We went back to the office, and McGuire handed me a slip of paper with an address on it. "Looks like a vamp, er, vampire attack. There was one last week, in case you didn't hear – Aquilina and Sefchik caught it. Compare notes with them, when you get a chance. Maybe we've got a serial fanger on our hands."
As we walk out of the squad room, I said to Karl, "Think the boss should get some of that sensitivity training?"
"Nah," he said. "I bet you could teach him all he needs to know."
In the elevator Karl said, "You check your email yet tonight?"
"Haven't had time. Why?"
"I was just wondering if you heard from the same guy that I did – Mitchell Hansen."
"That name rings a bell," I said, "but I can't remember why."
"Dude's a reporter for the T-T, does a lot of their crime stuff."
"That's right – he was bugging me about something a couple of months ago. And what does the Times-Tribune want to know this time?"
"He was asking if I knew anything about snuff films," Karl said, deadpan.
"Uh-oh. The Feebies are gonna shit when they hear about that. What'd you tell him?"
"That, far as I knew, it's an urban legend. I said he should stop wasting his time – and mine."
I nodded. "I'll tell him something like that if he writes to me. Good answer, by the way. You ever think about a career in PR?"
"As a liar, I'm strictly amateur, man. Not ready to turn pro just yet."
The elevator door opened, and we headed down the corridor that led to the parking lot.
"But talking about public relations," Karl said, "always reminds me of this dumb-ass I knew in high school."
"Did the dumb-ass go into PR?"
"Nah, he had this idea that he was gonna move out to Nevada and run one of those legal brothels they have there."
"Interesting career path," I said. "Don't know about the pay, but I bet the benefit package is outstanding. So, what'd the guy do – head out west after graduation?"
"Uh-uh. He wanted to go to college first, so he applied to the U. He said they had a degree program that would be good preparation."
"He really was a dumb-ass, then. The University of Scranton is a Catholic college, and I'm pretty sure the Church still discourages prostitution."
"Yeah, I know. Turned out he'd read their catalog wrong."
"What do you mean, he misunderstood the catalog? It's written so high school seniors can understand it, for Chrissake."
"Like I said, he wasn't too smart. He thought they offered a degree in Pubic Administration."
There are several nice apartment complexes just outside of Scranton that spread over several acres, allowing quite a lot of people to live there while creating the illusion of open space. But in town, real estate is too expensive for stuff like that. There are plenty of apartments, but they're mostly in buildings like Franklin Towers on McEvoy Avenue. Like a lot of these places, it doesn't live up to its pretentious name. There may have been somebody named Franklin involved in the design, but there wasn't a tower to be seen – just the usual big concrete rectangle on its side with a bunch of windows.
Lester Howard had lived, and died, in apartment 518. The uniform stationed at the door peeled back the crime scene tape to let us in.
The uniform's name was Meroni. I knew him well enough to nod "Hi" in the halls, but that was all.
"Forensics been here yet?"
"Not yet, Sarge. Busy night for them. There was a murder over in Dunmore – looks like a domestic, I hear." Dunmore's a suburb of Scranton. They've got their own police department, but it's too small to afford its own Forensics and SWAT, so they share with us.
"Another crew's over on Mulberry," Meroni went on. "I hear a couple of vamps were found staked in their house. Good riddance, you ask me. Somebody should stake 'em all."
I glanced at Karl, but apart from a mildly disgusted expression, he didn't react. I didn't say anything about it, either – but there was a time when I might've agreed with Meroni.
"Just let us in, will you?" I said.
The apartment looked like it had seen the services of an interior decorator. Not only was it not done in Early Man Cave – which is the style most young single guys adopt – I'm pretty sure most men living alone don't have curtains that coordinate with the walls. Hell, most guys don't even have curtains.
That impression of quiet good taste continued in the bedroom – apart from the corpse on the bed, which probably wasn't part of the decorator's original plan for the room. I figured it sure wasn't part of Lester Howard's plan.
In life he had been a thirty-something white male, in decent physical shape, who wore his hair long and his beard short. His penis was large and uncircumcised. In death he was just an extremely pale naked corpse on the bed with two small holes in his neck, his brown eyes staring at something only the dead can see.
I've been to a few vampire murder scenes. Not many. Vampires don't have to kill to get nourishment, especially in this age, with everything out in the open. But just as there are sicko humans who'd rather rape a woman than have consensual sex, there are some vampires who think that blood tastes best when you take it by force.
Other times, it's just loss of control. A vampire, especially a baby vamp who's new to the undead state, might be having such a good time at somebody's neck that he can't make himself stop. And the victim, if that's the word, won't always call a halt to it, even when vision starts to fade. I understand that being fanged feels really good, which is why there seem to be so many humans willing to part with a pint or two of their life's essence in return for the pleasure involved in giving it up.
But something about this murder scene was off, and it took me a minute to figure out what it was. "Look at his facial expression," I said to Karl.
"Doesn't have much of one, does he?"
"The guy looks… placid, like somebody laid out in a funeral home – what Mom used to call a 'corpse house'."