"Your mom sounds like somebody I could've learned to like," Karl said. "But you're right – he doesn't look like any vampire victim I've ever seen."
"If he gave it up willingly, he oughta look… blissful, not neutral. Like somebody who'd died from an overdose of marijuana."
"Um, I don't think that's possible, Stan."
"I'm just sayin'."
"Yeah, I know. And if he was attacked, there should be bruising and contusions. And his face would look frightened, or angry. Just like anybody else who's being murdered."
"Which means we have a serious case here of whiskey tango foxtrot."
He looked at me. "Say what?"
"Phonetic alphabet for WTF, or–"
"What the fuck. Yeah, OK. That's pretty good."
"Christine says they use it at work all the time."
"Not to the people calling in, I hope." Karl went to the bed, leaned over the corpse, and inhaled loudly. Then he moved a couple of feet down and did it again.
"You're gonna let me in on what you're doing eventually, right?" I said.
He straightened up and turned to me. "Vampire senses are more acute than human. All of them, not just sight. You knew that, right?"
"Yeah, I guess I did."
"Not all vampires are alike, and I hope you know that, too. But they all give off that characteristic vampire scent. I don't know how to describe it, but it smells like nothing else. And I'm not getting it from this guy, Stan. Not even a whiff."
"So we're back to…"
"Whiskey tango foxtrot," Karl said. "Exactly." He walked slowly around the bed, staring at the corpse of Lester Howard the whole time. "I think we better give Homer, or whoever does the post, some specific instructions, Stan."
"Such as?"
"Have him look at the wound track, if he can work with one that small. See if it gradually narrows, the way it would if fangs made the puncture – or if it's uniform the whole way down, as if somebody used…"
"A couple of needles. Yeah, I gotcha. And I agree. Anything else you wanna tell Homer?" I said.
Karl was looking closely at the bite marks – or whatever they were.
"Yeah, let's have him test the wound for vampire saliva," he said. "He might not do that unless we ask him. Could be he sees what looks like fang marks, figures 'vampire', and never gives the wound a close look. But it needs a close look."
"Goddamn right it does. And I was thinking we oughta ask him for a tox screen, too. If somebody drained this guy using some kind of needle, they'd need a way to make him lay still the whole time. And no bruises means they didn't just hold him down while they did it."
"I like the way you think," Karl said.
"All this stuff is leading us to a bigger question," I said.
"You mean whiskey tango foxtrot again?"
"Kind of. Assuming it wasn't one of the undead who chilled this guy – why the fuck would somebody kill him and want to make it look like a vampire did it?"
"Could be misdirection," Karl said. "Point suspicion away from the human killer. A jealous husband, maybe. Judging from the size of this guy's schlong, it isn't out of the question."
"Maybe," I said. "Or it could be something a lot worse than that."
"Such as?"
"Helter Skelter, buddy. Helter fucking Skelter."
Karl blew breath out between pursed lips. "You figure they're working both sides at once? Killing supes to make the supe community pissed off, and killing humans in a way that looks like a supe did it?"
"I hope I'm wrong," I said. "Because if I'm not, this isn't the work of one lone nutcase, or even a couple of them. This could be bigger than we thought."
Karl gave me the grin again. "Bigger than both of us?"
"Nothing's that big."
A Dell desktop computer sat on a small desk in one corner of the room. I made a mental note to have Forensics copy the hard drive for me to look at later. The computer was still on, but had gone into sleep mode. Using the tip of my pen, I moved the mouse a couple of inches – just enough to wake the machine up, and see the last thing that Lester Howard had been doing with it.
The screen came to life, and I was looking at
DRAC'S LIST
FOR VAMPIRES AND THE THOSE WHO LOVE THEM.
No matter who the murder victim is – or the killer, for that matter – the detective routine is the same. A forensics crew arrived as we were leaving Howard's apartment, and went in to do their CSI thing. Scanlon and his boys from Homicide never did show up. I guess the word had already gone out that this was a vampire kill, which made it a problem for the Supe Squad alone. I'd send Scanlon a copy of our report anyway.
Karl and I checked for witnesses by interviewing every tenant on Howard's floor. Nobody we talked to said they had seen or heard anything unusual. Nobody ever sees or hears anything, but you still have to go through the routine. We made note of the apartments where nobody answered the door, so they could be canvassed later. All told, we spent about three hours inside Franklin Towers.
Back at the car, we'd barely got the doors closed when my cell phone started playing "Tubular Bells". The caller ID simply read "Unknown Caller."
"This is Markowski."
"Sergeant, it's Victor Castle. We spoke recently at my place of business."
"Yeah, how you doing?"
"Less than optimal, I'm afraid. That's what I wanted to talk to you about."
"So talk."
"I much prefer to discuss this kind of thing in person, Sergeant."
"Listen, Castle," I said, "we haven't got time to swing by the rug store right now. Maybe we–"
"That won't be necessary. I'm only a hundred feet or so away from you. With your permission, I could appear in your back seat almost immediately."
"If you're so close, why don't you just walk over and get in?" I said.