“ I–I-I know you'll want ta talk to-to me,” a whiny, nasally stutterer was saying. She started to protest but was stopped by his next words.
I haf in-for-ma-tion about the vam-pire kill-kill-er.”
“ Who is this?”
“ My name. I'm not givin' my-my name; but I–I-I think I know who-who he is.”
The voice was calm save for the stutter.
“ How did you get my number?”
“ I've read about these ter-ter-terrible kill-killings. I've seen you in the papers, and-and to-night I got your number by-by lying. I told a lie, and they gave me this num-umberrr.”
“ Who gave you this number?”
“ The girl with the police did it-it for me.”
She inwardly cringed, believing her number was given out to a wacko who had been following the case in the papers. The man sounded like a retarded person.
“ The girl at the police department? Which department?”
“ Does-doesn't matter,” he said impatiently.
She sat up in bed, trying to clear her mind and her eyes all at once. “What… what kind of lie did you tell to get my number?” she insisted. “That I'm your father…”
She immediately resented the bastard.
“… that, that your mother's ill, dying! and that I had to get in touch with you.” There was a solidness, a timbre to the voice that kept it from being completely babyish-sounding.
“ Why me? Why bring your story to me, when you've got the entire Chicago Police Department to tell it to?” Her voice was openly caustic now.
“ Po-Po-Police Department? I have! I have tried them. No one will le-listen, 'cause they think I–I-I'm-well, stupid or some-all be-because I use-use-use-did-did d-d-drugs, and-and I was in the hos-”
“ I see.”
“ No, you don't see. I see. No one but me. He lives next door. I see him comin' in with the-these things. Packin' this, this red stuff 'way in his how-how-house, you know? and he tells me once… once he tells me his dear old mother put up some-some tomatoes for him, and once he told me that it was jus' to-to-tomato juice, and once it was ke-ke-ketchup, but-but it's all the same. It's blood.”
“ Who is this other man? What is his name?”
There was a long pause at the other end, until finally, the man said, “My neighbor.”
“ German?”
“ Kinda German, yeah. How'd you know?”
“ Short, stocky man? Dark hair?” She was describing Kaseem's man.
“ Yeah-yeah-yeah, that's him, but how-how-how did you know?”
Ignoring this, she asked, “Where are you located?”
“ My house?”
“ Yes, so we can speak. So you can show me where this man lives.”
“ I–I-I don't want no trouble.”
“ Please, just give me his address, then.”
“ No-no-no. I'll let you come here. You can-can-can't go there alone.”
“ I don't intend to, and certainly not before I've had a chance to investigate this thing further.”
“ All right.”
“ Is your neighbor home now?”
“ No. Prowling. What vam-pires do this time of night. Never see him days-never. Sleeps in-in-in his how-how-house in-in-in a cof-fin, I–I bet.”
“ Where is your location? I'll send a car around.” She wondered if this wasn't just the beginning of the crank calls.
“ No! No! No cars.”
“ Sir, I can't help you if you don't-”
“ Dr. Coran, I don't talk to no one about this no more. I–I-I quit because they were going to lock me up.”
She wondered momentarily if she was not speaking this moment to the killer himself. Perhaps he was a classic dual personality, and while one side of him wallowed in the kill, another side of him abhorred it and the creature personality that had repeatedly murdered while this personality stood by. It was a possibility that she was talking to Davie Rosnich at this very moment, but she dared not frighten him off with such questions. She must first establish a location, a rendezvous spot with a vampire killer.
Or someone who knew the killer.
“ You come alone, or not at all,” insisted the stutterer.
“ All right. What is the address?”
The voice said, “5234 Oak Grove. If anyone is with you, I swear, I don't talk.”
“ Are you sure of what you've seen?”
“ Yes.”
“ What is the man's name you suspect.”
“ No, not until you come; otherwise, you won't come.”
“ But sir, if we had the name, we could run some checks.”
“ No! Just come. I'll show you. I see from my win-dow-dow some of the queer things he does. He… he's got all kinds of weird-looking sur-sur-gical stuff. Catheters, tubes, hypos, you-you name it.”
It was clearly a long shot, and yet something strained and pitiful in the voice made her wonder along with the mention of medical supplies and the van, not to mention tubes and catheters.
“ All right, all right. I'll be there as soon as I can be.”
“ I r-read the late pa-pers. Saw what you-you people said. Awful-just awful. What he did to those poor women.”
“ And men,” she added. “He's killed at least two men, and we have good reason to suspect that there have been others,” she added, to see what kind of response she would get.
“ Men? The pa-per-pers didn't say anything 'bout men he's done? I al-always knew it-down deep. Such a filthy man.”
“ I'm coming,” she said, and hung up.
Jessica knew it was regulation to get backup on a net, and she fully intended to, but this wasn't a net, and she didn't have enough evidence to prove it so; she didn't have enough for a bench warrant, much less a search warrant.
Besides, she didn't believe the stutterer to be the self-assured, methodical killer she had been tracking now for so long. And going to meet with the man only constituted “further investigation.” Under that light, she knew she was on her own.
If only Otto had not had to fly back to D.C. Her only other choice was Brewer, a man she felt uncomfortable around.
She wasn't a complete fool to go to the address alone without some idea of what she was getting herself into. She again telephoned the field office only to find Joe Brewer still unavailable. She spoke to another agent who did some checking and who found the location of the address she wanted on a precinct map. She was given the number of the police precinct that had somehow gotten her number and had passed it along to the caller. “If you get in touch with
Joe, tell him I'm investigating a lead that's taken me to this address.”
The agent seemed bored with the entire idea. Like Brewer and everyone else, he was convinced that the Chicago-to-Wekosha vampire was Maurice Lowenthal, and that the killer was quite dead. The fact that no more bloodless bodies had been found had lulled them all into inactivity where her case was concerned. Even Otto and the P.P. team back at Quantico had wanted to believe it ended with Lowenthal. She alone could not accept this fact.
“ Sure, sure, I'll see he gets the message,” the agent told her.
She then telephoned Precinct 13 to ask questions of the desk sergeant. She asked him if any complaint calls had come to them from the address in question.
“ Ever?”
“ Past year, two?”
“ That might take time.”
“ I'll call back in an hour?”
“ Give me your number, and I'll get back to you.”
“ I need to know within the hour, Sergeant.”
“ Things're pretty slow here for the moment, so I think I can oblige you there, Doctor.”
“ Thank you, Sergeant.”
She took the hour to dress, but in less than a half hour, the desk sergeant at 13 called back.
“ Yes, there've been quite a few complaints from this man.”
“ What's the name?”
“ Gamble.”
“ Appropriate,” she muttered.
“ What?”
“ Never mind.”
“ Hillary Gamble's the full name. Something of a nutcase.”
Appropriate again, she thought, but kept mum. “The name of the person he's made complaints against? “Practically the entire neighborhood. He's a real nuisance, this one. Goes about causing problems, it looks like.”