 "Wrong Idea"
(Excerpt)
by David M. Fitzpatrick
“The problem with your case,” the man in
black said to us in the interrogation room, “is that it banks on the claim
by your star witness to this murder that I’m a vampire.”
Ron shot me that Okay, your turn look he
shoots me when he’s out of bad-cop ideas and it’s time for me to play good
cop. Something about big, round, blue eyes framed in a frustrated,
weathered face with salt-and-pepper hair has always struck me funny as
hell and it’s usually all I can do to keep a wise-ass smirk off my own
face. This time, though, the situation was decidedly more grim than usual,
and something about this guy just spooked the hell out of me.
I pulled out my pack of Winstons and lit
up. In typical good cop form, I offered one to the perp. He took it
ungraciously and I gave him a light. “Nobody said anything about you being
a vampire. Now state your name for the record.”
“Tepes,” he said without hesitation.
“Vlad Tepes.”
Cocky smile and everything. They guy was
playing around with us and was having a good time doing so. That pissed me
off.
“That’s what your witness thinks,” the
man said, sucking on the smoke like a lover. “Told you my eyes glowed red.
Told you I had fangs. Told you I ripped her throat out and drank her
blood.”
“His report was bizarre,” I said coolly,
“but we picked you up only minutes after the murder took place. He gave us
a complete description of you, right down to the ripped knee in your jeans
and the silver belt buckle with the dragon on it.”
“This murder was committed on the
fifteenth floor of the Jackson Building,” he said evenly. “Your boys
nabbed me twelve blocks away less than five minutes after his screaming at
the scene through her open apartment door brought everyone running. I
suppose you have a neat idea as to how I got those twelve blocks away so
fast. I suppose I turned into a bat and flew?” He shook his head. “Dammit,
boys, I think we’re missing a most basic point: it was broad daylight. Her
apartment has enough crosses in it to make an atheist find a good foxhole.
She had strings of garlic all over the place. How the hell is a vampire
supposed to pull that off?”
“We’re not talking about vampires,” Ron
said.
“Sounds like it to me. That’s what
Matlock there said.” He waved an uncaring hand in my direction.
“I never said it was a vampire,” I defended myself. “I said the killing
looked like something out of a vampire movie.”
“From the top,” Ron said gruffly. “What
were you doing there earlier?”
“All right, boys,” he said with a sigh,
“write it down this time, cuz I ain’t telling you again. John Bannon. I’m
a private investigator. Jenny Childress hired me that very morning to
investigate what she thought was someone stalking her. That’s why your
witness is swearing up and down he saw me vamp out. He saw me leave her
apartment. I mighta given him a nasty look just to scare the hell out of
him. But that was it. Next thing I know, the cops are picking me up way
the hell across town on a perfect physical description of me. It’s
bullshit and you know it.”
“I don’t know it,” Ron said, “but it
sounds reasonable. We’ve checked you out. You’ve been a private
investigator for fourteen years with a respectable record. You retired
from the Chicago Police Department after a long and distinguished career.
I would think you’d understand why we need to question you so intensely,
Mr. Bannon.”
The man sighed. “I do understand, buddy.
More than you can know. Look, I’m upset. The gal was a sweet piece,
innocent and young and scared shitless by whoever was stalking her. She
went on for an hour this morning about her concerns and I got the
impression she wasn’t just paranoid.”
“Evidently not,” I said.
“Yeah, smooth detective work, Holmes,” he
said.
The cute monikers were becoming
irritating. “If you met with her in a professional capacity,” I said, “you
must have taken notes. I think we should have a look at them.”
“Sorry. I don’t write down shit in
notebooks.”
“A career cop and veteran P.I., and you
don’t write down stuff when you interview a client?” Ron said.
“That’s right. I keep it all up in the Gray Room,” he said, tapping the
side of his head. “Now, pal, I’m pissed off and I want to see this guy
caught. I’m willing to lend any assistance I can. I’d like the chance to
check out her apartment. Maybe something will occur to me that isn’t to
you and Sherlock, here.”
I wanted to slap him in the mouth, but
held my composure. Ron seemed to think about it a bit, never looking to me
for any visual signs. He nodded slowly. “You’re considered a suspect in
this case, Mr. Bannon,” he said, “so I expect full cooperation with
Detective Harding and, of course, that you don’t leave town.”
“Oh, that’s original,” he said. “You got
it, buddy. Let’s get over there and do this. Come on, Magnum.”
* *
*
Ron let him leave first to sign for his
weapon and ID, staying behind to talk to me. He could tell by my glare I
wasn’t happy. “Jack, I’m sorry.”
“That’s a comfort,” I said.
“Well, this case is yours, but I think he
might be able to lend some insight.”
I nodded in surrender. “I know. I’m not
going to like working with him, not one bit, but…” I trailed off, images
of the dead girl, her throat all but torn completely out, body empty of
blood, fresh in my mind. “This murder is more than a tragic case, boss.
This one has to be solved.”
“I know,” he said quietly. Outside the
room and down the hall, we could hear Bannon bitching out the intake
officer. Ron half-smiled.
“As much of a bastard as he is,” I said,
“I think he’s sincere. And I think he’s likely to be able to help us. So
I’ll suffer with him.”
“So you don’t think he did it?”
It was a question too blunt and sudden
for me. We traded uneasy stares for a moment. “I don’t think it was him,”
I said finally, “but I know it wasn’t a vampire.”
* *
*
Bannon was insulting me, calling me Sam
Spade and Mike Hammer, and slamming on my mother, before we even made it
to my car, at which point he practically demanded to drive. It took me
five minutes to explain that department regulations prohibited it. He
finally relented, calling me a rookie ass-kisser, but at that point I was
about ready to grab him by the throat and twist his head off with my bare
hands. It was going to be a long day.
The drive over had him running his mouth
about the vampire aspect again. I couldn’t help but shut him up. “We’re
not even remotely considering the chance that the killer is a vampire,” I
said.
“Why not, Columbo?” he said vehemently.
“Your witness seems pretty sure of himself.”
“You suggested why not yourself,” I
argued. “Even if the vampire theory made a small amount of sense, it
wouldn’t hold water. Everyone knows vampires can’t be out in the
sunlight.”
He chuckled the way an adult might over
something silly a toddler may have done. “You’re too narrow-minded, buddy.
I was just spouting that shit for your boss back there. You really think
vampires are scared of sunlight? You really think crosses and garlic scare
‘em off?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. There
are no such things as vampires.”
“Oh, yes there are,” he said with stolid
absolution.
I grinned in spite of the man. “Really.”
He looked at me, all wise-ass smirks gone
from his face. “Believe what you want. But I’m gonna tell you this: I’m a
vampire hunter, my man. I quit being a cop the night I found one in an
alley sucking the life out of some wino’s throat. I had no idea why at the
time, but I scared him off that night. Found out later it was because
they’re not as indestructible as legend has it. But I quit the cop
business in order to be a gumshoe so I could work my own hours, on my
terms. I do some regular for-hire client shit, but it’s all a front.
Fourteen years, and I’ve killed twenty-six of the bastards. They’re real, all right. And sunlight doesn’t do jack shit to ‘em.”
He’d certainly caught me off guard with
that spiel. “I see. So all the legends over the centuries are completely
wrong? Vampires actually wouldn’t mind getting good tans?”
“Sure,” he said simply. “Think about it.
If you were a vampire and people wanted to burn your ass, would you hang
around at high noon when people could identify you easily? Hell, no. You’d
hunt by night. They all do.”
“And you… hunt them?”
“You got it, Harry-O.”
I could see her building about a half
block ahead. “How do you kill them? Wooden stake through the heart?”
“Nothing that difficult,” he said. “Nine
millimeter to the head usually does a good job. They don’t regenerate from
nothing. They don’t run from crosses – shit, I took one out who was a
Catholic fucking priest, if you can believe that. They don’t turn into
bats or smoke or anything else. And they don’t recoil at garlic – no more
than I do, anyway. I hate that shit.”
“You’re not doing a lot of good for the
vampire’s PR value, you know,” I said as I pulled the car up behind a
marked cruiser.
“Fucked if I care,” he said, and he meant
it. “You don’t believe me about any of this vamp talk, do you?”
“No, I don’t.”
I was reaching to undo my seat belt when
his hand was on my right shoulder, surprising me. I spun to meet his face
close to mine. “Listen, pal, like me or not, what I’m telling you is
true,” he said. “The girl was killed by a vampire. It’s unusual, broad
daylight like that, witnesses everywhere, but it happened. That’s a sloppy
vampire. Sloppy vampires mean crazy vampires, and if he’s left to run
around like that, there’ll be more Ms. Childresses. Bloodless bodies with
ripped-out throats’ll be piling up in the city morgue like poultry
carcasses at a chicken-packing factory.”
Whatever was going on in this man’s head,
there was no doubt in my mind he believed everything he was feeding me. I
said calmly, “Take your hand off my shoulder, Mr. Bannon.”
He removed it. “Sorry, buddy. I just want
this guy caught.”
“So do I.”
* *
*
There was an officer on watch outside the
crime scene, but otherwise the apartment was empty. The cop cleared us
through and we ducked under the police line across the doorway. The
apartment was as neat and organized as Jenny Childress had always kept it
– not much of a fight had been put up. We stood, silent for a few moments,
surveying the scene of the crime.
Her body had been removed, but there was
no guessing where it had been. The pretty pink rug in the living room had
been stained a deep maroon where she had bled. Patterns spiraled out from
four points of the elongated central oval of blood – arms and legs – and
we could clearly see where her head had been.
But he was sloppy, as Bannon had
postulated. If he were a vampire, he’d made a mess. A drop here or there
was acceptable, perhaps, but all over the body? Her body had been painted
red, like an artistic cannibal artist using her skin as his canvas.
“Jesus,” Bannon said in disgust, but he
didn’t seem sickened by it. Just pissed off, I think.
“They say she didn’t fight,” I said.
“Right there, like he talked her into lying down. Then he used his teeth
to rip out her throat. But he must have spit her blood all over her body
or something.” He was surveying the room, slowly turning in place, taking
everything in. I watched him curiously. “I thought you were here for an
hour today,” I said.
“I was.”
“And you’re a private detective?”
He looked at me, irritated. “You weren’t
paying attention at the staff meeting, were you, Mannix?”
“Are you any good?”
“Yeah, pretty damn good, in fact. Why?”
“It just seems you’d have cased the place
in good shape when you here earlier,” I said. “Being that you claim to
hunt vampires and that she was killed by one, and since you were here to
find out who was stalking her… I’d think you’d have looked the place over
really good then.”
“Nothing wrong with looking again. I
might have missed something.” He eyeballed me suspiciously. “You still
think I did it, don’t you, Sherlock?”
“Stop calling me those names,” I said
firmly, feeling the anger boiling deep within my heart. “I’ve heard enough
of them.”
He looked taken aback. “Why’s that piss
you off? They’re all famous detectives. Take them as compliments.”
“You’re not complimenting,” I almost
growled at him. “You’re insulting.”
We stared each other down for a few more
moments, and then he nodded slowly, turning away. “All right. No need to
get all uptight, detective.”
We scoured the apartment from top to
bottom. He knew all the procedures and rules of evidence and didn’t touch
anything with his hands. He had a ballpoint pen he used to tip things
aside and lift things up, very carefully looking them over. He watched his
step, stayed outside the area cordoned off where the body had been. I
didn’t trust him, that was for certain, but I had decided he hadn’t killed
her – knew as well as I knew my own name that he hadn’t been the killer.
We wrapped up our foray around the
apartment, after over a solid hour, empty-handed. Bannon wanted to trace
the route the alleged perp had taken in his flight from the scene. I led
him under the police line and through the top-floor hallway toward the
stairwell.
“This is where the young boy saw him,” I
said. “He was entering the stairwell door.”
“I remember the kid,” Bannon said. “About
ten years old, brown hair, big glasses. Playing with a Star Wars toy in
the hall – Darth Maul with that big-assed double light saber. He was right
in the middle of the hallway. Completely ignored the fact that I needed to
walk by and he was blocking the damn path. So I squeezed by, and he looked
up and me, and… well, I put on the best scare-the-shit-out-of-him face I
could manage. Maybe gave a nice little growl. He looked scared. Seems the
next guy probably bore a resemblance and he confused his descriptions.”
We lapsed into thoughtful silence riding
the elevator down, and in fact barely said two words on the ride home. I
dropped him off at his apartment in Brooklyn. He never called me detective
names, just said good night and away he went.
I called Ron from my apartment an hour
later to let him know we’d produced nothing more than brick walls. We
agreed to pick it up in the morning. But my workday wasn’t yet done.
I do understand, buddy. More than you can
know. That’s what he’d said, right before launching off into stories about
being a vampire hunter. Whatever the case, I thought he did indeed know
more than he was letting on.
* *
*
I stood in the Childress girl’s
apartment, in the darkness, concealed by the big plastic plant she had in
one corner by the balcony door. A wooden crucifix, the figure of Christ
nailed to it, rudely poked me in the back of the head from time to time.
Outside the hallway door, all was quiet. I had dismissed the on-duty blue
suit to work his shift at the precinct. I had been there for two hours. I
was an incredibly patient man.
The killer would be back. Of that, I was
certain.
Eventually, I heard the sound of someone
jimmying the lock. Credit carding it, by the sound; I could hear the
chafing sound of something thin being slid between the door and the frame,
the tunking sound as it was pushed against the bolt.
I stayed where I was, but moved my hand
up silently to hover over the light switch. My right hand firmly gripped
the butt of my forty-five.
The door clicked and slowly opened. Light
streamed in from beyond, illuminating a brilliant, widening ray on the
floor, softening the inky blackness a bit. A dark form moved into the
room, and I was only half-surprised to see who it was. I snapped the light
on.
* *
* * * * * *
*
Is it a vampire or not? Or is Bannon
lying to him? Or is it something else entirely?
Night to Dawn is no longer
available. I'll save this one for an anthology! |
Another story Angela Kessler at Dreams of
Decadence liked almost. Night to Dawn liked it enough.