time. But he didn't know those young cops in inner cities. To him, they were faceless men in blue uniforms, like the police on TV crime shows, somehow better trained, more mature, and more competent than his own men. He did know Stu and Ted. They were good men, good cops-good small-town cops--but they had never had to face something like this.
On the other, hand, neither had he.
'What are we going to do about the bodies?' Hillman asked from behind him.
' Robert turned to face the caretaker. He felt tired all of a sudden and realized that it must be getting close to midnight. 'After we're through with our investigation, we'll hire some men to re dig the graves and return the bodies to their proper plots.'
'How'll we tell who's who?'
'We'll have family members come out and identify the..' remains. If that doesn't work, and if we can't tell by the placement, we'll have to go by dental records.' He nodded toward the corner. 'My parents are over there.' No one spoke.
Robert bent down to examine the body closest to him, an ancient skeleton wearing the rotted remnants of a dress. He found himself focusing his attention on the ex posed left femur. The bone had been snapped in half. Frowning, he motioned Hillman over. 'Is this usual?
Do bones usually break like this?'
The caretaker dropped to his knees and squinted at the skeleton's leg.
'I can't really say. My job is just to take care of the cemetery grounds. I don't know nothing about the bodies.'
'Maybe it broke that way when she fell out,' Ted offered Robert shook his head. 'I don't think so. Look at how the body's positioned. It's been taken out of its coffin and deliberately placed here. That leg hasn't even been bent How could the bone have broken?' Stu climbed a small dirt mound nearby. 'Come here,' he said.
They followed him. His flashlight shone on the femur of another skeleton. This one, too, had been broken. ''Looks like we have a pattern here.' His flashlight beam moved on to another corpse lying next to an open new coffin on the other side of the mound, ii
Hillman gasped. '3esus.'
Robert moved quickly forward, sliding down the pile of dirt, the others following. The body at his feet, though fully clothed and obviously interred only recently, had been shriveled and shrunk and bore an uncanny and uncomfortable resemblance to Manuel Torres's exsanguinated corpse. The same wrinkled parchment skin clung moisturelessly to the skull, the same deflated lips surrounded the overly toothy mouth. It was Caleb Peterson, Robert realized. He'd forgotten that old Caleb had been buried last week. He'd read about it in the paper, but he hadn't known the miner that well and hadn't gone to the funeral.
Only Caleb looked as though he'd died decades--not days---ago.
Robert put forth a tentative finger. The skin he touched was dry and brittle. -J The vampire had smelled fresh meat.
He pushed the thought from his mind. 'Ted,' he said. 'Get on the radio to the station. I wantJud out here with a camera. Get Woods here too. I want a medical opinion on this.'
'Yes, sir.'
'And see if we can use Globe's K-9.'
[ , 'You're not going to want to hear this,' Stu said quietly.
'But I think it was a vampire.'
Hillman nodded fearfully. 'I think so too.'
'Don't be stupid.'
'Stupid? This whole place was uprooted. In an hour.
Mr. Peterson's body has been sucked dryB'
'The vampire got a mouthful of embalming fluid then.'
'Those bones were broken open because he was looking for the marrow.'
Robert kept his face as impassive as possible. 'We're here for ten minutes, we haven't even started our investigation, and already you're jumping to conclusions. Idiotic conclusions, I might add.' You don't think all this is weird? Mr. Torres--'
'Yes, it's weird. But we don't know what's doing this, and until we do know, I want you to keep your mouth shut. There are going to be enough rumors as it is. I don't want any of them to originate with the police department.
You got that? If you have theories, you keep them to your self.'
'Are you going to tell your brother?'
Robert glared at him. 'Yes, I am. I think he has a right to know since his parents are lying over there with their graves dug up.'
Stu looked down at the ground. 'Sorry. I just meant that, since he's on the paper and all---'
'I know exactly what you meant. Now if you don't think you can handle this investigation without blaming every thing on monsters, I'll get Steve out here and assign you to the desk.'
'I can handle it.'
'I hope so.' Robert looked at the young officer, then sighed. 'While we're waiting, why don't you take Mr. Hillman's statement.'
'Why? Am I a suspect? I swear to God, I didn't do itw' 'You're not a suspect. But you're the closest thing we have to a witness. We just have to record what you saw and when you saw it.'
He blinked. 'Oh. Okay.'
Robert stood alone next to Caleb's dehydrated body and empty coffin as Stand and the old man headed back through the cemetery toward the caretaker's house.
Looking for bone marrow.
The idea made sense.
Shivering, he looked again at the tight, grinning face of the corpse.
There was the sound, far off, of a coyote howling. A cliched noise at a cliched time, but it did its work, and the peach fuzz on the back of his neck bristled, turning into goose bumps on his arms.
Turning to face the bright beams of the car, he followed the others out of the cemetery.
It was time to call Pdch.
Sue stood for a moment in the middle of Center Street, looking at the front of the newspaper office. Stenciled white lettering in a rainbow curve on the window read: ' RIO VERDE GAZE TITE Beneath that, the chipped and faded ghosts of previous letters could be seen on the dusty glass. A lone pickup was parked next to the door.
She had passed by the newspaper office plenty of times but had never really noticed it before. It was located in one of the nearly identical sandstone brick buildings that made up most of the town's business district, lost amidst the proliferation of lawyers' offices, insurance offices, real estate offices, and title companies. Across the street was a small house that had been turned into a bauty salon, and next to that a metal quonset hut that was home to the American Legion Thrift Store.
She walked slowly across the asphalt, wondering if CarterRichwas watching her through the window. She felt exposed and a little embarrassed, and she wished she'd had her father drop her off farther away. Her palms were sweaty, and she wiped them on her jeans. Jeans?
She glanced down at her pants. She should have worn some thing dressier the first day. A skirl A nice blouse. Earrings. Jewelry.
At least she'd thought to put on makeup.
The door to the office opened, and Rich walked across the hard dirt parking lot toward her. He had been watching. 'Hello,' he said. 'I'm glad you're here.'
'Hi.' Sue nodded at him. He looked tired, she thought. The other night, at the school, he'd seemed vigorously healthy, but now there were dark circles around his red-rimmed eyes, and his face seemed thinner, though she knew that he could not have lost weight since Thursday. His clothes were wrinkled enough to have been slept in.
He must have caught her looking at him and correctly interpreted the expression on her face, because he gave her a wan grin. 'Forgive my appearance. I'm not usually this seedy, but I've been up most of the night. The graves at the cemetery were all dug up, and I had to cover the story. I was at the cemetery until one, and then I
