Holding the slumping figure up, leaning in over his shoulder, Matisak lifted the man's left forearm, and with his own right hand and scalpel, Teach Matisak taught Lowenthal a valuable lesson. He severed the arteries of the left wrist. The blood gushed from the deep wound. And now Teach lifted Lowenthal's right forearm and, using his left hand and the scalpel in it, he carved the right wrist. In so doing, no one, not even Jessica Coran, could tell that someone other than Lowenthal himself had done the cutting.
The hard part was watching the sad waste of the red fluid as it made wine stains in the man's clothing and spread over the weave of his flowered couch. The blood odor made him pant.
Matisak had some additional details to take care of. He pressed the dying man's right index finger and thumb around the handle of the scalpel, and then he repeated the process with the other hand. Some blood had smeared on the scalpel, but the dead man's prints ought to be clear.
Matisak, keeping the gloves on, retrieved his teacup and saucer as Lowenthal continued to bleed to death on the sofa where he now slumped over. In the kitchen he washed the cup and saucer, dried them and put them away. The dishwater also cleaned his gloves of blood, so he wouldn't be leaving any telltale bloody finger marks on a doorknob or door facing.
Lowenthal lived in a silent little neighborhood on the North Side of Chicago where the houses were older than Matisak. There were no children or dogs or young people strolling about, only an occasional old man with a cane. The street was tree-lined. Trash cans had been put out on the street for the next day's pickup. Matisak's van in Lowenthal's driveway drew no attention, and most windows were lit with the shimmery blue light of TV screens. Teach stepped back out into the night and surveyed the neighborhood from the front porch, where Lowenthal had hung a little swing. He cautiously went down to his van and unloaded what he had brought with him, evidence for the authorities. He had left the cutting tools dirty in his sink the night before without reason or good cause, but now he found good cause.
He returned to the house with the box of instruments he had used on successive victims. Inside the house again, he found that Lowenthal had moved, or had fallen, his body slumped over the suicide note, his remaining tea dripping over the edge, mingling with his blood.
Still using the gloves, careful to leave no prints, he located the other man's basement door, found a light switch and calmly moved down the steps. They creaked below his weight.
He located matching tools where he could for the ones that he had brought, exchanging these, hanging his on nails and placing his on shelves where he found replaceable ones. Lowenthal's stuff was top quality, like his own. The man knew machinery. But now Lowenthal's would be caked with the blood of the Indiana boy, Fowler, still nasty with chewed flesh. And when the authorities found the old man's body, they'd also find his sketches of the spigot and the patent application papers in his safe-deposit box, and they'd find his suicide note, a note that Matisak had written in Renee's blood from the inkwell with his quill pen, all of which he had brought with him.
And so they would have their nasty old Chicago vampire in Lowenthal, and Teach could go for some time on the supply of blood that he had, allowing things to cool a bit, just so that Dr. Jessica Coran was satisfied that she had gotten the man she wanted.
It was a perfectly orchestrated plan of genius, killing two problems with one suicide. The only drawback was losing his grandfather's quill pen, but this couldn't be helped. He knew that the FBI could not be fooled by a substitute, and since he had written the earlier letter to Coran with it, he must sacrifice this.
When he returned from the basement, he saw that Lowenthal was fully dead and that the suicide could not look more authentic. The only missing ingredient was the letter, the inkwell and the pen. As far as stocking Lowenthal's refrigerator with blood, he wasn't about to give up everything for the plan. He had brought two pints. If this did not suffice, so be it. The authorities would simply decide that he had another hiding place for the blood, or that his appetite for it was completely insatiable.
He surveyed the work, ticking off each detail, going through his plan as he had a hundred times throughout the day. With the blood in the freezer compartment, he decided that his work was done, save for the letter. This he pulled from his briefcase, little blood flecks popping off it as he moved it into place, atop the coffee table amid splatters of Lowenthal's blood.
It looked perfect there.
He left with his new tools, glancing back at Lowenthal's body where it had eerily slumped over the coffee table.?
TWENTY-ONE
Jessica Coran had had to spend another day and night in Chicago, poring over the list of pharmaceutical companies and hospital supply companies in the Chicagoland area. The list was endless. Pages upon pages, and none of the names-in and of itself-was of help. Still, she narrowed the firms down to the several hundred who either distributed or made their own surgical equipment.
She had telephoned HQ in Quantico and had gotten J.T., who sounded a little strange, but when she asked him what was going on, all he said was, “Be careful out there, Jess.”
She tried to get him to talk, but he dove into the case with some new twist that might have been the cause of the shakiness in his voice. “Robertson says the semen samples taken from Wekosha are definitely from a different man than those you sent from Zion.”
“ What about the Indiana killing? I sent the samples earlier today. You get them?”
“ Just got in the door, but from first scoping, I'd have to say no connection with Wekosha. That means no DNA match. That means-”
“ I know what it means, John!” She sounded more caustic than she meant to. “I think I know what it means.”
“ Sound tired.”
“ That's an understatement. Look, J.T., suppose for a moment that the guy who did the Copeland killing, the Trent and the McDonell killings was the same guy as our Zion guy. It's not a sex-lust killing in the usual sense with this guy, since his lust is not to fulfill any sexual fantasy but a fantasy of blood-harvesting. He simply has no need of sex.”
“ Then why the semen at all?”
“ To keep people like you and me going around in circles.”
“ So he gets the semen from other men? I don't get it.”
“ Goddammit, he's impotent. He's in and out of hospitals until he becomes a known fixture. We know he's likely using medical apparatus-tourniquets, tubes maybe, cortisone in potent dosage, and quite possibly narcotics. He knows his way around hospitals. So he knows where the sperm bank is.”
“ Ahhhh, gotcha.”
“ Men.”
“ What?”
“ You can be so thick.”
“ Thick?”
“ So he doesn't like playing with girls in that way, only killing them by syphoning away their lives through a tube.” The thought of such a killer made her feel once more for his various victims, and with the body count spiraling upward, she feared for his next victim. Her hatred of the killer grew by steady leaps.
She asked if he could transfer her to Boutine's office, complaining she'd heard nothing from him.
He said he'd transfer the call, but came on again complaining that Boutine was unavailable at the moment. She said goodbye to J.T., who seemed reluctant to hang up.
That had been at 4 P.M., sometime after she and Joe Brewer had gotten back to the Chicago bureau. Now she was back at the Lincolnshire Inn, where she had a message waiting from Boutine. He was flying in. He left the number on the jet where he could be reached.