be more to one another… someday.”
She covered his hand in hers. “I've had similar… hopes.”
“ So I came a thousand miles to be with you.”
She stared at him, trying to uncover the unspoken words here. “Against orders? Not against Leamy's holy wishes, I hope.”
“ No, nothing like that,” he said, but there seemed to be something hidden in his tone.
“ What, then?”
“ Someone's been spreading stories about… well, about you and me, Jess.” He scratched nervously behind his ear, and she saw that he was exhausted.
She frowned, but leaned across to him and kissed him. “Can you blame anyone for talking? There's some fire in this smoke… isn't there?”
“ There is… a fire.”
“ Brewer… some of your friends… are just worried it's too soon after Marilyn. Afraid I'll not be good for you or your career. And maybe, maybe they're-”
“- wrong,” he finished for her, kissing her deeply, probing her mouth with his tongue.
She felt her passion for him rise like the energy above an open flame; she felt as if all her inner turmoil and emotional conflict, the horrendous nature of her long, defeating search for the killer, the stress of being in charge of a forensics division of the largest law enforcement agency in the world-all of it melted within her, turning to an invisible, yielding mist that drained off her mind, to be replaced with his touch.
She could feel, also, Otto's inner trembling as he gave into his need for her. He tenderly held her, his mouth hungrily exploring hers, until suddenly he swept her up and carried her into the bedroom, where he softly placed her against the pillows. The earlier darkness of the room had been too heavy and somber and cold, but now it was as if a ray of morning light had filtered in. She could see Otto clearly over her, his features distinct and his eyes probing. She reached up and helped him tear away his shirt, her nails going into his flesh, making him arch toward her. She lifted her mouth to his chest and suckled at him, making him groan. She lay back and opened her robe to him.
“ I need you, Jess,” he moaned into her ear when he eased himself over her nude form.
“ And I need you,” she replied, wishing that he'd said “I love you,” instead. A part of Otto was still being held in check; a part of him was elsewhere. But she gave herself to him without reservation, praying that it would be enough for him, and that his coming to her like this would never be to his regret.
She pleased him.
She suiprised him.
She soon realized that he would never regret tonight.?
TWENTY-THREE
The discovery of a body on Chicago's near North Side rocked the city, its police force and the FBI. From all appearances, the fearsome Chicago-Wekosha vampire was dead of his own hand, a suicide note written in blood beside him, and he had been an aged, white-haired old man, just like the original Count Dracula of Bram Stoker's novel. The man's body was found by a neighbor who often played chess with him in the evenings. Maurice Lowenthal was a retired medical instruments specialist with a firm called Balue-Stork Medical Supply of Chicago, and except for his age, he very nearly fit the PPT profile the FBI had created in its attempt to locate and end the career of this vampiristic sadist. He lived alone. He had never married. He had buried his parents. He was a man of few friends, none beyond the man in the building who enjoyed a game of chess. He had been something of a loner in his work with Balue-Stork, something of a model worker. Never complained, never a claim for workmen's compensation. Had worked steadily for over eighteen years.
The suicide note told the whole story, and it was on the midnight news even before it was confirmed. The note read: “I cannot any longer live with my guilt and my evil inner self. I killed those poor women and boys for their blood. I now take my own.”
It was signed once more, Teach.
It was even in the same flourishing print, and in the man's stuffy little apartment, inside the refrigerator was found ajar of blood, labeled Renee. The blood would test out as belonging to the Zion woman; of this, Jessica was certain. Other, empty jars were found lying about. There was amid Lowenthal's sprawled body and his own blood, on the carpeting, a saucer and a teacup. The suicide note itself was on the coffee table, glued there by a pool of blood beneath. There were additional blood splotches on the note.
The CPD swore that nothing was handled, and that nothing was moved, and that the blue coats who'd first come on scene had called it in as an FBI matter the moment they saw it. So, presumably, they had a virgin death scene.
Joe Brewer was ecstatic. “When the newspapers work for us, it is a pleasure doing business with them, isn't it?”
Otto Boutine accepted Brewer's slap on the back as tacit approval for the course they had taken. In one corner of the room a stack of Tribunes and Sun-Times papers told them that Lowenthal had been keeping tabs on himself through the press and media. He obviously had been “touched.”
There seemed little else to do but bag the vampire and cart his body off, and that was the consensus. Everyone wanted to celebrate. Everyone but Jessica Coran. She wondered about the fact that no cortisone was found among the various drugs in the man's house, and she had come to believe the killer was a bigger, stronger man.
“ Something's not entirely right here. Otto,” she confided in a whisper.
He frowned but said, “I understand your misgivings. It just goes against everything we thought we knew about this madman to have him suddenly feeling remorseful, sitting down over a cup of tea and guilt, to slash his wrists this way. But downstairs we've got the tools and weapons, even the goddamned spigot!”
She had herself rushed down to see the little shop of horrors, especially curious about the spigot. While in the basement, she had noticed the telltale signs of dried, stringy tissue on the teeth of one electric saw. She'd taken the matter into a cellophane bag to be matched with the body tissue of one of the vampire's victims, one of Lowenthal's victims. But now she had focused her entire attention on the suicide note where it lay in the blood, and it was not quite right.
“ What is it about the note that bothers you, Jess?”
“ The writing for one, exactly the same as the letter he sent to me at Quantico. He was certainly not in a suicidal mood then.”
“ So?”
“ If he knew he was going to die, why'd he print?”
“ Habit. He always prints?”
“ But there's no sign of suicide in the writing.”
“ It's right before you, in the words.”
“ Yes, the words say suicide like a well-rehearsed play, but there's no tremble in the hand holding the pen.”
“ I lay you odds the blood he used for the note will belong to Fowler or one of his other victims.”
“ If not Lowenthal's.”
“ You're not buying into this at all, are you?”
“ I may… after microscopic tests, and I may not, after-”
“ After lab tests,” he finished for her. “Don't your eyes tell you anything?”
“ As a matter of fact, they do. Notice the blood below the paper?”
“ What of it?”
“ A shade darker, thicker, drier and older than that on top.”
Otto looked at her queerly. “Go on, I'm listening.”
“ The blood below dried much earlier than the blood here on top.”
He just stared back at her, not understanding.
“ Don't you see? If Lowenthal had killed himself with the note here in front of him, the blood on either side of
