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“People, plural?” he asked.

“I’ve only seen two bite marks, but they both have a slightly different pattern to them. The one on the chest is smaller, less space between the fangs. So, yeah, at least two, but I’m betting more.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because they bled her out. There’s almost no blood anywhere. Two vamps couldn’t drain an adult human being without leaving a mess.

They’d need more mouths to hold that much blood.”

“Maybe she was killed somewhere else.”

I frowned at him. “It’s October, she’s outside wearing five-inch plastic stilettos, an inexpensive wool coat, and not much else.” I motioned at the building behind us. “We’re in the parking lot of a strip club. Hmm, let me see, five-inch plastic stilettos, naked woman… could this be a clue that she worked here, stepped out for a smoke, or something?”

Dolph reached into his pocket and got out his ever-present notebook. “She’s been identified as one Charlene Morresey, twenty-two, works as a stripper-worked, as a stripper. Yes, she did smoke, but she told one of the other girls she was going outside for a breath of fresh air.”

“We know she probably didn’t know the vamps.”

“How so?”

“She came out to get some air, not to visit.”

He nodded and made a note. “There’s no sign of a struggle, yet.

It’s like she came out here for air and just walked over there with them. She wouldn’t do that for strangers.”

“If she was under mind control, she would.”

“So one of our vamps is an old one.” Dolph was still making notes.

“Not necessarily old, but powerful, and that usually means old.” I thought about it. “Someone with good mind control powers-that I’m sure of-age,” I shrugged, “I don’t know, yet.”

He was still writing in his notebook.

“Now, can I move the Dumpster and move the body around, or do you still need the techies to get back in there and do their thing first?”

“I had them wait for you,” he said without looking up from his writing.

I looked at him, tried to learn something from his face, but he was all concentration and business. It was a step up that he’d had the techs wait for me. And that he’d called me at all. Before his time off, he’d tried to get me barred from crime scenes. It was a step up, so why was I still wondering if Dolph was capable of letting his personal life go long enough to solve this case? Because, once you’ve seen someone you trusted lose it completely, you never truly trust them again, not completely.

4

There was a matching set of bite marks on the other side of her neck. They were so close to the same size as the ones on the left-hand side, that I wondered if the same vamp had bitten twice. I didn’t have my ruler with me. Hell, I didn’t have most of my equipment with me.

I’d been planning on a wedding tonight, not a crime scene.

I asked if anyone had something to measure bite radius. One of the techs offered to measure for me. Fine with me. She had a pair of calipers-I’d never used a pair of them before.

Measurements do not lie. It wasn’t the same vamp. Nor was it the same vamp at each of her inner thighs or her wrists. Counting the bite mark on her chest, that made seven. Seven vampires. Enough to drain an adult human being dry and leave very little blood behind.

There was no obvious evidence of sexual assault, according to a CSU technician. Glad to hear it. I did not bother explaining that the bite alone can be orgasmic both for the vic and the killer. Not always, but often, especially if the vampire is good at fogging the mind. A vampire with enough juice can make someone enjoy being killed.

Scary, but true.

After I’d seen every inch of the dead woman, when I knew that her pale flesh might dance through my dreams in their plastic shoes, Dolph wanted to talk.

“Talk to me,” he said.

I knew what he wanted. “Seven vamps. One has to be good enough at mind control to have made the vic enjoy what was happening, or at least not mind it. Someone would have heard her screams otherwise.”

“Have you walked into the club?” he asked.

“No.”

“Music is loud, lots of people inside,” he said.

“So they might not have heard her, even if she did scream?”

He nodded.

I sighed. “There’s no sign of a struggle. They’ll look at her nails, but there won’t be any sign of a fight. The vic didn’t even know what was happening, or at least not until it was way too late.”

“You’re sure of that?”

I thought for a second or two. “No, I’m not sure. It’s my best educated guess, but maybe she’s one of those people that doesn’t fight back. Maybe once seven vampires surrounded her, she just gave up. I don’t know. What kind of person was Charlene Morresey? Was she a fighter?”

“Don’t know yet,” Dolph said.

“If she was a fighter, then vampire mind tricks were used. If she wasn’t, if she was real docile, then maybe not. Maybe we’re looking for a bunch of young vamps.” I shook my head. “But I’d say not. I’d say at least one, maybe more, were old, and good at doing at this.”

“They hid the body,” he said.

I finished the thought for him, “And then exposed it, so that someone would find it.”

He nodded. “That’s been bothering me, too. If they had just closed her coat over her body, not messed with the hair, no one would have found her tonight.”

“They’d have missed her in the club,” I said, “or was she done for the night?”

“She wasn’t done, and, yeah, they would have missed her.”

I glanced back at the body. “But would they have found her?”

“Maybe,” he said, “but not this quick.”

“Yeah, she’s still fresh, cool to the touch, but not long gone.”

He checked his notes. “Less than two hours since she was on stage.”

I looked around us, at the bright halogen lights. There was no good place to hide in this parking lot, except behind the Dumpsters.

“Did they do her behind the Dumpsters?”

“Or a car,” he said.

“Or van,” I said.

“The serial killer’s best friend,” Dolph said.

I looked at him, trying to read behind those cop eyes. “Serial killer, what are you talking about? This is the first kill, to my knowledge.”

He nodded. “Yeah.” He started to turn away.

I caught his sleeve, lightly. I had to be careful how I touched him lately. He took so many things as aggression. “Cops do not use the phraseserial killer unless they have to. One, you don’t want it to be true. Two, the reporters will get hold of it and report it like it’s truth.”

He looked down at me, and I let go of his sleeve. “There aren’t any reporters here, Anita. It’s just another dead stripper in Sauget.”

“Then why say it?”

“Maybe I’m psychic.”

“Dolph,” I said.

He almost smiled. “I got a bad feeling, that’s all. This is either their first kill, or the first kill we’ve found. It was awful damn neat for a first kill.”

“Someone meant for us to find her, Dolph, and find her tonight.”

“Yeah, but who? Was it the killer, or killers? Or was it someone else?”

“Like who?” I asked.

“Another customer that couldn’t afford to let his wife know where he’d been.”

“So he opens her coat, draws out her hair, tries to make her more visible?”

Dolph gave one small nod, down.

“I don’t buy it. A normal person couldn’t touch a dead body, not enough to open the coat, mess with the hair. Besides, that flash of pale flesh was done by someone who knew that it would be as visible as it is. A normal person might drag her out from behind the Dumpster, maybe, but they wouldn’t mess with her, not like that.”

“You keep saying, ’normal,’ Anita; don’t you know yet, there is no normal. There’s just victims and predators.” He looked away when he said the last, as if he didn’t want me to see whatever was in his face.

I let him look away, let him keep that moment to himself. Because, Dolph and I were trying to rebuild a friendship, and sometimes you need your friends to pry, and sometimes you need them to leave you the fuck alone.