"Not me," I said. "I like women with some meat on their bones." Like Lacey Brennan, for instance, but I kept that thought to myself.
Famalette turned back from some graffiti on the wall he'd been pretending to read, still twanging that damn rubber band like a Spaghetti Western soundtrack. "You don't like vampires much, do you, Markowski?"
"Vamps aren't so bad," I said. "At least, I never heard of one working for Internal Affairs."
"Word is," Sullivan said, "you'd just as soon stake a vampire as have lunch."
I shrugged. "Depends on what's for lunch."
Sullivan leaned close, and his breath should have been banned by the Geneva Convention. "Face it, Markowski, you're not exactly broken up over this vamp's death, are you?"
"I wouldn't be broken up if you two walked in front of a truck tomorrow," I said. "Doesn't mean I'd be the one behind the wheel."
"Are you threatening us, Markowski?" Famalette said, trying for indignant and failing.
I just shook my head slowly and wondered how much longer it was going to last.
Eventually they turned me loose. Karl, too. The rat fuckers had no case, and no choice. McGuire agreed with that assessment, and he told Karl and me as much in his office. By then it was end of shift – the double shift that Karl and I had pulled, again. I'd planned to spend the time doing something more useful than answering questions for morons, but McGuire was philosophical.
"They're like the clap," he said. "The best you can do is take precautions and try to avoid them."
Karl and I laughed at that. Then McGuire said, "None of which answers the question of who dropped a dead vamp on top of you guys – and why?"
"Not to mention how," Karl said.
"Had to've been magic," I said.
"I wonder." McGuire leaned back in his chair. "I've been thinking about this. Let's say the vamp is in bat form, and he's flapping along, on his way to Joe's Blood Bank, or someplace. But there's a guy on the ground, or maybe on a roof, who's got a rifle loaded with silver, or that charcoal stuff we've been seeing lately. Bang! He nails Mr Bat, who turns back into human form upon death, like they do, whereupon gravity takes over and he drops like a rock – right on top of you."
I glanced at Karl. I was pretty sure we had the same thing in mind: this is what happens the boss has too much time to think about stuff.
"Be a hell of a shot," I said. "Especially at night."
"More than that, it fails the test of Occam's Razor," Karl said.
"Whose razor?" McGuire asked.
"William of Occam, big philosopher dude in the Middle Ages. He said that 'The simplest explanation that fits the known facts is probably true.'"
McGuire and I both stared at him.
Karl shrugged. "Just something I read in a magazine, is all. But it makes sense. No disrespect, boss, but that thing with the rifle is just too complicated to be real likely."
McGuire didn't get mad. "I wasn't pushing it," he said. "It was just a thought. And if that's not what happened, then why is some magician dropping a dead vamp on a couple of cops?"
"We might have the beginning of an answer once I hear from Cecelia Reynolds," I said. "She's doing the post on the vamp and I asked her to look for those symbols carved on the body."
"Oh, right," McGuire said. He rummaged through the mess on his desk and came up with a phone message slip, which he handed to me. "She called while you were in with the Rat Squad. Wants you to call back."
I got out my cell phone. "You mind?" I asked him.
"Nah, go ahead."
I called the number that Cecelia had left. It rang five or six times, and I was just thinking that I was going to have to leave a voicemail message when she came on the line.
"This is Dr Reynolds."
"Stan Markowski, Cecelia. I'm calling–"
"–about your vamp, right." Cecelia's phone manner tends to be kind of brusque.
"You called, so I'm assuming you found–"
"–weird symbols carved into the corpse. Yeppir, we got 'em. In the back, between the shoulder blades. Almost certainly post-mortem."
"Were there–"
"Three of 'em? Yep, just like you predicted, Stan."
"Okay, I'll need–"
"Photos, check. Ronnie already took 'em. Close up, middle distance, side angles, the whole nine yards. Give me your–"
"Email address?" Two can play this game. "Sure, here it is."
I gave her the address I use for official business. Cecelia promised to get photos to me within the hour, then hung up.
I told McGuire and Karl what she'd said.
"Which means that's number four," Karl said. "Just like you figured, Stan."
McGuire looked at me. "Somebody was trying to send you guys a message."
"That's not all they were doing," I said. "Remember, I sped up kind of sudden, to avoid hitting a cat that was crossing the street."
"Yeah, that's right," McGuire said. "I hope you told Internal Affairs about the cat – they'll probably wanna interview it."
"So it was a hit," Karl said. "The body was intended to go through the windshield, right on top of us – along with all that broken glass."
"Yeah," I said, "and that's where this gets really fucked up. The esoteric marks on the corpse means it's Sligo – or whoever's been offing all these vamps." I hadn't forgotten about Vollman – not after Prescott said this hard spell had to be carried out by a vampire/wizard.
McGuire nodded, then made a "Go on" gesture with one hand.
"But now we've got another hit attempt, using magic. We've been operating on the assumption–"
"But somebody who's involved in the vamp sacrifices just tried to kill us," I said. "And that means, one of our assumptions was wrong, either about Sligo or Longworth..."
There was silence in the little room before McGuire finally put it into words.
"Or the two of them are working together."
I needed sleep badly. My skull felt like it was packed full of wet cotton, and I knew that any heavy thinking was out of the question before I grabbed some z's. And in light of what we'd been discussing in McGuire's office, some very heavy thinking was going to be in order.