Until the day he wakes up at sunset to find me leaning over him, the sharp point of my wooden stake resting lightly against his chest. My other hand is holding a mallet, and I make sure he sees that, too, along with the silver crucifix hanging on a chain around my neck.
"You don't know how much I want to pound this stake clear through your body, Anton," I tell him, my voice thick and tight. "And if you so much as twitch, that's exactly what I'm gonna do."
Nothing moves but his eyes, which search my face and see there the truth of what I'd just told him.
His lips barely move when he finally speaks, and his voice is barely loud enough to hear. "Who – who are you?"
"I'm the husband of Rita Markowski, the woman you killed last fall. Remember, Anton? There can't have been so many of them since then that you don't remember Rita."
He closes his eyes for a few secs. Then he opens them and says, "I don't suppose it will matter if I tell you it was an accident – carelessness, really, on my part."
"No difference, Anton. None at all."
His head moves about an eighth of an inch in a nod. "So, why are we talking? You want to gloat a while before you stake me?"
"No, Anton. It tears my guts out to say it, but I need you."
He looks a question at me.
"You didn't turn Rita – didn't make her... one of you."
"Like I said – accident. Got... carried away."
"But you know how to do it."
"Sure, of course," Anton says. "I've done it before."
"Is it true, what I've heard? You have to exchange blood with the victim before she dies? Is that how it's done?"
"Yeah, pretty much." He swallows. "That it? You want... me to turn you?"
He winces as the stake's point presses harder into his chest. "Don't push your fucking luck, Anton. I'd no more become one of you leeches than I'd volunteer to work in a concentration camp."
"What, then?"
"My daughter. I want... I want you to turn my daughter."
Christine's admitted to me that she'd been concealing the symptoms – the weakness, night sweats, joint pain – for as long as she could. She didn't want to be a bother, she said – meaning, I guess, that she saw I was half-crazy with grief and she didn't want to push me the rest of the way. And I guess she also thought that some of it was just her body's way of dealing with the shock of Rita's death.
But when the lumps appeared in her armpits, she'd realized that something more serious was going on. By then, of course, it was too late.
The docs did everything the book says – radiation, chemo, even some experimental medicines. Then one day her primary physician took me into that little room they have at the hospital, just off the intensive care unit. As soon as I sat down, I figured this was the room where doctors give you the Bad News. I was right, too.
I'd suspended my off-hours search for Rita's killer when Christine was hospitalized. But the night they gave me the Bad News, I went back to it. If possible, I pushed even harder than before – and it paid off.
That's how I find myself kneeling over a vampire and telling him that he's going to buy continued existence by making my only child a bloodsucking leech just like him.
I bring Christine home a few days later, promising the hospital people that I'll arrange for twenty-four-hour nursing care. I tell them that I'll make sure she gets everything she needs.
And then, one night, when the painkillers have pushed her to edge of unconsciousness, I tell the night nurse she can go home early. Then I get in touch with Anton Kinski again.
He doesn't have to ask my permission to enter the house. He's been there before.
Even now, I'm not sure if what happened next was the right thing to do, or the worst idea I ever had.
Pittston's only about twenty minutes' drive from Scranton, so I gave Karl the short version of the story, but it contained all the essentials.
When I was done, he turned in his seat and looked at me. "Stan – Jeez – I'm sorry, man, I didn't–"
"Forget it, Karl," I said. "You didn't know and now you do, and there's nothing else to say about it. Besides, it's time to go to work."
We had reached the crime scene.
Pittston's a town of about nine thousand, midway between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. It's got more hills than any other town I've ever seen. I hear San Francisco's worse, but I've got no desire to find out – they can keep their vamp mayor, as far as I'm concerned.
The city's in Luzerne County, not Lackawanna, which explains why Lacey Brennan got the call from the State Police and I didn't. Besides, Lacey's got a much cuter ass than I do.
• • • •
We parked behind a Pittston PD cruiser that looked like it had a lot of miles on it. I could see yellow crime scene tape fencing off a white duplex with green trim. The place had seen better days. A couple of shingles were gone from the roof, and the paint was peeling in several places. As soon as we were out of the car, Lacey came strolling over, a notebook in her hand and a frown on her heartshaped face.