“ Thank you, Dr. Coran,” he said before falling into a well of silence again, the green dash lights alone illuminating the wounds on his face.
Jessica looked across at Boutine where they sat in the rear. Boutine bit his upper lip before speaking. “Stowell's going to do what he can to keep the vampire aspect frozen. At least no leaks for twenty-four hours.”
She realized that Boutine had bought a little time, and they both knew that the sensationalism of the case would soon overpower the small-town police force, the troopers and Stowell's county office within that time frame.
“ You look like hell, Otto,” she said in a whisper, not believing that the thought escaped her lips. “I'm sorry; I didn't mean to be so blunt. Guess I must look wrecked, too.”
He had continued to hold onto her hand and now took both of them in his own, massaging them. “Fact is, you look fine, just fine.”
“ Perjury before a witness, Otto?” She pulled her hands away, glancing at Stowell's eyes in the rearview mirror.
They both needed sleep. Neither of them had had any rest for well over twenty-four hours. She leaned back into the cushioned seat again, closed her eyes and recalled the telephone call at her home that placed her on standby status. God, had that been just yesterday? At the time Otto hadn't a clue as to where they would be flying, except to say that it was likely to be a Midwest destination. He had given her a pep talk about how the Bureau wanted her to get experience in the field and that he wanted her on his team. He spoke of consolidating his team with a clinician, someone who could put the pathology back into a psychological-pathological report on a serial killer.
So he had put her into the rotation, and after hours of standing by and standing down, she was told to stand to when Boutine had called back and cryptically said, “You ever been to Wisconsin in springtime?”
“ No, never,” she'd replied.
“ Lots of mud, what with the winter thaw.”
“ Is that right?”
“ Got any boots?”
“ Sure, I got boots.”
“ High-tops?”
“ High-tops, low, anything that's required. Is it a go?”
“ Be at the academy gates in half an hour.”
An army jeep was waiting for her at the gate, and when she got in, it swung out to the airfield, where she was given help with her gear to board a sleek Leaijet with engines piercing the stormy black sky, and her eardrums. In a matter of two hours they'd touched down at a remote airstrip facing a farmer's bean field. She was told they were on the outskirts of Wekosha, Wisconsin.
The entire way. Otto spent time filling her in on the case as he understood it. As it happened, however, he didn't fully understand it, primarily because it had not been reported in its entirety to him. He'd gotten it secondhand, off a fax. Anxious to prove to superiors that it would make sound sense to combine his psychological profiling team with a solid forensics team under Jessica's leadership. Otto had recklessly-for him-whisked her off to oversee the ' 'trouble” in Wekosha.
On the plane with Otto, she was given the impression the case involved murder, but she wasn't told that it involved the ninth level of torture, blood-taking. She wondered how much Otto had known, and how much he had kept from her when a sudden, jarring pothole in the city's pavement brought her back to the present.
They had to first go by the city police department, where all the evidence was placed under lock and key, Otto and Stowell witnessing, as a matter of protocol. From there Stowell had a deputy drive them to the Wekosha Inn, where they had rooms awaiting them. As soon as the deputy was away, Jessica hurried inside, anxious for a shower and some well-deserved sleep, but Otto stopped her at the desk the moment she had her key in her hand, taking her aside.
“ There's something you're not telling me, isn't there?” he said.
She stared into his eyes, wondering how he had ever gotten so smart at reading people. “Nothing I can prove, yet.”
“ What is it?”
“ Aside from the bastard's having carted off most of her blood?” she asked.
“ Carted off?”
“ Stowell said she had been missing for two days. From the stage of rigor that I saw, I'd say she died the first night of her disappearance. Now, the guy could have hung around all night, but I don't think so. And no one can consume that much blood at one sitting. I don't care if he thinks he's a vampire or not.”
“ So he took the blood with him?”
“ Most of it, yes.”
“ Some of the local idiots are trying to make a case for the Copeland girl's getting into a little B amp;D, or maybe auto-erotica getting out of hand.”
“ That's bullshit, and you know it. She was tied by her heels to the rafters and her blood syphoned off. If it had started out as some torture turn-on, there'd be whip marks, bite marks, small wounds and bruises, and like I said the sperm was smeared inside her along with the blood. She was not a party to her own death.”
“ Only insomuch as the way she lived her life,” he replied sadly.
She understood his meaning. Many a victim “invited” attack; many people were perfect victims.
“ Stowell says they got a tire print. Not a great one, but-”
“ You made sure that guy Stadtler's not to embalm her before I get a closer look at the lab?”
“ Taken care of, I assure you. Meanwhile, 1 want you to get some solid rest. God knows, you've earned it.”
She started away with a “good night” trailing after, but stopped at the elevator and said, “One thing, Otto.”
“ Yes?”
“ Whoever this fiend is, he showed amazing control.”
“ Amazing control?”
“ Of the blood flow. Given the body's position, there would have been tremendous pressure against the arteries leading to the cranium, the jugular in particular.”
“ The kind of pressure that should have sprayed the place with her blood.”
“ He knew that himself… has thought this thing out… thought about it a lot.”
“ Fantasized about it, or has actually done it before, maybe,” he suggested.
“ And the bastard's come up with a way to staunch the flow, control it and contain the blood.”
“ Suggest a medical background, possibly.”
“ Also suggests an organized mind at work.”
They both knew the literature-if it could be called that-on the organized versus the disorganized murderer. A disorganized killer left a disorganized crime scene behind: weapons, footprints, fingerprints, personal articles and other giveaways to the police, usually in haste to run from what he had done. An organized killer only left carefully chosen clues, evidence that he wanted police to find, often in an attempt to send them down a blind alley; other reasons ranged from fetishes and fantasy rituals concocted in a fevered brain to a sick desire to taunt those who came in to clean up his filthy work.
If Jessica was right, they'd turn up no murder weapon, and all the suspects hauled in by the locals would likely be poor substitutes for the real thing. The local response in such killings was to chalk it up to the work of lunatic impulse. In fact, they counted on it and on moving quickly to incarcerate someone for the crime.
But they both knew that while all this would happen for the community's sake and for the newshounds, the real killer would be all but invisible. An organized killer would have returned home, gone to bed, slept the peace of the innocent, having relaxed his biting urge to take blood, and wake refreshed. He was not about to show up at Stowell's office dazed, disoriented, blood dripping from his mouth, to give himself up in order to quell a brain in turmoil over having fed on the life of another human being. Whoever this man was, he felt no remorse, pain or empathy with his victim. Instead, he likely had a place in his garage for the cutting tools he'd used on Candy Copeland, and he most likely had placed each on its respective nail or shelf before turning in for the night.
“ Our guy's a tidy man,” said Otto there in the dimly lit hallway, as if reading her thoughts.