Macy and I held each other and cuddled for a moment on the living room couch. I liked her touch, the way she kissed. This wasn’t right, though. I knew that I didn’t want to be here. Not tonight, anyway. Macy wasn’t at her best right now.
“Good man’s hard to find,” Macy said, drawing me close. She was still slurring her words a bit. “You have no idea, no idea. So hard out here. It’s hell.”
I did have some idea about how hard it was to find someone to be with, but I didn’t pursue the point. Maybe some other time.
“Macy, I’m going to head home,” I finally said. “I liked seeing you again. I liked it a lot.”
“I expected as much! I knew it!” she exploded on me. “Just go, Alex. Go. I don’t want to fucking see you again!”
Before the anger had welled in her eyes, I had seen something beautiful and nearly irresistible. Now it was gone again. Maybe she could get back in touch with it, maybe not. Then Macy started to cry, and I knew enough not to try and comfort her. I didn’t want to be condescending.
I just left the apartment, with its beautiful piano and the wonderful quote from Rudy Crew. This woman wasn’t right for me to be with. Not now, anyway.
Sad night.
A good woman is hard to find too, I wanted to tell Macy.
God, I hated dating.
Chapter 40
THE NIGHT with Macy Francis kept bothering me for the next few days. It was like a sad song that played in my head. I hadn’t expected it to turn out that way. I didn’t like what I had seen, or felt. The look in Macy’s eyes stayed with me: a terrible mixture of hurt, vulnerability, and anger that would be hard to soothe.
I grabbed Sampson on Wednesday night after work. We agreed to meet at the Mark for drinks. The bar was a couple of streets down from Fifth. Local hangout. Tin ceiling, wide-board pine floors, long, worn mahogany bar, ceiling fan turning lazily.
“Sugar, damn,” Sampson said, when he arrived and found me sitting by myself, nursing a Foggy Bottom lager while studying the old Pabst clock on the wall. “You don’t mind me saying, you look like shit, man. You sleeping all right? You still sleeping alone, aren’t you?”
“Good to see you too,” I said to him. “Sit down and have a beer.”
Then Sampson wrapped one of his mammoth arms around me. He hugged me as if I were his little kid. “What the hell is going on with you?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Don’t know exactly. The manhunt on the West Coast went real bad. I mean, it dried the hell up. There’s no word on Betsey Cavalierre’s murder either. Had a date the other night. Just about has me swearing off dating for the rest of my life.”
Sampson nodded. “I know the words to that sad song.” He ordered a Bud from the bartender, an ex-cop we both knew, Tommy DeFeo.
“The case I was working on in California ended real badly, John. The killers just disappeared. Thin air. So. How are you doing? You look good. For you.”
He raised an index finger. Then he pointed it right between my eyes. “I always look good. It’s a given. Don’t try to change the subject on me. We’re into something here.”
“Oh hell, you know I don’t like to talk about my troubles, John. So tell me about yours.” I started to laugh. He didn’t.
Sampson just looked at me, said nothing, waited me out.
“You’d probably make a decent shrink,” I told him.
“Speaking of which, have you been to see the good Dr. Finally lately?” Adele Finally is my psychiatrist. Sampson has also seen her a couple of times. She helps. Both of us agree on that. We’re fans of Adele.
“No, she’s really pissed off at me. Says I’m not trying hard enough, says I won’t embrace my own pain. Words to that effect.”
Sampson nodded and smiled thinly. “So why is that?”
I made a face. “I didn’t say that I agree with Adele.”
I sipped my Foggy Bottom. It wasn’t too bad, and I liked being loyal to a local brewer.
“When I try to embrace the goddamn pain, I keep coming back to the conflict between the job and the life I think I want to lead. I missed another one of Damon’s concerts while I was out in California. Stuff like that keeps happening.”
Sampson punched my shoulder. “That’s not the end of the world, you know. Damon knows you love his little ass. The young dude and I talk about it sometimes. He’s over it. Now you get over it.”
“Maybe it’s just that I’ve worked on too many bad murder cases in the past few years. It’s changing me.”
Sampson nodded approval. He liked that answer. “Sounds like you’re feeling a little burned-out.”
“No. I’m feeling like I’m caught in a scary nightmare that won’t go away. Too many coincidences whirling around me. The Mastermind howling my name, threatening me. I don’t know how to make it all stop.”
Sampson stared into my eyes. He locked into them. “Back there a little bit you said coincidences, sugar. You don’t believe in coincidences.”
“That’s what makes it so scary. If you want to know the truth, I think that someone really is after me, and they’ve been after me for a long time. Whoever it is, he’s scarier than the vampires. I keep getting calls from somebody, John. He calls me every day. Hardly misses a day. We can’t trace the calls.”
Sampson ran a hand across his forehead. “Now you’re scaring me. Who would be stalking you? Who would dare to take on the Dragonslayer? Must be some kind of fool.”
“Believe me,” I said. “This is no fool.”
Chapter 41
SAMPSON AND I stayed at the Mark later than we should have. We drank a lot of beer, and finally closed the place down at around two. We were smart and sane and sober enough to leave our cars in the parking lot instead of driving home. John and I walked home under a bright moonlit sky. It reminded me of the two of us growing up in Southeast. We had to walk just about everywhere we went. Maybe we’d take a city bus if we were feeling flush. He dropped me off at my house and continued toward the Navy Yard and his place.
Early the next morning, I had to retrieve my car before I went to work. Nana was up with little Alex, and I drank a half pot of her coffee, then put the boy in his stroller. He and I walked to my car.
The morning was clear and bright, and the neighborhood seemed peaceful and quiet at around seven o’clock. Nice. I’ve lived on Fifth Street for thirty years, ever since Nana moved there from her old place on New Jersey Avenue. I still love the neighborhood, and it is home for the Cross family. I don’t know if I could ever leave.
“Daddy was with Uncle John last night.” I bent down and talked to the boy as I pushed his blue-and-white-striped stroller along. A nice-looking woman passed us on her way to work. She smiled at me like I was the best man in the history of the world because I was walking my child this early in the morning. I didn’t believe it for a second, but I enjoyed the fantasy.
Little Alex is very alert at nine months, and he likes to watch passing people, cars, the clouds streaming above his little head. He loves rides in the stroller, and I like pushing him, talking or singing kiddie ditties as we go about our business.
“See the wind blowing the tree leaves?” I said, and he looked up as if he understood every word.
It’s impossible to tell how much he understands, but he seems responsive to what I say. Damon and Jannie were the same way, though Jannie was constantly babbling as an infant. She still loves to talk, and to get in the last word, and the next to the last, just like her grandmother, and also, now that I remember, her mother, Maria.
“I need your help, buddy.” I stooped down and talked to little Alex again.
He looked up at me, smiled beautifully. Sure, Daddy, you can count on me.
“It’s your job to hold me together for a little while. You give me something precious to focus on. Can you do that?”
Alex continued to smile. Of course I can, Daddy. It’s no problem. Consider it done. I am your precious. Lean on me.
“Good boy. I knew I could count on you. Just kee
p doing what you’re doing. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a while. I love you, little buddy.”
As I was talking to my son, though, a little of the feelings of the night before rolled over me like some cold, wet fog coming up from the Anacostia River. Coincidences, I remembered. The bad things that had happened around me for the past two years. A real bad run. The murder of Betsey Cavalierre. The Mastermind. The vampire killers.
I needed for it to let up some, needed to come up for air.
When I got to headquarters that morning, a message was waiting for me. There had been another vampire murder. But the game had just changed, taken another turn.
This one had taken place in Charleston, South Carolina.
The killers were on the East Coast again.
Part Three
MURDER IN THE SOUTH
Chapter 42
I FLEW to Charleston and arrived a little before ten in the morning. The local murder story was boldly splashed across the front pages of the Post and Courier and also USA Today.
I could feel uncertainty and fear in the bright, sterile, overly commercialized confines of the airport. Travelers I passed seemed nervous and wary. Several looked as if they hadn’t slept well the night before.
I’m sure that some of them felt that if the mysterious killers could strike in the heart of Charleston, they could do it in an airport waiting room or food court just as easily. No one was feeling safe anywhere.
I rented a car at the Charleston airport, and then I set off for a spot called Colonial Lake in town. A male and female jogger had been murdered there at around six the previous morning. The couple had been married for just four months. The similarities to the murders in Golden Gate Park were unmistakable.
I had never been to Charleston, though I’d read books set in the city. I soon discovered for myself that Charleston is physically gorgeous. Once upon a time, it had been a city of incredible wealth, most of which came from cotton, rice, and slaves, of course. Rice had been the biggest export, but slaves, who were brought into Charleston Port and sold throughout the South, were the import that proved the most profitable. Wealthy planters had traveled frequently between the plantations in the lowlands and their homes in Charleston, where the important balls, concerts, and masquerades were held. Relatives of Nana Mama’s had been brought into Charleston Port and sold there.
I found a parking spot on Beaufain Street, which was lined with Victorian-style houses and was lovely. I even spied a few English gardens. This wasn’t the kind of place where ghoulish murders ought to happen. It was too pretty, too idyllic. Was that what drew the killers here? Did they appreciate beauty—or hate it? What were they revealing to us with each new murder? What was their dark fantasy? Their horror story?
If Charleston was suspicious and fearful about the murders, then the streets around Colonial Lake seemed close to terror. People eyed one another warily and coldly. There was nothing even close to a welcoming smile, no Southern hospitality on display anywhere.
I had left a message for Kyle to meet me at the lake. It was surrounded by wide sidewalks and wrought-iron benches. Yesterday, it had probably appeared picture-perfect and completely safe. Today, bright yellow crime-scene tape was set up near the intersection of Beaufain and Rutledge. The Charleston police had surrounded the area and were watching everybody as if the killers might return.
I finally saw Kyle waiting under a spreading shade tree, and I walked toward him. The morning was warm, but there was a breeze off the ocean that smelled of salt and fish. Kyle had on his usual attire: gray suit, white shirt, and nondescript blue tie. He looked like the playwright and actor Sam Shepard, even more so today than usual. Kyle looked gaunt, tired, almost as haunted as I felt. The murders were getting to him too. Something was.
“It must have been like this yesterday morning, though it was earlier when they struck the couple,” I said as I came up to Kyle. “No one saw anything? No witnesses in an area like this? That’s what I read in the police briefs.”
Kyle sighed. “We actually have a witness who saw two men hurrying out of the park. Man in his mid-eighties. He said he thought he saw blood on the shirts of the men, and he felt he was mistaken. Then he found the bodies.”
I quickly surveyed the scene at Colonial Lake again. The sun was shining brightly, and I was forced to shade my eyes. Birds were twittering in several of the trees. The park was so open to scrutiny. “They were out in broad daylight. Some vampires,” I muttered.
Kyle eyed me. “You’re not starting to believe in vampires?”
“I believe that there are people who practice a vampire lifestyle,” I told him. “I know some of them believe they’re vampires. Even some of the role-players sport very sharp teeth. Fangs. They can be violent. I haven’t seen any shape-changers yet. Otherwise our witness might have seen a couple of furry bats winging it out of here instead of two men. That’s supposed to be funny, Kyle. What else did our witness say about the men he saw?”
“Not a lot. He thought they were young, Alex. Twenties or thirties, which covers a hell of a lot of territory. They were walking quickly but didn’t seem alarmed that he saw them. He’s eighty-six, Alex. He seems, shall we say, distracted by all the attention he’s getting.”
“Whoever the killers are, they’re certainly bold. Or stupid. I wonder if these are the same bastards we chased through California and Nevada.”
Kyle lit up a little. He had something to tell me. “My people in Quantico were up half the night. Again. Alex, they’ve come up with a dozen East Coast cities with unsolved murders that could be connected to the others.”
“What’s the time frame of the murders?” I asked.
“That’s the really interesting part. This may have been going on for a long time. Nobody seems to have put these cases together before we came along. The time frame is at least eleven years.”
Chapter 43
THAT NIGHT, Kyle and I had dinner with a good friend in Charleston. Actually, Kyle made the arrangements, including reservations at the Grille on North Tyron.
Kate McTiernan hadn’t changed much since we had been thrown together during the Casanova murder spree in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. When the murderer Casanova had kidnapped Kate in her house outside Chapel Hill, he’d believed she was the most beautiful woman in the South.
Not only that, Kate was extremely smart. She was a doctor now, a pediatrician, but she was thinking about becoming a surgeon.
When Kate arrived at our table, Kyle and I were deep in conversation. Actually, we were arguing about possible next steps in the investigation.
“Hi, guys.” Lustrous brown hair framed Kate’s face. She was wearing her hair longer these days. Her eyes were dark blue with a nice sparkle. She was still in terrific shape, but I knew she was a softie deep inside.
“Give it up,” Kate said. “You boys are working way too hard. We’re going to have some fun tonight.”
Seeing her there got us both up out of our chairs, grinning like idiots. We’d gone through a lot together and survived to be together again for this unlikely dinner in Charleston.
“This is a great coincidence. I was at a medical conference just outside town,” Kate said as she sat down with us.
“Alex doesn’t believe there are coincidences,” Kyle said.
“Well, fine. So here we are again, brought together by divine intervention or whatever, praise the Lord,” Kate said, and grinned.
“You seem in excellent spirits, Kate,” Kyle said. He was actually pretty buoyant himself.
“Well, Kyle, this is just such a nice, unexpected treat, why wouldn’t I? I get to see the two of you. Plus, I am in excellent spirits. I’m getting married next year in the spring. My Thomas proposed two nights ago.”
Kyle fumbled out a congratulation, and I called over our waiter and ordered a bottle of champagne to celebrate. For the next few minutes, Kate told us all about her Thomas, who owned and ran a small, nicely snooty bookstore in North Carolina. He was al
so a landscape painter, and Kate said he was exceptional at both his jobs.
“Of course, I’m hugely biased, but I’m also a picky little bitch, and he really is good. He’s a fine person too. How are Nana and the kids? How’s Louise, Kyle?” she asked. “C’mon, tell me everything. I’ve missed you two.”
By the end of dinner, we were all in good spirits. The champagne and the company did the trick. I had noticed before how Kate could raise up everyone around her—even Kyle, who usually isn’t the most social person. All through dinner he rarely took his eyes off of her.
The three of us hugged outside the restaurant at around eleven.
“You two are coming to my wedding,” Kate said, and stamped her foot. “Kyle will bring Louise, and Alex, you’ll bring the new love of your life. Promise?”
We promised Kate. She left us no choice. We then watched her walk away toward her car, an old blue Volvo that she made house calls in.
“I like her a lot.” I couldn’t help stating the obvious.
“Yes, I like her too,” said Kyle, who didn’t stop watching until Kate’s car was gone from sight. “She’s a very special girl.”
Chapter 44
WE WERE connecting some of the dots now. Finally. I hoped we would be able to put together the whole vampire puzzle soon. By the following afternoon, the FBI had identified twelve eastern cities where murders involving vampire-like bites had occurred as early as 1989. I put the names on one of my index cards. Then I stared at the list long and hard. What could possibly link these cities?
Atlanta
Birmingham
Charleston
Charlotte
Charlottesville
Gainesville
Jacksonville
New Orleans
Orlando
Richmond
Savannah
Washington, D.C.
The breadth of the list was a problem. Scarier and more mystifying was the fact that the murders might have been going on for over a decade.