was suspect. Had the call come from within the building? Now the building itself had become a kind of evil working against her.
“ Got to get hold of myself,” she quietly said, trying desperately to calm her frayed nerves. It was one thing to hunt down a killer, but quite another when deadly, dangerous prey turned on you and stared you in the face. A police dispatcher called in telling her that the call was traced to a phone booth on the corner of Irving Park and Kedzie.
She next dialed long-distance for Otto, believing him most certainly back at HQ by now. She could not get him, and his fool secretary argued with her that he was still in Chicago. She became frustrated and asked to be routed to the lab in an attempt to reach J.T. But Robertson answered only to tell her that J.T. was gone for the evening.
“ Anything I can do for you?” he asked.
“ Yeah, as a matter of fact, there is.” She proposed that he get on a plane as quickly as possible and get to Chicago. She wanted him to confirm what she had found in the Lowenthal death, giving him just enough to whet his appetite. Robertson assured her that he was on his way, and he equally assured her that Otto Boutine, so far as he knew, had not returned to Quantico.
She hung up, feeling frustrated. She dialed for the Chicago offices of the FBI, asking for Brewer, only to leam that he was unavailable, something about investigating a case. One of Brewer's men got on with her, and she briefly recounted the conversation she had had with the killer, but this man, like everyone else in the Chicago law enforcement community, had long ago decided that the killer was dead.
“ Oh, you'll get hundreds of crank-heads calling, Dr. Coran, even a year from now-”
“ Just tell Brewer that this guy knew too much!”
She slammed down the phone in anger, taking it out on the agent.
Going from the floor and through the near empty building, she felt self-conscious, and she felt like a target, and she recalled how the sadistic bastard that had killed Candy Copeland had gone about his cruel work; she recalled it in its every vivid detail.
“ He's still out here somewhere,” she said to the bustling city night outside the Chicago Crime Lab where she hailed a cab. She had her gun with her, and for this she was grateful. She felt for it while in the cab, reassuring as it was to the touch, even in its ankle holster below her wide-legged, billowy slacks.
In a moment, she realized that the taxi driver was staring in his rearview at her and asking, “You okay, miss?”
“ Lincolnshire Inn, please,” she replied coldly.
“ Oh, great,” he replied, snapping on the meter. Now she was a good fare, and he no longer worried about her state of mind.
God, why hadn't Otto stayed with her??
TWENTY-SIX
It was 9 P.M. when the phone woke Jessica Coran from a less than sound sleep. She at first only half heard the voice at the other end of the line, thinking it was a wrong number.
“ I–I-I know you'll want ta talk to-to me,” a whiny, nasally stutterer was saying. She started to protest but was stopped by his next words.
I haf in-for-ma-tion about the vam-pire kill-kill-er.”
“ Who is this?”
“ My name. I'm not givin' my-my name; but I–I-I think I know who-who he is.”
The voice was calm save for the stutter.
“ How did you get my number?”
“ I've read about these ter-ter-terrible kill-killings. I've seen you in the papers, and-and to-night I got your number by-by lying. I told a lie, and they gave me this num-umberrr.”
“ Who gave you this number?”
“ The girl with the police did it-it for me.”
She inwardly cringed, believing her number was given out to a wacko who had been following the case in the papers. The man sounded like a retarded person.
“ The girl at the police department? Which department?”
“ Does-doesn't matter,” he said impatiently.
She sat up in bed, trying to clear her mind and her eyes all at once. “What… what kind of lie did you tell to get my number?” she insisted. “That I'm your father…”
She immediately resented the bastard.
“… that, that your mother's ill, dying! and that I had to get in touch with you.” There was a solidness, a timbre to the voice that kept it from being completely babyish-sounding.
“ Why me? Why bring your story to me, when you've got the entire Chicago Police Department to tell it to?” Her voice was openly caustic now.
“ Po-Po-Police Department? I have! I have tried them. No one will le-listen, 'cause they think I–I-I'm-well, stupid or some-all be-because I use-use-use-did-did d-d-drugs, and-and I was in the hos-”
“ I see.”
“ No, you don't see. I see. No one but me. He lives next door. I see him comin' in with the-these things. Packin' this, this red stuff 'way in his how-how-house, you know? and he tells me once… once he tells me his dear old mother put up some-some tomatoes for him, and once he told me that it was jus' to-to-tomato juice, and once it was ke-ke-ketchup, but-but it's all the same. It's blood.”
“ Who is this other man? What is his name?”
There was a long pause at the other end, until finally, the man said, “My neighbor.”
“ German?”
“ Kinda German, yeah. How'd you know?”
“ Short, stocky man? Dark hair?” She was describing Kaseem's man.
“ Yeah-yeah-yeah, that's him, but how-how-how did you know?”
Ignoring this, she asked, “Where are you located?”
“ My house?”
“ Yes, so we can speak. So you can show me where this man lives.”
“ I–I-I don't want no trouble.”
“ Please, just give me his address, then.”
“ No-no-no. I'll let you come here. You can-can-can't go there alone.”
“ I don't intend to, and certainly not before I've had a chance to investigate this thing further.”
“ All right.”
“ Is your neighbor home now?”
“ No. Prowling. What vam-pires do this time of night. Never see him days-never. Sleeps in-in-in his how- how-house in-in-in a cof-fin, I–I bet.”
“ Where is your location? I'll send a car around.” She wondered if this wasn't just the beginning of the crank calls.
“ No! No! No cars.”
“ Sir, I can't help you if you don't-”
“ Dr. Coran, I don't talk to no one about this no more. I–I-I quit because they were going to lock me up.”
She wondered momentarily if she was not speaking this moment to the killer himself. Perhaps he was a classic dual personality, and while one side of him wallowed in the kill, another side of him abhorred it and the creature personality that had repeatedly murdered while this personality stood by. It was a possibility that she was talking to Davie Rosnich at this very moment, but she dared not frighten him off with such questions. She must first establish a location, a rendezvous spot with a vampire killer.
Or someone who knew the killer.
