Lacey leaned over the front seat. I could feel warm breath on the back of my neck. "You're thinking copycat?"
"Maybe," I said. "It would sure explain a few things that don't otherwise make much sense."
Despite his modesty, Karl was good at nding stuff online besides porn. His fingers were flying over the keyboard, and I could hear him swearing softly as his search efforts came up empty, one after another. Then he stopped, stared at the screen, and said, "Jesus fucking Christ on a goddamn bicycle."
"What?" I asked, although I thought I knew the answer.
"This," Karl said, and turned the screen to face me.
And there they were.
The website described the photo as showing "Actual Occult Symbols Carved into Murder Victim in Scranton PA!!!" The idiot who put it up there explained that this was somehow a sign of the oncoming Apocalypse.
Whoever he was, I hoped he was wrong.
"How the fuck did some asshole get hold of these?" Lacey said from the back seat.
"Lots of possible ways," I said. "Somebody at the coroner's office, a guy doing night shift at the morgue, the funeral home people – could've been anyone. Almost everybody's got a cell phone these days, and almost every one of those has a built-in camera."
"Yeah, be a piece of cake," Karl said. "All you'd need is some decent light and about a minute of privacy."
Lacey had her forearms crossed over the back of the front seat, her chin resting on them. "So some 'fearless vampire killer' decided to make his work look like it was done by Sligo – or whoever's been going around knocking off vamps – to throw us off the scent. That what you're saying?"
It was quiet in the car for a few seconds.
Lacey bit her lower lip for a second or two, then shook her head. "Doesn't make any sense, Stan," she said. "Mostly these Van Helsing types want publicity for their deed, if not their name. See themselves as big holy heroes. They wouldn't want a serial killer to get the credit."
"Yeah, I know," I said. "It doesn't fit the pattern. If it's a vigilante, that is."
"But what's left?" Lacey asked. "If it's not the wizard, or a fucking vampire slayer...?"
I looked over at Karl and raised my eyebrows. He saw me, and nodded slowly.
"Lacey, listen: far be it from me to tell the great Michael Twardzik, Lieutenant, Pennsylvania State Police Criminal Investigation Division, how to run one of his cases."
"Apart from the fact that he'd tell you to fuck off as soon as you opened your mouth," Karl said.
"There's that too," I said. "But he seems to like you, Lacey. Kind of."
"He's got fantasies about getting in my pants," she said, "which should be filed under G for 'Good fucking luck.'"
"Whatever the reason, he at least lets you talk to him," I said. "Which is more than Karl and I can say."
"I know about you and the academy thing," Lacey said, "but what did Karl do to piss him off?"
"Guilt by association," Karl said, with a grin.
"Anyway," I said, "the next time you have the lieutenant's ear, you might whisper in it that he should take a good hard look at the kid's parents."
Lacey just stared at me.
I said, "If it were me, I'd want to know where both parents were at the kid's time of death, whenever the coroner says that was," I said. "I might also check trash cans and storm drains in a ten-block radius, looking for some bloody clothing that somebody might have tried to get rid of. And check the sink traps in the house for blood residue – you know the routine."
"'Course I do," she said, "and I'm aware that in most murder investigations you look at family first. But why...?"
"When we were in there, I counted six nails sticking out from the walls with nothing hanging from them, and those people are too neat just to leave nails there for no reason. That's where they hung the crucifixes, the paintings of the Sacred Heart, the little frescoes of the Virgin Mary, all that. If you looked, you'd most likely find all that stuff stashed in a bureau drawer. And I'll bet that all of it will be back on the wall tomorrow, or the next day."
Lacey shook her head again, but not as if she was disagreeing with me. "I can imagine how hard it is to deal with someone in your family who's been changed," she said. "But to off your own kid in cold blood..."
"You're Catholic, aren't you, Lacey?" I asked her.
"I was raised that way, but I'm in recovery," she said with a tiny smile, which is all that old joke deserved.
Karl turned and looked at her. "You're shittin' me," he said. "How can anybody do this kind of work and not believe in God?"
"I didn't say I don't believe in God, Karl," Lacey said. "Although, if you ask me, all supes prove is the existence of the devil. I just walked away from all the Catholic bullshit. No offense, if that's your thing."
"Even so," I said, "you know the Church's views about supes – vamps, weres, goblins, the whole crew."
"Anathema," Karl said. "The pope says they're cursed by God, all of them."
"Yeah, and that's one of the reasons I took a hike," Lacey said. "Give some old man a tall hat, and all of a sudden he speaks for God? I don't think so."
"You may not be with the program any more, Lacey," I said, "but I'm betting the Dwyers were. From all indications, they were hard-core Irish, and, especially in this area, that means hard-core Catholic."
"You think they drove a stake through their own kid because some fucking priest told them to?"
"Possible, but it didn't have to happen that way. If they figured the Church would have wanted him dead, that might have been enough. It would be, for some people I grew up with. They probably told themselves they were saving his soul." I turned my head and looked at the night as it pressed against the car windows. "Who knows? Maybe they were."
We were approaching the on-ramp for 81-North when I whacked the steering wheel with one hand and said, "Damn!"
Karl was bent forward, fiddling with the radio. "What? What's wrong?"
"Just remembered something else the Staties ought to be doing: check the computer in the kid's room."