why he was there. “The sheriff wants you on Stock Island.”
Stock Island is the first island across the bridge when leaving Key West. Part of it is city property, but the largest section belongs to the county.
“Me?” I yawned and went below. The good news was my sailboat wasn’t sinking.
Harry followed. “Yeah, he woke me at home and told me to bring you to the old mansion at the end of Fifth Street.” He stood in the hatchway. “Right away.”
“Why?” I fumbled into a pair of cargo shorts, put on yesterday’s T-shirt, and grabbed the sun-faded Boston Red Sox cap that accented my shaggy red hair and beard.
“He hung up before saying.” Harry grinned. “But it sounded urgent.”
Bob Pearlman is the county sheriff. We have met socially, but I found it curious he’d call me out at this hour. My experiences have shown that law enforcement and journalists are as compatible as spaghetti sauce and a white shirt.
“No ideas, Harry?” I walked up the dock with him.
“It’s my day off, Mick, so I’m not even sure what they’re working on,” he said. “Ride with me, maybe something will come over the radio.”
“Do you know her?” Sheriff Pearlman asked as we stood in the living room of the crumbling mansion.
I looked down at the naked body, but my eyes focused on the crude wooden stake driven into the victim’s chest. It was an attention grabber.
“Do you?” he asked again, agitated.
I looked at the woman’s ashen face. I saw her fogged brown eyes, heavily outlined in black, and the fear frozen in her final expression; messy shoulder-length hair, black as crow’s feathers, spread out on the floor alongside her head, and her lips were exaggerated by smudged red gloss. Someone had carefully crossed her arms below the wooden stake. One piercing accented the left side of her nose and multiple studs highlighted her earlobes. An open gash exposed raw flesh on her abdomen. She didn’t remind me of anyone I knew.
“No,” I finally answered. “Should I?”
“She’s one of yours,” Sheriff Pearlman said seriously.
“Mine?” I didn’t know what he meant; did he think I killed her?
“It’s Tracy Cox, the journalist,” he explained coldly.
My name is Liam Murphy but I picked up the moniker Mad Mick Murphy in college because of crazy pranks I got involved in and my Irish heritage. I’m a journalist and live on my sailboat in Key West, Florida.
Knowing we’re both journalists, the sheriff believed Tracy and I traveled in the same circles. We didn’t. She wrote long investigative pieces that were often published as books; I wrote when weekly newsmagazines or a Miami news service called me, otherwise I sailed.
The Tracy Cox I knew of was not into the Gothic look, but the pile of black clothing next to the body hinted otherwise, only the wooden stake wasn’t an accessory.
“Where’d the blood go?” I asked, curious about the lack of it.
“Killed somewhere else and then moved here,” the sheriff said matter-of-factly. “There’s no such thing as vampires, if that’s what you’re thinking, though someone went to a lot of work to make it look otherwise,” he muttered harshly and frowned at me.
I looked down again and went right to the stake, moved to her face, and stared.
“Tracy has dirty-blond hair,” I said. “I met her a long time ago at an award’s dinner. This isn’t her.”
The sheriff smirked. “It’s her. I met her a month ago in Miami and she had the black hair and piercings. The FBI called us rural sheriffs together and she was the guest.”
“Guest for what?” He had piqued my curiosity.
The sheriff led me into the next room as crime-scene people began their work.
“They wanted us yokels to be aware of a theft ring that could be moving to the countryside, maybe the Keys,” he said bitterly. “Tracy Cox told the story. She informed the FBI about it just before publishing her newspaper series and then the group went underground. She thought Florida was ripe for what they did.”
The room might have been the mansion’s library once, but the shelves were empty and dusty and the gray light of dawn accentuated the dirt on the cracked windows.
“Theft of what?” I yawned and wished I were back in bed.
“Body parts,” he said casually.
“Body parts?” I was no longer sleepy.
“Got your attention, did I?” he said coarsely.
“Yeah.” And he told me the sordid story.
After-hour Gothic clubs in the big cities, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and the like, had cliques of vampire wannabes and some of them were true believers in the messages that TV programs and cult movies profited from. The clubs didn’t advertise, or have signs outside; they didn’t need to, word-of-mouth filled them, especially on weekends.
For the past year, bodies of young men and women had been showing up in these cities, minus a kidney, liver, heart, or even eyes. Attending Gothic clubs and being young were two items that connected the victims. Missing body parts was another.
Tracy Cox went undercover and began a series about New York clubs where vampire devotees with surgically implanted dental fangs role-played and actually drank each other’s blood. And, she discovered a mesmerizing older vampire disciple. After her story appeared in the paper the club closed, the disciple vanished, and one tabloid called her the vampire slayer. The title stuck.
“What do you want from me?” I looked back into the room and Tracy’s body was covered with a tarp, waiting on the medical examiner.
“People talk to you,” the sheriff said slowly. “See what you hear about a Gothic club starting up. I don’t want to find kids stuck in the mangroves missing body parts.”
I only knew one Gothic kid and it was a presumption on my part because when I saw him at the marina he always dressed in black, had a pale complexion, piercings, and if I caught him in daylight it was as we passed coming and going in the early morning. He had changed in the last few months, losing most piercings, and actually hung around the dock some afternoons.