more cases were sitting in files that had not yet been in put? The pre-1920 backlog was not a high priority, and updating of the computer files was being done piecemeal. Fifteen thousand.
Rossiter turned down the intensity knob on the screen, the amber numbers fading into black. A pattern had emerged here, but it was not a pattern that made any sense. With few exceptions, the murders recorded had traced a recognizable path across the country that corresponded to a very definite time line. It was as if the murderer or murderers had crisscrossed the nation for the past six decades, killing as they went, draining the blood of people from the West Coast, the Midwest, the East Coast, the South, and the West.
The amazing thing was that there was nothing more to go on, no other tie-ins, not even an increase in other crimes along those routes. In a few cases, there had been arrests, but no convictions, the individual trials obviously attempts by the politically ambitious to prove to the voting public their criminal-catching credentials despite the o1> vious lack of evidence.
If these deaths really were connected, how had the killers survived in their travels? They hadn't robbed stores or houses along the way, apparently they had not even stolen from the victims. Had they taken ordinary day jobs to earn money while they went on their cross-country killing spree? Were they now working as clerks at the drugstore in Rio Verde? Attendants at the gas station? It just didn't jibe. Some of the murders were too far apart in too short a period of time. There had to be pieces of the puzzle still missing. From the facts available to him now, it could reasonably be deduced that the murderers had not had to eat, buy gas, or find places to stay, that the killings themselves had been sustenance enough--and he knew that could not be the case.
Sustenance.
It was still in the back of his mind, though he didn't want to admit it.
Vampires.
Rossiter closed his eyes, massaged his temples. He was not an overly imaginative man. Even as a child, he had never been afraid of ghosts or monsters or the dark. His fears had always been more concrete: accidents, adults, the tangible dangers of the real world.
But he had not been able to shake this vampire fixation, and when he tried to rationally analyze each new piece of information he uncovered, his mind kept drifting back to thoughts of the undead. He'd considered pulling in another agent to look at the data, maybe Buetell or Hammon, who were assigned to the case anyway, but he didn't want to give up his baby just yet. The more of a hot dog he was, the more he brought in on his own, the greater the reward would be careerwise. Before he started adding others onto the bandwagon, he had to be sure that his contribution was definitive and documented, that it would be clear to everyone that this was his idea and that the essential work had been done by him.
One interesting thing he'd discovered was that the Bureau did maintain quite a bit of information on vampires. He'd checked out several books and articles from the Bureau's library, three of which had to be sent from D.C., and he'd accessed two studies on the subject that had been conducted by operatives in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Of course, the existence of such information didn't mean much--the Bureau had files on anything and everything even remotely related to murder and death--but if he ever decided to pursue the vampirism angle, he at least knew he had Bureau sources he could quote for backup.
Not that he would ever consider ascribing a series of murders to vampires.
Unless... Unless he could prove the existence of multigeneradonal medical vampirism within a specific family.
A family of medical vampires that had killed fifteen thousand people?
He had to stop thinking about this. He had to put it out of his mind.
He opened his eyes, stared at his darkened computer screen. One of the reasons his brain was running along this track was the last series of faxes he'd received from that hick police chief in Rio Verde.
Apparently, a housewife claimed that her daughter had been abducted by Elvis. Ordinarily, he would have assumed that the woman was in shock because her daughter was missing or that she was already planning her insanity defense in case her daughter's body was found and she'd done a poor job of hiding her involvement. But the fact that the police had not ordered any psychological tests for the woman and were apparently treating this as an ordinary missing persons case, and the fact that this incident, bizarre as it was, fit cozily into the mainstream of current events in Rio Verde, made Rossiter take it a little more seriously himself.
Could Elvis be a vampire?
That was just too far out to even consider.
He needed to get out of Phoenix, get back over to Rio Verde, and check things out for himself. He'd made a big deal of his jurisdictional authority on his last trip there, but he hadn't been back since. He'd been so absorbed in this computer search that he'd virtually abandoned legwork the past week or so and had given the case back to Captain Hick by default.
He was turning into a petty bureaucrat.
He was turning into Engles.
Working here could do that to an agent.
Rossiter reached into his pocket, took out his key ring, and found the key to the computer. He shut off the monitor, locked the keyboard, but kept the computer on to retain the information he'd accessed. He stood, pocketed his keys, then walked over to the elevators. He was going stir-crazy in here. Outside, the day was overcast] 'patch of light gray and white clouds covering the sky over Phoenix, a wall of black storm clouds massing above the desert to the north. Across the street, a small group of cowboy-hatted Indians stood blocking the doorway of a bar, talking among themselves. Next door, a team of well-dressed lawyers were posed on the courthouse steps, addressing a news crew from Channel 10. In the real world, it was business as usual.
But in Rio Verde, people and animals and insects were having the bodily fluids sucked out of them through holes in their necks, and Elvis Presley was kidnapping little girls.
What would J. Edgar do in a situation like this?
Go home crying to mama, a small mean part of him said.
He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled a cigarette out of the pack, put it in his mouth, and lit it. He stared up at the sky and wondered if it was going to rain.
It was raining outside, a light drizzle, and though she couldn't hear it on the roof, she could see the mist on the stained glass windows and could feel the cool dampness in the air. Sitting at her desk, opening today's mail, Corrie glanced over at the Pastor Clan Wheeler. He was at his own desk, leaning back in his chair and smiling at her. She smiled back.
For the past week, the pastor had kept her busy doing menial paperwork, filing old invoices, paying bills, reading and answering all mail, even the form letters. He had remained with her at all times, had been so omnipresent as to be suspicious. She began to wonder if he suspected her of something. He definitely seemed to be watching her, keeping an eye on her.
She took the electric bill out of its envelope and put it in her in-box. She hazarded another glance at the pastor. He was still smiling at her. '
She felt happy being here, content in the presence of the pastor, but she was starting to worry about her position in the church. For the past week, the chapel and all other rooms within the complex had been sealed off from the outside, the doors padlocked, and she was confined to the office. If she had to go to the bathroom, the pastor made her use one of the porta-potties set up outside for the construction workers and volunteers. Out of all of the rooms in the growing church, she was allowed only in this one.
All that had been strange enough, but today things were even stranger.
It was nothing that had happened, nothing she could pinpoint. It was a feeling. Things were different today.
She suddenly wished she'd worn the jade necklace. Last week, Rich had tried to bully her into wearing it, telling her that he'd bought it in order to protect her from vampires, but she'd responded that her faith in Jesus was the only protection she needed. She'd made a show of leaving the necklace at home, on her dresser.
Now she wished that she'd worn it. Something within her sensed that the necklace should have been worn to day, that it would have helped her, would have .. . protected her. From what she did not know, but her neck felt bare and naked, like her finger had the time she'd lost her wedding ring.
'Corrie,' the pastor said.
' 'Yes?' She looked up. In person, in a one-to-one set ting, Wheeler's voice did not have the authority that it had on the pulpit, but what it lost in strength it gained in intimacy, and in many ways that was even more
